The Sot-Weed Factor

1st edition cover

The Sot-Weed Factor is a 1960 novel by the American writer John Barth, which marks Barth's discovery of Postmodernism.

Plot

The novel is a satirical^{[citation needed]} epic^{[citation needed]} of the colonization of Maryland based on the life of an actual poet, Ebenezer Cooke, who wrote a poem of the same title. The Sot-Weed Factor is what Northrop Frye called an anatomy —^{[citation needed]} a large, loosely structured work, with digressions, distractions, stories within stories, and lists (such as a lengthy exchange of insulting terms by two prostitutes). The fictional Ebenezer Cooke (repeatedly described as "poet and virgin") is a Candide-like innocent who sets out to write a heroic epic, becomes disillusioned and ends up writing a biting satire.^{[citation needed]}

The novel is set in the 1680s and 90s in London and on the eastern shore of the colony of Maryland. It tells the story of an English poet named Ebenezer Cooke who is given the title "Poet Laureate of Maryland" by Charles Calvert. He undergoes many adventures on his journey to Maryland and while in Maryland, all the while striving to preserve his innocence (i.e. his virginity). The book takes its title from the grand poem that Cooke composes throughout the story, which was originally intended to sing the praises of Maryland, but ends up being a biting satire based on his disillusioning experiences.

Writing process

The The Sot-Weed Factor was initially intended, with Barth's first two, as the concluding novel on a trilogy on nihilism, but the project took a different direction as a consequence of Barth maturation as a writer.

The novel takes its title from a poem of the same name published in London in 1708 and signed Ebenezer Cooke. "Sot-weed" is an old term for the tobacco plant. A "factor" is a middleman who buys something to resell it. As Barth explained:

The Sot–Weed Factor began with the title and, of course, Ebenezer Cooke's original poem. . . . Nobody knows where the real chap is buried; I made up a grave for Ebenezer because I wanted to write his epitaph.

Barth also made extensive use of the few pieces of information known at the time about the historical Cooke, his assumed father and grandfather, both called Andrew Cooke, and his sister, Anna.

The novel parodies, mimics, recuperates and rewrites the forms of the 18th century genre of the Bildungsroman (formation novel) and Künstlerroman (novel on the formation of an artist), and in particular Fielding's Tom Jones, Sterne's Tristram Shandy, and Samuel Richardson's three epistolary novels. The narrative presents Ebenezer as a Künstlerroman hero. The novel is also a parody of the picaresque genre, in particular of Tristram Shandy and Tom Jones.

The novel also rewrites the tale of John Smith and Pocahantas, presenting Smith as a boastful and bawdy opportunist, whose narrative of his explorations in Virginia is portrayed as highly fictional and self-serving. This view is generally accepted by historians today.

In 1994, Barth said retrospectively that this novel marks his discovery of postmodernism: "Looking back, I am inclined to declare grandly that I needed to discover, or to be discovered by, Postmodernism."

Publication

The first edition was written during four years, and published by Doubleday in 1960, consisting of about 800 pages. Barth revisited the text for a new edition issue in 1967 by another publisher, dried off by 60 pages. In 1987, the revised edition was reissued by the original publisher, in the Doubleday Anchor Edition series, with an added foreword.^{[citation needed]}

The novel has been translated to several languages, including Italian, Japanese and others. TIME included it in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.

See also

• 1960 in literature
• American literature

External links

• The Sot-Weed Factor, free ebook version of the first edition (1960) available at archive.org, scanned by Universal Digital Library