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The Wreckage of Intentions
ALEMBICS: PENN STUDIES IN LITERATURE AND SCIENCE
Mary Thomas Crane and Henry S. Turner, Series Editors
THE WRECKAGE OF INTENTIONS
Projects in British Culture, 1660–1730
DAVID ALFF
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS
PHILADELPHIA
Copyright © 2017 University of Pennsylvania Press
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher.
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Alff, David, author.
Title: The wreckage of intentions : projects in British culture, 1660–1730 / David Alff.
Other titles: Alembics: Penn studies in literature and science
Description: 1st edition. | Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2018] | Series: Alembics | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017010475 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4959-0 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: English literature—17th century—History and criticism. | English literature—18th century—History and criticism. | Industrial development projects—England—History—17th century. | Industrial development projects—England—History—18th century. | Scientific literature—England—History—17th century. | Scientific literature—England—History—18th century. | England—Civilization—17th century. | England—Civilization—18th century.
Classification: LCC PR431 .A39 2017 | DDC 820.9/004
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017010475
For Katie, as always
Contents
Introduction. What Is a Project?
Chapter 1. Improvement’s Genre: Andrew Yarranton and the Rhetoric of Projection
Chapter 2. Company in Paper: Aaron Hill’s Beech Oil Bust
Chapter 3. Projects Beyond Words: Undertaking Fen Drainage
Chapter 4. Inheriting the Future: Georgic’s Projecting Strain
Chapter 5. Swift’s Solar Gourds and the Antiproject Tradition
Coda. Imaginary Debris in Defoe’s New Forest
Introduction
What Is a Project?
In 1652, an anonymous London pamphlet proclaimed the end of famine. The twenty-four-page Designe for Plentie reasoned that England could secure “food in the time of want” by forcing its landholders to plant twenty apple, pear, walnut, or quince trees on every “five pounds per annum” of arable soil.1 According to this treatise, a law for compulsory arboriculture would restock the Commonwealth in the wake of civil wars that ruined tillage and emptied larders.2 “Woodwards” would patrol nurseries, fine defaulters, and schedule “common dayes” when parishioners would harvest the trees.3 These statutory labors would supply produce, timber, firewood, and juice, which could be fermented into cider. “Universal plantation” promised to barrel so much cider that England could stop brewing beer, a beverage that devoured bread barley while seeding “drunkennesse, disorder, and dangerous plots.”4 Fruit groves would transform “waste and wilde places” into a veritable “Garden of God” that could fill stomachs and dazzle eyes.5 Beauty, abundance, civility, and even a taste of prelapsarian bliss all seemed within the grasp of this single law.
Despite its euphoric imagery and breathless reasoning, Designe for Plentie concedes that its vision may not materialize. The author bemoans the “sluggishnesse” of his countrymen, likening them to a cat who hungers for fish, “yet her foot in water will not weat.”6 He simultaneously fears detractors who would dismiss communal orcharding as a “vain and trifling” notion, a specious enterprise unworthy of state support.7 To shake apathy and forestall censure, Designe characterizes itself as a practical measure for the benefit of all Commonwealth citizens: “we have thought it our dutie to present an Assay of Plenty, which we call (A Designe or Project for Plenty) yet not a project of any private advantage to us; but of publique good and plenty unto this Nation.”8 Designe anchors its self-justification to three nouns—assay, “designe,” project—that in the seventeenth century denoted both kinds of writing and modes of action. “Assay” frames the fruit scheme as a composition that subjects propositions to trial in the spirit of Montaigne’s essai. The author distinguishes his “try” at advancing the “publique good” from venal pursuits of “private advantage,” fashioning Designe as a tested article of national improvement rather than a vehicle for personal gain. “Designe,” the first word of the title, gives the impression of an elegant plan combining forethought and reason. The pamphleteer claims selfless motives and painstaking methodology to make credible his glimpse into future plenty.
The final term is “project.” Given its position behind the conjunction or, “project” at first sounds
