The theme of water in the novels of Tobias Smollett

The humanistic approach which I am using here to explore the theme of water in the novels of Smollett aims at bringing out Smollett's own humanistic views encoded in water which appear as threatening as rewarding. If water is the earth's "appareil a regarder le temps," this appareil might very well be the mirror which reveals the actual colour of man's soul and humble place on earth, at least from Smollett's point of view, and summed up through his last and most famous character, Matthew Bramble.;The present study is divided into three parts; each part deals with the treatment of the theme of water as it has been explored by Tobias Smollett in his novels.;While the first section deals with the theme of water in the light of social, cultural and historical events which the author recalls in the Travels, it tackles the episodic treatment of the element as a means to depict the author's society and its practices in Peregrine Pickle and Ferdinand Count Fathom. In the second section, this study dwells successively on the dramatic effects of sea water in Roderick Random and the impact of a life at sea on retired mariners in Peregrine Pickle and Launcelot Greaves. The last section concentrates on Humphry Clinke and sums up the multifarious effects of water in the context of medical and social activities. Because this last novel is comprised of discrete epistolary narratives, priority is given to the analysis of the emotional relationship which each correspondent establishes with the sites they describe and in which water is often included. The analysis of water as symbol is of minor importance in the first two sections of this dissertation, but it is central to this last section in which the study of the theme of water in the novels of Tobias Smollett coalesces fully. This strategy is dictated by the fact that in the earlier novels the author used water to enhance specific scenes. "which ought to animate the reader, against the sordid and vicious disposition of the world" (Preface to Roderick Random xlv). Smollett also used water to serve narrative purposes, for his latest work displays a cyclical exploitation of water as being both a pretext for the description of physical reactions and a means to release intimate emotions (Abstract shortened by UMI).