Resumen de Introducing Life to “the Young, the Ignorant, and the Idle”: Eliza Haywood and Daniel Defoe as Popular Novelists
- español
La exitosa publicación de las novelas de Daniel Defoe y de Eliza Haywood en las primeras décadas del siglo XVIII ejemplifica una serie de fenómenos culturales dignos de atenderse. Por ejemplo, la avasallante popularidad de ambos escritores durante su momento histórico, en contraste con la exigua —pero creciente— fama de Haywood en nuestros días, ilustra puntos relevantes sobre las veleidades del canon literario. Como puede inferirse, las ondulaciones en el camino hacia los laureles de ambos escritores se deben en gran parte tanto al género (sexual) de una y otro, como al género (literario) de sus obras narrativas más famosas. Sin embargo, irónicamente tal vez, a ojos de sus contemporáneos Haywood y Defoe eran, para bien o para mal, harina del mismo costal. El público lector devoraba sus obras; la naciente crítica literaria profesional las denostaba en público y quizá envidiaba en privado. En pocas palabras, autora y autor eran novelistas populares, en toda la extensión del término. Una de las claves para entender el lugar que ambos ocupan en la historia de la novela radica, pues, en el tipo de lectoras/es por quienes competían. En este artículo se revisan algunos puntos de contacto entre Haywood y Defoe, que les sitúan en una relación de equivalencia, en tanto que referentes culturales en su momento histórico, y abren reflexiones sobre el ejercicio literario en nuestro tiempo y el pasado.
- English
The remarkable commercial success of the novels of Daniel Defoe and Eliza Haywood in the first few decades of the eighteenth century testifies to a series of cultural phenomena that merit close critical attention. For instance, setting the overwhelming popularity of both writers during their lifetimes in contrast with the scant—though steadily growing—critical recognition accorded to Haywood in our time provides a succinct and vivid illustration of the vagaries of the literary canon. As can be guessed, the snakes and ladders in Defoe and Haywood’s game of fame had mostly to do with their gender, as well as with the genre of their most celebrated productions. Ironically, however, for good or evil, their contemporaries tended to put both writers together in the same basket. While professional critics belittled their talents in public—and perhaps envied them in private—the reading public seemed to have an insatiable appetite for their fictions. In short, Haywood and Defoe were fully-fledged popular novelists, with all the positive and negative connotations attached to this label. A key to gauging their place in the history of the novel lies, then, in the type of readers for whom they vied. This article reviews some of the correspondences between Haywood and Defoe—emphasizing their equality in terms of cultural relevance in their own time—with a view to complicate conventional assessments of Defoe as a star novelist and Haywood as a minor writer of amatory fiction, and to encourage reflection about literary practices then and now.
