Undermining a Genre: Parody, Value Reversal, Counter-Genre

Abstract

Reasserting the significance of The London Merchant plot for young people, Memoirs of George Barnwell was published in 1810. Written anonymously, the author claims to be a descendent of the Barnwell family. These documents are styled after the genre of penitential narratives in the early eighteenth century. The primary justification of this narrative is that its truth can serve as a warning to vulnerable youths. Cohen carefully analyzes the similarities and differences of the memoir with previous Barnwell genres, the memoir the first to leave Millwood unpunished—“the final example of the shift in values which this version of the Barnwell story represents.” The moral: “learn to evaluate the statement of others more carefully, or bring into the open the sexual passions latent in oneself.”

“Memoirs, or Memorials, a term now much in use for histories composed by persons who had some share, or concerns in the transactions they related, or who were eye-witnesses of them; answering to what Latins call commentaria. See Commentary and History.”

“Memoirs is also used for a journal of the acts, and proceedings of a society; or a collection of the matters debated, transacted, etc. therein. Such are the memoirs of the royal academy of sciences, etc. See journal, academy, etc.”

—E. Chambers, Cyclopedia, 4th ed., 1741