Abstract
This chapter examines a wide range of satirical approaches to the early Caribbean and in particular to slavery in the islands. It argues that eighteenth-century satirists who represented the Caribbean increasingly saw the region as a location of vice that stood in need of correction, and that as the eighteenth century progressed, the chief iniquities they calumniated were slavery and the slave trade. Thus, satirists became as much a part of the literary proto-abolitionist movement as did the sentimental poets and novelists whose work has been more intensively studied. The chapter suggests that early Caribbean satirical literature can provisionally be organized into four categories: “Occasional Asides,” “Satirical Voyage Narratives,” “London Caribbean Tales,” and “Abolitionist Satires.” To support this, it focuses on asides by John Dryden, Daniel Defoe, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, and others; satirical voyages by Ned Ward, Swift, and the anonymous authors of A Voyage to Cacklogallinia and The Adventures of Jonathan Corncob; London tales by Richard Steele, John Wolcot, and Richard Cumberland; and abolitionist satires by Laurence Sterne, Thomas Day, and William Cowper. The chapter concludes that while the majority of early satirical representations of the West Indies were in fact composed in Europe, satires reveal that the region was a subject of lively debate, emerging stereotypes, metropolitan snobbishness, and finally a deep-seated anxiety about the cruelty of slavery.
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- 1.
John Dryden, “Preface to Absolom and Architophel” (1681) in The Works of John Dryden, 20 vols, vol. II, ed H. T. Swedenberg, Jr. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), p. 5.
- 2.
Aphra Behn, Emperor of the Moon: A Farce. (London, 1687), p. 60.
- 3.
John Dryden, Cleomenes (1692) in The Works of John Dryden, 20 vols, vol. XVI, ed Vinton A. Dearing (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), p. 84.
- 4.
For recent discussions of slavery and drama, see Franca Dellarossa, Slavery on Stage: Representations of Slavery in British Theatre, 1760s–1830s (Bari: Edizione dal Sud, 2009) and Brycchan Carey, “To Force a Tear: Antislavery on the Eighteenth- Century London Stage,” in Affect and Abolition in the Anglo-Atlantic: 1770–1830, ed Stephen Ahern (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), pp. 109–128.
- 5.
Jonathan Swift, “A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed” (1731) in Swift: Poetical Works, ed Herbert Davis (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), pp. 517–19.
- 6.
Alexander Pope, The First Epistle of the First Book of Horace Imitated (1737) in John Butt, et al., eds. The Twickenham Edition of the Poems of Alexander Pope, 11 vols (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1939–1969), vol. 4, pp. 276–94, ll. 67–72.
- 7.
James G. Basker, ed, Amazing Grace: an Anthology of Poems About Slavery, 1660–1810 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002); Marcus Wood, The Poetry of Slavery: An Anglo-American Anthology, 1764–1865 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
- 8.
Basker, Amazing Grace, p. 38.
- 9.
Basker, Amazing Grace, p. 50.
- 10.
Jonathan Swift, Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World … by Lemuel Gulliver (1726) ed. David Womersley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 31.
- 11.
Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, pp. 331–32.
- 12.
Austen’s attitude to slavery has given rise to an extended critical debate. The most substantial contribution is Gabrielle D. V. White, Jane Austen in the Context of Abolition: “A Fling at the Slave Trade” (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).
- 13.
Francis Hickes, Certaine Select Dialogues of Lucian: Together With His True Historie, Translated from the Greeke into English (Oxford, 1634). For discussion, see Brycchan Carey, “‘A New Discovery of a New World’: The Moon and America in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century European Literature,” in Literature in the Age of Celestial Discovery: From Copernicus to Herschel, ed Judy A. Hayden (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), pp. 167–82, pp. 169–70.
- 14.
Howard William Troyer, Ned Ward of Grubstreet; a Study of Sub-Literary London in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1946), p. 19.
- 15.
Richard Ligon, A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbados (1657; 2nd edn 1673) ed Karen Ordahl Kupperman (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2011), p. 40; Edward Ward, A Trip to Jamaica: With a True Character of the People and Island, 3rd edn (London, 1698), pp. 6, 7.
- 16.
Ward, Trip to Jamaica, p. 10.
- 17.
Ligon, History, pp. 46, 50.
- 18.
Ward, Trip to Jamaica, p. 13.
- 19.
Ward, Trip to Jamaica, p. 14.
- 20.
Richard Blome, A Description of the Island of Jamaica; with the other Isles and Territories in America, to which the English are related (London, 1672), p. 59.
- 21.
Hans Sloane, A Voyage to the Islands Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers and Jamaica, with the Natural History of the Herbs and Trees, Four-Footed Beasts, Fishes, Birds, Insects, Reptiles, &c. of the Last of Those Islands, Vol. I (London, 1707), pp. 33–34.
- 22.
Thomas Tryon, The Merchant, Citizen and Country-man’s Instructor: or, a Necessary Companion for All People (London, 1701). p. 190.
- 23.
James Grainger, The Sugar Cane, edited with notes and an introduction by John Gilmore in The Poetics of Empire: A Study of James Grainger’s The Sugar Cane (1764), (London: The Athlone Press, 2000), pp. 87–198, I, 223–24; William Belgrove, A Treatise upon Husbandry or Planting. By William Belgrove. A Regular Bred, and Long Experienc’d Planter, of the Island of Barbados. And May Be of Great Use to the Planters of All the West-India Islands (Boston, 1755), p. 4.
- 24.
ΣΕΛΗΝΑΡΧΙΑ. Or, The Government Of the World In the Moon: A Comical History Written by that Famous Wit and Cavaleer of France, Monsieur Cyrano Bergerac: And Done into English by Tho. StSerf, Gent. (London, 1659), pp. 20–21. For an extended reading of this satire, see Carey, “‘A new discovery of a new world’,” pp. 175–76.
- 25.
Ward, Trip to Jamaica, p. 16.
- 26.
For a more detailed reading of this satire, see Carey, “‘A new discovery of a new world,’” pp. 177–80.
- 27.
A Voyage to Cacklogallinia: With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners, of that Country. By Captain Samuel Brunt (London, 1727), p. 15.
- 28.
Tobias Smollett, The Adventures of Roderick Random (1748) ed James G. Basker, Paul-Gabriel Boucé, and Nicole A. Seary (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2012).
- 29.
For discussion of the book’s relationship with genuine events and locations in Barbados, see Francesca Brady and Jerome S. Handler, “Jonathan Corncob Visits Barbados: Excerpts from a Late 18th Century Novel,” Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, LII (2006): 17–34.
- 30.
Adventures of Jonathan Corncob, Loyal American Refugee. Written by Himself (London: G. G. J. and G. Robinson, 1787). The Barbados passages are at pp. 115–47, and conclude with the table of casualties in the hurricane.
- 31.
Belgrove, A Treatise upon Husbandry, p. 42.
- 32.
See in particular Frank Felsenstein, English Trader, Indian Maid: Representing Gender, Race, and Slavery in the New World. An Inkle and Yarico Reader (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999) and Brycchan Carey, “‘Accounts of Savage Nations’: The Spectator and the Americas,” in Uncommon Reflections: Emerging Discourses in “The Spectator,” ed. Don Newman (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2005), pp. 129–49.
- 33.
Richard Steele, Spectator 11 (13 March 1711) in The Spectator, ed Donald F. Bond, 5 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), I, pp. 49–51.
- 34.
Rae Blanchard, “Richard Steele’s West Indian Plantation,” Modern Philology, 39 (1942): 281–285.
- 35.
All five poems are reproduced in Basker, Amazing Grace, pp. 324–28.
- 36.
Basker, Amazing Grace, p. 328.
- 37.
Richard Cumberland, The West Indian: A Comedy. As It Is Performed in the Theatre Royal in Drury-Lane (London, 1771), pp. 7–8.
- 38.
Accounts of the relationship between sentiment and abolition begin with Wylie Sypher, Guinea’s Captive Kings: British Anti-Slavery Literature of the Eighteenth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1942). For more recent contributions, see especially Stephen Ahern, ed., Affect and Abolition in the Anglo-Atlantic: 1770–1830 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013); George Boulukos, The Grateful Slave: The Emergence of Race in Eighteenth-Century British and American Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Brycchan Carey, British Abolitionism and the Rhetoric of Sensibility: Writing, Sentiment, and Slavery, 1760-1807 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); Lynn Festa, Sentimental Figures of Empire in Eighteenth-Century Britain and France (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006).
- 39.
Ignatius Sancho, Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African (1782) ed. Vincent Carretta (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Editions, 2015), p. 128.
- 40.
Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759–67) ed Melvyn New and Joan New, 3 vols (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1978), II, pp. 747–49.
- 41.
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy (1768) ed Melvyn New and W. G. Day (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2002), pp. 99–100.
- 42.
Thomas Day, The History of Sandford and Merton, A Work Intended for the Use of Children, (1783–89), 8th edn, 3 vols (London: John Stockdale, 1798), I, p. 12. For a more extended discussion, see Carey, British Abolitionism, pp. 68–72.
- 43.
James King and Charles Ryskamp, eds, The Letters and Prose Writings of William Cowper, 5 vols (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1979–1986), III, p. 130.
- 44.
The Poems of William Cowper, ed John D. Baird and Charles Ryskamp, 3 vols (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1980–1995), III, pp. 15–16.
- 45.
This point is explored in depth in Carey, British Abolitionism, pp. 102–106 and Joanne Tong, “‘Pity for Poor Africans’: William Cowper and the Limits of Abolitionist Affect,” in Ahern, ed., Affect and Abolition, pp. 129–50.
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Carey, B. (2018). Colonial Vices and Metropolitan Corrections: Satire and Slavery in the Early Caribbean. In: Aljoe, N.N., Carey, B., Krise, T.W. (eds) Literary Histories of the Early Anglophone Caribbean. New Caribbean Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71592-6_9
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