Adventures of Eovaai, Princess of Ijaveo, Eliza Haywood

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language: English
country: UK
year: 1736
form: novel
genre(s): fantasy
dates read: 22.5.24-24.5.24

Eliza Haywood’s Adventures of Eovaai, Princess of Ijaveo: A Pre-Adamitical History, published in 1736, is a pregenre fantasy satire of 18th-century English politics, but frankly I don’t think it’s especially interesting as a satire — I mostly ignored Earla Wilputte’s explanatory footnotes in the edition I was reading. I’m just not especially interested in 18th-c politics (with an exception, noted below).

it’s more interesting and remarkable as one of the first pregenre texts to have actively engaged in recognizable world-building, beginning with its “Preface, by the Translator” — part of its elaborate frame narrative, where the text is comprised of

  1. the core text, supposedly predating the (re)creation of the world and creation of Adam;
  2. the work of a period commentator (Hahehihotu), and other pre-Adamitical writers, who are regularly referenced in the footnotes;
  3. the work of a “Cabal” of Chinese translators who supposedly were working on an edition of the text at the behest of an emperor; and
  4. the work of an English-speaking Chinese translator, who, “in gratitude for the many Favours I have received from the English” (emphasis original), has decided to produce an English version of the text.

the text includes a large number of footnotes elaborating on aspects of the setting that aren’t directly relevant to the story, as, for example, the gloss on “the Theatre of the Gods” which informs us that this was “[a] Temple dedicated to the whole Hierarchy of Celestial Beings, and never entered but on solemn Days, or to give thanks for some National Blessing”. the “translator’s preface” describes an alternate chronology for Christian world history, where the creation documented in Genesis and subsequent history of the world was actually a recreation following a cataclysm that destroyed all life on earth. it is of significant formal and generic interest, then, as a prototype of the kind of mythic prehistory we find in Howard or Tolkien.

the actual plot is a fairly tedious monarchist drama where the titular princess loses the jewel that secures the favor of the god Aiou, finds herself kidnapped by the evil magician Ochihatou, prime minister of a neighboring polity and apparently analogue for Robert Walpole. Eovaai herself does very little during these adventures, other than escaping once (but only after she’s been given a firm push by a divine being).

the most interesting part by a wide margin is her sojourn in the “Republick” of Oozoff, where Eovaai finds herself debating a republican who very obviously gets the best of her. the novel implies that if she had been in a more stable mental place she would have been able to find her way out of his counterarguments, but it very conveniently neglects to explain to the reader why constitutional monarchy would avoid the republican’s assessment of the dangers of monarchism. unclear whether this is because Haywood harbored some real republican sympathies or because she thought she’d constructed a strawman rather than a scathing critique of monarchy.

is it “good”? it’s fine. but it’s engagingly written and definitely worth a read if you’re interested in the early history of what has become the fantasy genre.

moods: adventurous, reflective, wacky


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