The Eighteenth Century and the Enlightenment: A Loose Overview of Portrayals

This has come about for three reasons: Coins and Scroll’s new project; the imminent demise of G+ and having recently finished two novels set during the eighteenth century: Thackeray’s History of Henry Esmond and Thomas Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon. 

I do not claim that this is to be a comprehensive account of the ways the eighteenth century has been portrayed, but it may be of interest. There is a good distillate of Early Modern mores and technology by Joseph Manola at Against the Wicked City. 

"1. Everyone has guns. 2. Telescopes exist. 3. Printing is commonplace. 4. People have access to stimulants as well as depressants. 5. People have access to painkillers. 6. People might have access to phosphorus. 7. Rich people have pocket-watches."

Perhaps this post may offer material to create something like.

Before I begin, I shall be indulging ‘the long eighteenth century’ as a definition: taking the start as 1689. The focus of my regard shall be English language media.

FIRST, PIRATES

The pirate film is at least, in part, perhaps an essential introduction to the technologies and ways of the eighteenth century. Gunpowder weaponry is widespread; so is transoceanic travel. Rich cargos can be found in distant lands, as can the profits of same. Some portions of the world are charted, but by no means all of it. The difficulty of states exerting their authority on far-flung regions is clear.

It is interesting, looking at the summaries of some early pirate films, to see what degree piracy is forced upon our hero, perhaps as a response to injustice: Captain Blood has his start after the Bloody Assizes of Judge Jeffreys. There may be a background of pure rogues, but the hero has his reasons –which become everyone’s reasons. The Mutiny on the Bounty (as popularly portrayed) has something of this. Thinking on it, there seem to be few instances of explicit criminality as a motivation, however much it maybe gloried in.

An exception exists for Stevenson’s Treasure Island: Long John Silver, the archetypal pirate may be an amiable rogue, but his compatriots are hardly portrayed as anything like as good-natured. The revolt of the crew of the Hispanola is not quite an expression of liberty and heroism.

NOBILITY AND NATION BUILDING

Certainly in English literature, there is a great deal of this. The eighteenth century sees upheaval, to be sure, but this brings questions of identity to the fore. It is no strange thing that various British patriotic anthems date from this time. The Jacobite Rebellion, the exploits of the Duke of Marlborough and the Seven Years War all contribute to this. 

Thackeray’s History of Henry Esmond tackles both Jacobite plots and the War of the Spanish Succession, while his Barry Lyndon (and Kubrick’s film of the same) brings up the Seven Years War as central to Redmond Barry’s advance in the world. The flaws and nobility of the Jacobite Cause are played off against one another by Thackeray, as high hopes and self-sacrifice give way to a disappointing reality. 

Barry Lyndon is a wonderful film for this article: the long, high, isolating rooms; the low lighting from candles; the violent backdrop to a genteel world - even the children's magician with his invocation of the spectrum of visible light.

Another aspect of this is the world of letters. Thackeray brings the explosion of 18th century pamphleteers and essay writers to the fore in Henry Esmond; the title character even contributing to that world. There is a laissez-faire approach to the pamphlets: they can be censored and might well be, but the roots of the free press are on display here - and part of political discourse.

SQUALOR AND PREDATION

It will have not have escaped your notice that the Victorian author dominated the section titled Nobility. Well, Thackeray has his share of rogues and shabby deeds, but I do not think it wrong to say that the note of Squalor is clearer in later works.

The mind goes instantly to Gin Lane.

Two great recent accounts of the Enlightenment, Thomas Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon and Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle rest soundly in this regard. Both take a certain delight in charting the course of scientists and aristocrats through grime-ridden city streets. Whilst the crowding and rapid growth of the Industrial Revolution might not have swollen cities, there is plenty of space for rookeries, debtor’s prisons, prostitution and slums. Even where Stephenson brings kindly or noble motives to the fore, one eye is on the squalor and pain of the times. Pynchon, however coated by conspiracy and framing device, is nothing if not more forthright in this.

For both authors, this is especially the case for the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Even if by both the treatment of slaves is contextualised as one of many unequal relationships of the time rather than a unique ill, it is still singled out and condemned by protagonists. (Stephenson deals with both the taking of slaves by the Barbary Corsairs as well as the trade of slaves in Sub-Saharan Africa). This is scarcely surprising for authors writing in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Of course, given the actual course of historical events, any rebellion or liberation needs must be a small scale affair.

The Picaresque dominates both: the high frivolity of massive wigs and frockcoats encountering sewage and upset. Which is distinct from the practicalities of everyday life (consider this chap, for instance).

MEASUREMENT AND ITS ABUSES

I have written on here before about Map of a Nation and the history of the Ordnance Survey. Even if that grows a little out of even the Long Eighteenth Century, it is still relevant at to consider. Not that that counts as a work of fiction.

Given the fame of astronomer George Mason and surveyor Jeremiah Dixon, their exploits in charting the Maryland-Pennsylvania border are front and centre here. The adverse effects of chopping a line through the landscape and the unintended (or, given Pynchon's Jesuit conspiracies, utterly intended) effects thereof are made quite clear - by the presumed knowledge of the reader as regards the eventual significance of the Mason-Dixon line, if no more.  The first portion of Mason & Dixon deals with the Transit of Venus in 1761; this is another indicator of the propensity for measurement by the minds of the eighteenth Century. Taking and repeating accurate measurements - learning the span of the globe and the particular parts thereof - is all part of the Enlightenment project. 

The world, by such methods, becomes easier to traverse and to comprehend - for those at the centre of information networks, at any rate. [If you want to bring up Seeing Like a State at this point, you can. However, the ills of Modernism are still a way off.] 'Mapping' as a concept extends to other fields - think, for instance, of the Linnean taxonomy.

WHAT ARE WE LEFT WITH?

Most of Manola's points stand. But we are looking not just at the Early Modern, but the incipient modern, for good and ill: the growth of political discourse, the mapping of the world and the drawing of boundaries, global commerce. Of course, it isn't the Modern World. It's all the discarded ideas and first efforts and groundwork that contributed, bundled up and dressed in a periwig. There's doubtless a lot I've missed (the American War of Independence, for one) - but these are some of the notes portrayal of the eighteenth century offer up.

In which a number of Biblical Settings Come Together

For those of you in Great Britain and with a television license, I shall mention that Darren Aranofsky's Noah is on BBC iPlayer. I watched it, having seen it upon release in the cinema; by my lights, it held up (especially comparing its constant sincerity to the latest Marvel snark-fest). Goodness knows what it does for you.

To briefly make a few points - this is a Biblical film drawing from the four Chapters in the Book of Genesis, as well as numerous of Aronofsky's own expansions and interpretations. The result steers clear of the historical drama angle of other Biblical films. The setting is more temperate in climate than the Near and Middle East; industry and environmentalism arise as themes; motivations are unclear, as is the divine will. Plus Anthony Hopkins appears as Methuselah wielding a flaming sword.

Firstly: let us compose a melange of the settings of Biblical films: the grand cast-of-thousands cities of Ben-Hur or The Ten Commandments with the empty spaces and industrial degradation of Noah. The harsh deserts of the former two also have an appearance. That is landscape; for society, we must think of a set of decadent empires and their verges, with subject peoples caught between them.  Lost artefacts and the ruins of lost kingdoms crust the land. The empires of the day may be cruel, but not unthinkingly so (Marsala as the exception, not the rule). Nonetheless, their presence to the people of the periphery may be hateful. At this point, I shall reference the 2009 American television serial Kings, based on the Biblical book of the same name (this is the only decent-ish clip I could find: Ian McShane as Not-Saul seems a compelling choice).

The supernatural also dots the periphery of these empires; from magical rocks (the zohar of Noah) to giants to signs and portents: the wilderness is the place for all these things. Thus it is a source of potential power, resulting in high-stakes conflict over magical artefacts (IE, Raiders of the Lost Ark; there is something appealingly recursive about a version of Raiders in a near-Bibilical setting) or powerful substances (Mad Max with Bronze-Age angel designed chariots and firearms powered by combustable rocks).

A free-wheeling combination: Bread and Circuses on one hand and vast industry-scarred wilderness on the other. Perhaps rather better as a thought experiment than anything else.

Ilium and a Post-Literate Post-Apocalypse

Another brief post, but in the same tent (roughly) as the Trojan War piece from a few weeks ago.

I have been digging into Dan Simmons's Ilium of late, rereading in between other works. His work tends to either detailed historical horror (IE, The Terror, Black Hills) or far-future space opera with heavy reference to literature (Ilium/Olympos, but more prominently, Hyperion).

Anyway, one strand in Ilium/Olympos concerns the folk ('old-style humans') on a far-future earth who live century-long life spans with rejuvenation every twenty years. Their lives are idle and hedonistic, all necessary tasks for survival being carried out by biological robots ('the Voynix'). Teleportation nodes provide for all transport. Fatherhood is basically unknown, thanks to some tampering allowing for sperm storage - though women are only permitted one child. Said old-style humans can't even read.

They are set in a world where familiar features have warped and changed. Paris (population 25,000 - and considered a metropolis) has a vast crater at its centre and is overshadowed not be the Eiffel Tower but by a vast statue of a naked woman - semi-transparent and filled with a photo-luminescent red liquid (a 'Lost Age artefact'). For some reason, the Golden Gate bridge is now by Macchu Picchu. In the unpopulated areas between teleportation nodes of the 'faxnet', resurrected species lurk (smilodons, allosaurs and more). Folk killed by them, can be resurrected - if close enough to a node.

Functions similar to a smartphone, if more advanced, have been implanted into the residents of the future - but are taken so as part of nature that most of these functions have been forgotten. This, and most of the state of being enjoyed by folk in this time are the workings of the Post-Humans dwelling in a vast orbital ring (hence 'Old-style humans).

These are the remnants of humanity, dwelling in the structure of a forgotten world, lacking the skills or curiosity to explore or develop much; lightly and subtly governed by those who have gone before.

***

This is merely the setting. Then everything falls apart: the teleport ceases, the voynix turn nasty and things collapse - and no-one knows how to cope, miserable eloi that they are.

Think The Culture - but no Contact, no Special Circumstances - and then all the Minds vanish. And everyone is useless.

Naturally, the protagonists are the exception - or at any rate, get a head start on a vicious learning curve. Assisted by Odysseus, son of Laertes and a televison-equivalent viewing of the Trojan War (I won't explain that bit here, but this is the Classical connection).

***

I think this strand of Ilium has potential: quite a few post-apocalyptic settings have humanity in the ruins of the old world - but tend to have some form of community come together already by the start of the story. Likewise, there are a variety of settings where poorly understood technology looms over all (generation ship stories like Orphans of the Sky or Non-Stop do this), though the fruitless hedonism angle rather calls to mind Logan's Run. Perhaps more recent and relevant is the strangely named Horizon Zero Dawn, summarised and discussed in tabletop terms at Throne of Salt: the mechanical beasts that imitate prehistory especially.

But of course, the tribes of Horizon Zero Dawn or the monks of A Canticle for Liebowitz are fully developed by the start of the narrative. No-one has to work out hunting and gathering from scratch, let alone forging anti-voynix weapons. One could perhaps look to Kingdom Death Monster and its settlement and technology mechanics - scaled as appropriate (not to mention the extensive reskin!).

This feels quite current, in its way. Your technology has failed you now; you can't fix it and you didn't make it and now all your skills are useless (You used to work out? Super set of abs, but can you kill a charging aurochs? You used to garden? Lovely tulips, what do you know about crop rotation?). Humankind didn't just pull the ladder up after itself: they burnt the drokking ladder! An immediate switch from garden parties to fighting tyrannosaurs, with the accompanying learning curve.

Throwing in a visit from Odysseus (or similar) would be a way to soften things - but this is taking a catapult into Fantasy RPG land very quickly. Being able to read is nigh-on magic; being able to read and understand even more difficult: Old-Style humans probably don't even have a system of measurements. At the tabletop one could factor this in - using non-inidcative or nonsense names for real-world concepts (A mile is a faga; a hard drive is a blarter) in in-universe texts. Translation could evolve slowly.

You may wish to read Ilium and its sequel Olympos first. Don't ask me where the Proust-reading Jovian robots come into all the above, however.