The Reformation brought a dual system of Protestantism to western Europe. On the one hand, a strict Puritanism appeared, but on the other, a watered down form of Catholicism allowed new freedoms of expression in the people.
No longer tied to a strict Catholic superstition as the story of their lives, a new form of media allowed a storytelling form that placed people’s urges and emotions as central to their lives.
SUBVERSIVE STORIES
Liberties began to be taken in drama, with individuality becoming uppermost in the story. In England, this was curtailed as Cromwell placed an austere culture on the country, but with the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, bawdy Restoration comedies appeared. Storytelling became subversive, leaving spirituality behind and centring the story on human predicaments.
This had a massive effect on culture and society in general. In particular, religion declined further, and throughout Europe a new kind of thinker began to appear. These were the scientists and philosophers, looking at life and the universe and devising man-made laws to account for phenomena. The effect on God was severe, with His place as creator and regulator of man and the universe in decline.
A NOVEL IDEA
The success of man’s mind, combined with new license for representing humanity, led to perhaps the greatest storytelling device invented since the myth. This was the novel. But in the novel, we find something much more ingenious than mere myth. For the first time, meaning was no longer to be found in some supernatural authority, but in the individual mind of the author and his characters.
This cannot be overstated. The novel was, indeed, new, with individual writers having a voice in a new, secular world, where social morality was a device invested in the storyteller in human terms. And such morality was diverse.
In the novels of de Sade we found sexual and violent licence with the invention of the new word, ‘sadism;’ whilst in the novels of Jane Austen we find a new society arising, based on the middleclass, with inheritance and good marriage as all important.
THE HUMAN DIMENSION
This ability of the new writer to exemplify a social time is well known today, with whole periods of history being defined as Shakespearean or Dickensian. In a real sense, the novel and novelist, together with the playwright, became mainstream media. But in realizing this, we face a dilemma concerning the power of storytelling even in the modern world.
Were people really individuals, or did they still cling to the story as told by the storyteller? One interesting point to note is that the success of the novelist was not due, so much, to his brilliance, but acceptance by a consensus of the public. In this way, the story pushed society on, but only when society was happy with the message.
Hence, a mutualistic scenario can be seen in the writer/reader relationship. We could almost say that the novelist intuited a new mood in the people, but in highlighting it in the story, he defined it for all to follow. And in understanding this, we must ask if the individual was really let loose, or did storytelling still impose its will on society?
© Anthony North, July 2007
Find more posts in the Story of the Story series on the History Page.
