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Abstract
The birth of such innovative newspapers as The Tatler and The Spectator enables the readers to observe and join the public debate through a new intellectual lens. The use of Latin epigrams opening every issue of The Spectator emphasizes not only the close interest in classical literature and culture, but also the communicative strategy focused on the celebration of wit through the moral paradigms of ancient Roman poets, at a time of the rise of modern public opinion. The poetical and rhetorical choices of Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, along with other Latin poetry enthusiasts such as Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope, bitingly denounce social hypocrisies and contradictions through parody and mockery. Their purpose was to rebut conventional behavior through the permeating force of Enlightenment wit inspired by cleverness, satire and sarcasm.
Acknowledgements
This paper was part of the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Framework Programme (H2020-MSCA-RISE 2018) DIGITENS, carried out at The National Archives in London (TNA, Kew) as a Marie Sklodowska-Curie visiting researcher (August–October 2022) and as a member of the DIGITENS project, The Digital Encyclopedia of British Sociability in the Long Eighteenth Century, 2019–2022, www.digitens.org.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 For further information see Bowers, “Universalizing Sociability,” 150–174.
2 On Joseph Addison’s unpublished hexameter poem, Arcus Triumphalis, see Davis, “A New Latin Poem by Joseph Addison,” 502–517.
3 On the social and cultural impact of coffeehouses and newspapers see Cowan, “Mr. Spectator and the Coffeehouse Public Sphere,” 345–366.
4 On this topic it may be useful to read the essay by Sweet, Cities and the Grand Tour, 94–163.
5 For a biographic and intellectual profile of Addison see Cowan, “Joseph Addison”.
6 See Fumaroli, The Republic of Letters.
7 Edelstein et al., “Historical Research in a Digital Age,” 413.
8 Motto, Persius, Satires, 5, 19–20: ‘Indeed, it is no aim of mine that my page should swell with pretentious trifles, fit only to give solidity to smoke’. The translation retrieved from Bond (ed.), The Spectator, vol. 1, 259. All Latin mottos and their translations are retrieved from the edition of The Spectator edited by Donald Bond.
9 Page 259.
10 McLuhan, Understanding Media, 277. This is an aspect effectively investigated by Archer-Parré and Dick, Pen, Print and Communication in the Eighteenth Century.
11 Black, The English Press: A History, 26.
12 Bond, “Introduction,” xix.
13 The Spectator 1 March 1711.
14 Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, 41.
15 Ibid., 43.
16 Capdeville and Kerhervé, British Sociability in the Long Eighteenth Century, 4: ‘Clearly, the spreading of a new kind of sociability does not require everyone to follow suit, it just needs a critical mass, or general awareness, to reach a state of widespread acceptance and emulation to establish itself as the dominant mode of procedure in social situations’.
17 Baker, Newspapers, Politics and English Society, 1695–1855, 128.
18 Lund, “Wit, Judgment, and the Misprisions of Similitude,” 53.
19 See Binns, The Latin Poetry of English Poets.
20 Boulard-Jouslin, “Essay Periodical”.
21 Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, 43.
22 On the social function of newspapers and periodicals see Ellis, “Sociability and polite Improvement in Addison’s Periodicals,” 142–163.
23 Mayhew, “Swift’s Anglo-Latin Games and a Fragment of ‘Polite Conversation’ in Manuscript,” 133–159.
24 Davis, “A New Latin Poem by Joseph Addison,” 503.
25 Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, 59.
26 Motto, Horace, Epistles, 2. 2. 45: ‘To search for truth in groves of Academe’.
27 Ibid.
28 On the proliferation of Virgilian English translations see Adkins, “The Mirror’s Reflection: Virgil’s Aeneid in English Translation,” 55–64.
29 The Spectator, no. 10, March 1711.
30 Motto, Virgil, Georgics, I, 201–3: ‘As if one, whose oars can scarce force his skiff against the stream, should by chance slacken his arms, and lo! headlong down the current the channel sweeps it away’.
31 The Spectator, no. 12, March 1711.
32 Adkins, “The Mirror’s Reflection: Virgil’s Aeneid in English Translation,” 14.
33 Motto, Horace, Ars Poetica, 143–4: ‘Not smoke after flame does he plan to give, but after smoke the light, that then he may set forth striking and wondrous tales’.
34 On the journalistic and rhetorical paradigms of that time see Randall, The Conversational Enlightenment, 168–225.
35 The Spectator, no. 1, March 1711.
36 Boulard-Jouslin, “Essay Periodical”.
37 Ibid.
38 Bond, “Introduction,” lxxxiii: ‘There is abundant testimony to the astonishing success which The Spectator achieved in contemporary London, and elsewhere. Whatever the circulation of the daily issues was, 4,000 perhaps, many of the essays were certainly read aloud to frequenters of the numerous coffee-houses which were then a prominent feature of London, so that there was an even wider reading public for the paper’.
39 Motto, Horace, Ars poetica, 309: ‘Of writing well the source and fount is wisdom’.
40 The Spectator, no. 61, 10 March 1711.
41 On the interpretative fluctuation of daily and literary texts see Eco, The Limits of Interpretation, 23–43.
42 The Spectator, no. 62, 11 March 1711.
43 Elias, The Civilizing Process, 171.
44 The Spectator, no. 62, 11 March 1711.
45 On Pope’s communicative and literary innovation see McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy, 155–263.
46 On the public relevance of The Spectator see Mackie, “Being Too Positive About the Public Sphere,” 81–104.
47 Edmondson, “Republic of Letters”.
48 The Spectator, no. 62, 11 March 1711.
49 Ibid.
50 Lombardinilo, “Public Opinion (Journalism and Communication)”.
51 McLuhan, Understanding Media, 277–78.
52 Haan, Vergilius Redivivus, 72.
53 For further investigation see McCrea, Addison and Steele Are Dead, 23–35.
54 Innis, The Bias of Communication, 144.
55 Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, 51.
56 Sennett, Flesh and Stone, 347.
57 Ibid., 345.
58 Haan, Vergilius Redivivus, 13.
59 Bond, “Introduction,” lxxxvii. This aspect is attentively explained by Boulard and Klaus-Dieter, Addison and Europe / Addison et l’Europe.
60 The Spectator, no. 62, 11 March 1711.
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Andrea Lombardinilo
Andrea Lombardinilo, Department of Legal and Social Sciences, Gabriele d’Annunzio University, Chieti-Pescara, via dei Vestini 31, Chieti, 66100, Italy.