Short Fiction in the Eighteenth Century

Introduction

The eighteenth century did not produce the first modern short story as it is known today as an art form, a clearly defined genre. Seldom during the century did a story have the firm story line and economy of effect that would justify labeling it a short story in the modern sense; a story was concerned with how an experience is valued and what difference it makes to someone, not merely what is said and done. A surprising number of literary historians agree that the birth of the genre did not occur until the early nineteenth century, in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (1819-1820), by Washington Irving.

As Benjamin Boyce states in his essay “Eighteenth-Century Short Fiction,” however, for “the present discussion . . . ‘short fiction’ includes any kind of imaginative writing about people that contains or implies action and that does not exceed in length 12,000 words.” Within this definition can be found the vast variety of forms of short fiction that were produced by writers of the eighteenth century. These include fairy tales, Oriental tales, satirical adventure tales, the conte, epistolary fiction, rogue literature, sueño (or dream) fiction, essays, moral tracts, character sketches, the German Novelle, and the nouvelle or novelette (considered by some critics to be merely a stepchild of the novel, simply a short, uncomplicated novel; for this essay’s purposes, the novelette qualifies as eighteenth century short fiction). As will be seen, the great periodical of the eighteenth century, The Spectator (1711-1712, 1714), was the chief vehicle for the majority of these forms. In the latter part of the century, with the advent of Romanticism, gothic fiction and psychological tales became immensely popular.

It is quite apparent from the foregoing list that if the birth of the distinctly defined genre of the short story did not occur until the nineteenth century, then the eighteenth could fairly be said to be its gestation period. It saw a time in which fragmentary but excellent characteristics of the short story were refined until they coalesced into a superb whole. The seeds that allowed the growth of the genre were planted in the eighteenth century.

To appreciate fully the merits of authors or their writings, it is necessary to throw a searchlight on the period in which they wrote. The eighteenth century was, after all, one of the great pivotal and transitional eras of all time. It saw a severe dichotomy of thought. The century opened with the Enlightenment (also called the Age of Reason), then moved through the beginning of the Industrial Age with the invention of the steam engine in 1765, and then saw the American and French revolutions, before closing under the strong and lasting influence of the age of passion, Romanticism. This essay will examine briefly the events of the age when considering each individual nation. The short fiction of the Western world is the focus here: England, America, France, Germany, Spain, and Italy.

England

England in 1700 was possibly the most advanced nation in Europe, yet the English scene of 1700 was darkened by political and religious corruption and injustice. Literature was strictly for aristocrats—those “to the manor born.” Public schools were slowly being instituted, but they were few, and most people were unable to read or write. The cities, however, were growing, and the well-to-do were spending less time in their countryseats and more in the cities—more specifically, in the coffeehouses, discussing the latest news from abroad, from Parliament, from society.

Within these conditions was found the germ of the eventual short story proper. The need for a new social expression against the excesses of the Restoration created the personal essay, which attempted not only to address the conflicts of the time but also to chronicle the “talk of the town.” Fictional “talkers” were created by the authors of periodicals. In The Tatler (1709-1711), created by Joseph Addison, and later in the superior The Spectator, created by both Addison and Sir Richard Steele, were found the highest quality of fictional talkers, reflectors of their times. The Spectator was one of the most important periodicals of the century, greatly influencing writers throughout Western Europe and America. The best-known of the characters about whom Mr. Spectator “talks” in The Spectator is Sir Roger de Coverley, a good-natured gentleman who represents surviving feudalism and through whom the vehement opposition between town and country was expressed.

The mixture of fashionable contempt for book learning, blended with shrewd wit, is well represented in the character of amiable, simpleminded Will Wimble, one of Sir Roger’s friends. His character is amazingly fleshed out with gentle satire in the de Coverley papers. Poor Will, younger brother to a baronet, has no estate and naturally no business sense, but he has mastered the craft of idleness. The depiction of English homebred life formed the basic nature of the early eighteenth century story: a graceful realism and the criticism of manners in an attractive satirical style, found especially in Addison’s stories.

The Tatler and The Spectator were the first organs attempting to give form and consistency to the opinions rising out of the social context. Through Addison and Steele, public opinion was founded by a conscious effort of reason and persuasion. The Spectator and its predecessors, with their dual purposes to instruct and/or entertain, were true children of the Enlightenment. Reason and instruction were foremost considerations, and often this made for severe didacticism. Happily, though, the vehicle for instruction was fictional entertainment. That philosophy, consistently followed, is put best in Mr. Spectator’s own words: “The mind ought sometimes to be diverted, that it may return to thinking better” (The Spectator, 102). Short fiction, still dubious and generally unfamiliar as a form of entertainment, played an important role in the success of The Spectator, and in a smaller way, The Tatler, which preceded it.

Through character sketches such as those in the de Coverley papers, the short story began tentatively to detach itself from the essay. The Spectator, unlike earlier periodicals, presented dialogue not merely as a device to present two viewpoints but as a give-and-take between two generally believable characters. Although the short fiction in The Spectator is not always technically well drawn, it did provide embryonic examples of modern narration and developed characters.

Perhaps the best narrative is Addison’s “The Vision of Mirzah” (The Spectator, 159). Oriental tales became enormously popular after Antoine Galland’s translation of Alf layla wa-layla (fifteenth century; The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, 1706-1708). The Spectator, not surprisingly, capitalized on the form’s influence in Oriental-flavored moral tales, such as “The Vision of Mirzah.” Other forms of Oriental tales appeared as “letters” from the Orient, as in Montesquieu’s Lettres persanes (1721; Persian Letters, 1722) and Oliver Goldsmith’s The Citizen of the World (1762), and as romances—moral, philosophical, or satirical—such as Voltaire’s popular Zadig: Ou, La Destinée, Histoire orientale (1748; originally as Memnon: histoire orientale, 1747; Zadig: Or, The Book of Fate, 1749) and Samuel Johnson’s similar Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia: A Tale by S. Johnson (1759).

“The Vision of Mirzah” displays a pleasing mixture of elements—Oriental material, allegory, and dream vision—and showcases Addison’s ability to construct a narrative around a consistent mood and condensed action. A good narrator also controls a story by presenting a scene in its varied details. Addison excels in imaging a scene, and in “The Vision of Mirzah,” the reader is taken successfully by the second paragraph to enjoy the air on the mountaintops above Baghdad.

In Steele’s sketch “The Matchmaker” (The Spectator, 437), realistic details and several characters in motion make it a delightful narrative story. From the beginning words, the emphasis is on minute details of movement and gesture and on conversation with real people. “The Biter” (The Spectator, 504), though technically a simple character sketch, contains the record of actual spoken words, presented in such a way as to convey a conversational tone and the sting of wit, and is an excellent short narrative episode.

Whether directly by description or indirectly through action, the authors come close, in a number of cases, to achieving the conflict, unity of mood, and character interplay necessary for the short story proper, as in “The Envious Man” (The Spectator, 19). Sir Roger and his friends acted and talked in accordance with their imagined personalities. Human figures so naturally drawn had not appeared in English prose fiction before. The smooth, easy flow of words and natural conversational tone overlaid with brevity throughout The Spectator is worth a study for any short-fiction enthusiast.

The custom of didacticism restricted the range of short fiction in the eighteenth century to a certain extent. The tones in Johnson’s didactic essays in The Rambler, though of high quality, approach dictatorial instruction. Anyone comparing the light and rhythmical periods of The Spectator to the ponderous sententiousness of The Rambler will perceive that the spirit of preaching was gaining ground on the genius of conversation. Hannah More’s Cheap Repository tracts also reflect the limitations of didacticism. Brought up from childhood on The Spectator and The Rambler, which introduced new and lofty conceptions of the principles of morality, the characters in More’s tracts and her fifty tales and ballads are merely pegs on which to hang principles. The principles are stated with considerable skill in her case, but there is little development of character to help the case of short fiction at the time.

Didacticism of the period did reap benefits, though. The didactic morality influenced other writers, such as Daniel Defoe and Jonathan Swift. The satire was generally directed against the upper classes, which, through writers such as Defoe, began a sympathetic understanding of poverty and the travails of the underprivileged. Truth and realism were the watchwords of Defoe, a professed moralist. He brought to his short fiction a journalistic sense of truth and clarity. Indeed, Defoe’s A True Relation of the Apparition of One Mrs. Veal (1706), long considered fiction, is merely a piece of expert reporting. His writing skills are evident, and the account has the same clear and simple delineation of scenes and the same lucid factual tone that compels the reader’s belief, possessed by Defoe’s later famous works, such as The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner, Written by Himself (1719; commonly known as Robinson Crusoe).

What Defoe tries to do in the story is retain the significance of the old legends, ballads, and folktales in a culture in which those beliefs were no longer tenable. A True Relation of the Apparition of One Mrs. Veal looks backward to the most traditional form of short narrative—the fable presented to teach a moral lesson—and forward to the realistic story presented for its own sake as an account of an actual event. What makes the story so interesting is that it foregrounds this duality so emphatically.

A True Relation of the Apparition of One Mrs. Veal can be taken in several different ways at once. First of all, although it is presented as a moral tale, it is much more detailed and specific than other “moral tales” or illustrative essays of the early eighteenth century, in which the sincerity of the teller alone was sufficient to persuade the reader of the truth of the event. It little matters, in terms of the technique of the tale, whether the apparition actually appeared to Mrs. Bargrave or not, nor does it matter that Defoe takes the incident from an actual account by Mrs. Bargrave. What does matter is the process by which the relation becomes a story. Whether an event actually took place or whether a central character or narrator is “crazed” and has simply hallucinated the event is one of the most common foregrounded concerns of short fiction later in the nineteenth century.

Another English writer admired for his simplicity, lucidity, and reasonableness is Goldsmith, the most noteworthy successor of Johnson in the art of the didactic short story. He writes with a range of humor, from subtle irony to broad farce, and the impulse to tell a good story carried his imagination far beyond the scope of so-called good sense. The best-known eighteenth century character essay-sketch with moral purpose is Goldsmith’s “The Disabled Soldier.” The narrator’s reflections center on the difference between the misfortunes of tragic and epic sufferers, who are usually considered to be fit subjects for artistic presentation, and the misfortunes of socially insignificant sufferers, who are usually ignored. The frame reflections suggest a radical difference between the epic form that gave rise to the novel and the folktale form that gave rise to the short story. In the former, the epic or tragic structure depends on the hero’s high stature and the incongruity of his consequent fall.

For the ordinary person, however, for whom distress is the usual course of things, calamity poses no incongruity and thus no reason for his life to be the subject of a tragic or epic form. There is no obvious irony in the oral teller’s story. The irony exists tacitly in the fact that the litany of events is presented to readers who perceive the gap between the soldier’s situation and their own. “The Disabled Soldier” neatly illustrates the tale within the essay, differences between history and story, and some basic distinctions between the oral and written story. It also centers on the prototypical nineteenth century short-story character, the little man whose identity resides only in the story of adversity he tells.

Perhaps the most important eighteenth century short fiction to influence the nineteenth century short story is Horace Walpole’s gothic romance, The Castle of Otranto (1765), for in it, Walpole self-consciously combined conventions of both realism and romance. In his famous preface to the second edition, Walpole says his work is an attempt to blend the ancient and the modern in which, while

leaving the powers of fancy at liberty to expatiate through the boundless realms of invention, and thence of creating more interesting situations, he wished to conduct “the mortal agents in his drama according to the rules of probability; in short, to make them think, speak, and act, as it might be supposed mere men and women do in extraordinary positions.

However, because Walpole’s ordinary people are placed in extraordinary situations, his characters do not remain “ordinary.” For even though they seem to be motivated by individual psychology, placing them in extreme situations transforms them into psychological embodiments. The basic story of The Castle of Otranto is the family romance—the mystery of paternity and the problem of who shall rule, all of which is “displaced” and emphasized by the multiplication of character roles. There are, for example, three “fathers” (Manfred, Frederick, and Jerome), two “sons” (Conrad and Theodore), and two “daughters” (Isabelle and Matilda). In structure, The Castle of Otranto is a story in which all characters and thus all motifs are closely and obsessively related.

In the middle years of the eighteenth century, the novel is prominent among literary forms in England. Ultimately, the great novelists in England exerted a deep influence on Europe. Therefore, while the nouvelle in France emerged as a popular art form in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the novelette and other similar fictional forms in England were quite overshadowed by the novel. Some of these included travel accounts, secret histories, memoirs, and biographies (each of these forms were usually thinly disguised romances of passion). Eliza Haywood, who wrote, among other short fiction, Secret Histories, Novels, and Poems (1725), is an example of an author who acquiesced to the decreasing demand for the above-mentioned fictional forms and wisely moved on to produce good quality novels.

Because of the emergence of the novel in England, then, the short story generally remained tied to the essay, chiefly in the periodical. Within this small range, its success was remarkable, and its impact kept the seeds of short fiction, though dormant in many ways by the end of the century, still alive.

America

In America during the eighteenth century, all roads did not lead to the novel, as in England. As literary historian Edward Joseph Harrington O’Brien (The Advance of the American Short Story, 1923) theorizes, the answer lies in the difference of temperament and environment between the English (and Europeans) and the Americans. The more impatient and restless temperament of the pioneers, settling the relatively new and largely unexplored nation, and their view that there was little place for leisure in their rough and difficult environment (compare hardworking wealthy landowners in America to the court and aristocracy of England and Europe in the 1700’s) made the short story much more appealing—being brief and able to condense emotion into a figurative moment as it flies.

The essays of Benjamin Franklin covered a broad range of subject matter, in form and in purpose; it can be said that they kept short fiction creatively alive in the 1700’s in America. He wrote gracefully and urbanely yet could write equally well in the rough school of realism fathered by Defoe. The earthy realism of Franklin’s style is vividly exemplified in one of his essays, “Reflections on Courtship and Marriage,” in which he describes the picture that some women present in the morning, with “frowsy hair hanging in sweaty ringlets, staring like Medusa with her serpents . . . teeth furred and eyes crusted. . . .”

Influenced by the great periodicals in England, humor and satire were increasingly being given more stress in American essays. Franklin’s “Silence Dogood Essays”demonstrate his vivid imagination and his sense of the ridiculous. They resemble in style the colloquial manner of The Spectator, with one major difference, more typical of the aggressive pioneer spirit of America: The learned allusions and literary anecdotes of The Spectator were replaced by homely sayings and by comic, even earthy stories. They also show remarkable empathy for women and their problems, as Franklin sees through the eyes of the widow Silence Dogood; many of the essays are related to women’s affairs and problems.

In 1732, Franklin wrote a series of three character sketches: of Anthony Afterwit, an honest tradesman with an extravagant wife; of Celia Single, a sketch with considerable dialogue as a forum to discuss women’s rights; and of Alice Addertongue, whose words, through Franklin’s pen, speak facetiously about scandal yet scrupulously avoid making his newspaper the Pennsylvania Gazette a scandal sheet, as were some of the other papers of the day.

Franklin’s “The Bagatelles,” lighthearted or humorous essays, are classics in short fiction that cover a great emotional range. Here, Franklin momentarily lays aside his constant watchword “utility.” For once, his essay becomes not a mere means to an end. “The Elysian Fields,” for example, is an excellent piece that shows considerable similarities to modern short stories—with a clearly discernible beginning, middle, and end, with elements of surprise and balanced irony. He was a writer clearly ahead of his time. Franklin established a tradition of humor and journalistic writing that was peculiarly American and that can be found in the best of modern short fiction.

France

In France, as well as America and England, the formal short story—with its exacting demands of narrative structure, content, and development—did not fully develop until well into the nineteenth century. From France, though, at the end of the seventeenth century and through the first half of the eighteenth, came the highest-quality short fiction in Europe and America. Voltaire and the Encyclopedists, leaders in Enlightenment thinking, were producing high quality contes philosophiques, and the nouvelle had replaced the heroic romance in popularity. The nouvelle, a short fiction centered on a love intrigue, though generally longer than most short fiction, showed the move toward shorter pieces and is considered integral to the development of the short story.

The first work of fiction in the 1700’s actually to comply with the theory of the nouvelle is Robert Challes’s Les Illustres Françoises (1713; The Illustrious French Lovers, 1727). The work is a collection of nouvelles or histoires, joined together within a narrative frame, so it belongs to the fictional genre that also contains Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron: O, Prencipe Galetto (1349-1351; The Decameron, 1620) and Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (1387-1400). Challes’s nouvelle is revolutionary in the way in which it focuses more closely on the texture of experience than earlier fictions, but at the same time it places heavy stress on the elements that restrain and shape emotional and impulsive elements in human character.

Montesquieu, a forerunner of Voltaire, deserves further mention in this essay for his vastly entertaining Persian Letters, fictional letters written home by two Persians traveling in France. One can enjoy them for their subtle irony and urbane style, and one can faintly hear the first criticisms of the artificiality of the French aristocracy.

Voltaire, in the early eighteenth century, stood as a symbol of the Enlightenment, and he is now considered an intellectual precursor of the French Revolution. He used—as did Franklin, who manifested the same spirit and ideals in America before the American Revolution—the weapon of humor to correct human folly. The bizarre adventures in Candide: Ou, L’Optimisme (1759; Candide: Or, All for the Best, 1759; also as Candide: Or, The Optimist, 1762; also as Candide: Or, Optimism, 1947) are the best examples of his skill in persuading with a smile, to carry the reader along on an even flow, even while he uses satire’s fierce energies to challenge readers’ complacencies. He reveals the underside of the Enlightenment ideal of reason: that the much-praised reason of human beings can also expose their weaknesses.

Voltaire at once invented the conte philosophique and brought it to such perfection that only few writers have dared to imitate him. Le Micromégas (1752; Micromegas, 1753), Zadig, and Candide all show Voltaire’s ability to cover ground with complete lucidity in a small number of words. The first page of Candide offers a wonderful example. Without the slightest sense of haste or compression, the scene is set, the chief characters are introduced, and the tone and feeling of the story are established.

To complete a view of eighteenth century short fiction in France, it is necessary to observe the revolutionary effects, to observe how the disintegrating work of Voltaire and the Encyclopedists was followed by the constructive work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the dreamer. The earlier writers, such as Voltaire, worked to expose, even to destroy, the existing system; the later writers, such as Rousseau, were hopeful constructors, dreamers of ideal commonwealths and societies. Rousseau, at first alone, and seconded only later in life by the enthusiasm of a new school of Romanticists, imparts a touch of poetic fire to French thought in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Rousseau’s Julie: Ou, La Nouvelle Héloïse (1761; Eloise: Or, A Series of Original Letters, 1761; also as Julie: Or, The New Eloise, 1968) marks the beginning of the new period. The essential idea is of life as an organic whole and human beings as creatures essentially connected with the rest of nature by virtue of their emotions—this is the very center of Romantic theory. Rousseau’s nouvelle marked the shift in writing to an increase of subjectivity, which was ultimately painful and stressful (eventually, intense subjectivity became, as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe described it, a form of sickness). The new, free intensity of feeling of Romanticism, however, opened the floodgates of creativity, and the short story flourished in the nineteenth century because of it.

Even before Rousseau and full-blown Romanticism, there was an interest on the Continent in highly developed emotional responsiveness. In Germany, Goethe’s work Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (1774; The Sorrows of Young Werther, 1779) was immensely influential in establishing the image of the introspective, self-pitying, melancholy Romantic hero. In fact, it was the German Romantic school that developed most quickly and thoroughly in Europe.

Germany

Although it was the novel that became the most popular fictional form in Germany during the “Romantic” end of the eighteenth century, excellent short fiction was produced as well because of the stronger emphasis on the narrative, rediscovered interest in fables, and the relaxed formal structures allowing increased freedom of expression.

The German Novelle, an original romance form of short fiction, was also cultivated by the German Romanticists. Noteworthy is Goethe’s Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten (1795; Conversations of German Emigrants, 1854), with its escapist motif, written for the German periodical Die H”ren. It is a framework series of stories intended primarily to entertain and to instruct, written in much the same manner as Boccaccio’s Decameron. As in the Italian work, there is a background of suffering and death contrasted with the relative calm among the small group of aristocrats involved in the storytelling.

The German Romanticist Ludwig Tieck was a prolific writer of Novellen, but his best work was in the realm of Romantic fairy tales. The excellent Der blonde Eckbert (1797; Fair Eckbert, 1828) is a product of dreams and fancies which spin a web of varicolored moods and atmospheres. It delves into the depths of the subconscious. The awe-inspiring potency of Romantic writing is seen here at its best. Tieck succeeds quite well in giving poetic form to his mystic feeling for nature and in making nature a sort of allegory for the vague strivings and imaginings of humankind. True to his fatalism, which told him that human beings are at the mercy of higher powers, the horrible is seen as residing in nature itself and overpowering humankind.

The problem with Fair Eckbert is not only that the story makes use of such fairy-tale motifs as a magical bird, a grotesque old lady, and a child who runs away from home to enter an enchanted world but also that characters seem to do things without any reason, and there does not seem to be any logical connection between the events in the tale. Bertha’s tale within a tale is dominated by a dream logic that makes it seem predominantly like a fairy tale. However, Bertha’s story differs from fairy tales because, presented as a story of a personal experience, it becomes a self-conscious embodiment of psychological processes.

Because Bertha’s story is about the child’s retreat from the external world into the world of fantasy or fairy tale, the specific motivation for her leaving home cannot be made clear; she leaves the house scarcely realizing what she is doing, for truly her departure is an unconscious one, both in the manifest story and in its latent meaning. Her journey into the mountains that reveal no sign of human habitation, her encounter with the strange old woman whose face twitches so that Bertha is never sure what she really looks like and with the bird that lays an egg each day with a pearl or gem inside are all characterized as if they were a dream—even a dream within a dream, says Bertha. As the dream events become familiar to her, the dream reality takes on the appearance of the only reality there is.

When the reader returns to the frame, which is Eckbert’s story, he or she enters into a different realm of motivation and logic of events, for the reader is, comparatively speaking, “back to reality.” Eckbert’s anxiety about the telling of the secret story to his friend Walther can be accounted for consciously rather than unconsciously, just as his original motivation for urging Bertha to tell the story can be accounted for as an irresistible impulse to tell a friend a secret to make him a closer friend. However, after the story is told, Eckbert regrets the confidence, fearing that it is human nature that the listener will misuse the secret. This anxiety transforms the “real” story of Eckbert into a fairy-tale story, as Eckbert unconsciously kills Walther and thus mysteriously “causes” the death of Bertha. This double loss of wife and friend makes Eckbert feel that his life is “more like a strange fairy-tale than an actual mortal existence.”

The Romanticists’ aversion to rationalism is exemplified in Tieck’s famous short-fiction works in the three-volume Volksmärchen (1797), characterized by childlike feeling, unrestrained imagination, and satire against the Enlightenment. Here, reason is held up to ridicule, and winsome miraculous happenings come into their own. Tieck and other early German Romantics sought the elements of wonder and horror in old fairy tales and in old German chapbooks and found far-off colorful lands of poesy, miracles, and dreams.

Spain

Both Romanticism and the Enlightenment came late to Spain, which was weakened from divisions and the loss of much territory at the beginning of the eighteenth century as a result of the War of the Spanish Succession. Additionally, throughout the century, government censors and inquisitors were vigilant. As late as 1793, for example, a group of intellectuals who wanted to publish a periodical called El Académico made a promise that shows the power of censorship over the press at that time. They proclaimed, “We will say nothing, quote nothing, and become involved in nothing which might cause offence and would rather pass for ignorant in the eyes of some than for men of new ideas.” It was a situation unique to the rest of the Western world at that time.

Although censors and inquisitors might have kept much of the Enlightenment out of print, however, they could not keep it out of Spain. For example, in the 1770’s, the bishop of Plasencia complained to the king of the ease with which he had procured the irreligious and subversive writings of Voltaire himself. Even if such works could not be published in Spain, it was difficult to avoid their discussion at private gatherings and in the coffeehouses.

By the middle of the century, increasing contact with the rest of Europe led Spanish writers to explore international literary forms. One of the first to adopt an obviously European style was José Clavijo y Fajardo, whose periodical El Pensador began to appear weekly in 1762. The model for this was clearly The Spectator. Seven whole speculations are translated, and there are direct imitations of at least six others. Clavijo y Fajardo adopted many of The Spectator’s fictional forms. Some of his fictional devices, however, have purely Spanish sources.

The periodicals encouraged the development of short forms and rapid, even casual reading habits in readers. Enlightenment topics occupied the majority of space in Spanish periodicals and fueled such dangerous prose works as Cartas marruecas (wr. 1774, pb. 1793), by José de Cadalso y Vásquez (the most original of the literary Enlightenment thinkers of the day), which accepts the morality of the Moors, as well as the Christians. Works such as Cadalso’s often fell victim to the Inquisition.

A preperiodical short fiction form that was to become a staple of Spanish periodicals in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was the fictional dream or sueño. Diego de Torres Villarroel’s Sueños morales (1727 and 1728) and later those of Ramirez de Gongora are the best examples of the dream fiction that later found its way in the form of short sueños morales into the periodicals.

In the light of eighteenth century repression in Spain, it is understandable that through most of the century, Spanish writers restrained their imaginations. Even Spanish satires were more closely related to the everyday in Spain than, say, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels or Voltaire’s Candide. The Peninsular War in the middle of the century was instrumental in opening the way for Romantic thought with its non-hidalgo officers, which made for the first real breach in the status system. The middle and lower classes had found a voice. Finally, in the 1790’s, with the publication of Mor de Fuentes’s La Serafina (1796)—a novel of love in the provinces told in the form of letters and singing the virtues of country life and simple people—it was obvious that Romanticism was arriving.

Italy

If in Italy, the seventeenth century, a period of the iron despotism of Spain, was a time of stagnation, then the eighteenth was a period of recovery, for Italy was one of the territories lost by Spain in the War of the Spanish Succession. The ancient luster of literature, indeed, was but feebly rekindled, but an invigorating breath pervaded the nation as Spanish dominion disappeared from Italy. People wrote and thought in comparative freedom.

The extinction of the free spirit of the Renaissance was the more unfortunate for Italy, as it arrested the development of speculative and scientific research, which had seemed to be opening up there. Therefore, it was natural that the thrust of Italian literature was toward those directions in the eighteenth century, not toward fiction in its many forms experienced throughout the Continent. Certainly no novelist of reputation wrote from Italy during the century. Italy could have easily degenerated into mediocrity but for the tremendous literary convulsions at the end of the century. Only in drama did Italy stand apart and supreme during nearly the whole of the age.

By the middle of the century, a strong wave of foreign influence, particularly from France, and more indirectly from England, aided markedly in the awakening of Enlightenment thinking reflected in Italian literature. As one might assume by now, it was the periodical that hurried the spread of liberal ideas in Italy and kept various forms of short fiction active. It should also be no surprise that The Spectator was the model for most Italian periodicals, such as Il Caffe (1764-1766) and Gasparo Gozzi’s La Gazzetta veneta (1760-1761), which included imaginative original sketches and stories with acute but gentle satire and humor directed at the Venetian scene. Gozzi continued the tradition in 1761 and 1762 with L’Osservatore venuto, a journal of manners and customs very similar to Addison’s The Spectator.

Gozzi’s younger brother Carlo was a writer of note with considerable ability. The popularity of his works show the slow move to Romanticism that blossomed at the end of the century in Italy. Carlo Gozzi’s best-known works are his fairy tales. The most successful one of his famous scenic stories is the exotic and fantastical theatrical fable L’Amore delle tre malarance (pr. 1761; The Love for Three Oranges, 1949). His stories were intensely popular throughout the Romantic period and beyond.

Italy was one of the last countries to feel the effects of Romanticism, but as the cosmopolitan drift became more and more powerful toward the end of the century, writers such as Goethe and Sir Walter Scott excited the curiosity of Italian readers. Italy joined late but joined entirely the movement, impatient with the prosaic present and enamored of the neglected Middle Ages.

As the eighteenth century drew to a close, Spain and Italy were playing literary catch-up, while the focus in Germany, France, and England was on the novel. The geographic isolation of America made it a separate entity as far as literature was concerned, almost an anomaly. Given the state of short fiction in England and on the Continent by the end of the eighteenth century, perhaps it is not surprising that the short-story genre emerged strong and distinct in America. In England, great periodicals, such as The Spectator, had lost considerable influence in the face of the proliferation of low-quality magazines, penny dreadfuls, and chapbooks because of cheaper printing methods and a growing working-class readership.

The news for short fiction, however, was not all bad. Gothic themes were found not only in cheap magazines but also in high-quality novels. Also, the element of suspense and tension in the gothic theme found its way into the modern short story, elements that had been lacking throughout the eighteenth century. Additionally, the coming of the popular magazine established a market for brief prose pieces, however inferior those pieces might be. The way was kept open for the exceptional creativity of nineteenth century writers and for the emergence of the distinct short-story genre.

The debt that these writers owe to the Enlightenment periodicals is not small. The vast array of fictional forms produced in these publications paved the way for the cohesive short forms that evolved in the nineteenth century.

The Spectator was the model for most of the periodicals of the age. For good reason, it was the most widely read and the best periodical of the century. The purpose of The Spectator was not only to instruct but also—and this is perhaps its most significant contribution to the short-story genre—to entertain. The motto for the first edition of The Spectator was successfully followed by Addison and Steele and has the kind of staying power that makes it a worthy goal for fiction of any age: “Not smoke after flame does he plan to give, but after smoke the light, that then he may set forth striking and wondrous tales.”

Bibliography

Anderson, Douglas. The Radical Enlightenments of Benjamin Franklin. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. Discusses the literary and intellectual career of Franklin in his early years. Provides a close reading of a number of Franklin texts.

Brooks, Christopher K. “‘Guilty of Being Poor’: Oliver Goldsmith’s ‘No-Account’ Centinel.” English Language Notes 36 (September, 1998): 23-38. Argues that “Private Centinel” in The Citizen of the World is one of the most profound uses of a poor, homeless character in eighteenth-century literature.

Howells, Robin. Disabled Powers: A Reading of Voltaire’s Contes. Atlanta, Ga.: Rodopi, 1993. An interpretation of the contes of Voltaire in the light of Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of the “carnivalesque.” Part 1 focuses on the theme of disablement; Part 2 contains carnivalesque readings of two tales, “Le Monde comme il va” and “Candide.” The third part considers the historical changes in consciousness represented by the later tales. Includes bibliographical references.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “Pleasure Principles: Tales, Infantile Naming, and Voltaire.” The Modern Language Review 92 (April, 1997): 295-307. Suggests that one of the characteristics of the eighteenth century French prose tale is repetition typical of young children.

Hunter, J. Paul. Before Novels: The Cultural Contexts of Eighteenth-Century English Fiction. New York: W. W. Norton, 1990. Examines the background for the development of the modern novel, including discussions of literacy, popular culture, and society in the eighteenth century.

Knight, Charles A. Joseph Addison and Richard Steele: A Reference Guide. New York: G. K. Hall, 1994. An exhaustive reference source containing works written about Addison and Steele between 1729 and 1991. Includes summaries of major scholarship about the authors, as well as an index.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “The Spectator’s Moral Economy.” Modern Philology 91 (November, 1993): 161-179. Examines Addison and Steele’s principles of moral economy in The Spectator to control dreams of endless financial gains. Argues that they found a secular basis for moral behavior, which emphasized the common good over individual gain.