Love in Excess; or The Fatal Inquiry by Eliza Haywood, and: The Injur’d Husband and Lasselia by Eliza Haywood, and: The Adventures of Rivella by Delarivier Manley

Abstract

74 els. In ‘‘Jonathan Swift: Angleterre, Irlande et patriotisme protestant, 1688– 1735,’’ François Boulaire adequately emphasizesthereignsofQueenAnneand George I, without forgetting the Irish context. In ‘‘Lashing the Vice: Jonathan Swift, Satire, and Nature’s Designs,’’Jefferson Holdridge stresses ‘‘the Gaelic literary and cultural tradition’’ in a paper that relies heavily on Robert Elliott’s and Michael Seidel’s work. Likewise, Eileen Douglas’s ‘‘In ‘a glass darkly’: Swift, Gulliver and the Human Shape’’ deals with ‘‘the human shape’’ as ‘‘the leading quality’’ in the definition of the human species in the Travels and in Swift’s Irish writings of the previous decade. Stephen Karian discusses well-known issues of textual history in ‘‘The Texts of Gulliver’s Travels.’’ Examining Gulliver ’s ‘‘models’’ in ‘‘Gulliver’’: voyages et véracité,’’ Jan Borm goes back to Herodotus , Lucian, and Dampier, and concludes that in travel literature, the borderline between fiction and nonfiction can be blurred. In ‘‘Gulliver’s Travels and the language debates of Swift’s time,’’ Anne Mulhall discusses the political and religious implications of the plain style in Restoration England, not mentioning that contempt of complicated rhetoric had initially been advocated by early Puritans. ‘‘Rhetoric’’ is used in a broader sense in Claude Fiérobe’s outstanding ‘‘La rhétorique de Swift dans Gulliver’s Travels: remettre en question(s).’’ Mr. Fiérobe highlights the ‘‘combination of several narrative approaches,’’ warning the reader to act ‘‘like a watchman constantly on his guard.’’ Daniel Carey in ‘‘Swift, Gulliver , and Human Nature’’contrastsSwift and his contemporary Hutcheson, arguing that ‘‘Swift constitutes an instance of counter-enlightenment sensibility in this context.’’ Relying heavily on secondary sources, Melanie Maria in ‘‘The ReceptionofGulliver ’s Travels in Britain and Ireland, France, and Germany’’concludes thatthe book was better received in France, thanks to Desfontaine’s toned-down translation, than in the British Isles and Germany. She might have mentioned Georg Philipp Telemann’salmostgraphic musical illustration of the book in the Getreue Music-Meister(1728) withthemost diminutive note values reserved for Lilliput . Françoise Deconinck-Brossard Université de Paris X ELIZA HAYWOOD. Love in Excess; or The Fatal Inquiry, ed. David Oakleaf. Second edition. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview , 2000.Pp.291.$15.95CDN;$12.95 US; £8.99 UK; $24.95 AUST. ELIZA HAYWOOD. The Injur’d Husband and Lasselia, ed. Jerry C. Beasley. Lexington : Kentucky, 1999. Pp. vi ⫹ 162. $16.95. DELARIVIER MANLEY. The Adventuresof Rivella, ed. Katherine Zelinsky. Broadview Literary Texts. Petersborough, Ontario : Broadview, 1999. Pp. 178. $16.95 CDN; $14.95 US; £7.99 UK; $24.95 AUST. These four lesser-known texts are exemplary contributions to the ever-expanding canon of Restoration and eighteenth -century novels by women, significant at their time, but blurred to the point of obscurity by later literary histories and academic practices. In our own time—particularly during the past two 75 decades—literary criticism and cultural history have restored women writers to their rightful place in our conception of the past. The importance ofHaywood totheearly novel is without question. Her Love in Excess, as Mr. Oakleaf points out, was ‘‘the spectacularly successful first novel of a spectacularly successful novelist.’’ The Injur’d Husband and Lasselia, while notable neither for being the first nor the best of Haywood’s work (as Mr. Beasley acknowledges), are typical examples of Haywood’s narrative preoccupations with the expression and theconsequences of female desire. Manley, while less prolific in her literary output than Haywood, was every bit as prominent on the literary scene and every bit as scandalous in her personal life. Her pseudoautobiographical narrative is a fascinating example of the self-justification that underwrites all self-construction, and Ms. Zelinsky excellently separates the threads of historical reality and imaginative fabrication that Manley weaves into her portrait of Rivella. In their introductory remarks, all three editors bravely face the question of aesthetic achievement. Ms. Zelinsky (in Rivella ) and Mr. Oakleaf (in Love in Excess) convincingly argue narrative skill and seriousness of thematic purpose in Rivella and Love in Excess respectively. If Mr. Beasley does not persuade us of similar excellences in Lasselia and The Injur’d Husband, it is because his purpose is to draw attention to the way these texts ‘‘helped to stimulate the...