“A True Landmark to Warn”: Seduction-Betrayal and the Recognition of History in Delarivier Manley’s The New Atalantis

Abstract

Abstract:Organized as a diffuse collection of vignettes, Delariver Manley’s The New Atalantis (1709) has proven challenging to approach as a discrete work. In this essay, I engage Atalantis as a romance and argue that the text is structurally unified by patterns of repetition, in particular the repetition of a narrative that I term “the seduction-betrayal fantasy.” The topos of political seduction-betrayal was widespread in early eighteenth-century Tory historiography as a means of acknowledging the failures of the Stuart monarchy while displacing blame away from monarchs onto others in their orbits. Yet it was frequently difficult for historians to “prove” that political seduction-betrayal had occurred. I argue that Manley addresses this challenge in Atalantis by pairing vignettes concerning political treachery with structurally analogous vignettes about well-known sexual seduction-betrayals. These sets of dyads invite readers to interpret controversial episodes from political history through paradigms generated by strategically selected stories of sexual wrongdoing. However, they also enable Manley to inject moments of ambivalence into her Tory secret history.