Scriblerus Club

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The Scriblerus Club was an informal and exclusive association of politically active writers who were close to the Tories and who had come together in London around 1713. Members were the poet and writer Alexander Pope , the satirist Jonathan Swift , the poet and writer John Gay , John Arbuthnot , polymath and personal physician Queen Annes , the politician and philosopher Henry St. John and the poet Thomas Parnell (1679-1718). Occasionally the Queen's Treasurer, Robert Harley , who sponsored the group, attended the meetings. The founding purpose of the club was to satirically target the excesses of erudition and scientific jargon. When Arbuthnot lost his office after Queen Anne's death, the members dispersed, but remained in contact by letter.

The members

Alexander Pope had published his first major work An Essay On Criticism in 1711 , with which he gained access to London literary circles that were close to the Whigs . In 1713 he changed political camp and went to the Tories. Here he met Swift and his friend, the playwright and comedy writer William Congreve , as well as the later Scriblerus members John Gay and Robert Harley know.

Jonathan Swift had started his political career with the Whigs, but because of the rapprochement between the Whigs and the Dissenters he had distanced himself from the party since 1709. On the initiative of the new Prime Minister Robert Harley, he moved to the camp of the Tories and became their most important pamphlet writer .

John Gay had completed an apprenticeship with a silk merchant, but preferred to devote himself to writing. He wrote satires and farces for the theater. From 1711 he was acquainted with Pope. In 1713 he dedicated his poem Rural Sports to Pope and from then on remained friends with Pope. Queen Anne sent him to the English embassy in Hanover with a diplomatic assignment in 1714. However, his diplomatic career came to an early end with the Queen's death on August 1, 1714. He has remained famous as the author of The Beggar's Opera .

Henry St. John had sat in Parliament for the Tories since 1701. He maintained social and personal contacts with Queen Anne, who in 1710 made him the second highest ministerial office ( Secretary of State for the Northern Department ), and who appointed him Viscount Bolingbroke in 1712. After the Queen's death and George I's assumption of office on October 20, 1714, he went into exile in France.

John Arbuthnot was a Scottish polymath who wrote books on a variety of subjects. In 1692 he translated Christiaan Huygens ' “De ratiociniis in ludo aleae” (= “The Laws of Chance”) into English and gained a reputation as a mathematician. In his work "An essay on the usefulness of mathematical learning, in a letter from a gentleman in the city to his friend in Oxford" from 1701, he recommends the study of mathematics as a suitable means against superstition. In 1705 the University of Oxford awarded him a doctorate ( MD ), in the same year he became the Queen's physician extraordinary . In 1710 he was made a Fellow at the Royal College of Physicians .

Arbuthnot and Swift founded their first political-literary club, The Brothers' Club , in 1711 , which included government members, but which ended in 1713. In the same year he was given a residence at the Royal Hospital Chelsea , where most of the members' meetings were held. Arbuthnot was a prolific and imaginative writer of satires and pamphlets. In his pamphlet "Law Is a Bottomless Pit" (= The law is a bottomless pit) from 1712 he created the allegorical figure of John Bull , who is still alive today in political caricatures.

According to the consensus of the members, Arburthnot was the idea generator. As the only natural scientist in the club, he was the authoritative source when it came to the excesses and mannerisms of science and the language of science. Arburthnot came up with the idea of ​​writing the memoirs of the fictional Martinus Scriblerus, who was modeled after his former opponent and popular target of his pamphlets, John Woodward .

Thomas Parnell , a clergyman and poet from Ireland, was like Swift, who sponsored him, initially partisans of the Whigs, until he also switched to the Tories. Parnell worked closely with Pope. After the Queen's death, he returned to Ireland. Swift wrote a dedication in verse as a foreword to an edition of Parnell's "Poems on Several Occasions" from 1722.

Robert Harley was a British politician who held several high government offices throughout his career. He began his political career as a Whig before joining the Tories. From 1711 to 1714 he was Chancellor of the Exchequer and thus the most powerful and influential minister in the cabinet. When an assassination attempt (the Bandbox Plot ) was to be carried out on him on November 4, 1712 , Swift, who happened to be present, managed to defuse the bomb and thus save Harley's life. When George I took office, he announced his resignation and retired to his country estate. A little later he was charged with high treason and imprisoned in the Tower for nearly two years in July 1715 , until he was acquitted of all charges.

  • Alexander Pope

  • Jonathan Swift

  • John Gay

  • John Arbuthnot

  • Henry St John

  • Thomas Parnell

  • Robert Harley

The memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus

The most important and in principle the only literary result of the club were the " Memoirs of the Extraordinary Life, Works, and Discoveries of Martinus Scriblerus ", which were first printed in 1741 in the second volume of Pope's prose works. In a foreword, the editor notes that the memoirs were mostly written by Pope and Arbuthnot, while Parnell on Pope's "Essay on the Origin of Science" and Gay on the "Memoirs of a Parish Clerk “(= Memoirs of a parish priest) were involved.

expenditure
  • Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope: Memoirs of the life of Scriblerus. Dublin 1723 ( digitized version )
  • Memoirs of the extraordinary life, works and discoveries of Martinus Scriblerus. Written by Dr. Arbuthnot and Mr. Pope. January 1, 1725 ( digitized version )
  • Memoirs of the extraordinary life, works, and discoveries of Martinus Scriblerus. By Mr. Pope. Dublin: Printed by and for George Faulkner 1741.
First edition.
  • Memoirs Of the Extraordinary Life, Works, and Discoveries of Martinus Scriblerus . Written in collaboration by the Members of the Scriblerus Club John Arbuthnot, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, John Gay Thomas Parnell, Robert Harley., Earl of Oxford. Ed. by Charles Kerby-Miller. Publ. For Wellesley College by Yale University Press. New Haven 1950. Reprint 1966.
The text of this first critical edition comprises 85 pages, foreword and notes by Kerby-Miller over 300 pages.

In 1755 a French translation by Peter Henry Larcher appeared in Paris under the fictitious printer Knapton in London under the title. "Histoire de Martinus Scriblerus, de ses ouvrages et de ses découvertes. Traduite de l'Anglois de Monsieur Pope ”.

Martinus Scriblerus has not yet been translated into German.

reception

Richard Owen Cambridge: The Scribleriad, 1751

The protagonist in Richard Owen Cambridge 's epic mockery poem "The scribleriad" from 1751 bears traits of members of the Scriblerus Club, especially Pope, Arburthnot and Swift. The epic is full of dark allusions that do not make it easy to read and was not a hit with the public.

Henry Fielding publishes his six early pieces (1730–32) under the pseudonym Scriblerus Secundus . He also used this pseudonym for the foreword to the play “The Tragedy of Tragedies of Tom Thumb the Great”, which was printed under his name. As it is Acted in the Theater at the Hay Market by Henry Fielding ”, in which he parodies the heroic tragedies of his time.

In the 1940s, the American English scholar Charles Kirby-Miller prepared the first annotated new edition of the memoirs since they were first published in the works by Alexander Pope of 1741. The memoirs went to print in 1950, together with extensive annotations and a commentary by Kirby-Miller. Nabokov, who worked as a lecturer in English literature at Wellesley College from 1943 to 1948 , had come to know and appreciate the Kirby-Millers there. His story “Scenes from the life of a Double Monster” goes back to the story of a Siamese pair of sisters, which is told in the memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus.

The literary journal The Scriblerian and the Kit-Kats, published by Temple University in Philadelphia, has been published since 1968 and is devoted to English literature of the late 17th and early 18th centuries.

literature

  • Patricia Carr Brückmann: Manner of Correspondence: A Study of the Scriblerus Club. McGill-Queen's Press 1997, ISBN 0-7735-1546-1 .
  • John Richardson: Slavery and Augustan Literature: Swift, Pope and Gay. London; Routledge 2004. pp. 39-62 (Routledge Studies in Eglish Literature.), ISBN 0-415-31286-8 .
  • Lisa Zunshine: Vladimir Nabokov and the Scriblerians. In: Nabokov at Cornell. Edited by Gavriel Shapiro. New York: Cornell Univ. 2003.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Pat Rogers: An Introduction to Pope. [1975]. New edition New York 2014. p. 133.
  2. ↑ [1]
  3. ^ The Cambridge History of English and American. Vol. 9. 1907. Chap. 4. § 9 .
  4. ↑ Sebastian Kühn: Knowledge, Work, Friendship. Economics, social relations at the academies in London, Paris and Berlin around 1700. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2011. Introduction.
  5. ^ Valerie Rumbold: Scriblerus Club. In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. 2014. Retrieved July 6, 2014.
  6. ^ ES Roscoe: Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, Prime Minister, 1710-14 . London: Methuen 1902.
  7. ↑ The Journal to Stella, by Jonathan Swift. Letter 55.
  8. ^ The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes. Vol 9. 1907. § 4.
  9. ↑ Emil Weller: The wrong and fake print locations. Vol. 2. Leipzig: Engelmann 1864, p. 141
  10. ^ First print 1958. German translation: Vladimir Nabokov: Scenes from the life of a double monster from d. Engl. By Dieter E. Zimmer . In: Vladimir Nabokov: Stories 2. Reinbek b. Hamburg: Rowohlt 1989. pp. 517-530.
  11. ^ The Scriblerian and the kit-cats. ISSN  0190-731X