Final Project

Short Essay – Option 2

Prompt

What is the significance of Tobias Smollet naming his book after a character that appears to be as insignificant as Humphry Clinker? What point, if any, is Smollet trying to get across by doing so? Please be sure to consider the following terms as you construct your answer: Epistolary form, representation, mediation, consumption, etc.

 

RE: “The rhetoric of prefacing”

Hi Kira – I enjoyed reading your comments and connections between the three books’ introductions, especially its purpose of validating and legitimizing the stories. One difference I noticed in the Preface of this week’s book is that it’s the only one where we don’t actually hear from the author.

RE: “The Many Styles in Humphry Clinker”

Hi Vicki – Thanks for sharing all of your great connections between Matt and Smollett! I didn’t know that the author died so young or that he was writing the book during his last years. In regards to your question about Matt’s age, I think he was in his mid-forties because even though Smollett never explicitly tells us, Jery writes,

Performed Identity in Humphry Clinker: The Etymology of Metamorphosed and Its Relationship to the Supernatural and Class Distinctions

Performed identity was the most interesting theme in Tobias Smollett’s Humphry Clinker partially due to the language used by Jery Melford, Matt Bramble, Lydia Melford, and Winifred Jenkins. Specifically, these characters use variances the term metamorphism seven times in the novel.

RE: “The Siren’s Song”

Hi Chris – I enjoyed reading the connections you made between Humphry Clinker and Homer, and the obsession with luxury they had then and we still have in contemporary society. In my post, I wrote about Mr. Bramble’s dislike of the people who had a want of taste, and I think he saw this in the country laborers who went to the city for service jobs.

RE: “London Vs Bath”

Your comments about age are interesting because I sometimes felt like Mr. Bramble uses his age as an excuse. For example, early on, he tells his doctor that the alterations to Bath have an “exaggerated impression on the irritable nerves of an invalid surprised by premature old age, and shattered with long-suffering” (32).

RE: “Formatting and Judgement in Humphry Clinker”

Hi Brian – I’m glad you posted about the format because it surprised me so much that after I read the first few letters and realized the rest of the book was letters, I did a search of Google to make sure I was reading the right book. That being said,

The Want of Taste in Humphry Clinker: Mr. Bramble’s Double Folly

Tobias Smollett’s Humphry Clinker addresses the issues of Taste particularly through Mr. Matt Bramble’s character. Social status is a crucial part of Mr. Bramble’s identity, and is one of the reasons why he does not like Bath. Unlike London and the country, in Bath “genteel people are lost in a mob of impudent plebeians who have neither understanding nor judgment, nor the least idea of propriety and decorum,” meaning the classes are mixed and the upper class is lost within the lower class whose citizens are uneducated, do not have good manners, and do not know beauty (35).