Atalantis Major — Key Ideas to Explore

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In Category - Government

Authors: Defoe, Daniel, 1661?-1731 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2008 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1702-1714 Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 17,275

Reading time 76 min

Text sections 2

The catalog record for Atalantis Major — Key Ideas to Explore provides practical reading context through 17,275 words, 1 hr 16 min estimated reading time, and 2 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 38.1 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1702-1714,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #26940

An editorial note on Defoe's allegorical pamphlet about the 1710 Scottish peer election, focusing on its layered structure, recurring images of theatrical performance, and the movement between real and invented geographies.

Editorial Edition Score 4.5/5

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Description quality20 pts
Title & short description10 pts
Source metadata20 pts
Text length15 pts
Chapters / structure15 pts
EPUB file integrity20 pts

Total of 100 points, scaled to a 2.5-5.0 range. Editions with an empty description or a missing EPUB file are not scored.

Edition quality

File: pg26940

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Godolphin was unable or unwilling to negotiate an end to the long, expensive, and consequently, unpopular war with France. The quarrel between Queen Anne and her confidante, the Duchess of Marlborough, smouldered until, on 6 April 1710, the breach between them became final. The Queen's confidence in the Duke of Marlborough began to erode as early as May 1709 when he sought to be appointed "Captain-General for Life." Godolphin's decision to impeach the popular Rev. Dr. Henry Sacheverell for preaching "a sermon which reasserted the doctrine of non-resistance to the will of the monarch" was ill-advised, for not only did it give the High-Church Tories a martyr, it also gave the Administration the appearance of being against the Church. In securing the impeachment of Sacheverell on 20 March 1710, the Whigs discovered that they had lost the support and the confidence of both the Parliament and the country.

Dissention within and intrigue from without further hastened the fall of the Administration. Godolphin, a moderate, had, after the General Election of 1708, found himself allied with the "Junto" of five powerful Whig Lords--Wharton, Sommers, Halifax, Orford, and Sunderland--but it was, at best, an uneasy alliance. Throughout 1709 and into the early months of 1710, personal jealousies drove the Godolphin-Marlborough interest farther and farther away from the Junto. Robert Harley and the Dukes of Somerset and Shrewsbury, in their determination to overthrow the Administration, exploited every chance to widen the rifts between Anne and her Ministers and between the two ministerial factions. Abigail Hill Masham, who soon became an agent of Harley, replaced the Duchess of Marlborough as Anne's confidante.

When the Ministry fell, it fell like a house of cards. On 14 April 1710 Shrewsbury was made Lord Chamberlain over the unavailing protests of Godolphin. Two months later, at the instigation of Somerset, the Queen replaced Sunderland with the Tory Lord Dartmouth as Secretary of State. Finally, on 8 August, Godolphin was ordered to break the White Staff of his office and Harley was appointed Treasurer. One by one the remaining Junto Ministers were replaced by Tories. By September the work was complete. The Duke of Marlborough alone remained, in command of the army, but this was only to be until the new Ministry could negotiate a peace and his services would no longer be required.

It had been Harley's intention to govern by means of a "moderate" Administration, a "Queen's Ministery above party," but he had not reckoned on the outcome of the General Election called in October. "On the day Godolphin fell, Harley expounded his 'moderate' programme in a letter to the Duke of Newcastle: 'The Queen is assured you will approve her proceedings, which are directed to the sole aim of making an honourable and safe peace, securing her allies, reserving the liberty and property of the subject, and the indulgence to Dissenters in particular, and to perpetuate this by really securing the succession of the House of Hanover.'"[1]

Alone, either the antagonism to the war or the intensity of feeling for the High-Church cause which the Sacheverell affair engendered, would have been sufficient to sweep the Whigs from power. Together, and combined as they were with the prestige of the Queen's public support of Harley and the newly appointed Tory Ministers, these issues were irresistible. Harley found himself with an "immoderate" House of Commons. The Tories held 320 seats, the Whigs only 150, and there were 40 seats whose votes were "doubtful."[2] Many of the new Parliamentarians were High-Church zealots, and most were anxious to turn the nation away from the policies of the Whig Administration of Godolphin.

The House of Lords, however, remained a bastion of Whig strength. As an hereditary body the House of Lords was simply not subject to the same opportunity for change as the elected House of Commons. Consequently, in 1710, as a result of the Glorious Revolution, the long reign of William III, and the Godolphin Ministry, the majority of the members of the House of Lords were of Whig or Revolution Settlement policies. Therein lay Harley's problem in late October of 1710: to obtain a Lords to match the Commons he had been given.

Any early eighteenth-century Ministry--Whig or Tory--could count on having the support of those peers whose poverty made them dependent on governmental subsidies, but this number would not have given Harley even a bare majority in the strongly Whig House of Lords. And there Harley needed at least enough strength to ensure success for some of the measures designed to satisfy the demands of the newly Tory House of Commons, particularly if his Ministry was to be able to negotiate a satisfactory treaty of peace with France.

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Defoe’s Atalantis Major opens with a claim that it will describe a “Farce” acted out in the northern part of an imaginary island. This theatrical metaphor is not incidental; it recurs throughout the text, framing political maneuvering as a staged performance. The narrator insists that the characters must be described before the action can be understood, signaling that the work’s structure depends on a deliberate unveiling of disguised identities.

The pamphlet moves between two registers: a transparent allegory of the 1710 Scottish peer election and a fantastical geography of “Atalantis Major” and its regions. This double movement allows Defoe to critique real political figures—such as the “Prince de Heymuthius” (Marlborough) and the “E. of Dolphinus” (Godolphin)—while maintaining a satirical distance. The reader is constantly shuttled between the invented and the actual, a structural device that mirrors the duplicity Defoe attributes to the election’s participants.

Theatrical Framing and the Language of Performance

From the outset, Defoe presents the election as a “Farce” requiring a cast of actors. The narrator’s insistence that the characters must be described before the plot unfolds suggests a deliberate structural choice: the pamphlet is organized as a dramatis personae followed by a narrative of events. This theatrical framing is reinforced by verbs like “acted,” “played,” and “performed.” For instance, the Lord of the Isles is said to have “acted his usual Flattery on both Sides,” while Greeniccio and Marereskine are described as “Instruments” who “acted one Part” and “another.” The repeated use of theatrical language turns political manipulation into a scripted performance, inviting the reader to view the election as a staged spectacle rather than a genuine contest.

Geographical Movement and Allegorical Layering

The pamphlet’s geography is deliberately unstable. Real locations like “Reeky” (Edinburgh) are placed within the fictional “Atalantis Major,” while the island’s “North” and “South” parts correspond to Scotland and England. This movement between real and invented spaces allows Defoe to comment on the Union of 1707 and the separate election of Scottish peers. The narrative shifts from the “City Reeky” to the “Isles” and back to the court, creating a sense of political terrain that is both familiar and estranged. The allegory is not consistent: sometimes the “Tartarian Emperor” stands for the Jacobite pretender, sometimes for the French king. This fluidity forces the reader to constantly re-evaluate the referents, mirroring the confusion Defoe attributes to the election itself.

Recurring Images of Duplicity and Self-Interest

Defoe returns again and again to the image of the self-interested politician who “run with every Stream” and “kept fair with every Side.” The Lord of the Isles is the prime example: he “spoke smoothly to all, meant Service to none, his dear Self excepted.” This portrait is built through a series of parallel phrases that emphasize his insincerity. The same pattern appears in descriptions of other figures, such as the unnamed courtiers who “talked of him, and Party and Queen, as one Knot.” The repetition of such images creates a cumulative effect: the reader is left with the impression that duplicity is not an individual failing but the system’s operating principle. The pamphlet’s structure—moving from one double-dealing character to another—reinforces this theme.

The Role of the Narrator and the Reader’s Position

Defoe’s narrator frequently addresses the reader directly, using phrases like “I cannot better describe them to you” and “let you into a true Notion.” This rhetorical strategy positions the reader as an outsider being initiated into the secrets of the election. The narrator claims to reveal hidden motives and backroom dealings, but the revelations are often partial or ambiguous. For example, when describing the Lord of the Isles’s encounter with the “North Atalantis Ministers,” the narrator adds “whether designedly or no it matters not,” leaving the reader to judge. This technique creates a sense of complicity: the reader is invited to see through the farce, but the narrator’s own reliability is never fully established. The pamphlet thus becomes a performance of exposure that may itself be part of the political game.

Readers approaching Atalantis Major should attend to the way Defoe uses allegorical names and shifting geographies to create a layered critique. The pamphlet rewards those who track the movement between the fictional and the real, and who notice how the theatrical language undercuts the claims of transparency. Because the excerpts are incomplete, the full extent of Defoe’s satirical targets remains uncertain, but the structural patterns are clear: this is a work that distrusts surfaces and expects its readers to do the same.

That grey afternoon, the rain kept time while I traced Defoe’s shifting map, his invented geographies bleeding into real streets. The theatrical staging of power lingered, a masque where every vote was a role played. Weeks later, this echoed faintly while reading the Canadian elections in The Masques of Ottawa — Key Ideas to Explore, and I felt the same strange fog lift between two centuries.