The New Atalantis and Varronian Satire

What age of Varroes name shall not be told? Marlowe, Ovid's Elegies, 1.15.21 initial sensation surrounding Delarivier Manley's pro-Tory allegory, New Atalantis (1709), led to her arrest for libel; its continuing popularity prompted new editions to appear throughout first half of century. (1) work is now familiar primarily from Pope's mention of it in Rape of Lock (As long as Atalantis shall be read), seemingly validating Anna Laetitia Barbauld's observation that The Atalantis of Mrs. Manley lives only in that line of Pope which seems to promise it immortality. (2) Today, however, a growing number of critics are discussing New Atalantis, often as part of analyses of writing or rise of novel. A comment relevant to both of these projects which has been largely overlooked is Manley's own description of book in her dedication to second volume: The New Atalantis seems, my Lord, to be written like Varonian satires, on different subjects, tales, stories and characters of invention. (3) To label a work a seems somewhat exotic, even pedantic, today. Most critical dictionaries simply offer term as a synonym to its more familiar relative: satire. (4) But Varronian satire and Menippean satire are not interchangeable, and Manley did not randomly choose former term over latter. This essay will explore reasons behind Manley's identification of her work as Varronian, and how this identification affects current critical understanding of work and its audience. Manley today is more often celebrated as a woman writer, an outsider, and even a rebel; ultimately, mention of Varro reminds reader of Manley's now less fashionable interests in Tory politics and classical learning. A brief summary may be in order. New Atalantis relates experiences of Astrea, goddess of Justice, who has returned to Earth in order to gather examples of virtue and vice with which to educate a young, divine prince in her charge. She encounters her mother, Virtue, and later Intelligence, who recount various stories of earthly treachery, betrayal, and lechery, which are thin allegories for misbehaviours of important Whigs. work shifts early on from a more general social to personal attacks on familiar figures such as John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, and Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, as well as Halifax, Godolphin, and many others. Though infamous for its explicit representations of various sexual scandals, book nevertheless played an important role in propaganda war which led up to defeat of Whigs in 1710. New Atalantis is clearly not a in modern sense: characters are undeveloped, experiences fantastic, plot static. It also differs from contemporary works now treated as novels, such as Behn's Love-Letters between a Nobleman and his Sister (1684-7). This work is often compared to New Atalantis because of its Tory slant and allegorical attacks on Whigs, but unlike Manley's work, it portrays realistic situations and relationships, features an active, omniscient narrator (particularly in Parts 2 and 3), and traces emotional development of its characters. Behn's Silvia, for example, transforms herself from naif to sophisticate; Manley's Astrea undergoes no such changes. New Atalantis, therefore, has more often been considered as part of other prose fiction genres, particularly secret history. Recently, Ros Ballaster has argued that it might be placed in a more feminocentric tradition. (5) In her influential book, Seductive Forms: Women's Amatory Fiction from 1684 to 1740, Ballaster argues that women's writing must be analysed within a history of genre if it is to find a satisfactory place in accounts of `rise' of (21). She therefore links work to female French forms (the romance, petite histoire, chronique scandaleuse, and epistolary novel [42]) and posits that works of Behn, Manley, and Haywood ultimately act as the early modern equivalent of . …

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