Abstract
Dying, grotesquely, of what was probably cirrhosis—yet somehow sailing for Portugal in the summer of 1754—Henry Fielding was brought to mind of Parliament’s recent repeal of James I’s notorious Witchcraft Act of 1604. Why? One answer might lie in the nascent language of sensibility within which both Fielding’s reflection and Parliament’s revocation were forged. As a signature of ethical enlightenment, that is, the 1736 Act played a significant role in the articulation of English sentimental culture at midcentury. For its part, the “vehicular story” that is Fielding’s Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon (published posthumously in 1755) would seem to bear an uncanny resemblance to the work that has long assumed pride of place in that culture’s history, Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey (1767).1 A “Dedication to the Public” likely composed by Arthur Murphy implored Fielding’s readers to “let your own imaginations place before your eyes a true picture, in that of a hand trembling in almost its latest hour, of a body emaciated with pains, yet struggling for your entertainment.” Such an “affecting picture” was bound to “open each tender heart, and call forth a melting tear, to blot out whatever failings may be found in a work begun in pain, and finished almost at the same period with life” (JVL, 3). Appropriately enough, the “act of parliament” twice cited in that “work” marked the English witch’s metamorphosis from a supposed agent of harm detectable through “insensible Parts” on her (or his) own body into a harmless object of pity.2
Seduction takes from discourse its sense and turns it from its truth,… substituting the charm and illusion of appearances,… the seduction of the signs themselves being more important than the emergence of any truth.
Jean Baudrillard, Seduction (1979)
Now, though I am as free from superstition as any man breathing, and never did believe in witches, notwithstanding all the excellent arguments of my Lord Chief Justice Hale in their favour, and long before they were put down by act of parliament, yet by what power a ship of burthen should sail three miles against both wind and tide, I cannot conceive; unless there was some supernatural interposition in the case ….
Henry Fielding, The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon (1755)
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Notes
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© 2012 Toni Bowers and Tita Chico
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Lewis, J.E. (2012). Bewitched: The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon and the Seduction of Sentiment. In: Bowers, T., Chico, T. (eds) Atlantic Worlds in the Long Eighteenth Century. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137014610_10
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