The Eighteenth Century / The Closet: Two Introductions – Bobker

Danielle Bobker
Reading: ➢ closet, n. v. Oxford English Dictionary

Green Closet, Frogmore

Fig. 5. Patrick Allan-Fraser, Oliver Cromwell Closeted with the Spy.
Courtesy of the collection of The Patrick Allan-Fraser, Hospitalfield Trust.

The course begins with separate introductions to the closet and eighteenth-century history. Then students are invited to start to connect the two. Perusing OED definitions and citations for closet, noun (Figure 2) and closet, verb (Figure 3) as well as two paintings of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English closets (Figures 1 and 5) brings many of its now obsolete inflections into view. In this period a closet could be a room for private prayer (1b), family worship (2b), or quiet study (1c), a small bedroom or antechamber (4), a dressing room “for a lady to make her redy in” (1a), a water closet (7), sewer (9), or a repository for valuables or cabinet of curiosities (3a). The closet’s role as a site and symbol of politicized intimacies is important throughout the course: a schematic floor plan of an early modern household (Figure 4) helps to make sense of the unique privacy and social capital of this room, filling out definition 2a: “The private apartment of a monarch or potentate; the private council-chamber.” The storage function of the marginal architectural spaces we now call closets (3b) has a long history as well. At the end of the eighteenth century, when Jane Austen observed “[a] Closet full of shelves… should… be called a Cupboard rather than a Closet,” she was acknowledging, and hoping to curtail, the semantic reduction of the word to this strictly functional space.

We also explore the use of the word as a general metaphor for privacy and seclusion. Some of these metaphors are negatively charged: closet as a marker of “mere theories as opposed to practical measures” (1c) or of painful, shameful secrets, including, especially since the late 1960s, secrets about one’s sexuality (3c, 3d, and 10b). Other metaphors are more neutral: closet as an analogy for a hidden interior site—”the Closet of your Conscience” (6b)—or as an adjective that qualifies a particular experience or thing as inward—”closet-sins” as opposed to “stage-sins” (10a). It is not surprising that, as the private room known by this name proliferated in English culture, closet began regularly to be used as a verb meaning “to retreat,” whether alone or—as in the title of Allan-Fraser’s painting (Figure 5)—with another person.

With reference to such events as the Glorious Revolution, the lapse of the Print Licensing Act, and the founding of the Royal Society and the Bank of England listed on a timeline (Figure 6), my opening lecture characterizes the long eighteenth century as a period of gradual, uneven transition—from absolutism to constitutional monarchy, a land- to commodity- and money-based economy, from manuscript to print culture, and from a court public to a modern public sphere. Then, turning back to the OED definitions and citations, we consider in which of them the closet seems to encapsulate traditional values, in which of them progressive values, and in which a tension between the two. This collective interpretive work helps to ground a basic thesis of the course: that closets became central to eighteenth-century English discourse and culture because they were such flexible and such evocative spaces.

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The Philosophy of Progress – Bobker

Danielle Bobker

Readings:
➢ John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, selections
➢ John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, selections

In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke contests traditional notions of knowledge; in the Two Treatises, he contests traditional notions of government. Our discussion of excerpts from these texts gives depth to the historical transformations introduced in the opening lecture.

Our conversation about the epistemology touches on Locke’s rejection of prior models of innate knowledge. We note his special use of such terms as sensation and reflection, and explore various images of human understanding at work turning experience into ideas, including that of the “closet wholly shut from light, with only some little opening left, to let in external visible resemblances, or ideas of things without.” We then approach the political theory as a comparable rejection of top-down authority. Students become familiar with such key concepts as patriarchy/patriarchalism, the state of nature, property, social contract, civil society, and paternal power.

Finally we find links between these two foundational texts of liberal democratic thought. I ask students to think with me about how the empirical mind is served by civil society and vice versa. We also discuss contradictions and gaps within and between Locke’s epistemology and his political theory, particularly relating to the status of women. On the one hand, Locke’s (largely) universal models of learning and political engagement cut against traditional views of female cognitive and political inferiority. On the other hand, though Locke refutes the traditional equivalence of political and familial authority, he ultimately rationalizes male superiority within the family and more or less takes it as a given within the state.

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Rooms for Improvement – Bobker

Danielle Bobker

Reading: ➢ Samuel Pepys, Diary, selections

During the nine years he kept his Diary (1660-1669), Samuel Pepys had three closets: he constantly renovated and redecorated them, and just as constantly wrote about them. Thus the Diary serves as a valuable social historical document of the period’s rich closet culture. Social mobility was then a tricky operation, only indirectly dependent on wealth. “Rooms for Improvement,” the title of this section, underscores the multiple important roles closets played in Pepys’s efforts to climb the social ladder.

View Through a House
Fig. 7. Samuel van Hoogstraten, View of the Corridor © National Trust.
Many of Pepys’s closet episodes are easy to collate with the OED entries for closet, an exercise that reinforces the range of uses and resonances of this space. Pepys undertakes concentrated solitary work in his own closets, updates his journal in them, and, on at least one occasion, retreats to a closet to pray (10 August 1662). He also builds and nurtures valuable alliances as a frequent guest in royal and noble closets and, eventually, as a host in his own. And he develops his taste by paying close attention to closet contents and décor, like the perspective painting on the door to his colleague Thomas Povey’s closet that he frequently admired. [In their authoritative University of California edition of the Diary, Robert Latham and William Matthews suggest that the painting was probably Samuel van Hoorgarten’s 1662 View of the Corridor (Figure 7), a fine example, in any case, of the baroque aestheticization of receding space.] Pepys filled his own closets with maps, decorative plates, curiosities, like the tennis-ball-sized stone he had had removed from his bladder (27 August 1664), and his books—an ever-growing and much-prized collection that he had gilded for display in purpose-built bookcases. We sketch the parameters of closet gift exchanges among the Restoration elite. One memorable series of entries details the way Pepys provoked his colleague’s mistress, Abigail Williams, by “not giving her something to her closet” (6 August 1666)–pointedly excluding her from his chosen social circle (see also 19 March 1666, 10 February 1667, 22 August 1667, 15 May 1668).

Class discussion is also elicited by those closet episodes that underscore Pepys’s social aspirations and fraught relationships with women. Though his wife Elizabeth participates in several of Samuel’s schemes to prettify their closets (see 5 October 1663, for example), he clearly sees himself as master of all these rooms–even the one officially designated for her use. Closets feature in entries exposing Pepys’s infidelity. He corners several young lowborn women into sexual indiscretions in closets (28 November 1666, 18 February 1667, 20 June 1667) and when setting up his office closet, drills a hole so that he can spy on the maid who cleans the common area (30 June 1662). Observing Mr and Mrs Pepys’s relationships to domestic space allows us to explore the period’s new ideals of companionate marriage and female privacy, and their limits under couverture, the longstanding legal convention that subsumed a wife’s identity into that of her husband.

The personal journal is the first of several genres with close ties to the closet that we discuss over the course of the semester. We consider the type of self-relation Pepys’s Diary reflects and reinforces, paying attention to linguistic tics like his use of a sexual cipher—as in: “my wife, coming up suddenly, did find me embracing the girl con my hand sub su coats” (25 October 1668)—and reflexive language—as in: “I do thinke myself obliged to thinke myself happy and do look upon myself at this time in the happiest occasion a man can be” (26 February 1666). How and to what extent is this journal a record of inner experience? In what way is Pepys a “private” man? For students, as for other critics, there tends to be significant disagreement on these questions.

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Privacy and Modernity I: The Family – Bobker

Danielle Bobker

Readings:
➢ Philippe Ariès, Introduction to The History of Private Life III: The Passions of the Renaissance
➢ Michael McKeon, “Chapter 5: Subdividing Inside Spaces” in The Secret History of Domesticity:
     Public, Private, and the Division of Knowledge

Because a major goal of the course is to enrich and complicate notions of both private and public, students are invited to provide synonyms any time they find themselves using either of these words in discussion or writing. In this way, we can begin to uncover and, where necessary, let go of our assumptions about both categories and the relationships between them. Excerpts from two major histories of privacy ground the rethinking we have already begun: both Philippe Ariès and Michael McKeon narrate privacy’s emergence in relation to the development of the modern family.

Ariès contrasts the communality of medieval Europe–-“private was confounded with public” (1)–-to the compartmentalized forms of nineteenth-century social life – when private and public separated as the family home became a refuge from a basic state of anonymity everywhere else. According to Ariès, increasingly bureaucratic governments, the flourishing of print and literacy, and internalized religious practices like confession and closet prayer were major cultural factors in the shift from communality to compartmentalization. Early modern privacy consisted not only in more intimate family interactions than ever before in more intimate rooms than ever before, but also in changing discourses and practices of selfhood, including new concerns with bodily modesty, reflexive reading and writing, and friendship, which was increasingly characterized as shared solitude.


Fig. 8a. Longleat House, 1570. From Michael McKeon, The Secret History of Domesticity, 253. Marquand Library, Princeton University Library.

Fig. 8b. Longleat House, c1809. From Michael McKeon, Secret History of Domesticity, 254. Marquand Library, Princeton Univesrity Library. By permission of Oxford University Press.

In his Secret History of Domesticity, McKeon situates the increasing coherence and complexity of the private in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries within a series of interrelated categorical and disciplinary divisions, including the separation of science from the arts and humanities and, most significantly, the separation of workplace from household. Our initial encounter with McKeon’s book focuses on his exploration of the architectural corollaries to this process. In the chapter on “Subdividing Inside Spaces,” McKeon is interested in how changing domestic designs mirrored and precipitated the conceptual evolution of privacy in the period. Privacy had traditionally been defined—and designed—as a withdrawal from the fundamental publicness of the household. Later, the generous use of corridors made individual rooms discrete and less permeable (see Figures 8a and 8b), thereby reinforcing the new feeling that privacy was a positive and distinct value. Separate rooms variously accommodated women’s desire for distance from men (and vice versa), family members’ desire for distance from servants, and the desire of any and all members of the household for distance from outside visitors. McKeon’s chapter also provides our third catalogue of the varieties of the closet and cabinet in the period, including the cabinet of curiosities and closet as study, library, boudoir, harbour of secrets, and site of secretarial business.

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Privacy and Modernity II: The Public Sphere – Bobker

Danielle Bobker

Readings:
➢ Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, selections
➢ Michael Warner, “Public and Private” in Public and Counterpublics
➢ Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, The Spectator, Numbers 1, 10, 217

An introduction to public sphere theory extends students’ understanding of changing ideas and practices of privacy as corollaries or complements (and not necessarily in opposition) to changing ideas and practices of publicness. This section turns on Jürgen Habermas’s influential account of how new modes of political action and interpersonal connection, independent of the state, were made possible by the growth of capitalism, personal wealth, and print culture in eighteenth-century England. We note that here, not only is the family the major site in the development of privacy “in the modern sense of a saturated and free interiority” (28), but it is also the subjective condition of possibility of the modern public sphere (43).

 

Warner Public and Private 

Fig. 9. Public and private
From Michael Warner, Publics and Counterpublics, 29-30

Fig. 10. Private and public. Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, 30.

 

With reference to three essays from Joseph Addison and Richard Steele’s highly successful, daily London periodical, The Spectator (one of Habermas’s exemplary texts), we observe how print’s quick turnaround and low costs facilitated a more reciprocal relationship between authors and readers. This is most obviously manifested in the many letters from readers that Mr Spectator solicits, publishes, and engages with in print. In Number 10, when Mr Spectator declares, “I shall be ambitious to have it said of me, that I have brought Philosophy out of Closets…,” he makes the private room symbolize the antiquated, impenetrable form of intellectual authority that he explicitly rejects in favor of a more interactive mode of engagement. (As we will see in Section 7, in the eighteenth century, the closet or cabinet “opened” in fact became a very common figure for the unprecedented accessibility of commercial print.) The issue of women’s access to the public sphere is especially charged in the Spectator. Mr Spectator represents female readers as important beneficiaries of the daily guidance provided by his publication because they are naturally susceptible to frivolity and other passionate excesses, but he also seems eager to discipline female embodiment and women’s collective agency beyond the home. In Number 217, for example, Mr Spectator responds with bemused reproach to “Kitty Termagant”’s description of a “Club of She-Romps,” a wild all-female midnight gathering.

Convinced by Habermas’s narrative in outline, Michael Warner emphasizes the democratic potential of modern media publics while criticizing the ways their putative universality in fact privileges heterosexual white men. Warner especially champions the idea and manifestations of counterpublics, that is virtual collectives in which the embodied conditions of gender and sexuality are not denied and repressed as in conventional publics but rather treated as “the occasion for forming publics, elaborating common worlds, making the transposition from shame to honor, from hiddenness to the exchange of viewpoints with generalized others” (61). For instance, Warner finds in the “Club of She-Romps” in Spectator Number 217 a striking illustration of an early counterpublic. This part of Warner’s argument causes some debate among students, some of whom are skeptical that this obviously satirical essay can be read so much against the grain. Warner’s discussion of a famous anecdote about Diogenes masturbating in the marketplace succinctly illustrates “the visceral force behind the moral ideas of private and public” (21). Another very helpful point of reference is his comprehensive chart of definitions (Figure 9), which elaborates the wide range of meanings of private and public, some but not all of which are opposing. We use it to review Habermas’s specific uses of the terms private and public (Figure 10) (which may seem contradictory but in fact are not) and we return to this chart often throughout the semester to make sense of our own and other current investments in these categories.

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The Courtly Closet and the Closet of Devotion – Bobker

Danielle Bobker

Readings:
➢ Anthony Hamilton, Memoirs of Count Grammont, selections
➢ Edward Wettenhall, Enter into thy Closet, selections

 

Miss Hobart and Miss Temple Fig. 11. C. Delort, Miss Hobart and Miss Temple.
From Anthony Hamilton, Memoirs of the Count de Grammont, Walter Scott, ed. (New York: Dutton, 1905).

Miss Hobart and Miss Temple
Fig. 12. L. Boisson after C. Delort, Miss Hobart and Miss Temple.
From Anthony Hamilton, Memoirs of Count Grammont, Henry Vizetelly, ed. (London: Vizetelly, 1889).

Excerpts from Anthony Hamilton’s Memoirs of the Count Grammont, a secret history of the Restoration court, and Edward Wettenhall’s Enter into thy Closet, a frequently republished prayer manual, open up distinctive but overlapping modes of political and spiritual privacy: court favouritism and closet devotion. At court, decisions about when and to whom to grant access to the closet were exercises in arbitrary power and the status and roles of secretaries and other royal favorites were explicitly defined in relation to the closet. As one sixteenth-century secretary had put it: “To a Closet, there belongeth properly, a doore, a locke, and a key: to a Secretorie, there appertaineth incidently, Honestie, Troth, and Fidelitie.” We consider the many examples of closet relations in Hamilton’s Memoirs, focusing on (1) a funny and puzzling episode involving the Duchess of York, Miss Hobart (the Duchess’s favourite), Miss Temple (the Duchess’s favorite’s favorite), and the Restoration’s most notorious rake, the Earl of Rochester (Figures 11 and 12), (2) the author’s bond with his biographical subject, his brother-in-law Philibert de Comte de Gramont, and (3) the virtual transfer of favor to readers throughout this text and in the genre of secret history in general.

We especially consider the politics of same-sex closet relations: Who gains what through relations of patronage and favoritism between people of the same sex? Under what circumstances and in what way do these relationships become erotic? What are the broader social and political implications of this kind of ambitious intimacy? At first glance, the prayer closet seems a very different space from the courtly closet. Satisfying the basic Protestant impulse to strip away Catholic mediations, the King James translation of the Bible (1611) gave a new specificity to the injunction to pray alone in Matthew 6.6: “But when thou prayest enter into thy Closet…” Along with new modes of self-examination, closet prayer formalized a special kind of closeness to God and Jesus. With reference to Wettenhall’s manual, we parse out the key components of closet prayer and the interesting notions of time and timelessness associated with this practice. Wettenhall writes that the most powerful prayers belong to those “whose daily and frequent application of themselves to the throne of grace hath rendred them there well acquainted and favourites” (29). Students are asked to think about how the discourse of favouritism connects the prayer closet to the courtly closet. We also discuss the homoerotics of closet prayer with reference to Richard Rambuss’s Closet Devotions, which argues that the prayer closet was an important site for the internalization of sexuality.

 

Suggested Presentation Topics:

The history of court favoritism
The history of the secretary
The secret history and court memoir
The homoerotics of the prayer closet

 

Fig. 13: Enter into thy Closet.
Frontispiece from Edward Wettenhall, Enter into thy Closet
.

 

 

 

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The Cabinet of Curiosity and the Dressing Room – Bobker

Danielle Bobker

Readings:

➢ Selections from The Ladies Cabinet broke Open, Modern Curiosities of Art and Nature, Cabinet of Momus,
                    and Cabinet of Choice Jewels
➢ Alexander Pope, “Rape of the Lock” and “The Key to the Lock”

Le Cabinet de la Bibliotheque de Sainte Genevieve 

Fig. 14. Franz Ertinger, Le Cabinet de la
Bibliothèque de Sainte Geneviève

     © The Warburg Institute – University of London.

The Cabinet Maker
Fig. 15. The Cabinet Maker.
     © British Library Board, RB.23.a.18153 plate opposite 73.

John White's Rich Cabinet

Fig. 17: A Rich Cabinet. Frontispiece of A Rich Cabinet.

When the British elite and a growing group of merchants developed a taste for collecting in the middle of the seventeenth century, they brought into their closets freestanding wooden repositories, and the word cabinet–- from the French for “closet”–-was increasingly attached to this latter smaller enclosure (Figure 14). In the eighteenth century, cabinet-makers had a booming trade (Figure 15). Multi-sectioned, lockable cabinets permitted not only the safe storage and organization of books, art works, antiquities, natural specimens, and other curios, but also their elegant display. I briefly introduce this practice with reference to a subsection of Michael McKeon’s “Subdividing Spaces” (218-19) and Patrick Mauriès’s beautifully illustrated Cabinets of Curiosity (see especially III “The Collector: senex puerilis,” and IV “The Phantom Cabinet: 18th-19th Centuries”), emphasizing the triumph of systematic methods of organization over the collector’s subjective experience of awe or wonder. In the eighteenth century, as Mauriès explains, “The concept of the cabinet of curiosities began to change when differences became more important than correspondences. This would lead to the breaking up of the great collections and their re-allocation to specialized institutions, the naturalia to natural history museums and the artificialia to art galleries” (193). The Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, opened in 1683, housed the collection that John Tradescant had originally displayed in his private home; the British Museum, the first national public museum in the world, was founded in 1753 to exhibit the contents of the private cabinets of naturalist and collector, Sir Hans Sloane.

Closets Without Walls (Figure 16) is my bibliography of 170 publications, most from eighteenth-century England, called “closets” and/or “cabinets,” many of which were also qualified as “unlocked” or “broken open.” Its title alludes to the phrase “libraries without walls,” which was coined by book and media historian Roger Chartier to refer to the textual bibliothèques— book catalogues—popular in eighteenth-century France. Whereas in the French “libraries without walls,” publishers confronted the longstanding fantasy that all the books in existence (or at least their titles) might be gathered in one place, the books in the Closets Without Walls archive highlight the important metaphorical role played by private spaces for publishers, and others in the book trade, coming to terms with the growing popularity of print in eighteenth-century England. I introduce the figurative appeal of the closet or cabinet opened with reference to the frontispiece of John White’s Rich Cabinet (Figure 17), whose array of boxes is suggestive not only of the residual chaos of natural philosophical knowledge in the seventeenth century but also of the novelty and excitement associated with their public exposure in print. To further investigate this appeal, I ask students to analyze the front matter of The Ladies Cabinet broke Open, Modern Curiosities of Art and Nature, Cabinet of Momus, and Cabinet of Choice Jewels as well as three other texts of their own choosing, which they select on the Closet Without Walls bibliography then locate on Early English Books Online or Eighteenth Century Collections Online. As the Notes column (G) on the bibliography indicates, in textual closets and cabinets, the figure of private space serves as a very flexible conceptual bridge between an elite, exclusive, manuscript-centered culture of knowledge production and exchange and a growing print culture in which accessibility was increasingly valued.

The discussion of “Rape of the Lock” focuses on the new light that histories of the closet can shed on it. The dressing room was the fashionable version of the closet reserved for storing and putting on clothes, accessories, and cosmetics. Following a brief introduction to this space by way of Tita Chico’s Designing Women: The Dressing Room in Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture, we explore the impact of a burgeoning consumer culture in eighteenth-century rituals of privacy, especially as depicted in the famous toilet scene at the end of Canto 1 (lines 121-48). Pope clearly both scorns and delights in his characters’ love of surfaces. We discuss if and how the quality of this ambivalence differs where the different sexes are concerned. Next we approach the poem as a sort of collector’s cabinet: a container for arranging things in relation to one another. In particular, we consider how the poem’s many odd groupings—like the “Counsel” and the “Tea” that Queen Anne “sometimes takes” (3.8) or the “twelve vast French Romances, neatly gilt,” “three Garters,” and “half a Pair of Gloves” (2.38-39) on the Baron’s altar to love—comment on the difficulties of Pope’s contemporaries in distinguishing between style and substance. Finally, with reference to the satirical paratext “The Key to the Lock,” which Pope wrote himself, we consider if and how the poem parodies the genre of secret history.


Suggested Presentation Topics:

Cabinets of curiosities
The dressing room
The history of the encyclopedia, the dictionary, the miscellany, and/or the anthology
Roger Chartier, “Libraries Without Walls”
Pope’s grotto
Eighteenth-century cosmetics

 


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Privy Pastoral – Bobker

Danielle Bobker

Readings:
➢ Ben Jonson, “To Penshurst”
➢ Jonathan Swift, “Panegyric on the Dean,” “The Lady’s Dressing Room,”
“A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed,”
     “Strephon and Chloe,” and “Cassinus and Peter”
➢ Mary Wortley Montagu, “Reasons that induced D— S— to Write a Poem Called ‘The Lady’s Dressing Room’”
➢ Samuel Rolleston, Philosophical Dialogue Concerning Decency

 
Fig. 18. A plaine pot of a privie in perfection.>
John Harington, Metamorphosis of Ajax, 196.

 

Is the desire for excretory privacy innate? Our discussion of some eighteenth-century responses to this question is informed by the material history of the water closet and the literary history of country-house poetry. A mechanized privy pot, capable of instantly flushing away waste, built into a room reserved exclusively for solitary excretion had been invented in the sixteenth century (Figure 18), but such a machine did not have wide appeal until the late eighteenth century. Before then, even among those who could have afforded to install special equipment, simple chamber pots, which could be used anywhere and emptied by servants, were vastly more common. The fundamental value encapsulated by the water closet – the fantasy of perfect excretory autonomy – was, however, already in the air, and already subject to critique, in the first half of the eighteenth century.

Pastoral, georgic, and country-house poetry focus on relationships among nature (including the body and its impulses), culture (including art, labour, and agriculture), and retreat. The primary texts in this section all draw on the interrelated forms of nature poetry to depict excretory privacy as a fraught gender issue. Though each juggles a unique set of presuppositions about the extent to which culture can or should compensate for apparently natural sexual differences, all toy with the common (and enduring) belief that women are particularly shamed by the exposure of primal bodily functions. Mary Wortley Montagu’s retort to Swift’s “Lady’s Dressing Room” is an engaging way into these issues: Is there evidence in the poem that Montagu or any of her characters share Strephon’s fear of Celia’s shit? We then consider Rolleston’s Dialogue Concerning Decency as a countertext to Swift’s longest, earliest, and most explicit scatological poem. “Panegyric on the Dean” commemorates the pair of his-and-hers outdoor privies Swift had just built on the country estate of his patroness, Lady Anne Acheson, and is written for her (and in her voice). As they explore the modern ideal of complete excretory autonomy, both texts ask not only (1) whether the ideal is aligned with or contrary to nature and (2) whether it is or should be equally shared by both sexes, but also (3) whether it reinforces social or selfish impulses. These questions guide our conversation.

Suggested Presentation Topics:

The history of the water closet
Swift’s “excremental vision”
Pollution issues: Mary Douglas’s Purity and Danger
Michael Edson, “‘A Closet or a Secret Field’: Horace, Protestant Devotion and British Retirement Poetry”



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Epistolary Spaces – Bobker

Danielle Bobker

Readings:
➢ Eliza Haywood, Love in Excess
➢ Samuel Richardson, Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded

Closet discourses and practices provide concrete tools for exploring the rise of the novel in the final weeks of the semester. We read four influential and entertaining novels in chronological sequence. Many critics have argued that the modern novel shaped and reflected the growth of bourgeois domestic ideology in eighteenth-century England. Focusing on the novel’s links to the secret history, our exploration emphasizes the gradual, uneven process of this development. Cynthia Wall has pointed out that most of the settings in eighteenth-century novels are only vaguely sketched if at all. Yet there is nevertheless a preponderance of closets and cabinets (and antechambers, keyholes, closed gardens, backdoors, backstairs, and underground passages) in them. Other clear, concrete marks of the influence of secret history on eighteenth-century novels include the elevated/public status of key characters, the elliptical rendering of certain names (such as Mr B—), and the centrality to their plots of private correspondence and sexual scandal. Joseph Highmore’s Mr. B— Finds Pamela Writing encapsulates a number of these themes. We consider how novels finally challenge the secret history’s traditional economy of value in which the importance of private affairs lies in the way they impinge upon or allegorize larger—national and/or political—concerns. In the eighteenth century, novelists were asking if and how the personal, the domestic, and ordinary people might be valued in and of themselves. McKeon’s discussion of the secret history is very helpful here (469-505) in relation to his rereading of Pamela (639-59): McKeon shows that it is the carefully crafted political aura in Richardson’s novel that invests Mr B— and Pamela’s amatory entanglement with “socio-ethical weight” (642).

Our discussions of Love in Excess and Pamela also look at how female privacy helped to lay the groundwork for the radical questioning of traditional gender roles and social hierarchies. Haywood uses the privileged, highly literate and reflexive solitude of her elite female characters to work out a new ideal of rational sexual agency for all women, dramatically revising the longstanding association of female virtue with chastity. In Richardson’s novel, Pamela’s surprising sophistication and self-awareness reflect her earlier dressing-room intimacy with her mistress, Lady B—, and the countless hours she later spends reading and writing letters in one closet or another: in other words, her exceptional access to privacy equips Pamela, morally and intellectually, to play the heroine. Ultimately, for both novelists, some substantial degree of female autonomy is the basic precondition of a good—that is, a companionate—marriage. Some students feel frustrated by the hypocrisies and contradictions in this formulation, which seems to assess female agency in terms of its advantages to men and heterosexuality. It can help to recall the older patriarchal values and practices–arranged marriages or marriages of alliance, for example—to which Haywood and Richardson were reacting.

Our study of the novel as a modern genre in the making also focuses on key scenes of private reading of Pamela and Love in Excess. Haywood is especially interested in how reading helps her curious but virtuous heroine, Melliora, to cultivate and ultimately to discipline her passion. In Pamela, Mr B— learns to love Pamela respectfully only after reading all of her letters and coming to sympathize with her suffering. We discuss how these metatextual subplots model the virtual and internal experiences of intimacy that were increasingly understood to be characteristic of novels and at the core of their moral power.

Suggested Presentation Topics:

Ros Ballaster on amatory fiction and the female reader
Eighteenth-century reading practices
Literacy in the eighteenth century
Desire and Domestic Fiction
The novel and masturbation

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(Homo)Erotic Closets – Bobker

Danielle Bobker

Reading: ➢ John Cleland, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet

Fig. 19. closet, sb.
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet, 65
.

 

Fig. 20. Jean-Honoré Fragonard, L’Armoire (The Closet)
© The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY
.

John Cleland’s Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, the most famous English pornographic novel, focuses our attention on the erotics of privacy, and the network of associations linking privacy, sincerity, and sex. Fanny Hill announces on the first page that her narrative will present “stark, naked truth”: “I will not so much as take the pains to bestow the strip of a gauze wrapper on it, but paint situations such as they actually rose to me in nature…” Significantly, she defends the decorousness of her sexual explicitness with reference to domestic space: “The greatest men, those of the first and most leading taste, will not scruple adorning their private closets with nudities, though, in compliance with vulgar prejudices, they may not think them decent decorations of the staircase, or saloon” (1).

Throughout the novel, not only do people have sex in closets and similarly enclosed spaces, but such rooms also give shape to formative solitary sexual experiences. Notably, Fanny Hill is introduced to heterosexual intercourse by spying from a closet on Mrs Brown, her first madam, and a young soldier (24), and then on Polly, one of her brothel sisters, and an Italian merchant (28). We ask if and how Cleland’s depictions of sexual voyeurism seem to serve a metatextual function akin to scenes of reading in other novels. That is, do Cleland’s scenes of virtual intimacy also serve to clarify the kind of vicarious learning the author wants his readers to do? The end of the novel provides an important focal point for musing on the novel’s apparently contradictory lessons about sex and propriety. Ultimately Fanny claims that her experiences as a prostitute have made it possible for her to recognize the morally and sensually superior pleasures of the reproductive matrimonial bed. For many critics Cleland’s turn to married love and virtue in what Fanny calls her “tail-piece of morality” (187) is a cheap parody of the expected finale of the domestic novel. This skepticism may seem less warranted if we recognize the extent to which Cleland has tried to distinguish Fanny’s reunion with Charles, her husband-to-be, from all the sexual encounters that have preceded it (181-186). Especially striking in this regard is Cleland’s metaphor aligning Charles’ penis with a maternal breast at which infants “in the motion of their little mouths and cheeks… extract the milky stream prepar’d for their nourishment.”

We go on to consider the novel as a cabinet of sexual curiosities in which a wide range of sexual practices, including virgin hunting, flagellation, hair and glove fetishes, and sodomy, is gathered and displayed. While Fanny’s rhetoric of “taste” and “universal pleasure” accommodates this range (see especially 144), Cleland also links certain practices to social and/or physiological deficiencies. Indeed he often reinforces a new tendency in the period to turn on its head the traditional idea of good blood: the sexual taste of the aristocracy comes off as especially depraved. The publication and reception history of Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, succinctly summarized in Peter Sabor’s 2000 review essay, particularly highlights the importance and complexity of the novel’s oft-censored sodomitical theme. On the one hand, sex between men was virulently condemned in the period and Cleland’s novel echoes some of the dehumanizing rhetoric associated with this condemnation. On the other hand, there is strong evidence that Cleland’s own sexual preference was for men: as David Robinson discusses in his chapter on Cleland in his Closeted Writing and Gay and Lesbian Literature, it may make most sense to read this text as sympathetic to sodomites though in a roundabout way.

Finally, the opening chapter of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s Epistemology of the Closet provides a springboard for a conversation about the queer closet, then and now. The private domestic space became our most common metaphor for queer secrecy and shame with the gay and lesbian liberation movements of the 1960s and 70s. How did this special signification of closet take root and what are the implications of this term’s use in this context? Sedgwick opens some doors for speculating about the etymology of the queer closet with the selection of OED definitions she includes at the start of her Epistemology of the Closet (Figure 19). To Sedgwick’s suggestions, we add others that seem relevant from the complete OED entries for closet (Figures 2 and 3). Definition 3d. of closet, n., is especially relevant here, as is definition 1c., which suggests that one historical bridge to our current metaphor may have been the use of the closet as a symbol of a negative, stifling attachment to privacy. Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s painting, L’Armoire (translated as The Closet) (Figure 20), points up the basic spatial connection between the closet and the bad feelings following illicit experiences: near the bed and large enough to hide a lover, the freestanding wardrobe was a logical symbol of sexual shame.

Suggested Presentation Topics:

The history of pornography
Peter Sabor, “From Sexual Liberation to Gender Trouble: Reading the Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure from the 1960s to the 1990s”
Thomas Laqueur, Solitary Sex: The Cultural History of Masturbation
Eve Kosowsky Sedgwick, “Introduction: Axiomatic” in Epistemology of the Closet
David Robinson, “The Closeting of Closeting: Cleland, Smollett, Sodomy, and the Critics” in Closeted Writing and Lesbian and Gay Literature: Classical, Early Modern, Eighteenth-Century

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Overview – Bobker

Danielle Bobker

The English closet took on many new shapes and functions as it proliferated in the long eighteenth century. It had origins in sixteenth-century palace apartments designed in enfilade: the lockable room at the end of a series of adjoining chambers had been crucial to the performance and consolidation of absolute power in the Tudor and early Stuart courts. In these secluded places, kings and queens could store valuables and special documents, read, write, or pray alone, and exchange confidences with their most trusted courtiers. Yet closets proved remarkably resilient over the next two centuries, even as power drifted away from the court. In the houses of people of quality and, increasingly, those of the middling sort, private rooms served as prayer closets, cabinets of curiosity, dressing rooms, libraries, art galleries, and impromptu bedrooms; and merging with the bath or privy, closets were transformed into bathing closets, closets of ease, outdoor privies known as earth closets and, eventually, water closets.

While multiplying and morphing in material culture, these intimate spaces also made significant appearances in all kinds of writing. The closet was, for example, a metaphor for the space of the mind in empirical philosophy, a symbol of female vanity in satirical poetry, and a setting for introspection, sexual intrigue, and letter writing in fiction. Along with its close cousin, the cabinet, the closet also gave a name and an implicit structure to hundreds of miscellanies or anthologies in eighteenth-century England, from how-to books like The Golden Cabinet of Useful Knowledge to recipe and remedy books like The Queen-Like Closet.


Green Closet, FrogmoreFig. 1. Green Closet, Frogmore © British Library Board, 747.f.3, volume 2, plate opposite page 19.

Eighteenth-Century Literature and the Culture of the Closet is a course that I developed to explore the functional, narrative, and symbolic roles closets played in eighteenth-century life and literature. Focusing on discourses and practices of the closet especially helps to illuminate the changing parameters of privacy in the period and the centrality of this category to concurrent developments in politics, religion, science, architecture, gender, and sexuality. First defined as a kind of withdrawal available only to the elite, privacy became in the eighteenth century a positive category of experience, as desirable as it was variable. The course takes a special interest in how privacy shapes and reflects literary styles and genres of the period, including the secret history, the prayer manual, the anthology, the country house poem, and the novel.

 

I have taught this semester-long course three times—once as a multilevel, interdisciplinary undergraduate seminar at Emory University and twice as a graduate English seminar at Concordia University in Montreal. I have also incorporated aspects of this course in introductory surveys of eighteenth-century literature. When I first designed it, my research agenda was at the forefront of my mind: the course was an opportunity for me to test, refine, and expand my ideas on the proliferation of closets in eighteenth-century architecture and writing, and to work on communicating them as clearly as possible. I have returned to the course and its themes again and again because they are clearly engaging for students as well. Advanced students enjoy the many open-ended explorations. At the same time, because the question of privacy was so central in eighteenth-century Britain, and a major preoccupation for canonical figures on the syllabus such as Locke, Pepys, Haywood, Pope, and Richardson, the course works well as a general introduction to the period.

There are intellectual challenges for everyone. Our objects of study are three moving targets: (1) the closet as a flexible architectural construct, (2) privacy’s evolution in relation to other historical developments of the period (especially new practices and ideas of publicness), and (3) the reciprocal relationship between changing literary forms and writers’ inventive use of closets as settings and symbols. Each of these themes invites a distinctive disciplinary orientation—those of material culture, social theory, and literary history respectively—while meta-thematic analysis of the processes of transformation—historicism—connects them all. Both depth and breadth of analysis are required, and maintaining the balance between them has been important to me each time I teach the course. On the one hand, there are a great many opportunities for creative and critical leaps. On the other hand, the specificity—the materiality—of our objects demands a special rigor and precision.

Below, I explain the key historical, cultural, and theoretical ideas I have emphasized during each of the course’s eleven separate sections and I outline some of the most fruitful topics of conversation. I have found it useful initially to approach each theme on its own. After several weeks of overview (Sections 1 through 5), the course moves roughly chronologically through a range of interrelated texts (Sections 6 through 11). Early on we spend a good deal of time deciphering the closet’s range of functions and uncovering our ideas about the meaning and value of private and public—detective work that is above all about careful close reading of primary texts. Later, we enter more abstract territory as we ask how various literary genres celebrate, reinforce, or challenge different kinds of private experience, not least those of readers. Near the end of the semester, many students have pieced together a basic narrative of privacy’s emergence in and around literary form and will be ready to make their own intuitive leaps.
Teachers interested in the course as a whole will find it productive to peruse the sections in order. However, the lists of section headings and readings allow for more selective encounters.

Starting with Section 6, I have suggested presentation topics designed to familiarize the class with a range of complementary materials. Writing projects for the course have generally been a series of short response papers, in which students are asked to document their initial impressions of the readings, then a long final research paper, preceded by an annotated bibliography and prospectus, in which inquiries emerging during response papers and class discussions are extended. My students’ final essays have covered such topics as Pepys at the coffee house, Castle of Otranto as a secret history, the feminism of Swift’s scatology, Rape of the Lock as cabinet of curiosities, the feminization of privacy in Pamela and Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, status implications of the word alone in the seventeenth century, among many others: the pleasure they have taken in defining and pursuing their projects for this course has in turn been one of the greatest pleasures of the course for me as well. Please use the seminar outlines below in your classroom however you wish. I welcome your questions and comments at danielle.bobker@concordia.ca

 

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Gothic Collections, Gothic Chambers – Bobker

Danielle Bobker

Reading: ➢ Horace Walpole, Castle of Otranto

Strawberry Hill, the Seat 
Fig. 21. Edward Dayes, Strawberry Hill, the Seat of the Honourable Horace Walpole. Courtesy of The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

Gallery at Strawberry Hill

Fig. 23. Gallery at Strawberry Hill.
Courtesy of The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

Strawberry Hill Library

Fig. 24. Library at Strawberry Hill.
Courtesy of The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

The Cabinet

Fig. 25. The Cabinet.
Courtesy of The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

Strawberry Hill, Before and After

Fig. 22: Strawberry Hill, Before and After
Courtesy of The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

In our last week of the course we explore the influence of Horace Walpole’s eclectic tastes on the genre of the Gothic novel he invented. Walpole’s continual renovations of his estate, Strawberry Hill (Figures 21 and 22), reflected his passion not only for feudal architecture but also for his own eccentric collections of antique coins, old and contemporary paintings, and antiquarian curios including Mary Tudor’s hair in a gold locket, Cardinal Wolsey’s red hat, and an ivory comb from the twelfth century. Walpole was not interested in the empirical systems of classification privileged by many eighteenth-century collectors. Instead he was concerned with immediate affective and imaginative charge of medieval material culture—especially its delightful dreariness, or “gloomth” as he called it—and he went to great lengths to create interior settings appropriate for the display of the things he loved (Figures 23, 24, 25, and 26).

In the introduction to Castle of Otranto, Walpole writes that his inspiration for the novel came from a dream he had had about the medieval suit of armor he kept in the main staircase at Strawberry Hill (Figure 27). We approach the novel as the literary corollary of Walpole’s unorthodox antiquarianism. In particular, we pay close attention to moments where the very modern immediacy of characterization and dialogue bump up against the romantic plot, settings, and “properties”—such as Mathilda and Isabelle’s late-night exchange about their shared attraction for Theodore, for example. Ultimately, we focus on the ideological complexity of Walpole’s Gothicism. How is the novel’s melodramatic resolution a reflection of this ideological complexity? It seems clear that Walpole’s nostalgia is for the surfaces and style of Europe’s feudal past, rather than its top-down political and religious institutions. Does he succeed in showing his appreciation for the former but not the latter? Another favorite topic of conversation for students is the relationship between Walpole’s homosexuality and his taste, which we might now label as campy or kitschy.

Suggested Presentation Topics:

Gothic architecture
Strawberry Hill and/or Walpole as collector
Cynthia Wall, “Writing Things” in The Prose of Things: Transformations of Description in the Eighteenth Century
Susan Sontag, “Notes on Camp” from Against Interpretation and Other Essays
Walpole’s closet drama, The Mysterious Mother

 

GBR Stawberry Hill

Fig. 26. Beauclerk Closet, Strawberry Hill.
© World Monuments Fund.

Strawberry Hill Staircase

Fig. 27. Staircase at Strawberry Hill.
Courtesy of The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

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Image Gallery – Bobker

Danielle Bobker

Green Closet

Fig. 1. Green Closet, Frogmore © British Library Board, 747.f.3, volume 2, plate opposite page 19.

Fig. 2. closet, n. Oxford English Dictionary.

Fig. 3. closet, v. Oxford English Dictionary.

Fig. 4. The axis of honour in the formal house. From Mark Girouard, Life in the English Country House, 145. Courtesy of Yale University Press.

Cromwell Closeted
View Through a House

Fig. 5. Patrick Allan-Fraser, Oliver Cromwell Closeted with the Spy. Courtesy of the collection of The Patrick Allan-Fraser, Hospitalfield Trust.

Fig. 6. Long eighteenth-century timeline of English political and cultural events.

Fig. 7. Samuel van Hoogstraten, View of a Corridor © National Trust.

Fig. 8a. Longleat House, 1570. From Michael McKeon, Secret History of Domesticity, 253. Marquand Library, Princeton University Library.

Warner Miss Hobart and Miss Temple

Fig. 8b. Longleat House, c1809. From Michael McKeon, Secret History of Domesticity, 254. Marquand Library, Princeton University Library. By permission of Oxford University Press.

Fig. 9. Public and Private. Michael Warner, Publics and Counterpublics, 29-30.

Fig. 10. Private and public. Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, 30.

Fig. 11. C. Delort, Miss Hobart and Miss Temple. From Anthony Hamilton, Memoirs of the Count de Grammont, Walter Scott, ed. (New York: Dutton, 1905).

Miss Hobart and Miss Temple The Cabinet Maker

Fig. 12. L. Boisson after C. Delort, Miss Hobart and Miss Temple. From Anthony Hamilton, Memoirs of the Count de Grammont, Henry Vizetelly, ed. (London: Vizetelly, 1889).

Fig. 13. Enter into thy Closet. Frontispiece from Edward Wettenhall, Enter into they Closet.

Fig. 14. Franz Ertinger, Le Cabinet de la Bibliothèque de Sainte Geneviève © The Warburg Institute — University of London.

Fig. 15. The Cabinet Maker © British Library Board, RB.23.a.18153 plate opposite 73.
Rich Cabinet Definition of Closet

Fig. 16. Closet Without Walls a bibliography.

Fig. 17. A Rich Cabinet. Frontispiece of A Rich Cabinet.

Fig. 18. A plaine pot of a privie in perfection, John Harington, Metamorphosis of Ajax, 196.

Fig. 19. closet, sb. Eve Kosofsky Sedgewick, Epistemology of the Closet, 65.

Strawberry Hill Seat Strawberry Hill Before and After Strawberry Hill Gallery

Fig. 20. Jean-Honore Fragonard, L’Armoire (The Closet) © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY.

Fig. 21. Edward Dayes, Strawberry Hill, the Seat of the Honourable Horace Walpole. Courtesy of The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

Fig. 22. Strawberry Hill, Before and After. Courtesy of The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

Fig. 23. Gallery at Strawberry Hill. Courtesy of The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

Strawberry Hill Library The Cabinet GBR Strawberry Hill Strawberry Hill Staircase

Fig. 24. Library at Strawberry Hill. Courtesy of The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

Fig. 25. The Cabinet. Courtesy of The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

Fig. 26. Beauclerk Closet, Strawberry Hill © World Monuments Fund.

Fig. 27. Staircase at Strawberry Hill. Courtesy of The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

 

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Closets Without Walls – Bobker

Danielle Bobker

DOWNLOAD SPREADSHEET FOR COMPLETE INFORMATION

«ABCDEFGHIJLMPRSTVW»

A
A Book of Rarities: Or, Cabinet of Curiosities Unlock’d (1743)
A brief history of the Restauration (1729)
A cabinet of choice jewels (1701)
A cabinet of choice jewels (1762)
A Cabinet of Fancy (1799)
A Cabinet of Jewels opened to the Curious, by a key of Real Knowledge (1757)
A Cabinet of Miscellanies (1794)
A call to the unconverted (1746)
A catalogue of a pleasing assemblage of prints… (1792)
A catalogue of a well-chosen and select collection of Pictures (1791)
A Catalogue of that Superb and Well Known Cabinet of Drawings of John Barnard, Esq. (1787)
A catalogue of the cabinet of birds, and other curiosities (1769)
A catalogue of the collection of pictures, etc. (1758)
A catalogue of the elegant cabinet of natural and artificial rarities of the late ingenious Henry Baker, Esq. (1775)
A Catalogue of the genuine, curious, and valuable (1779)
A catalogue of the valuable museum (1794)
A closet for ladies and gentlewome (1608)
A Closet Piece: The Experimental Knowledge of the Ever-Blessed God (1721)
A collection of curious prints and drawing by the best masters in Europe (1718)
A Companion to Bullock’s Museum (1799)
A coppy of verses writt in a Common Prayer Book (1710)
A general history of the proceedings and cruelties of the court of inquisition in Spain, Portugal (1731)
A key to natural history (1798)
A key to the cabinet of the Parliament, by their remembrancer (1648)
A key to the Kings cabinet (1645)
A key to the Six Per Cent Cabinet (1798)
A letter from the Man in the Moon to Mr. Anodyne Necklace (1725)
A manual history of Repentance and Impenitence (1724)
A rich cabinet of modern curiosities containing many natural and artificial conclusions… (1704)
A satyr, occasioned by the author’s survey of a scandalous pamphlet intituled, the King’s cabanet opened (1645)
A Thousand Notable Things on Various Subjects (1776)
A true narration of the surprizall of sundry cavaliers (1642)
A vindication of King Charles (1648)
An Account of a Useful Discovery (1756)
Apollo’s Cabinet or the Muses Delight (1757)
Aristotle’s Last Legacy (1711)
Art’s Master-Piece (1768)

B

Beautiful Cabinet Pictures (1798)

C

Cabinet Litteraire (1796)
Cabinet of Curiosities, No. 1 (1795)
Catalogue of the geniune (1798)
Catalogue of the intire Cabinet of Capital Drawings, collected by the late Greffier Francois Fagel (1799)
Christ’s famous titles (1728)
Coins and medals, in the cabinets of the Earl of Fife (1796)
Copys of several conferences and meetings (1790)
Cupid’s Cabinet Open’d (1750)
Cupids cabinet unlock’t (1641)
Curiosities: or, the cabinet of nature (1637)
Curtius’s Grand Cabinet of Curiosities (1800)

D

Delights for young Men and Maids (1725)
Duties of the Closet (1732)

E

Elegant and Copious History of France. Number 1. (1791)
Elegant Drawing and Cabinet Pictures (1785)
England’s choice cabinet of rarities; or The famous Mr. Wadham’s last golden legacy (1700)
England’s Mournful Monument (1714)
Every Lady her own Physician or the Closet Companion (1788)

F

Flower-Garden Display’d (1732)
For the Inspection of the CuriousFor the inspection of the curious…a cabinet of royal figures (1785)
Fragment of the chronicles of Zimri the Refiner (1753)

G

Gale’s Cabinet of Knowledge (1796)
Gloria Britannorum or, The British Worthies (1733)

H

History of Mother Bunch of the West (1797)
History of Mother Bunch of the West, Part the Second (1797)
Hocus Pocus (1715)

I

Incomparable varieties (1740)
Instructions for a prince (1779)

J

Jocabella, or a cabinet of conceit (1640)

L

Ladies Cabinet broke open, Part 1 (1718)
Letters, poems, and tales (1718)
Lineal Arithmetic (1798)

M

M—-C L—-N’s cabinet broke open (1750)
Miss C–Y’s cabinet of curiosities (1765)
Mist’s Closet Broke Open (1728)
Monthly Beauties (1793)
Mother Bunch’s Closet broke open…Part the Second (1800)
Mrs. Pilkington’s Jests (1764)

P

Particulars of and conditions of sale for a large and valuable estate called Goldings (1770)
Phylaxa Medinae. The cabinet of physick (1799)
Proposals for publishing by subscription from the curious and elaborate works of Thomas Simon (1753)
Psalmes of confession found in the cabinet of the most excellent King of Portinga (1596)

R

Religion the most delightful employment (1739)
Ruperts sumpter, and private cabinet rifled (1644)

S

Seven conferences held in the King of France’s Cabinet of Paintings (1740)
Specimens of British Minerals selected from the Cabinet of Philip Rasleigh (1797)
Sunday Thoughts .4 (1781)

T

Thane’s second Catalogue (1773)
The accomplish’d Lady’s Delight (1706)
The Believer’s Golden Chain (1763)
The Book of Psalms Made Fit for the Closet with Collects and Prayers (1719)
The British Phoenix (1762)
The Cabinet (1797)
The Cabinet (1754)
The Cabinet of Beasts (1800)

The Cabinet of Genius (1787)
The Cabinet of Love (1792)
The Cabinet of Momus and Caledonian Humorist (1786)
The cabinet of the arts (1799)
The cabinet of True Attic Wit (1783)
The cabinet of wit (1797)
The Christian mans closet (1591)
The Christian’s Closet-Piece: Being An Exhortation to all People To forsake their Sins, Which too much Reign in the present Age: As Pride, Envy, … (1770)
The Christian’s duty from the sacred scriptures (1730)
The Christian’s New Year’s Gift: containing a companion (1764)
The Christian’s Plea for His God and Saviour Jesus Christ (1719)
The Christian’s Preparation for the worthy receiving of the Holy Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper (1772)
The chyrugians closet (1630)
The Closet Companion (1791)
The Closet of Counsells conteining the advice of divers philosophers (1569)
The Compleat English and French Vermin-Killer (1710)
The Copper Plate Magazine (1792)
The Country Physician (1703)
The Cyprian Cabinet (1783)
The Female Pilgrim1 (1762)
The French Momus (1718)
The General State of Education in the Universities (1759)
The Gentleman and Lady’s Palladium (1752)
The Genuine Letters of Mary Queen of Scots to James Earl of Bothwell (1726)
The Golden Cabinet (1790)
The Golden Cabinet (1793)
The Golden Cabinet (1765)
The housekeeper’s valuable present (1790)
The Irish Cabinet (1746)
The Irish cabinet: or His Majesties secret papers (1646)
The Key to the kings cabinet-counsell (1644)
The King of Scotlands negotiations at Rome (1650)
The Kings cabinet opened (1645)
The Ladies Cabinet (1743)
The ladies cabinet opened (1639)
The Lady’s companion (1743)
The Laird of Cool’s Ghost (1786)
The Last Night (1790)
The Lord George Digby’s cabinet and Dr Goff’s negotiations (1646)
The Lovers Cabinet (1755)
The Modern Family Physician (1783)
The Muses Cabinet (1771)
The Naturalist’s Pocket 1 (1799)
The Naturalist’s Pocket 2 (1799)
The Naturalist’s Pocket 3 (1799)
The Naturalist’s Pocket 4 (1799)
The Naturalist’s Pocket 5 (1799)
The Naturalist’s Pocket 6 (1799)
The New Week’s Preparation for a Worthy Receiving of the Lords Supper (1770)
The Oxford Cabinet (1797)
The Parallel (1762)
The Parents Pious Gift (1704)
The Phenix Volume One (1707)
The Pleasing Instructor (1756)
The Poor Man’s Help, and Young Man’s Guide (1709)
The private tutor to the british youth (1764)
The rich cabinet furnished with varietie of excellent discriptions (1616)
The riches and extent of free grace displayed (1772)
The Royal Jester (1792)
The second part of Mother Bunch of the West (1750)
The Second Volume of the Phenix (1707)
The Spirit of Liberty (1770)
The state of France (1760)
The treasurie of commodious conceits (1573)
The world’s doom: or the cabinet of fate unlocked. Vol. 2 (1795)
The world’s doom: or the cabinet of fate unlocked. Vol.1 (1795)
To a vertuous and judicious lady who (for the exercise of her devotion) built a closet (1646)
To be seen in Curtius’s Cabinet of Curiosities (1792)
Two spare keyes to the Jesuites cabinet (1632)

V

Vox Populi (1774)

W

Who Runs next (1715)
Wit’s Cabinet (1715)

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Closets Without Walls – Bobker

Danielle Bobker

DOWNLOAD SPREADSHEET FOR COMPLETE INFORMATION

«1500 — 15501600165017001710172017301740175017601770178017901800 »

1550 – 1600

1569      The Closet of Counsells conteining the advice of divers philosophers
1573      The treasurie of commodious conceits
1591      The Christian mans closet
1596      Psalmes of confession found in the cabinet of the most excellent King of Portinga

1600 – 1650

1608      A closet for ladies and gentlewomen
1616      The rich cabinet furnished with varietie of excellent discriptions
1630      The chyrugians closet
1632      Two spare keyes to the Jesuites cabinet
1637      Curiosities: or, the cabinet of nature
1639      The ladies cabinet opened
1640      Jocabella, or a cabinet of conceit
1641      Cupids cabinet unlock’t
1642      A true narration of the surprizall of sundry cavaliers
1644      Ruperts sumpter, and private cabinet rifled
              The Key to the kings cabinet-counsell
1645      A key to the Kings cabinet
              A satyr, occasioned by the author’s survey of a scandalous pamphlet intituled, the King’s cabanet opened
              The Kings cabinet opened
1646      The Irish cabinet: or His Majesties secret papers
              The Lord George Digby’s cabinet and Dr Goff’s negotiations
              To a vertuous and judicious lady who (for the exercise of her devotion) built a closet
1648      A key to the cabinet of the Parliament, by their remembrancer
              A vindication of King Charles
1650      The King of Scotlands negotiations at Rome

1700 – 1709

1700      England’s choice cabinet of rarities; or The famous Mr. Wadham’s last golden legacy
1701      A cabinet of choice jewels
1703      The Country Physician
1704      The Parents Pious Gift
              A rich cabinet of modern curiosities containing many natural and artificial conclusions…
1706      The accomplish’d Lady’s Delight
1707      The Second Volume of the Phenix
              The Phenix Volume One
1709      The Poor Man’s Help, and Young Man’s Guide

1710 – 1719

1710      The Compleat English and French Vermin-Killer
              A coppy of verses writt in a Common Prayer Book
1711      Aristotle’s Last Legacy
1714      England’s Mournful Monument
1715      Hocus Pocus
              Who Runs next
              Wit’s Cabinet
1718      A collection of curious prints and drawing by the best masters in Europe
              Ladies Cabinet broke open, Part 1
              Letters, poems, and tales
              The French Momus
1719      The Book of Psalms Made Fit for the Closet with Collects and Prayers
              The Christian’s Plea for His God and Saviour Jesus Christ

1720 – 1729

1721      A Closet Piece: The Experimental Knowledge of the Ever-Blessed God
1724      A manual history of Repentance and Impenitence
1725      A letter from the Man in the Moon to Mr. Anodyne Necklace
              Delights for young Men and Maids
1726      The Genuine Letters of Mary Queen of Scots to James Earl of Bothwell
1728      Mist’s Closet Broke Open
              Christ’s famous titles
1729      A brief history of the Restauration

1730 – 1739

1730      The Christian’s duty from the sacred scriptures
1731      A general history of the proceedings and cruelties of the court of inquisition in Spain, Portugal
1732      Duties of the Closet
              Flower-Garden Display’d
1733      Gloria Britannorum or, The British Worthies
1739      Religion the most delightful employment

1740 – 1749

1740      Incomparable varieties
              Seven conferences held in the King of France’s Cabinet of Paintings
1743      The Ladies Cabinet
              A Book of Rarities: Or, Cabinet of Curiosities Unlock’d
              The Lady’s companion
1746      The Irish Cabinet
              A call to the unconverted

1750 – 1759

1750      Cupid’s Cabinet Open’d
              M—-C L—-N’s cabinet broke open
              The second part of Mother Bunch of the West
1752      The Gentleman and Lady’s Palladium
1753      Proposals for publishing by subscription from the curious and elaborate works of Thomas Simon
              Fragment of the chronicles of Zimri the Refiner
1754      The Cabinet
1755      The Lovers Cabinet
1756      The Pleasing Instructor
              An Account of a Useful Discovery
1757      Apollo’s Cabinet or the Muses Delight
              A Cabinet of Jewels opened to the Curious, by a key of Real Knowledge
1758      A catalogue of the collection of pictures, etc.
1759      The General State of Education in the Universities

1760 – 1769

1760      The state of France
1762      The British Phoenix
              The Female Pilgrim
              The Parallel
              A cabinet of choice jewels

1763      The Believer’s Golden Chain
              The private tutor to the british youth
1764      The Christian’s New Year’s Gift: containing a companion
              Mrs. Pilkington’s Jests
1765      The Golden Cabinet
              Miss C–Y’s cabinet of curiosities
1768      Art’s Master-Piece
1769      A catalogue of the cabinet of birds, and other curiosities

1770 – 1779

1770      The Christian’s Closet-Piece: Being An Exhortation to all People To forsake their Sins, Which too much
                        Reign in the present Age: As Pride, Envy, …
              The New Week’s Preparation for a Worthy Receiving of the Lords Supper
              Particulars of and conditions of sale for a large and valuable estate called Goldings
              The Spirit of Liberty
1771      The Muses Cabinet
1772      The riches and extent of free grace displayed
              The Christian’s Preparation for the worthy receiving of the Holy Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper
1773      Thane’s second Catalogue
1774      Vox Populi
1775      A catalogue of the elegant cabinet of natural and artificial rarities of the late ingenious Henry Baker, Esq.
1776      A Thousand Notable Things on Various Subjects
1779      A Catalogue of the genuine, curious, and valuable
              Instructions for a prince

1780 – 1789

1781      Sunday Thoughts .4
1783      The cabinet of True Attic Wit
              The Cyprian Cabinet
              The Modern Family Physician
1785      Elegant Drawing and Cabinet Pictures
              For the Inspection of the CuriousFor the inspection of the curious…a cabinet of royal figures
1786      The Laird of Cool’s Ghost
              The Cabinet of Momus and Caledonian Humorist
1787      A Catalogue of that Superb and Well Known Cabinet of Drawings of John Barnard, Esq.
              The Cabinet of Genius
1788      Every Lady her own Physician or the Closet Companion

1790 – 1799

1790      The housekeeper’s valuable present
              The Last Night
              The Golden Cabinet
              Copys of several conferences and meetings
1791      A catalogue of a well-chosen and select collection of Pictures

              Elegant and Copious History of France. Number 1.
              The Closet Companion
1792      The Copper Plate Magazine
              A catalogue of pleasing assemblage of prints…
              The Cabinet of Love
              The Royal Jester
              To be seen in Curtius’s Cabinet of Curiosities
1793      Monthly Beauties
              The Golden Cabinet
1794      A catalogue of the valuable museum
              A Cabinet of Miscellanies
1795      Cabinet of Curiosities, No. 1
              The world’s doom: or the cabinet of fate unlocked. Vol.1
              The world’s doom: or the cabinet of fate unlocked. Vol. 2
1796      Cabinet Litteraire
              Coins and medals, in the cabinets of the Earl of Fife
              Gale’s Cabinet of Knowledge
1797      History of Mother Bunch of the West
              History of Mother Bunch of the West, Part the Second
              The Oxford Cabinet
              Specimens of British Minerals selected from the Cabinet of Philip Rasleigh
              The Cabinet
              The cabinet of wit
1798      A key to natural history
              A key to the Six Per Cent Cabinet
              Lineal Arithmetic
              Beautiful Cabinet Pictures
              Catalogue of the geniune
1799      The Naturalist’s Pocket 1
              The Naturalist’s Pocket 2
              The Naturalist’s Pocket 3
              The Naturalist’s Pocket 4
              The Naturalist’s Pocket 5
              The Naturalist’s Pocket 6
              Phylaxa Medinae. The cabinet of physick
              Catalogue of the intire Cabinet of Capital Drawings, collected by the late Greffier Francois Fagel
              A Cabinet of Fancy
              The cabinet of the arts
              A Companion to Bullock’s Museum

1800

1800      The Cabinet of Beasts
              Curtius’s Grand Cabinet of Curiosities
              Mother Bunch’s Closet broke open…Part the Second

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Closets Without Walls – Bobker

Danielle Bobker

DOWNLOAD SPREADSHEET FOR COMPLETE INFORMATION

Spirtual Advice | Educational Miscellany | Religious Miscellany | Miscellany of Art & Music | Miscellany
Catalogue | Fiction | Recipe Book | Miscellany of Biographical Material | Literary Miscellany | Historical Miscellany


Spiritual Advice

A cabinet of choice jewels (1762)
A Closet Piece: The Experimental Knowledge of the Ever-Blessed God (1721)

The Christian’s Plea for His God and Saviour Jesus Christ (1719)

Educational Miscellany

A Book of Rarities: Or, Cabinet of Curiosities (1743)
A brief history of the Restauration (1729)
A Cabinet of Jewels opened to the Curious, by a key of Real Knowledge (1757)
A Cabinet of Miscellanies (1794)
A catalogue of the cabinet of birds, and other curiosities (1769)
A closet for ladies and gentlewomen (1608)
A general history of the proceedings and cruelties of the court of inquisition in Spain, Portugal (1731)
A key to natural history (1798)
A key to the cabinet of the Parliament, by their remembrance (1648)
A key to the Six Per Cent Cabinet (1798)
A rich cabinet of modern curiosities containing many natural and artificial conclusions… (1704)
A satyr, occasioned by the author’s survey of a scandalous pamphlet intituled, the King’s cabanet opened (1645)
A Thousand Notable Things on Various Subjects (1776)
A true narration of the surprizall of sundry cavaliers (1642)
An Account of a Useful Discovery (1756)
Aristotle’s Last Legacy (1711)
Art’s Master-Piece (1768)
Cabinet of Curiosities, No. 1 (1795)
Cupids cabinet unlock’t (1641)
Curiosities: or, the cabinet of nature (1637)
Delights for young Men and Maids (1725)
Elegant and Copious History of France. Number 1. (1791)
Every Lady her own Physician or the Closet Companion (1788)
Gale’s Cabinet of Knowledge (1796)
Gloria Britannorum or, The British Worthies (1733)
History of Mother Bunch of the West (1797)
History of Mother Bunch of the West, Part the Second (1797)
Hocus Pocus (1715)
Instructions for a prince (1779)
Jocabella, or a cabinet of conceit (1640)
Ladies Cabinet broke open, Part 1 (1718)
Lineal Arithmetic (1798)
Monthly Beauties (1793)
Mother Bunch’s Closet broke open…Part the Second (1800)
Mrs. Pilkington’s Jests (1764)
Phylaxa Medinae. The cabinet of physic (1799)
Ruperts sumpter, and private cabinet rifled (1644)
Seven conferences held in the King of France’s Cabinet of Paintings (1740)
Specimens of British Minerals selected from the Cabinet of Philip Rasleigh (1797)
The accomplish’d Lady’s Delight (1706)
The British Phoenix (1762)
The Cabinet (1754)
The Cabinet (1797)

The Cabinet of Genius (1787)
The Cabinet of Momus and Caledonian Humorist (1786)
The cabinet of True Attic Wit (1783)
The chyrugians closet (1630)
The Closet of Counsells conteining the advice of divers philosophers (1569)
The Complete English and French Vermin-Killer (1710)
The Country Physician (1703)
The Country-Man’s Vade-Mecum (1709)
The Female Pilgrim (1762)
The General State of Education in the Universities (1759)
The Gentleman and Lady’s Palladium (1752)
The Golden Cabinet (1790)
The housekeeper’s valuable present (1790)
The Irish Cabinet (1746)
The Ladies Cabinet (1743)
The ladies cabinet opened (1639)
The Lady’s companion (1743)
The Lovers Cabinet (1755)
The Modern Family Physician (1783)
The Muses Cabinet (1771)
The Naturalist’s Pocket 1 (1799)
The Naturalist’s Pocket 2 (1799)
The Naturalist’s Pocket 3 (1799)
The Naturalist’s Pocket 4 (1799)
The Naturalist’s Pocket 5 (1799)
The Naturalist’s Pocket 6 (1799)
The Parallel (1762)
The Phenix Volume One (1707)
The Pleasing Instructor (1756)
The Poor Man’s Help, and Young Man’s Guide (1709)
The private tutor to the british youth (1763)
The rich cabinet furnished with varietie of excellent discriptions (1616)
The Royal Jester (1792)
The second part of Mother Bunch of the West (1750)
The Second Volume of the Phenix (1707)
The Spirit of Liberty (1770)
The state of France (1760)
The treasurie of commodious conceits (1573)
To be seen in Curtius’s Cabinet of Curiosities (1792)
Two spare keyes to the Jesuites cabinet (1632)
Vox Populi (1774)
Wit’s Cabinet (1715)

Religious Miscellany

A call to the unconverted (1746)
A copy of verses writt in a Common Prayer Book (1710)
A manual history of Repentance and Impenitence (1724)
Christ’s famous titles (1728)
Duties of the Closet (1732)
Religion the most delightful employment (1739)
Sunday Thoughts (1781)
The Book of Psalms Made Fit for the Closet with Collects and Prayers (1719)
The Christian mans closet (1591)
The Christian’s Closet-Piece: Being An Exhortation to all People To forsake their Sins, Which too much Reign in the present Age: As Pride, Envy, … (1770)
The Christian’s duty from the sacred scriptures (1730)
The Christian’s New Year’s Gift: containing a companion (1764)
The Christian’s Preparation for the worthy receiving of the Holy Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper (1772)
The Closet Companion (1791)
The New Week’s Preparation for a Worthy Receiving of the Lords Supper (1770)
The Parents Pious Gift (1704)
The world’s doom: or the cabinet of fate unlocked. Vol.1 (1795)
The world’s doom: or the cabinet of fate unlocked. Vol.2 (1795)
To a vertuous and judicious lady who (for the exercise of her devotion) built a closet (1646)

Miscellany of Art & Music

A cabinet of choice jewels (1701)
A catalogue of a well-chosen and select collection of Pictures (1791)
Apollo’s Cabinet or the Muses Delight (1757)
Cupid’s Cabinet Open’d (1750)
Flower-Garden Display’d (1732)
For the Inspection of the Curious (1785)
Proposals for publishing by subscription from the curious and elaborate works of Thomas Simon (1753)
The Cabinet of Beasts (1800)
The cabinet of the arts (1799)
The Copper Plate Magazine (1792)
The Oxford Cabinet (1797)

Miscellany

England’s choice cabinet of rarities; or The famous Mr. Wadham’s last golden legacy (1700)

Catalogue

A catalogue of pleasing assemblage of prints (1792)

A Catalogue of that Superb and Well Known Cabinet of Drawings of John Barnard, Esq. (1787)
A catalogue of the collection of pictures, etc. (1758)
A catalogue of the elegant cabinet of natural and artificial rarities of the late ingenious Henry Baker, Esq. (1775)
A Catalogue of the genuine, curious, and valuable (1779)
A catalogue of the valuable museum (1794)
A collection of curious prints and drawing by the best masters in Europe (1718)
A Companion to Bullock’s Museum (1799)
Beautiful Cabinet Pictures (1798)
Cabinet Litteraire (1796)
Catalogue of the genuine (1798)

Catalogue of the intire Cabinet of Capital Drawings, collected by the late Greffier Francois Fagel (1799)
Coins and medals, in the cabinets of the Earl of Fife (1796)
Curtius’s Grand Cabinet of Curiosities (1800)
Elegant Drawing and Cabinet Pictures (1785)
For the inspection of the curious (1785)
M—-C L—-N’s cabinet broke open (1750)
Particulars of and conditions of sale for a large and valuable estate called Goldings (1770)
Thane’s second Catalogue (1773)
The Last Night (1790)

Fiction

A Cabinet of Fancy (1799)
A letter from the Man in the Moon to Mr. Anodyne Necklace (1725)
Copys of several conferences and meetings (1790)
Fragment of the chronicles of Zimri the Refiner (1753)
Miss C–Y’s cabinet of curiosities (1765)
The Cabinet of Love (1792)
The cabinet of wit (1797)
The Cyprian Cabinet (1783)
The Female Pilgrim (1762)
The Laird of Cool’s Ghost (1786)

Recipe Book

Incomparable varieties (1740)

Miscellany of Biographical Materials

A key to the Kings cabinet (1645)
A vindication of King Charles (1648)
England’s Mournful Monument (1714)
Letters, poems, and tales (1718)
Mist’s Closet Broke Open (1728)
Psalmes of confession found in the cabinet of the most excellent King of Portinga (1596)
The French Momus (1718)
The Genuine Letters of Mary Queen of Scots to James Earl of Bothwell (1728)
The Irish cabinet: or His Majesties secret papers (1646)
The King of Scotlands negotiations at Rome (1650)
The Kings cabinet opened (1645)
The Lord George Digby’s cabinet and Dr Goff’s negotiations (1646)
The Queen’s Closet Opened (undated)
The riches and extent of free grace displayed (1772)
Who Runs next (1715)

Literary Miscellany

The Golden Cabinet (1765)

Historical Miscellany

The Key to the kings cabinet-counsell (1765)

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Bibliography – Bobker

Danielle Bobker

Addison, Joseph and Richard Steele. The Spectator. Ed. Donald Bond. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon, 1965. Print.

Ariès, Philippe. Introduction. The History of Private Life III: The Passions of the
Renaissance
. Ed. Roger Chartier. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1989. Print.

Armstrong, Nancy. Desire and Domestic Fiction. New York: Oxford UP, 1990. Print.

Ballaster, Ros. Seductive Forms: Women’s Amatory Fiction from 1684 to 1740. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1992. Print.

Brooks, Thomas. Cabinet of Choice Jewels Or, A Box of precious Ointment. EEBO. London: 1669. Web. 30 Aug. 2007.

Cabinet of Momus
. London: 1786. ECCO. Web. 30 Aug. 2007.

Chartier, Roger. “Libraries without Walls.” Future Libraries. Spec. Issue of Representations 42 (Spring 1993): 38-52. Print.

Chico, Tita. Designing Women: The Dressing Room in Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture. Lewisburg: Bucknell UP, 2005. Print.

Cleland, John. Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008. Print. Oxford World’s Classics. Print.

Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. Boston: Routledge, 1979. Print.

Edson, Michael. “‘A Closet or a Secret Field’: Horace, Protestant Devotion and British Retirement Poetry.” Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 35.1 (2012): 17-41. Web. 15 Dec. 2012.

Habermas, Jürgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Trans. Thomas Burger. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology P, 1995. Print.

Hamilton, Anthony. Memoirs of Count Grammont. Whitefish MT: Kessinger, 2010. Print.

Haywood, Eliza. Love in Excess. Peterborough ON: Broadview, 2000. Print.

Jonson, Ben. “To Penshurst.” Norton Anthology of British Literature: Vol 1B. Ed. George M. Logan, Stephen Greenblatt, and Barbara Lewalski. New York: Norton, 2000. 1399-1401. Print.

The Ladies Cabinet broke Open
. London: 1710. ECCO. Web. 30 Aug. 2007.

Laqueur, Thomas. Solitary Sex: The Cultural History of Masturbation. New York: Zone Books, 2003. Print.

Locke, John. Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Ed. Peter Nidditch. Oxford: Clarendon, 1979. Print.
——. Two Treatises of Government. Ed. Peter Laslett. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000. Print.

Mauriès, Patrick. Cabinets of Curiosity. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2002. Print.

McKeon, Michael. The Secret History of Domesticity: Public, Private, and the Division of Knowledge. Baltimore MD: The Johns Hopkins UP, 2006. Print.

Modern Curiosities of Art & Nature. Extracted out of the Cabinets of the most Eminent
Personages of the French Court
. London: 1685. EEBO. Web. 30 Aug. 2007.

Montagu, Mary Wortley. “The Reasons that Induced Dr S[wift] to Write a Poem Call’d the Lady’s Dressing Room.” Essays and Poems and Simplicity, A Comedy. Ed. Robert Halsband and Isobel Grundy. Oxford: Clarendon, 1977. Print.

Pepys, Samuel. Diary. Project Gutenberg Literary Editions. Web. 30 Aug. 2007.

Pope, Alexander. “Rape of the Lock” and “The Key to the Lock.” New York: Bedford, 2007. Print.

Rambuss, Richard. Closet Devotions. Durham NC: Duke UP, 1998. Print.

Richardson, Samuel. Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008. Print.

Robinson, David M. Closeted Writing and Gay and Lesbian Literature: Classical, Early
Modern, Eighteenth-Century
. Burlington VT: Ashgate, 2006. Print.

Rolleston, Samuel. Philosophical Dialogue Concerning Decency. London: 1751. ECCO. Web. 1 Feb. 2006.

Sabor, Peter. “From Sexual Liberation to Gender Trouble: Reading the Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure from the 1960s to the 1990s.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 33.4 (2000): 561-78. Print.

Sedgwick, Eve Kosowsky. Introduction: Axiomatic. Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley: U of California P, 1990. Print.

Sontag, Susan. “Notes on ‘Camp.’” Against Interpretation and Other Essays. New York:
Picador, 2001. 275-92. Print.

Swift, Jonathan. Complete Poems. Ed. Pat Rogers. New Haven: Yale UP, 1983. Print.

Wall, Cynthia. “Writing Things.” The Prose of Things: Transformations of Description in the
Eighteenth Century
. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2006. Print.

Walpole, Horace. Castle of Otranto. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009. Print. Oxford World’s Classics.
——. The Mysterious Mother. Castle of Otranto and The Mysterious Mother. Peterborough ON: Broadview, 2003. Print.

Warner, Michael. “Public and Private.” Public and Counterpublics. New York: Zone Books, 2002. Print.

Wettenhall, Edward. Enter into thy Closet. London: 1684. EEBO. Web. 30 Aug. 2007.

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Works Cited – Klein

Aull, Laura L. “Students Creating Canons: Rethinking What (and Who) constitutes the Canon.” Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture 12.3 (2012): 497-512. Print.

Ball, Cheryl, and Ryan Moeller. “Reinventing the Possibilities: Academic Literacy and New Media.” The Fibreculture Journal 10 (2007) Web. 16 Aug. 2014.

Barst, Julie M. “Pedagogical Approaches to Diversity in the English Classroom: A Case Study of Global Feminist Literature.” Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture 13.1 (2013) 149-57. Print.

Koh, Adeline. “Introducing Digital Humanities Work to Undergraduates: An Overview.” Hybrid Pedagogy (14 Aug. 2014). Web. 23 Aug. 2014.

Keleman, Erick. “Critical Editing and Close Reading in the Undergraduate Classroom.” Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture 12.1 (2011): 121-38. Print.

Lari, Pooneh. “The Use of Wikis for Collaboration in Higher Education.” The Professor’s Guide to Taming Technology. Leveraging Digital Media, Web 2.0. Ed. Kathleen P. King and Thomas D. Cox. Charlotte, NC: Information Age, 2011. 121-33. Print.

Marsden, Jean I. “Beyond Recovery: Feminism and the Future of Eighteenth-Century Literary Studies.” Feminist Studies 28.3 (2002): 657-62. Print.

Moskal, Jeanne. “Introduction: Teaching British Women Writers, 1750-1900.” Teaching British Women Writers, 1750-1900. Ed. Jeanne Moskal and Shannon R. Wooden. New York: Peter Lang, 2005. Print. 1-10.

Shesgreen, Sean. “Canonizing the Canonizer: A Short History of The Norton Anthology of English Literature.” Critical Inquiry 35.2 (2009): 293-318. Print.

Takayoshi, Pamela, and Cynthia L. Selfe. “Thinking about Multimodality.” Multimodal Composition: Resources for Teachers. Ed. Cynthia L. Selfe. New York: Hampton Press, 2007. 1-12. Print.

Weber, Elizabeth Dolly. “Lighting Their Own Path: Student-Created Wikis in the Commedia Classroom.” Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture 13.1 (2012): 125-32. Print.

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Reflections on the Course – Klein

The goals of the course (revisited) were to:
• introduce students to eighteenth-century British culture and eighteenth-century British women’s poetry;
• explore the interaction between the poetry of women and men in eighteenth-century Britain;
• understand the position and oppression of women in eighteenth-century Britain;
• gain an appreciation of eighteenth-century poetic forms and styles; and
• contribute to the popularization of understudied women’s literature

At the end of the course, students had acquired an appreciation of poetic forms (like sonnets, odes, and heroic couplets), read a variety of poems from the eighteenth century by English, Scottish, and American women, and had first-hand experience with literary research using both primary and secondary sources. Through in-class presentations and supplementary readings, students were also introduced to eighteenth-century culture and life in Britain and America, with particular attention paid to the position of women at the time. The course included poetry by women, both rural and London-based, well-known in their own time and obscure, rich and poor, black and white. The course focused on issues of inclusivity, diversity, feminist recovery, canonicity, and community. Students demonstrated their mastery of literary terms and analysis through their final project, and, through the wikis and class discussions, they also showed their new-found interest in the female authors we studied.

Where I feel the course could be improved was with regard to the formal elements of poetry, such as the uses of meter, rhyme, line breaks, etc. While some of these elements were covered in the course, there was not enough time to explore them in-depth. Similarly, in a full-length, semester-long course, there might have been time for students to give a second oral presentation on an element of eighteenth-century life, especially pertaining to women. Instead, the burden of introducing students to the historical period fell to me, the instructor, and was limited by time.

Additionally, it bears mentioning that although my initial hope was that the students would have time to revise the wiki entries and then use them to edit the existing author pages on Wikipedia, the students did not seem overly eager to share their work publicly. Some of them actively expressed their fear of publishing in a public forum. Pooneh Lari notes that this is a fairly common fear of students: “another concern noted about the use of wikis is the idea of ‘hidden audience’….Wheeler and Wheeler (2009)…noted that students were aware of a hidden audience of visitors that would visit the wiki that could be tracked by the hit counter….A simple solution to this problem is to create a password for accessing the wiki, thereby excluding outside visitors” (123).

Another solution to this issue might have been to include time for revision, further class/instructor collaboration, and then edit the Wikipedia pages together, collaboratively. Lari notes, however, that “a community of practice provides an environment for social interaction between learners in which they can have a dialogue and discuss their learning and perspectives” (124). Even though the students ultimately did not publish their wiki entries, they still gained important experiences through the course discussions and dialogues that grew out of the wiki project.

The main goals of this website (revisited) are to:

• introduce scholars of the eighteenth century to digital projects for the literature classroom;
• demonstrate that digital projects actively generate student interest in research and broaden their abilities to write in a digital medium;
• examine the limitations of students and literature courses at the university undergraduate level, especially with regard to eighteenth-century
literature broadly and women’s literature specifically;
• suggest methods for making students more aware of canon-formation and feminist practices; and
• open up a discussion among scholars on the relation of digital pedagogy and feminist recovery practices in the classroom.

While it may not be practical or possible to run such specific poetry courses at other universities, it may be possible to adapt these ideas and materials to a single unit of a course on poetry, eighteenth-century literature, or even a British survey course. One of the major ideas that guided my choices during this course and the ensuing online project about it was that even the most general courses can accommodate lesser-known writers and works, works by women, lower-class writers and writers of color, as well as digital, multimodal projects and writing.

I hope that this project will inspire other instructors to incorporate course wikis and other interactive, multimodal projects into their classes. Additionally, it is my hope that this web project will also spark further conversation about how such projects can enhance literary studies while working in tandem with projects that focus on issues of equality. Research projects that engage actively in understanding, sifting through, altering and analyzing public knowledge, especially those that focus on issues relating to sex, race, class, sexuality, nationality and empire, can, in a digital forum, leave the classroom and contribute to changing public paradigms of thought on these topics. Digital projects have the power to engage students in textual studies while also helping them become twenty-first-century thinkers and digital writers.

Final Questions for Discussion

What is the future of the “traditional” literary research paper in the undergraduate classroom?

How might instructors make use of digital forms of writing to make literature courses, from the introductory course to the survey to the upper-level seminar, more effective and student-centric?

What kinds of digital projects are best suited to the literature classroom?

How can digital technologies change/augment classroom syllabuses, “traditional” anthologies, and classroom instruction?

What kinds of projects help students gain first-hand understanding of literary theories and practices, including, but not limited to feminism, queer theory, critical race theory, postcolonialism and transnational conceptions of literature and literary canons?
Next Section: Works Cited . . .

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Sample Student Wiki – Klein

Introduction

A woman of intractable talent, Mary Darby Robinson was one of the leading English actresses, as well as one of the forerunners of feminist prose, during the Romantic Era in the Eighteenth Century. She was an intelligent, witty, inexhaustible powerhouse of creativity whose legacy all at once serves as an inspirational force and a tragic lesson. For quite some time, Robinson was incomprehensibly sidelined during scholarly research and study of writers in that era. Fortunately, there has been a recent resurgence of interest in her life and work.

Biography (BPK)

Mary Robinson was born in College Green, Bristol in 1758 on November 27th (Robinson 3). Robinson was brought up by her father, Captain John Darby, and her mother, Hester Seys (Robinson 2). Mary Darby Robinson was one of five children (Lonsdale 468). Robinson’s upbringing was not one of wealth, but of constant financial difficulties. Her father often abandoned the family to go on business, leaving them in financial distress (Lonsdale 468). Robinson began her schooling in a school in Chelsea, London (Robinson 468). For financial reasons Robinson’s mother opened her own school where Robinson assisted in her adolescent years (Lonsdale 468). Robinson then continued schooling, where she met David Garrick, who would later become her mentor in the world of theatre. However, prior to this Robinson was married to Thomas Robinson in April 1774 at age fifteen (Lonsdale 469). During her husband’s imprisonment in 1775, Robinson wrote poetry in order to pay off her husband’s debts and cared for their daughter, Mary Elizabeth, who was born in November 1774 (Lonsdale 469). After her husband’s release from prison Robinson resumed her pursuit of the stage and with the help of Garrick had her debut performance as Juliet in December of 1776. Robinson became famous for her theatre work and early poetry. Robinson is best known for her role as Perdita in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale. This led to her relationship with the Prince of Wales, later to become George IV. She would later be contracted to be his mistress. Robinson was later dismissed from being the Prince’s mistress, before the Prince’s coming of age (Luria 6). After the loss of this engagement with the Prince of Wales and other men of the time, Lord Malden and Charles James Fox, Robinson’s “scandals” became public and tarnished her “celebrity status” (Lonsdale 469). Robinson, who once coveted her celebrity identification, often detested the falsehood and shallowness of society later in her works (Mole 194). Following her theatre career, which ended in May 1780, Robinson began writing again, and became the poetry editor of the Morning Post, a literary magazine of the time (Mole 188). As editor, she came into contact with many of her well known literary contemporaries, such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth (Cross 40). Later in her life, Robinson suffered from intense rheumatoid medical problems and passed away on the 26th of December in 1800 (Lonsdale 470), leaving her autobiography, Memoirs, unfinished. Robinson only completed up to her affair with the Prince of Wales. However, the remainder was edited by her daughter and published in 1801 with some of her other, older poetic works. Overall, Robinson had a strong influence on the Romantic period and is regarded today as a well-known eighteenth century celebrity, poet, actress, and literary rival to many of her contemporaries.

Upbringing and Education (BPK)

Robinson was brought up by her parents Captain John Darby and her mother Hester Seys (Robinson 2). Although her mother had three miscarriages Robinson was one of five children to be brought up their house in Bristol (Robinson 4). Being a Captain, Robinson’s father was commonly absent in her upbringing. He was often working on shipments and projects. He once took an absence for three years in order to construct a whaling station off the cost of Labrador (Robinson 14). This often placed the family in financial difficulties (Lonsdale 468). However, the family still had some financial means and was able to educate their children. Robinson was first educated at a school in Bristol, taught by the sister of Hannah More, one of Robinson’s literary predecessors (Luria 5). Eventually, Robinson’s father later left the family for a mistress and America (Luria 5). The remainder of the family departed from London, and Robinson continued her education at a school in Chelsea (Lonsdale 468). Her teacher in Chelsea, Mrs. Meribah Lorrington, fostered Robinson’s literary interests (Robinson 21). Out of necessity, due to financial constraints, Robinson’s mother was forced to open her own school for girls in Chelsea, in which Robinson assisted (Robinson 27). Her father, who periodically reconnected with the family, was opposed to this and forced Robinson back into education (Lonsdale 468). With her father now back in London, Robinson began to complete her schooling in a school located in Marylebone called the Oxford House, which was run by Mrs. Hervey (Robinson 30). During this period of schooling Robinson began to address desires to pursue a career in theatre. Through her instructor Robinson was introduce to theatre icons such as Thomas Hull, Arthur Murphy, and David Garrick (Robinson 32). David Garrick would later become her mentor and friend in the world of theatre, and later be her largest supporter. However, Robinson’s aspiration to perform had to be postponed due to her mother’s marriage arrangement. Robinson’s mother arranged a marriage with Thomas Robinson, who was an article clerk at Lincoln’s Inn (Lonsdale 469). Robinson’s marriage was kept secret for a time in order to release him from all youthful debts, secure his inheritance, and keep young women around him to secure social status (Robinson 44). Robinson was alarmed by this request but agreed begrudgingly (Robinson 44). However, Robinson’s husband never gained his inheritance, had many scrupulous affairs that he did not even care to hide, and was generally careless for his wife (Luria 6). Robinson bore her only daughter, Maria Elizabeth, on the 18th of November in 1774 (Lonsdale 469). Shortly following Maria Elizabeth’s birth, the family was forced to flee from London due to debts owed by Robinson’s husband (Lonsdale 469). Robinson’s husband was often described as a frivolous and careless about money, and equally careless about his wife (Lonsdale 469). Robinson later accompanied her husband to prison where she cared for her daughter and wrote poetry (Lonsdale 469). Robinson identifies the experience of debtor’s prison as some of her first foundations for her poetry (115). By appealing to the Duchess of Devonshire Robinson shared her initial works with the Duchess and came to be in her good favor (Robinson 115). Finally with the assistance of the Duchess of Devonshire, Robinson was able to publish her first work Poems in 1775.

Theatre and Societal Status (BPK)

Robinson’s debut performance, as Juliet at the Royal Theatre in Drury Lane in 1776, granted her instant notoriety (Mole 186). Robinson instantly became an icon of the social scene during her time. Robinson was breaking the mold of acting and using a different style pioneered by her mentor David Garrick (Mole 187). Her style was more natural and emphasized physical agility and facial expression over the static and declamatory style of previous actors (Mole 187). Robinson’s celebrity presence went beyond the stage to painting, novels, essay, and caricatures (Mole 199). Thomas Mole describes Robinson’s works as a “multimedia phenomenon, including poems, novels, essays; stage performances, social appearances and fashions; paintings, engravings, and caricatures; newspaper puffs, reviews, and gossip columns” (200). Robinson even took to self-promotion and publicized her plays and writings, which was uncommon for women during this time period (190). Robinson was practiced in the arts of self-promotion, whether in performance or print, argues Thomas Mole (190). Her celebrity identity circulated so widely because it was so appropriated by others in ways that slipped out of her control (190).

Some of Robinson’s roles included Fanny in The Clandestine Marriage (1777), Lady Macbeth in Macbeth (1778), and Cordelia in King Lear (Mole 187). Robinson also contributed to the musical farce The Lucky Escape (1778) (Lonsdale 469). However, Robinson was most well recognized for her role as Perdita in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale. During this performance Robinson shocked audiences and secured her celebrity status (Gamer 2). Performed in front of the royal family, Robinson was addressed by the Prince (Robinson 155). Under the guise of “Florizel,” according to Luria, the Prince of Wales began to court Robinson, only known at the time as Perdita (6). Robinson reluctantly received the admiration and courtship from the Prince (Robinson 161). Robinson communicated with the Prince secretly for many months, often advising him to wait until he come of age and then to pursue his interests (Robinson 164). Robinson was eventually requested to meet the Prince by the fall of night and disguised in the garb of man (Robinson 167). This has been noted to fit Robinson’s adventurous and promiscuous side (Mole 194). In time, Robinson was engaged to be the Prince’s mistress and paid a sum of 20,000 pounds on his coming of age (Luria 6). However, before this time came, the Prince tired of Robinson and the contract was voided (Luria 6). Robinson’s offstage performances were often more memorable than her onstage ones, as evident by her affairs and social practices (Mole 188). After this period in time Robinson’s reputation faltered, he mindset shifted, and a dramatic change in personality was seen.

Celebrity Status (BPK)

Robinson always identified herself as person who has a “propensity to adore the sublime and beautiful” before she would acknowledge herself as someone of beauty and fame (Cross 39) Robinson later came to show contempt for social media and all the idolized beauty and fame. Robinson complained in her Memoirs that the high visibility her celebrity status brought her was nothing but trouble (Robinson 193). Mole states that Robinson argued that “ despite being an active participant in it, Robinson indicts celebrity culture as a force overturning all that is natural and distorting all that is beautiful” (194). Robinson later wrote about her now changed opinion of celebrity culture in many of her poems, such as “Stanzas,” “The Fugitive,” and “January 1795.” Although acting and her celebrity status had a major impact on Robinson’s life, the theatre only had a three year impact on her 25 year publishing career.

Literary Contemporaries

By the 1790’s Robinson was a well-known writer and poet, and was viewed harshly by society for her promiscuous behavior. Regardless of the public’s opinion, Robinson continued writing and eventually (January 1790) became the editor of The Morning Post, a popular literary magazine at the time (Cross 40). Through The Morning Post Robinson was able to search for a contemporary that she deemed worthy of ‘“the sacred intercourse of the soul, the sublime union of sensibility,’” or sharing and communication through poetry (qtd. in Mole 41). Samuel Coleridge was the individual to rise to Robinson’s challenge. Although Robinson and Coleridge did not meet until 1800, their correspondence began in the late 1790’s (Cross 39). However, it is suggested that Coleridge and Robinson met as early as 1796 at a dinner party at Godwin’s (Cross 39). Coleridge and Robinson worked together in order to bolster their own and each other’s reputation (Cross 41). Coleridge acted as a huge supporter of Robinson in the literary works that she published. Often writing anonymously or outright, Coleridge played an active role in the endorsement of Robinson, and vice versa (Cross 42). Coleridge often wrote in response to Robinson under the pseudonym “Francini” (Cross 46). Robinson reveled in the praise of “Francini” and used this promotion as a way to further her writing. Coleridge also used Robinson’s poems to advance his own writing style. One of the most acknowledged correspondences between Coleridge and Robinson was in her poem “Ode to a Snow-drop” which appeared in Robinson’s novel Walsingham Or, the Pupil of Nature (Robinson 53). In response to Robinson’s poem, Coleridge published his own using the same imagery but elaborating further upon it. Robinson was so pleased with this praise that she published an outstanding response in praise of Coleridge’s poem, “The Apotheosis or the Snow-drop” (Cross 46). This was one of many correspondences between Coleridge and Robinson. Through the use of similar imagery, settings, and published critiques of the other’s literature, Coleridge and Robinson used each other to further their writings (Cross 55). It wasn’t until the year of Robinson’s death, on the fifteenth of January 1800, that Coleridge and Robinson officially met (Cross 40). After Robinson’s passing Coleridge would later go on to be one of Robinson’s biggest supporters (Cross 40).

Complete List of Theatre Roles (Robinson 141) (BPK)

Ophelia, in Hamlet
Viola, in Twelfth Night
Jacintha, in The Suspicious Husband
Fidelia, in The Plain Dealer
Rosalind, in As You Like It
Oriana, in The Inconstant
Octavia, in All for Love
Perdita, in The Winter’s Tale
Palmira, in Mahomet
Cordelia, in King Lear
Alinda, in The Law of Lombardy
Mrs. Brady, in The Irish Widow
Araminta, in The Old Bachelor
Sir Harry Revel, in The Miniature Picture
Emily, in The Runaway
Miss Richley, in The Discovery
Statira, in Alexander the Great
Juliet, in Romeo and Juliet
Amanda, in The Trip to Scarborough
Lady Anne, in Richard the Third
Imogen, in Cymbeline
Lady Macbeth, in Macbeth

Role in Eighteenth Century Literature

Despite being considered a fallen woman after the end of her affair with the Prince of Wales, Robinson’s personal life continued to be of great interest to the public. Anything she published— poems, plays, novels, newspaper essays, pamphlets— was in high demand. As a result, she certainly struggled with wanting to be the center of attention and wanting to desperately conceal her private life from society’s prying eyes. She once mused, “celebrity culture is…as a force overturning all that is beautiful and destroying it” (Mole 194). Her prolific works achieved great notoriety and acclaim but she was often criticized for being a hypocrite, likely because of “calculated maneuvers to increase her visibility or her ambition to move up within the social hierarchy” (Munteanu 127). Being deemed “The English Sappho” was the result of a honed talent, and it is obvious she had considerable aptitude in doing so, which earned her numerous literary successes (Curran 66). Robinson strongly believed that talent was far superior to privilege or status (Munteanu 127).

Perhaps as either a way to experiment with her writings or “a theatrical impulse held over from her early years as an actress” (Feldman and Kelley 261) Robinson used at least nine documented pseudonyms to furnish some of her literary works to the public. They included Anne Frances Randall, Laura Maria, Oberon, Sappho, Julia, Lesbia, Portia, Bridget, and Tabitha Bramble. For example, as Oberon, Robinson penned graceful tributes that lavished praises on women whereas when she wrote as Tabitha Bramble, she was sharp and critical (Feldman and Kelley 260). Their voices, individually and collectively, represented Robinson’s messages to the world. She was able to exploit her experiences because “it was assumed that women’s writing revealed their lives; what they wrote was read as a mirror of their selves” (Cross 573).

Romantic Women Writers: Voices and Countervoices, written by Paula Feldman and Theresa Kelley, points out that the “poetry venue provided by a daily newspaper in the 1790s was particularly suited to performative modes of self-representation and, as a result, was especially hospitable to Mary Robinson” (253). Publishing poetry in The Morning Post created unique challenges and opportunities for her. She was able to appeal to a far larger audience and was also afforded greater flexibility when it came to subject matter and creativity.

During her time, it was believed that many literary figures drew inspiration from their peers and at times could be construed as plagiarizing. One keen example of this borrowing of ideas can be seen through critical analysis of Wordsworth’s “Ruined Cottage” and “Michael” alongside Robinson’s “Deserted Cottage.” All three poems show significant similarities. It is believed that Robinson’s poem “Deserted Cottage” appropriated many aspects of “Ruined Cottage.” Michael Wiley states in his essay, “Wordsworth responds to such appropriations by re-appropriating and amplifying what Robinson takes from him” (222). Reviewing “…early drafts of “Michael” reveal[s] Robinson’s prosodic importance” (226). This same issue can be found in Robinson’s “Lyrical Tales” and Wordsworth’s “Lyrical Ballads.” Eight days before her death in December of 1800, to the dismay of William Wordsworth, her final collection of poetry entitled Lyrical Tales was published. There had been an exchange of poems between Robinson, Coleridge, and Wordsworth prior to the publication of Lyrical Tales. Robinson had read, and was inspired by, Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads. It is true that “Lyrical Tales respond in a variety of ways to the Lyrical Ballads: in particular … both Wordsworth’s ‘Ballads’ and Robinson’s ‘Tales’ ask readers to think actively about the process of reading, and of storytelling” (Bolton 742). It is precisely as Ashley J. Cross posits in her journal article “From Lyrical Ballads to Lyrical Tales: Mary Robinson’s Reputation and the Problem of Literary Debt”: there is “a complex web of relations that undoes the possibility of separating categories of self and other, copy and original” (574). Lyrical Tales presents an “abundance of voices, modes of representation, and fertile creativity” (Wilson 26) for its readers to enjoy.

Robinson set herself apart from her contemporaries in many ways and often was the target of other poets’ appropriation of her work. Unlike her contemporaries, many of her poems did not use authorial voice to direct readers’ conclusions to that of her own. She carefully constructed the poems using factual descriptive language in which the readers would irrefutably be drawn to the same conclusion based on societal norms of the time: “In limiting herself to pointing up the hypocrisies of the time, Robinson is extending an implicit critique of any poetry that suggests either the resolution of such contradictions via flights of imagination or, worse, a poet’s use of verse as respite from the responsibilities demanded by commitment to material history” (Krapp 79).

Themes and Meanings in Selected Literary Works

Much of Robinson’s poetry was autobiographical and speaks of sadness, loneliness, and alienation—emotions that were likely no stranger to Robinson after the gossip and public recoil following her several affairs with the Prince of Wales and Banastre Tarleton. When Tarleton and Robinson’s affair ended after fifteen years because of his abrupt marriage to an heiress, Robinson wrote the poems “The False Friend” and “The Natural Daughter” out of anguish and anger. “The False Friend” is a thinly veiled literary characterization that casts Tarleton as a villain while “The Natural Daughter” reminds its readers about an old scandal regarding Tarleton’s new wife. Poems such as “The Savage of Aveyron” (about a traveler who comes across an orphan who only speaks the word ‘alone’), “All Alone” (about a traveler who tries to convince an orphan he is not alone, even though he has lost both parents), and “The Fugitive” (about a persecuted exile whose family has been massacred) gave insight to readers about the inescapable alienation, heartache, and despair felt by society’s outcasts. Her work was paradigmatically Romantic in that she put forth “the diverse and often devastating effects on society of both personal and political social conflicts” (Miskolcze 218). She wrote of orphans and exiles of every kind and characterized them as having “a heightened awareness of mortality” (209).

Not all of her poetry however was filled with gloom. Some of Robinson’s other poetry celebrated Nature’s beauty, peaceful solitude, and the joys of youth. In particular, her poem “Reflections” gives the reader a sense of optimism and hope. Robinson scrutinizes the world around her in her poems “January, 1795” and “London’s Summer Morning.” It is apparent that Robinson “participates in the chief aesthetic innovations of the decade [and] chronicles the major news events of the day” (Pascoe 20). Many of her works serve as a valuable window into the eighteenth century because they allow the reader to become the observer.

In 1799, shortly before her death, A Letter to the Women of England, on the Injustice of Mental Insubordination was published. In this work of social criticism, Robinson, writing as Anne Frances Randall, contends that it is her “endeavour to prove that, under the present state of mental subordination, universal knowledge is not only benumbed and blighted, but true happiness, originating in enlightened manners, retarded in its progress” (2). It is a reflection of the thinking many female writers during that time put into their writings. Robinson felt very strongly about the unequal dynamic between husband and wife. She expresses her disillusionment about women being pigeon-holed into roles that offered no intellectual stimulation by asserting “that they are not the mere appendages of domestic life, but the partners, the equal associates of man: and, where they excel in intellectual powers, they are no less capable of all that prejudice and custom have united in attributing, exclusively, to the thinking faculties of man (Randall 3). She truly believed that women should be afforded the right to declare themselves as capable of making informed decisions about things that directly affected their own well-being or happiness.

Memoirs, Letters, and Posthumous Legacy

Robinson’s health declined during the year 1800. She passed on December 26, 1800 and was buried in the churchyard at Old Windsor. She was gone, but her daughter made sure she was not forgotten for the next several decades. In her Memoirs of the Late Mrs. Robinson, Written by Herself, posthumously edited and published by her daughter in 1801, she detailed her earlier years and education, marriage, affairs, and lamented on how the high visibility her celebrity brought her was nothing but trouble (Mole 193). As a precursor to her recollections she declares that, “The early propensities of my life were tinctured with romantic and singular characteristics; some of which I shall here mention, as proofs that mind is never to be diverted from its original bent, and that every event of my life has more or less been marked by the progressive evils of a too acute sensibility” (Robinson 12). These candid and soulful memoirs are “a highly selective narrative of selfhood that conceals and implies meanings in a tenacious effort to steer clear of the genre of the histoire scandaleuse … and promotes a virtuous intersection between sensibility and domesticity, on the one hand, and creative genius, on the other” (Saglia 722). In a set of original letters presented by Sharon Setzer, Robinson provides poignant accounts of her exhaustion and anguish as she struggled to evade merciless creditors by using her pen to earn a meager living.

Her life, particularly the highs and lows, give her story an enduring appeal. Robinson truly is a great example of a Romantic poet. Some argue that she is the embodiment of early feminism while others whole-heartedly disagree, citing Robinson’s adulterous affairs with famous men as her fleeting claim to fame. In truth, Robinson refused to be confined to the domestic lifestyle that so many women in that time frame were forced into accepting. She was a young wife, a mother, a mistress, and worked her way through multiple careers. While vicious caricatures depicted Robinson as a whore and her affairs fodder for newspaper gossip, her writing and actions flouted the double standards and reaffirmed the female right to autonomy.

Works Cited

Bolton, Betsy. “Romancing the Stone: ‘Perdita’ Robinson in Wordsworth’s London.” ELH 64.3 (1997): 727-759. Web. Project MUSE. 9 Aug. 2012.
Cross, Ashley J. “From Lyrical Ballads to Lyrical Tales: Mary Robinson’s Reputation and the Problem of Literary Debt.” Studies in Romanticism 40.4 (2001): 571-605. Web. JSTOR. 26 July 2012.
Curran, Stuart. “Charlotte Smith and British Romanticism.” South Central Review 11.2 (1994): 66-78. Web. JSTOR. 26 July 2012.
Feldman, Paula R. and Theresa M. Kelley. Romantic Women Writers: Voices and Countervoices. Hanover, NH: U P of New England, 1995. Print.
Gamer, Michael, and Terry F. Robinson. “Mary Robinson and The Dramatic Art of The Comeback.” Studies in Romanticism 48.2 (2009): 219-56. Web. JSTOR. 26 July 2012.
Krapp, John. “Female Romanticism at the End of History” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 46.1 (2004): 73-91. Web. Project MUSE. 9 Aug. 2012.
Lonsdale, Roger. Eighteenth Century Women Poets: An Oxford Anthology. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1990. Print.
Luria, Gina. Introduction. Walsingham Or, the Pupil of Nature. Vol. I. By Mary Robinson. London: Garland, 1974. Print.
Miskolcze, Robin L. “Snapshots of Contradiction in Mary Robinson’s Poetical Works.” Papers on Language & Literature 31.2 (1995): 206-19. Web. JSTOR. 26 July 2012.
Mole, Tom. Romanticism and Celebrity Culture, 1750-1850. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009. Print.
Munteanu, Anca. “Confessional Texts versus Visual Representation: The Portraits of Mary Darby Robinson.” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 9.2 (2009): 124-52. Web. Project MUSE. 9 Aug. 2012.
Pascoe, Judith, ed. Mary Robinson: Selected Poems. New York: Broadview, 2000. Print.
Randall, Anne Frances. A Letter to the Women of England, on the Injustice of Mental Insubordination. London: T.N. Longman and O. Rees, 1799. Hypertext.
Robinson, Mary Darby. Memoirs of the late Mrs. Robinson, Written by Herself. London: Wilkes and Taylor for R. Phillips, 1801. Hypertext.
Robinson, Mary. Memoirs of Mary Robinson, ‘Perdita.’ Ed. J. Fitzgerald Molloy. London: Gibbings and Co., 1895. Print.
Saglia, Diego. “Commerce, Luxury, and Identity in Mary Robinson’s Memoirs.” SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 49.3 (2009): 717-36. Web. Project MUSE. 9 Aug. 2012.
Setzer, Sharon. “Original Letters of the Celebrated Mrs. Mary Robinson.” Philological Quarterly 88 (2009): 305-35. Web. JSTOR. 26 July 2012.
Wiley, Michael. “Romantic Amplification: The Way of Plagiarism.” ELH 75.1 (2008): 219-40. Web. Project MUSE. 9 Aug. 2012.
Wilson, Carol Shiner and Joel Haefner. Re-Visioning Romanticism: British Women Writers, 1776-1837. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1994. Print.

 

Next Section: Reflections on the Course . . .

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Final Student Assignment – Klein

Assignments

The final project for the course was creating a course wiki in which students would combine their biographical research on the author along with research on her literary accomplishments and some close readings of her poetry.

The Wikipedia- style format would give students a sense of how literary canons are formed through literary encyclopedias and what information author entries include and (sometimes) exclude. Students had to look up extant Wikipedia entries on their authors, read them, analyze their weaknesses, and then write their own version. The course assignments leading up to the final project were designed to help students prepare materials for the wiki entry.

The main assignments for the course were:

     • a researched, written biography of the author;
     • an oral presentation with a visual element about the author and her works;
     • an annotated bibliography in preparation for the wiki;
     • an online wiki entry for the author; and
     • a reflection paper about the wiki activity.

The biography of the author was due half way through the course, and it functioned to prepare the students for the biographical section of the wiki and the oral presentation to the class on their author. The wiki entry was the final project for the course, and it incorporated research and literary analysis elements.

Why a Wiki?

I chose a wiki entry for the final course project because I felt that such a piece of writing would further engage the students in the precepts of feminist recovery and make clear to them how writers are made popular or marginalized in different time periods. Similarly, I felt that since many of the students were not English majors and even those who were had little to no experience with eighteenth-century literature, they would benefit from understanding how literature of the past can speak to contemporary readers through a digital medium.

The idea of multimodal writing and of encouraging students to be “writer/designers” has met with great success in the composition classroom and is currently growing through a variety of digital humanities projects in literary studies. Digital Humanities projects in the eighteenth century currently include the 18th-Century Common, the digital exhibit “What Jane Saw” as well as the recently-launched website ABOPublic. While it was not within the scope of a six-week course to put together an entire website, I opted to use the course wiki section of our class Blackboard page to create our student-researched wiki.

By engaging students with multimodal ways of writing, I hoped to encourage them to see literary study as a dynamic, ever-changing process of research and discovery. According to Cheryl Ball and Ryan Moeller, “this new [multimodal] version of the university…should value different models of learning and nontraditional academic literacies….The focus of communication would have to shift away from writing to include new media designing as a critical literacy composition practice.” The wiki project embraced such a philosophy by combining traditional literary research with the online encyclopedia platform. Similarly, as Pamela Takayoshi and Cynthia L. Selfe point out, when students write in “internationally networked digital environments, texts must be able to carry meaning across geo-political, linguistic, and cultural borders, and so texts must take advantage of multiple semiotic channels” (2). One of the goals of the wiki project was to make students aware of the inadequacy of the existing wiki pages for these authors and the difficulty of making digital texts informative and unbiased.

Similarly, it has been made clear through the work of various scholars that the medium of the wiki itself holds many possibilities for making students more aware of digital communication, the possibilities of modern scholarship, and the continuing gender bias in publicly-available knowledge. Adeline Koh suggests that “Wikipedia editing trains students to think about what constitutes reliable information and what does not, which translates into their academic work.” Similarly, using Wikipedia in gender-related projects can serve to make students more aware of “the gender gap in its [Wikipedia’s] editors–the typical Wikipedia editor is a thirty-year-old, middle-class, English-speaking college-educated male” (Koh). Thus, our wiki project expanded student understanding of feminist approaches to literary studies and the vital need for such approaches.

The course wiki functioned to make students more comfortable with new forms of literacy while engaging them personally in the project of feminist recovery and critical thinking. According to Elizabeth Dolly Weber, when students work on a course wiki, “[it] guides students to recast and reshape information rather than simply reading it, facilitates individualized research and critical thinking, and encourages students to think creatively and to work cooperatively and collaboratively in ways that are otherwise difficult to achieve in the classroom” (125). The class wiki for our summer course achieved all of these goals in a relatively short amount of time.

Author Wiki Entries

In many cases, the existing Wikipedia entries for the authors we studied in the course were extremely short and lacking in detail (such as the one for Elizabeth Tollet). If an author already had a relatively well-developed Wikipedia page (such as those of Anna Laetitia Barbauld or Mary Robinson), then the students were charged with reading the existing post thoroughly and deciding, through their own research, what was missing, biased or under-developed. Finally, students wrote their own wiki entry on the authors using the Course Wiki tool in Blackboard. As a class, we studied the Wikipedia entries of well-known poets like Alexander Pope and William Wordsworth to get an idea of the general sections of a wiki entry. Together we narrowed the scope of the wiki to the following sections:

     • Short Introduction;
     • Short Biography;
     • Role in the Literary Eighteenth Century and Influence on Future Writers;
     • Discussion, with Examples, of Major Themes in Her Work;
     • Optional: Other Literary or Non-Literary Contributions to the Historical Record; and
     • References List (a minimum of 10 references, including both articles and books).

Students were encouraged to include images and hyperlinks in their wikis to make the entries more interactive. I required the students who were working in pairs to split the sections evenly and to make the authorship of each section clear using their initials. Toward the end of the course, students had time in the computer lab to upload all of their information to the Blackboard site. They then presented their wikis to the class on the last day of the course.

The projects were graded on how thoroughly the students covered each section, the amount and quality of primary and secondary sources used, the depth of literary analysis, and the creativity shown in formatting the entry and in using images.

The final part of the assignment was to write a short reflective paper in which students analyzed what they had learned about the process of researching their poet and what they had learned about the process of canon-formation. The idea for the reflection paper came from my experiences teaching composition classes, where the production of reflection papers are a fairly common practice. In the composition classroom, students use the reflection paper as a way of self-assessing and of verbalizing what they have learned in order to gain insight into where they improved as writers and what still lies ahead.

Similarly, the reflection paper on eighteenth-century women poets was meant as a tool for students to describe their research process and what they had learned from it, as well as to reflect on the project of feminist recovery in a digital medium. The reflection paper encouraged students to consider the choices they had made for the content of their wiki and how it compared to the original Wikipedia page online. Additionally, it allowed me, as the instructor, to learn what methods the students had found the most useful in the classroom and what aspects of the final project were the most stimulating intellectually for the students.

Next Section: Sample Student Wiki . . .

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Course Materials – Klein

Textbook and Materials
I chose to use Roger Lonsdale’s anthology Eighteenth-Century Women Poets: An Oxford Anthology because it was compact, the poems were ordered by author, and the authors were presented chronologically. Due to the structure of the course and students’ lack of prior knowledge, I felt that working chronologically and by author would best serve our needs. For these reasons I did not use British Women Poets of the Eighteenth Century, by Paula R. Backscheider and Catherine E. Ingrassia, which is organized by subject and genre of poem. I supplemented the Lonsdale, however, with poems from other anthologies.

In my attempt to keep the syllabus as diverse as possible, I included a day on Phillis Wheatley’s poetry, which was not included in the Lonsdale at all. I also included poetry by Scottish poet Joanna Baillie and working-class poets such as Ann Yearsley and Mary Leapor. My reasoning was similar to that of Julie M. Barst, who argues that “we as teachers realize that one of our most important pursuits is to encourage students to understand and consider the positions of peoples within their own communities and around the world who are different from them, not only in terms of gender, race, and sexual orientation but also in terms of religion, class, cultural beliefs and practices, ethnicity, and in many other realms” (149).

I did not want, however, to present these women as writing in isolation from the major literary and political movements of their time period. Thus, I also included some complementary poems by men that demonstrated how male and female poets of the time period interacted with each other in print and how they influenced each other stylistically. For example, we read John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester’s “The Imperfect Enjoyment” alongside Aphra Behn’s “The Disappointment,” and Robert Burns’s “Ae Fond Kiss” alongside Joanna Baillie’s “Woo’d and Married and A’” in order to explore how male and female poets used similar forms and styles to explore the same topic from different perspectives.

Resources for Poems:

Backsheider, Paula R. and Catherine E. Ingrassia. British Women Poets of the Eighteenth Century: An Anthology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2009. Print.

Eighteenth-Century Collections Online. Gale Publishing Group.

Lonsdale, Roger. Editor. Eighteenth-Century Women Poets: An Oxford Anthology. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1990. Print.

Norton Anthology of English Literature Vol. C: Restoration and Eighteenth-Century and Vol. D: Romanticism, as well as the Norton Anthology of Poetry

Exploring the Canon: Anthology Activity

When teaching a course on a topic so seemingly narrow and specialized, I felt it was extremely important to convey issues of canonization and feminist recovery practices to the students. The students, though unfamiliar with the time period and content, believed that by virtue of its availability, the course proved the “canonicity” of its content. By contrast, when I mentioned to a (male) colleague (who frequently taught courses on Jane Austen) that I would be teaching a summer course on female poets of the eighteenth century, he jokingly asked me, “Oh, were there any?”

In order to illustrate these kinds of problems to my students, I began the course with an activity in which I brought in various kinds of anthologies of literature for the students to look at in pairs. In doing so, I hoped to make students more aware of the practices of canonization. Laura L. Aull notes that “a limitation to contemporary discussions of survey anthologies is that they imply that canon revision of the classroom consists of making anthologies more inclusive–not by having students engage in anthologizing itself” (498). In order to avoid such limitations, I actively encouraged students to partake in the act of “anthologizing” by actively choosing which poets to read and also by comparing different popular anthologies and their offerings of female poets over time.

Students were instructed to look at the contents of these anthologies and compare them to the syllabus in front of them. Some of the anthologies we looked at were the Norton British literature anthology from the 1960s, one from the 1990s, the Norton Anthology of Poetry in English, the Restoration and 18th Century splits of the Norton and the Longman anthologies, as well as the Lonsdale and the Backscheider and Ingrassia specialized anthologies. In this way, the students were able to identify the ways in which anthologies mold the canon. The activity also illustrated how the poets featured in the course were often marginalized, even in anthologies dedicated to the eighteenth century. Consequently, this activity, completed during the second meeting of the class, illustrated how “anthologies function as shapers of canons, from narrating particular frames for texts to adjusting the original context and appearance of texts in fonts and formats” (Aull 499).

Course Documents

Below is a link to the course syllabus. At the start of the course, the second half of the schedule of readings was empty. This is what the syllabus looked like once the students chose which poets they wished to study.

Also included in the next section are the assignment prompts for the biography, the annotated bibliography, and the Wiki.

» Assignment Course Wiki Full
» Assignments – Bio & Bib
» Syllabus_for_Women_Poetry_Class

Next Section: Final Student Assignment . . .

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Structure & Framework – Klein

Course Format
In my past courses, students at Stony Brook had expressed a wish to have greater individual choice of materials in the course. I decided to experiment with this possibility in my course on eighteenth-century women poets. I hoped that in allowing students to have some say in the texts we discussed, they might become more invested in the course and the final assignment. Therefore, I chose the authors for the first half of the course and the students chose the authors for the second half (though they chose from a list compiled by me ahead of time). Thus, in the first half of the semester, I picked out the poems, wrote the reading questions, presented the biographical information on these poets (see below) and led the class discussions.

In the second half of the course, after selecting a poet from the pre-selected list students then researched the author, presented on her biography, chose poems for their classmates to read and discuss, and prepared reading questions that the other students had to answer before coming to class. The poems and reading questions were vetted by me before being sent out to the rest of the class, but by and large students were successful in choosing poems that they found interesting and significant for class discussion. In this way, students were active in “editing” our anthology and class list. My usual input as instructor was to limit the number of poems, as students often chose too many for us to cover in one class period.
By giving the students choice over the syllabus content, students were actively encouraged to question the course syllabus and engage in a form of textual criticism, as they often looked for poems outside the anthology to include in the course reading. According to Erick Keleman, “the reasons to bring textual criticism into any classroom are to demystify textual media and thereby to increase students’ ability to negotiate and interpret textual mediations” (122). Thus, by having students choose the poems themselves, they engaged in a kind of critical thinking that led them to question the traditional literature classroom and engage actively in feminist recovery of unanthologized poems.
Students also became emotionally and intellectually invested in the poets they chose as the poet became “theirs” through researching her. This sentiment was especially prominent in the case of the two groups that chose Hannah More and Ann Yearsley and ended up presenting the two sides of those women’s relationship. In this case, again, the course goals of engaging students in a nuanced kind of feminist recovery project were attained. Jean Marsden warns that often female writers with “views we find distasteful” are neglected by feminist scholars (661). In the case of More and Yearsley, both were included in the syllabus and discussed by the students, and students could decide for themselves whether More’s treatment of the impoverished and dependent Yearsley were warranted. The students were offered the chance to study women writers “from a wide range of educational, class, religious, and political backgrounds,” therefore encouraging students to look at the “issues…that separate women rather than unite them” (Marsden 661).
Additionally, in the first half of the syllabus, I paired female writers with male contemporaries in order to make it clearer to students how the women of the time were in conversation with their male peers. This was an important addition to the course as it helped us avoid the problem of women’s writing in anthologies, as described by Jeanne Moskal. Moskal argues that bringing women’s voices into anthologies has resulted in “two versions of women writers’ liminality…the women-only and the mixed-sex anthologies…[F]or the teacher the theoretical choice between integrationism and separatism takes the practical form of which textbooks to order and which poems and novels can be fitted into the syllabus” (2). Although I ended up choosing a women’s-only anthology for the course, I supplemented it with the works by male authors to avoid such “separatism” and to encourage classroom discussions that showed how women poets were central to the larger literary world of the eighteenth century.

Course Poets

Poets Chosen By Instructor:
The poets I chose to teach in the first half of the syllabus were fairly canonical, as I wanted to insure that we would cover the most well-known female poets of the century. At the same time, however, I also made room to include Phillis Wheatley and Joanna Baillie to make sure that the course would feature authors from outside England as well as at least one author of color.
• Aphra Behn
• Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea
• Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
• Charlotte Smith
• Phillis Wheatley
• Joanna Baillie
• Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire
List of Poets the Students Could Choose From:
I compiled a list of poets that the students could choose from so that they would not be overwhelmed by the choices in the Lonsdale anthology and to make sure that students ended up with a poet about whom they could find sources. In this class, the students ended up covering almost the entire list (the only poets not covered from this list were Elizabeth Thomas, Elizabeth Hands and Susanna Blamire).
• Sarah Egerton (née Fyge, later Field; 1670-1723)
• Elizabeth Thomas (1675-1731)
• Elizabeth Tollet (1694-1754)
• Mary Leapor (1722-1746)
• Anna Seward (1742-1809)
• Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1743-1825)
• Hannah More (1745 – 1833)
• Elizabeth Hands (1746-1815)
• Susanna Blamire (1747-94)
• Ann Yearsley (1752-1806)
• Mary Robinson (1758-1800)

Next Section: Course Materials . . .

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Prior Student Knowledge – Klein

Who would take the course? What did they know before entering the classroom?

This course focused on introducing students to various aspects of literary feminist interpretation and research through the poetry of eighteenth-century women, primarily those from Great Britain. It was also one of the goals of the course to introduce the students to eighteenth-century literature and culture more generally. It ran at Stony Brook University as a summer course, which meant it was constrained by a six-week time frame as well as by a lack of prerequisites for the course. The course officially ran as an upper-level, cross-listed English and Women’s and Gender Studies course. I assumed correctly that for most of the students in the class, this course would be their first introduction to eighteenth-century literature and culture, and that their knowledge of the position and role of women and women writers would be equally small. The course content and structure was therefore designed to take these limitations into account and to address them as thoroughly as possible in the time allotted.

What is the eighteenth century? What were the lives of eighteenth-century women like?

The class size was relatively small; there were twelve students in the class, about half of whom were English majors. There were also a couple of Women’s Studies majors, and about four students from various other disciplines, including psychology, biology, and engineering. This was not unexpected, as the course also functioned as an upper-level general education credit. It was important to me, in this case, to give the students an understanding of the eighteenth century and the position of women during this time.

Students were introduced to the eighteenth century through:

» instructor-led lectures on the time period and on pertinent aspects of the culture;
» documentary and narrative film on eighteenth-century subjects; and
» student research on individual eighteenth-century authors.

Instructor-led Lectures

Class usually began with short PowerPoint presentations (see examples for Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Phillis Wheatley, and Anne Finch, attached) by the instructor on the time period, the position of women in eighteenth-century Britain, or the specific authors being studied that day. The presentations included images as well as bullet point information about the eighteenth century. This information included political, economic, social, medical, and everyday aspects of eighteenth-century life, mostly in England.

Documentary and Narrative Film

The course used two films to supplement student understanding of women in the eighteenth century. One was a film made to accompany an exhibit of eighteenth-century costumes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, entitled The Eighteenth-Century Woman. The other film was the much newer production, The Duchess, which presents the life of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, during the early years of her marriage to the Duke of Devonshire. The first film introduced students to the material culture of the eighteenth century as well as to a variety of important and powerful women to whom the costumes from the Met exhibit belonged. The second film illustrated the limits that even powerful, wealthy women faced in the eighteenth century. The Duchess was also appropriate as students read poems by the Duchess of Devonshire prior to watching the film.

Student Research on Individual Authors

Students were also personally involved in supplementing their understanding of the eighteenth century and eighteenth-century women through biographical research on authors that they carried out during the course of the class. In the second half of the course, students conducted research on a poet of their choice and presented this information to the class. They were required to provide a visual aide, as the instructor had done in the first half of the course.

Next Section: Structure & Framework . . .

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Rationale – Klein

Course Rationale, Expanded

The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Part I, ninth edition, contains the section on “The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century (1660-1785).” In this section, which must also compete with the Medieval and Early Modern periods for space, there is limited room for the literature of a time period that is often misunderstood and under-valued by ‘outsiders.’ Thus, eighteenth-century female authors must vie with canonical writers like Dryden, Pepys, Swift, Pope and Johnson for pages. It should come as little surprise that the eighteenth-century female poets included in the Norton are limited to Aphra Behn, Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and Mary Leapor. There is also some representation of women poets in the section “Working Class Geniuses,” which includes selections from the works of Mary Collier, Mary Barber, and Mary Jones. A student in a traditional British survey course might, therefore, have little exposure to eighteenth-century women poets specifically and eighteenth century literature more generally. I use the Norton Anthology as a case study because it is one of the most widely used literary anthologies in the United States. In the words of Sean Shesgreen, the Norton Anthology of English Literature is a “hegemonic text” (295), even as other anthologies, such as those published by Broadview and Longman, have gained popularity. Further, anthologies like the Norton are important in the sense that they often dictate what we teach—usually by default. According to Shesgreen, “anthologies control our ways of reading and even shape our conception of what literature is” (295). Therefore, when these same anthologies add women writers but only as “women writers,” these writers are “marked…as marginal [often] through drastic abridgements or ghettoization, as in ‘The Woman Question,’ a subcompartment of ‘Victorian Issues’” (Shesgreen 209). The section on “Working Class Geniuses,” which I mention above, is one type of “ghettoization” of these writers—both as women and as working-class writers.

Thus, when I was given the opportunity to propose a poetry course at Stony Brook University in the summer of 2012, I leaped at the chance and proposed a course specifically on eighteenth-century female poets. The idea for the course grew out of an introductory literature course for non-majors during a regular fall semester, which surveyed British poetry from 1660 to 1900. As a feminist and queer scholar, I emphasized issues of gender, women’s rights, and sexuality frequently in our discussions of poetry that fall, and, at the end of the semester, my students expressed interest in a course on women’s poetry specifically.

The thought behind this course was to offer students the opportunity to study the literature and culture of the eighteenth century and, more specifically, the position of women at this historical moment through the concentrated study of eighteenth-century women poets.

Website Rationale, Expanded

This web presentation grew out of the course via a poster session at ASECS 2013 on course design. The desire to share what I had done in the classroom with other eighteenth-century scholars was, like the course itself, linked to my desire to inform and encourage other scholars to combine the growing discipline of digital humanities with the project of feminist recovery.

In the 1980s and 1990s, feminist scholars working in eighteenth-century studies launched various projects to re-discover eighteenth-century women writers. According to Jean Marsden, the goals of these recovery projects, which were often inspired by the work of Elaine Showalter and Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, were “to bring long-lost women writers and their works to light, to bring them into scholarly discourse, and to make their works available to students and scholars” (657). Despite their successes and the inclusion of many more women writers in popular classroom anthologies, however, “much remains to be done…recovery work, and the education that accompanies it, is not, and, perhaps, can never be completely finished” (Marsden 658).

Accordingly, the first goal of this web presentation is to argue that a course on eighteenth-century women writers is not only possible but also necessary. In light of the continued ghettoization of women writers on college syllabi, this project argues that courses focusing on women writers (but not necessarily devoid of discussions of their male contemporaries) can be fruitful and enjoyable for both students and instructors.

The second major goal of this web presentation is to demonstrate the usefulness of digital pedagogies in the classroom at a time when the digital humanities and multimodal writing are becoming increasingly central to the conversation about the evolving university. While the idea for the multimodal component of this course (the course wiki) grew out of the feeling that I “should be” doing digital humanities in my courses, the project ended up serving the purposes of furthering our course goals of feminist recovery.

Next Section: Prior Student Knowledge . . .

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“The Critick and the Writer of Fables”: Anne Finch and Critical Debates, 1690 – 1720

Sharon Young

WORKS CITED

Ades, John I. “‘Fit Letters Though Few’: Dryden’s Correspondence.” Papers on Language and Literature 19.3 (1983): 263−79. Academic Search Complete. Web. 12 May 2014.

Audra, E. and Williams, Aubrey. “Introduction to An Essay on Criticism.” Pastoral Poetry and An Essay on Criticism. Ed. E. Audra and Aubrey Williams. London: Methuen, 1961. 197−235. Print.

Backscheider, Paula R. Eighteenth-Century Women Poets and Their Poetry: Inventing Agency, Inventing Genre. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2008. Print.

———. and Catherine E. Ingrassia, eds. British Women Poets of the Long Eighteenth Century. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2009. Print.

Barash, Carol. English Women’s Poetry, 1649−1714: Politics, Community, and Linguistic Authority. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996. Print.

———. “The Political Origins of Anne Finch’s Poetry.” Huntingdon Library Quarterly 54 (1991): 327−51. Print.

Benedict, Barbara M. “Publishing and Reading Poetry.” The Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth-Century Poetry. Ed. John Sitter. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001. 63−82. Print.

Dryden, John. “To My Lord Chancellor. Presented on New-years-day.” Poems and Fables. Ed. James Kinsley. London: Oxford UP, 1961. 28−32. Print.

———. Sylvae, or, the second part of the Poetical Miscellanies. London: Jacob Tonson, 1685. Early English Books Online. Web. 12 May 2014.

Ezell, Margaret J.M. Writing Women’s Literary History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1993. Print.

Fairer, David. English Poetry of the Eighteenth Century, 1700−1789. London: Pearson, 2003. Print.

Finch, Anne. The Anne Finch Wellesley Manuscript Poems: A Critical Edition. Ed. Barbara McGovern and Charles Hinnant. Athens, GA: The U of Georgia P, 1998. Print.

———. The Poems of Anne Countess of Winchilsea. From the original edition of 1713 and from unpublished manuscripts. Ed. Myra Reynolds. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1903. Print.

Gavin, Michael. “Critics and Criticism in the Poetry of Anne Finch.” English Literary History 78.3 (2011): 633−55. Print.

Gerrard, Christine. Introduction. A Companion to Eighteenth-Century Poetry. Ed. Christine Gerrard. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006. 1−4. Print.

Griffin, Robert J. “The Age of ‘The Age of’ is Over: Johnson and the New Versions of the Late Eighteenth-Century.” Modern Language Quarterly 62.4 (2001): 377−92. Academic Search Complete. Web. 12 May 2014.

Hammond, Paul. The Making of Restoration Poetry. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2006. Print.

Hunter, J. Paul. “Canon of Generations, Generation of Canons.” Modern Language Studies 18.1 (1988): 38-46. Academic Search Complete. Web. 12 May 2014.

——— “Missing Years: On Casualties in English Literary History, Prior to Pope.” Common Knowledge 14.3 (2008): 434−44. Print.

Lonsdale, Roger, ed. Introduction. The New Oxford Book of Eighteenth-Century Poetry. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1984: xxxiii−xli. Print.

McGovern, Barbara. Anne Finch and her Poetry: A Critical Biography. Athens, GA: U of Georgia P, 1992. Print.

McGovern, Barbara, and Charles Hinnant. Introduction. The Anne Finch Wellesley Manuscript Poems: A Critical Edition. Ed. Barbara McGovern and Charles Hinnant. Athens GA: The U of Georgia P, 1998. xv−xli. Print.

Myers, William. Dryden. London: Hutchinson, 1973. Print.

Nokes, David. “Pope’s Friends and Enemies: Fighting with Shadows.” The Cambridge Companion to Alexander Pope. Ed. Pat Rogers. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007. 25−36. Print.

Parker, Blandford. The Triumph of Augustan Poetics: English Literary Culture from Butler to Johnson. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998. Print.

Pivetti, Kyle. “Coupling Past and Future: Dryden’s Rhymes as History.” Modern Philology 109.1 (2011): 85−107. Academic Search Complete. Web. 12 May 2014.

Pope, Alexander. “An Essay on Criticism.” Selected Poetry Ed. Pat Rogers. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1994.1-19. Print.

Rudy, Seth. “Pope, Swift, and the Poetics of Posterity.” Eighteenth-Century Life 35.3 (2011): 1−28. Academic Search Complete. Web. 12 May 2014.

Tomlinson, Charles. “Why Dryden’s Translations Matter.” Translation and Literature 10.1 (2001): 2−20. Academic Search Complete. Web. 12 May 2014.

Trolander, Paul, and Zeynep Tenger. “Abandoning Theory: Towards a Social History of Critical Practices.” Critical Pasts: Writing Criticism, Writing History. Ed Philip Smallwood. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell UP, 2004: 37−50. Print.

Williams, Abigail. Poetry and the Creation of a Whig Literary Culture, 1681-1714. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005. Print.

Stephen Zwicker. Lines of Authority: Politics and Literary Culture, 1644-1689. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1993. Print.

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“In Prose and Business lies extinct and lost”: Matthew Prior and the Poetry of Diplomacy

Conrad Brunström

NOTES


1. Such a reading has long been contested. In 1972, Otis Fellows, in an article entitled “Prior’s ‘Pritty Spanish Conceit,’” argued that Don Quixote (or rather Sancho Panza) was a significant influence on “Alma,” noting Panza’s insistence that the belly governs the heart rather than vice versa. Fellows uses this hint to undermine the entire system of “Alma”:

The present writer is still as convinced as he was a few years ago when he wrote that in the debate between Mat and Richard, it is the latter who says that the mind’s seat of empire is the belly, and that it is significant that Richard should have the last thirty lines, which are in praise of happiness, or at least contentment. It remains his considered judgement that, in the end, “the pragmatic Richard is closer to Prior’s position than Mat, and Prior’s poem succeeds only as Mat’s system fails, as all systems must fail that employ only the modest agent of human reason for metaphysical speculation. Thus, Mat’s system – the reconciling product of intellectual pyrotechnics that are not only magnificent but absurd – collapses before the awesome prospect of Richard’s discontented belly. (11)

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2. The sexualization of William of Orange’s relationship with his favorites is discountenanced by David Onnekink in his article “Mynheer Benting Now Rules over Us”: The 1st Earl of Portland and the Re-Emergence of the English Favourite, 1689−99.” Of course, from the point of view of compensatory propaganda, it is the prevalence rather than the accuracy of homophobic identifications which is significant.

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3. In “The Pre-Requisites for Decisiveness in Early Modern Warfare,” Jamel Ostwald writes, “even Marlborough’s most ardent supporters acknowledge it was a Pyrrhic victory. The heavily entrenched French army suffered nine thousand casualties and the Allies twenty-four thousand, losses so high that the well-organized French withdrawal from the field was not even contested” (665).

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WORKS CITED

Auden, W.H. Collected Shorter Poems 1927−1957. New York: Random House, 1966. Print.

Austin, J. L. How to do Things with Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1962. Print.

Boileau’s Lutrin: A Mock Heroic Poem. In Six Cantos. Render’d into English Verse. London: Printed for R. Burrough, J, Baker, E. Sanger and E. Curll, 1708. Print.

Eves, Charles Kenneth. Matthew Prior: Poet and Diplomatist. New York: Octagon, 1939. Print.

Fellows, Otis. “Prior’s ‘Pritty Spanish Conceit.’” Modern Language Notes 87 (Nov. 1972): 3−11. Print.

Gildenhuys, Faith. “Convention and Consciousness in Prior’s Love Lyrics.” Studies in English Literature, 1500−1900 35.3 (Summer 1995): 437−55. Print.

Johnson, Samuel. The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, with Critical Observations on their Words. Ed. Roger Lonsdale. 4 vols. Oxford: Clarendon, 2006. Print.

Legg, L.G. Wickham. “Torcy’s Account of Matthew Prior’s Negotiations at Fontainebleau in July 1711.” The English Historical Review 29.115 (Jul. 1914): 525−32. Print.

Longinus. The Works of Dionysius Longinus, On the Sublime: Or, A Treatise Concerning the Sovereign Perfection of Writing. Translated by from the Greek by Mr Welsted. London: Printed for Sam. Briscoe, 1712. Print.

Onnekink, David. “Mynheer Benting now rules over us”: The 1st Earl of Portland and the Re-Emergence of the English Favourite, 1689−99.” The English Historical Review 121.492 (Jun. 2006): 693−713. Print.

Ostwald, Jamel. “The ‘Decisive’ Battle of Ramillies, 1706: Pre-Requisites for Decisiveness in Early Modern Warfare.” Journal of Military History 64.3 (July 2000): 649−77. Print.

Prior, Matthew. The Literary Works of Matthew Prior. Ed. J. Bunker Wright and Monroe K. Spears, 2nd ed. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon, 1971. Print.

Rawson, Claude. “War and the Epic Mania in England and France: Milton, Boileau, Prior and English Mock Heroic.” The Review of English Studies 64.265 (2013): 433−53. Print.

Richardson, Jonathan. “Modern Warfare in Early-Eighteenth-Century Poetry.” SEL 45.3 (Summer 2005): 557−77. Print.

Rippy, Frances Mayhew. Matthew Prior. Boston: Twayne, 1986. Print.

Swift, Jonathan. Works. Ed. Herbert Davis. 14 vols. Oxford: Blackwell, 1973. Print.

Williams, Arthur S. “Panegyric Decorum in the Reigns of William III and Anne.” Journal of British Studies 21.1 (Autumn 1981): 56-−7. Print.

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The Difficulties of Quantifying Taste: Blackmore and Poetic Reception in the Eighteenth Century

Adam Rounce

NOTES

1. The variant runs, “Poet, whoe’er thou art, I say God damn thee, /Take my advice and burn thy Mariamne” (Vieth 219).
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2. The Digital Miscellanies Index can be found at http://www.digitalmiscellaniesindex.org. The present essay draws in part on experience of working as a Consultant for this invaluable project, in particular the attribution of canonical poets.
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3. First published in the Pope/Swift Miscellanies volume of 1732; see Gay 2.636, for the attribution to him.
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4. For the relationship between the poetics of Creation and Whig ideas of the sublime, see Williams 186-9.
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5. Creation appears seven times, though four of these are reprintings in new editions: Essays in Prose and Verse (1775, two extracts); The Virgin Muse (1717, 1722, 1731); and The Plain Dealer (1730, 1734). Prince Arthur makes twenty appearances: Bysshe’s Art of English Poetry (1702, two extracts); Athenian Sport (1707, two extracts); The Agreeable Variety (1717, 1724, 1742, five extracts in each); and The Morning Walk or City Encompassed (1751). His only other frequently included poem is from his Paraphrase on the Book of Job (1700): the extracted version of the 2nd Psalm appearing in the volume of religious verse, Divine Hymns and Poems on Several Occasions (1704, 1707, 1709, 1719, 1757).
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WORKS CITED

Anon. The History of Herod and Mariamne; Collected and Compil’d from the Best Historians, and Serving to Illustrate the Fable of Mr. Fenton’s Tragedy. London: T. Corbet, 1723. Print.

Anon. Thesaurus Dramaticus. Containing all the Celebrated Passages, Soliloquies, Similes, Descriptions, and other Poetical Beauties in the Body of English Plays. 2 vols. London: Sam. Aris, for T. Butler, 1724. Print.

Beattie, James. Essays. On poetry and music, as they affect the Mind. On laughter, and Ludicrous Composition. On the utility of classical learning. Edinburgh: William Creech, 1776. Print.

Bonnell, Thomas. The Most Disreputable Trade: Publishing the Classics of English Poetry 1765-1810. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008. Print.

Boyle, Roger. Dramatic Works of Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery. Ed. William Smith. 2 vols. Cambridge MA: Harvard UP, 1937. Print.

Boys, Richard C. Sir Richard Blackmore and the Wits. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1949. Print.

Bysshe, Edward. The Art of English Poetry. 2 vols. London: R. Knaplock, E. Castle & B. Tooke, 1702. Print.

Cibber, Theophilus. Ed. The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain. 5 vols. London: R. Griffiths, 1753. Print.

Cowper, William. The Letters of William Cowper: Vol 1, 1750−1781. Ed. James King and Charles Ryskamp. Oxford: Clarendon, 1979. Print.

Culler, A. D. “Edward Bysshe and the Poet’s Handbook,” PMLA 63 (1948): 858−85. Print.

Dennis, John. The Critical Works of John Dennis. Ed. Edward N. Hooker. 2 vols. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1939−43. Print.

Derrick, Samuel. A Poetical Dictionary. 4 vols. London: J. Newberry, 1761. Print.

Dodsley, R. A Collection of Poems by Several Hands. Ed. M. Suarez. 6 vols. London: Routledge, 1997. Print.

Dryden, John. The Works of John Dryden. Ed. E. N. Hooker, E. H. T. Swedenberg, et al. 20 vols. Berkeley: U of California P, 1956−2000. Print.

Fairchild, Hoxie. Religious Trends in English Poetry, I, 1700−40. New York: Columbia UP, 1939. Print.

Fenton, Elijah. Mariamne. A Tragedy. London: J. Tonson, 1723. Print.

Gay, John. The Poems and Plays of John Gay. Ed. Vinton Dearing and Charles Beckwith. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon, 1978. Print.

Jacob, Giles. The Poetical Register. 2 vols. London: A. Bettesworth, W. Taylor, J. Batley, 1723. Print.

Jauss, Hans Robert, trans. Timothy Bahti. Towards an Aesthetic of Reception. Brighton: Harvester, 1982. Print.

Johnson, Samuel. The Lives of the Poets. Ed. Roger Lonsdale. 4 vols. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006. Print.

Langbaine, Gerard. An Account of the English Dramatick Poets. 2 vols. London: George West & Henry Clements, 1691. Print.

Lloyd, Robert, The Poetical Works of Robert Lloyd. 2 vols. London: T. Evans, 1774. Print.

Marshall, Ashley. The Practice of Satire in England, 1658-1770. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2013. Print.

Oldham, John. Compositions in Prose and Verse of Mr. John Oldham. Ed. Edward Thomson. 3 vols. London: W. Flexney, 1770. Print.

——. The Poems of John Oldham. Ed. Raman Selden and Harold Brooks. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1987. Print.

Pope, Alexander. The Art of Sinking in Poetry. Ed. E. L. Steeves. New York: Russell and Russell, 1968. Print.

——. The Dunciad in Four Books. Ed. Valerie Rumbold. London: Longman, 1999. Print.

——. The Poems of Alexander Pope. Ed. John Butt. London: Methuen, 1963. Print.

Pordage, Samuel. Herod and Mariamne: a Tragedy. London: W. Cademan, 1672. Print.

——. Azaria and Hushai. London: Charles Lee, 1682. Print.

Potter, Robert. An Inquiry into some Passages in Dr Johnson’s Lives of the Poets. London: J. Dodsley, 1783. Print.

Reddick, Allen. The Making of Johnson’s Dictionary, 1746−1773. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996. Print.

Rochester, John Wilmot, 2nd Earl. The Complete Poems. Ed David Vieth. New Haven: Yale UP, 1968. Print.

Seward, Anna. The Letters of Anna Seward. 6 vols. Edinburgh: Constable, 1811. Print.

Solomon, Harry M. The Rape of the Text: Reading and Misreading Pope’s Essay on Man. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 1993. Print.

Williams, Abigail. Poetry and the Creation of a Whig Literary Culture. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005. Print.

Womersley, David. Ed. Augustan Critical Writing. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1997. Print.

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Paying for Poetry at the Turn of the Eighteenth Century, with Particular Reference to Dryden, Pope, and Defoe

J. A. DOWNIE

NOTES

I would like to thank James Woolley for his advice and assistance in the preparation of this essay. Stuart Gillespie, Paul Hammond, David Hopkins, Rob Hume, Paul Hunter and Pat Rogers were also kind enough to respond to my queries.

1. It should be noted that Professor Barnard has acknowledged that he has now revised his “unwise statement, made in 1963, that the Virgil was ‘through and through a commercial venture’” (“Patrons” 174).
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2. Until the value of the guinea was fixed at 21 shillings by royal proclamation in December 1717, its value fluctuated. At the accession of George I, it was worth about 21 shillings and sixpence.
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3. It should be borne in mind, however, that if the second subscribers are taken into account, Dryden’s Virgil attracted 349 subscribers, two of whom, as Barnard points out, were both first and second subscribers (“Patrons” 180n22).
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4. A Second Volume of the Writings of the Author of the True-Born Englishman. Some whereof never before printed, sig. A3r.
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5. Charles Montagu’s well-received Epistle to Dorset, “one of the most widely-praised Whig poems” of the 1690s, according to Abigail Williams, cost sixpence (173).
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6. A True Collection of the Writings of the Author of the True Born English-man[.] The Second Edition Corrected and Enlarg’d by himself, sig. A3v.
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7. All the quotations in this paragraph are taken from the undated folio half-sheet, The Case of the Booksellers Right to their Copies, or Sole Power of Printing their Respective Books, represented to Parliament, which was almost certainly published to inform the parliamentary debate on copyright which led to the Copyright Act of 1709. It is interesting that the author should maintain that “the greatest Charge in Printing is setting the Letters together,” as opposed to the cost of paper, which was extremely expensive, unless, that is, he was speaking about the cost after the paper had been purchased.
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8. The invitation is to be found in the June 1693 issue of The Gentleman’s Journal: or the monthly Miscellany. In a Letter to a Gentleman in the Country. Consisting of News, History, Philosophy, Poetry, Musick, Translations, &c., vol. 3, 195.
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9. Johnson makes the remark in the Adventurer no. 115 (December 11, 1753): “The present age, if we consider chiefly the state of our own country, may be stiled with great propriety THE AGE OF AUTHORS; for, perhaps, there never was a time, in which men of all degrees of ability, of every kind of education, of every profession and employment, were posting with ardour so general to the press.”
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10. The most recent contribution to the debate is Dustin Griffin’s Authorship in the Long Eighteenth Century (2014), esp. Chapter 11, “The Rise of the Professional Author?,” but Brean Hammond’s Professional Imaginative Writing in England 1670-1740 (1997) should also be consulted.
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WORKS CITED

Anon. The Case of the Booksellers Right to their Copies, or Sole Power of Printing their Respective Books, represented to Parliament. London: no publisher, no date. Print.

Astbury, Raymond. “The Renewal of the Licensing Act in 1693 and its Lapse in 1695.” The Library 33.2 (1978): 296-322. Print.

Backscheider, Paula R. Daniel Defoe: His Life. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins UP, 1989. Print.

Barnard, John. “Dryden, Tonson, and the Patrons of The Works of Virgil (1697).” John Dryden: Tercentenary Essays. Ed. Paul Hammond and David Hopkins. Oxford: Clarendon P, 2000. 174-239. Print.

———. “Dryden, Tonson, and the Subscriptions for the 1697 Virgil.” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 57.2 (1963): 127-51. Print.

Defoe, Daniel. Jure Divino: A Satyr. London, 1706. Print

——. Review. Ed. John McVeagh. 9 vols. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2003–2011. Print.

——. A Second Volume of the Writings of the Author of the True-Born Englishman. Some whereof never before printed. London: Printed, and Sold by the Booksellers, 1705. Print.

——. A True Collection of the Writings of the Author of the True Born English-man[.] The Second Edition Corrected and Enlarg’d by himself. London: Printed, and are to be Sold by most Booksellers in London and Westminster, 1705. Print.

Downie, J. A. “Printing for the Author in the Long Eighteenth Century.” British Literature and Print Culture. Ed. Sandro Jung. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2013. 58-77. Print.

Dryden, John. Examen Poeticum: Being the Third Part of Miscellany Poems, Containing Variety of New Translations of the Ancient Poets. Together with many Original Copies, by the Most Eminent Hands. London: Jacob Tonson, 1693. Print.

——. The Letters of John Dryden. Ed. Charles E. Ward. Durham, N. C.: Duke UP, 1942. Print [Abbreviated Letters].

Dunton, John. The Athenian Oracle: Being an Entire Collection Of all the Valuable Questions and Answers in the Old Athenian Mercuries … By a Member of the Athenian Society. 3 vols. London: Printed for A. Bell, 1703-04. Print.

Foxon, D. F. English Verse 1701-1750: A Catalogue of separately printed poems with notes on contemporary collected editions. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1975. Print.

——. Pope and the Early Eighteenth-Century Book Trade. Revised and ed. James McLaverty. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1991. Print.

Griffin, Dustin. Authorship in the Long Eighteenth Century. Newark, DE: U of Delaware P, 2014. Print.

Habermas, Jürgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Trans. T. Burger with the assistance of Frederick Lawrence. Cambridge: Polity P, 1989. Print.

Hammond, Brean. Professional Imaginative Writing in England 1670-1740: “Hackney for Bread.” Oxford: Clarendon P, 1997. Print.

Hunter, J. Paul. “Political, satirical, didactic and lyric poetry (I): from the Restoration to the death of Pope.” The Cambridge History of English Literature, 1660-1780. Ed. John Richetti. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2005. 160-208. Print.

Lockwood, Thomas. “Subscription Hunters and their Prey.” Studies in the Literary Imagination 34.1 (2001): 121-35. Print.

McLaverty, James. “The Contract for Pope’s Translation of Homer’s Iliad: An Introduction and Transcription.” The Library 15.1 (1993): 206-25. Print.

Motteux, Peter Anthony. The Gentleman’s Journal: or the monthly Miscellany. In a Letter to a Gentleman in the Country. Consisting of News, History, Philosophy, Poetry, Musick, Translations, &c. London: Printed; and are to be sold by R. Baldwin, 1692-94. Print.

Pope, Alexander. The Rape of the Lock. An Heroi-Comical Poem. In Five Canto’s … The Third Edition. London: Bernard Lintott, 1714. Print.

Rogers, Pat. “Pope and His Subscribers.” Publishing History 3 (1978): 7-36. Print.

Rowe, Elizabeth Singer. Philomela: Or, Poems by Mrs. Elizabeth Singer, [Now Rowe,] Of Frome in Somersetshire. The Second Edition. London: E. Curll, 1737. Print.

——. Poems On Several Occasions. Written by Philomela. London: John Dunton, 1696. Print.

Sherburn, George. “Letters of Alexander Pope, Chiefly to Sir William Trumbull.” Review of English Studies 9 (1958): 388-406. Print.

St Clair, William. The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004. Print.

Tonson, Jacob. The Annual Miscellany: For The Year 1694: Being the Fourth Part of Miscellany Poems. London: Jacob Tonson, 1694. Print.

Williams, Abigail. Poetry and the Creation of a Whig Literary Culture 1681-1714. Oxford: Oxford UP. 2009. Print.

Winn, James Anderson. John Dryden and His World. New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1987. Print.

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The Stillbirth of Capital: Enlightenment Writing and Colonial India, by Siraj Ahmed

Reviewed by Margaret J-M. Sönmez

This ambitious book provides important reading for postgraduate students and researchers in the fields identified by its title. The title and opening chapter identify the broadest of its arguments, which is that accepted models of Enlightenment progress, especially in global economics (capital expansion and colonialism’s role in opening new capital markets) are unsustainable in the face of historical and textual evidence. The main trajectories of the book’s chapters place emphasis on other, related arguments, however. These concern the ways in which early colonialism was motivated by the twin evils of the costs of Early Modern warfare and the monopolism instigated by mercantile economics that developed with the collusion of the government, under the understanding that these economics would help decrease the growing national debt, itself largely the product of escalating military costs. To this end the monopolism instigated by mercantile economics and that itself directed behavior on the high seas and in early trading stations, developed with the collusion of the English government, under the understanding that these economics would help. In addition to these well-argued points, the book’s analytic chapters demonstrate that the Enlightenment’s own reading of its colonial activities was self-aware and highly critical, and that it did not unanimously approve of the ways in which national and international finances were moving state policies.

The literary texts analyzed in The Stillbirth of Capitalism demonstrate direct and indirect acknowledgements of the unethical and often horrifying acts perpetrated by the merchant-colonizers from as early as the seventeenth century, and at the same time show an understanding of the deeper forces underlying these acts. The non-literary texts analyzed are shown, similarly, to be wise to the ways of the East India Company and its brutalities overseas, but to have been misread by subsequent scholars. These readers—who theorized the Enlightenment for us—incorporated such misreadings or partial readings in key texts that gave rise to subsequent disciplines; it is implied that Marx relied, at least in one part of Capital, on an incomplete reading of Burke, for instance. The book’s various arguments and their many sources of evidence are repeated and developed through all the chapters, the last one tracing the implications of these and related activities for nineteenth-century, post-1813 Charter Act literature and for contemporary theory. Here, among other revelations, Said’s interpretations of Orientalism are shown not to have gone far enough.

The assumption that readers’ own mind-sets have been molded by critical theory and its postcolonial offshoots gives Ahmed’s comments an argumentative tone, and allows him to present them as novel and controversial. Bringing together evidence of literary and non-literary sources, and constantly reminding readers of subsequent and current ideological climates, the book follows in its methodology a broadly New Historicist approach. It is, then, open to the usual questions about this approach—is it good history, is it good literary scholarship?—whatever it is that we take “good” to mean in this context. The historical evidence produced is compelling, and the literary readings are illuminating and inspiring. In each case, however, there remains the question of representativeness: these materials provide very strong evidence for Ahmed’s arguments, but it would be stronger if readers were told how much more evidence of this nature is out there to be found. While the book is already almost overburdened with the complexities of interrelated ideas, actions, and interpretations, more indications of the extents to which other writers, or other writings by the writers under scrutiny (both literary and non-literary), displayed similar awareness could have strengthened the arguments. In this and other, more stimulating ways the book leaves the reader wanting more.

The texts whose references to Indian and East Indian affairs Ahmed analyzes at some length are: Dryden’s Amboyna, Defoe’s Captain Singleton, Sterne’s Bramine’s Journal (also known as Journal to Eliza), Foote’s Nabob, the anonymous Disinterested Nabob of 1787, Books 3 and 4 of Smith’s Wealth of Nations (which Ahmed shows to have been ignored in favor of Books 1 and 2), Bentham’s under-studied “Essay on the Influence of Time and Place on Matters of Legislation” (no English version was published in his lifetime), the speeches of Burke and Sheridan in the impeachment of Warren Hastings (this chapter is mostly on Burke; there is very little on Sheridan), Voltaire’s Lettres d’Amabed, Morgan’s Missionary, and Scott’s Guy Mannering. Taking an overview of this chronological sequence of readings, one may find in these texts movements from open criticisms of “merchant capital’s duplicity” (42) and the rapine of monopolistic policies in practice, to anxieties about the corruption underlying the new wealth from India and its degenerating influence on policy makers. From there we find demonstrations of novel ways of assuaging such anxieties and equally uncomfortable acknowledgements that Western European states (and, specifically, England) are themselves based upon the incursions of nomadic and barbarian peoples (a sub-text that seems to grow in time, and is shown to have reached thematic scale in Scott’s novel). Allaying these worries involved disguising the raw profiteering of the British presence in India through first a progressive sentimentalizing of colonial relationships, especially when rewriting the colonial other in terms of native traditions, and then through an imposed version of history, both activities being then manipulated in the formulation of new laws. By the second decade of the nineteenth century, the previously satirized eighteenth-century corrupt nabob had disappeared (105) to be recreated, in Scott’s novel, as “the figure of the aristocrat in the colony” (208).

Defoe scholars will be particularly interested in what Ahmed has to say about Captain Singleton. It is, after all, rare to find studies in the area of colonial and postcolonial literature focusing on this novel rather than starting, as they so often do, with Robinson Crusoe. The previous chapter on Amboyna introduced to the reader a number of facts and discussions about the island’s history of European colonialism and trade (it is present-day Maluku, Indonesia). These discussions having taken us to a finer understanding of the competition between Portuguese and Spanish colonial forces and the Dutch and English East India Companies, the analysis of Captain Singleton focuses on the inextricable relations between piracy and the dealings of the two East India Companies. The historical background is again detailed, showing how the state-backed monopolies of these companies meant that no independent trader could operate legally, with piracy and illicit individual trading by Company servants (which was unofficially encouraged by their employers) being inevitable consequences. The broader economic argument is that the monopolies killed off pre-existing, vibrant merchant networks and their earlier flows of capital, thus basing the subsequent entire capital system of modern England upon overt and covert piracy, as seen in both the Company- and the state-backed acts of rapine, appropriation, and monopoly, and their encouragement and unofficial integration of individual “privateers.” Defoe’s recurrent interest in pirates is thus shown to be closely connected to the economy of the expanding colonial trade-empire, and not merely a matter of extending the popular genre of criminal narratives.

The extent to which Captain Singleton shows awareness of these dynamics is considerable and demonstrated through some fine and complex readings that include investigations into the implications of concealed illicit origins (54–6), the collapsing of “the distinction between British merchants and pirates” (59), Defoe’s “elaborate understanding of Indian Ocean trading patterns” (60), the historical pertinence of Defoe’s representation of the Surat trading factory (63–4), and the strange long-term silencing and disguising of Singleton and William once they have returned to England (68–74). Before examining the novel in detail, however, the chapter brings together accepted understandings of Enlightenment economic history as progressive, with the modern writing of the history of the novel and its place in the broader history of capitalist society. Tracing the well-known arguments of Watt, McKeon, and Thompson to Lukács’ 1920 Theory of the Novel, Ahmed shows that early novels have been accepted as showing a progressive rise of bourgeois economic individualism while “whitewash[ing] their material history” (51), the political and the economic specifics of the individuals’ circumstances. Ahmed strongly opposes this view, arguing that this novel “is a wide-ranging exploration of the global monopoly system European states had imposed on the circulation of capital” that “touches on a material history of capitalism to which our histories of the novel are not yet attuned” (52). In his reading of the novel, Ahmed once more puts forward his main argument that Enlightenment writers illustrated how, contrary to “the widely accepted premise that European modernity unleashed capital globally, thereby first bringing the individual and socioeconomic mobility into history,” “European states and corporations together attempted … to subordinate the production of already flourishing non-European economies to their own war-making capacity” (53–4).

Apart from a statement that Defoe is not troubled by contradictions in his writing, the concluding remarks of the chapter do not integrate biographical information about Defoe to the same extent as is the case with Dryden in the previous chapter, although it might have been more understandable to have reversed the case and given (perhaps) less importance to Dryden’s—and more to Defoe’s—biography and other writings. Defoe scholars will be aware, however, that a reading of Defoe’s novel and his pirate protagonist as allegorical or semi-allegorical figures would be supported by Defoe’s arguments about Robinson Crusoe as put forth in Serious Reflections, and they will be familiar with the characteristic mixing of fictional narrative and moral didacticism in most of his writings, whatever their ostensible genres, and the strong interest in trade and economy that he maintained throughout his life. As a merchant, a trader, and a writer on trade, economics, and politics, Defoe was more practised in detailing and exposing the mechanics of European mercantilism than he was concerned with developing any new form of prose fiction for purely literary purposes. We should always remember that his General History of Trade came out just six years before Robinson Crusoe, and, as Vickers says, “[i]t is in Defoe’s non-fictional tracts … that we have our most important source for our understanding of his fictional works” (3). Re-examining Defoe’s novels of the high seas within the framework that Ahmed provides is likely to provide more evidence in support of his argument, and this reviewer’s reaction after reading this chapter was a great desire to turn back to Defoe and reconsider not only Robinson Crusoe, the Farther Adventures, and Captain Singleton, but also Colonel Jack and parts of the other novels attributed to him. All in all, then, knowing that Defoe was biographically more implicated in trade and (political) moralizing than in novel writing, Ahmed’s reading of this novel will not so much shock Defoe scholars as delight them.

There is no space here for discussion of the remaining chapters in this book, but they are of equally high standard and similarly intriguing, while they continue and refine the arguments that are set out in the introduction and developed, as far as is historically relevant, in the Dryden and Defoe chapters. As mentioned in an earlier paragraph, the exciting conclusions and strong statements that Ahmed makes would sometimes be rendered more convincing if the issue of representativeness were more directly addressed in a clarification of his methodology. Related to this possible weakness is a tendency later in the book for Ahmed to move from specific and context-related instance to forceful and general statements; a particularly noticeable case in point is when Bentham’s critical stance on corrupt law and practices is taken to mean that he was “against” merchant economics as a whole (130). The weakness, such as it is, is more than compensated for by the fascinating way in which Ahmed brings together materials from diverse and sometimes little-known sources, and provides such a powerful interpretation of both the foundations of modernity and the relations between economic history and literature.

Margaret J-M. Sönmez
Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey


WORKS CITED

Lukács, Georg. The Theory of the Novel: A Historico-Philosophical Essay on the Forms of Great Epic Literature. 1920. Trans. Anna Bostock. London: MIT Press, 1971. Print.

McKeon, Michael. The Origins of the English Novel, 1600–1740. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1987. Print.

Thompson, James. Models of Value: Eighteenth-Century Political Economy and the Novel. Durham: Duke UP, 1996. Print.

Vickers, Ilse. Defoe and the New Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996. Print.

Watt, Ian. The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding. London: Chatto and Windus, 1957. Print.

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New Testaments: Cognition, Closure, and the Figural Logic of the Sequel, 1660-1740, by Michael Austin

Reviewed by John C. Traver

In 1998, Paul Budra and Betty A. Schellenberg described the sequel as “an almost-predictable footnote to the narratives of Western history” (3). Almost fifteen years later, it is refreshing to encounter a book-length study that seeks to redress a persisting omission within criticism. With David A. Brewer’s The Afterlife of Character, 1726–1825, Austin shares an interest in the public’s desire for the further adventures of favorite characters, but he grounds his conclusions in studies from cognitive science which explore the effects of closure and “universal cognitive imperatives” (xv). For Austin, the pleasure of reading a sequel alongside an original almost inevitably provokes “cognitive dissonance”—a discomfort that results from perceiving contradictions between the ideas or factual claims offered in the two works. Austin’s central claim is that, in their efforts to produce a connective logic between an earlier narrative and its sequel, Europeans during the long eighteenth century replicate many of the rhetorical strategies already being employed to view the Jewish and Christian Bible as a cohesive, unified text.

In the early chapters, Austin develops the theoretical underpinnings for his study’s larger claims. In the Introduction, he clarifies precisely what he means by a “sequel”: a work which “follows another work in both narrative time and actual publication,” recognizably “incorporates characters, settings, or major concerns from the first work,” and is not considered by the author as part of the original (xi). In chapter 1, Austin does an especially strong job of not simply engaging with prominent theorists on narrative and closure (for example, Frank Kermode, D. A. Miller, and Marianna Torgovnick) but of placing them in conversation with work from cognitive and evolutionary psychology, such as Kruglanski’s work on cognitive closure. While the human brain’s adaptability to changing circumstances promotes a willingness to “revoke the closure” and critically re-examine earlier conclusions—be it the “closure” offered by a novel, a religious system, or a scientific theory—the mind simultaneously desires a final account that will resolve cognitive dissonance (10). While the book as a whole may focus on the Bible as a resource for resolving contradictory observations among eighteenth-century readers, this chapter describes a more basic set of human desires behind all cultures and myths, ranging from The Epic of Gilgamesh to the Bhagavad Gita.

In chapter 2, “God’s Sequel,” Austin delineates the “figural logic” (or “typological logic”) which was used to connect the Old and New Testament and which influenced the British eighteenth-century sequel. Austin here draws substantially from Erich Auerbach’s essay “Figura” and Paul Korshin’s Typologies in England, 1650–1820, explaining the importance of typology, in which two events (called “type scenes”) or two persons are separated by time, and the second element is interpreted as “fulfilling” the earlier first element (called a “type”). Through typology, New Testament authors (particularly in the Gospels) and later readers could re-interpret the message and earlier “ending” of the Hebrew Bible as anticipating a fulfillment in Christ. The chapter concludes by examining typological strategies employed outside the Bible, particularly the “political typologies” identifying Charles II with King David as depicted in John Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel and its successive ripostes.

In the following chapters, Austin moves from developing this theoretical framework to applying it to an analysis of several sequels and the figural logic behind each of them. Austin’s chronological account suggests that, as the rhetorical authority of the Bible becomes increasingly displaced by secularism during the period, the influence of the New Testament’s typological strategies remains long after within later sequels. In chapter 3, Austin links John Milton’s Paradise Regained with Paradise Lost in arguing that Christ is both a type of Adam and of David; Christ’s contestation with Satan ultimately hinges upon the perceived typology within the Hebrew Bible, and whether the Davidic kingdom must be fulfilled through Christ’s establishing a political (rather than spiritual) kingdom in that immediate historical moment. In chapter 4, Austin is especially concerned in answering why John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress Part Two was commercially successful when his earlier “sequel” to The Pilgrim’s Progress, Mr. Badman, was not. Austin proposes that The Pilgrim’s Progress in its two parts figurally and thematically resemble the relation between Old and New Testaments. Between its two parts, The Pilgrim’s Progress shifts its emphasis from sternness to compassion, from the individual to community, and from concealment to clarity (vii). In serving as an interpretive guide for the first work (such as interpreting Christian’s apparent “abandonment” of his family as a necessary step for their salvation), Part Two is a “true sequel” and was recognized as such by its audiences (78).

In chapter 5, Austin focuses primarily on the unifying “type scene” of massacres spanning Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and its two sequels as their connecting thread. Where critics might often dismiss the last sequel, Serious Reflections—a series of moral essays seemingly disconnected from the main narrative—as an example of economic opportunism, Austin sees it as a “crucial part” and extension of the narrative itself (82). Where the first novel introduces Crusoe’s ambivalence towards the natives, Defoe’s Farther Adventures raises new questions as Crusoe can not only invoke a biblical type-scene to condemn a massacre at Madagascar, but a competing type-scene to recommend a similar massacre against idol-worshippers. Serious Reflections helps resolve this cognitive dissonance by articulating when such massacres are “just.” In chapter 6, Austin sees in the “Pamela vogue” a transformation and secularization of the typological strategies employed in the Absalom and Achitophel event. Where Dryden and his competitors understood the biblical myths as historically true and “types” of contemporary events, “pro-Pamelists” and “anti-Pamelists” accepted Samuel Richardson’s Pamela as a fiction (that is, not historically true) to be re-narrated. This chapter considers this narration both in the sequel proper, such as with Richardson’s Pamela II and John Kelly’s competing volume Pamela’s Conduct in High Life, and in the “subversive sequels” of anti-Pamelists, such as with Henry Fielding’s Shamela and Joseph Andrews, and Eliza Haywood’s Anti-Pamela. We see a transition from the biblical David as a “type” for Charles II to Richardson’s Pamela as a “type” within later literature.

On the whole, Austin’s elaboration on figural logic offers a very illuminating lens for his chosen sequels. Though other critics have already drawn the natural analogy between the New Testament and sequels, Austin’s richer, more developed treatment makes its utility clearer and rewarding. In its incorporation of cognitive studies concerning closure, the book speaks beyond the period and region to the role of the sequel in other cultures. Austin’s search for a connective unity between a sequel and its predecessor provides some strong insights in individual sequels; his reading of Defoe’s Serious Reflections is particularly intriguing, where he explores the book’s preface—often read as Defoe’s own defense of the two novels and their “historicity”—as the words of the character. Austin thus categorizes Crusoe’s moral essays as themselves a “narrative”—for a culture whose understanding of the term differs from ours (82–83).

In some regards, our understanding of “narrative” and issues of formal diversity touch on the wider applicability of Austin’s characterizations of the “logic of the sequel.” Austin’s larger claims are ambitious, suggesting not only that figural logic “lies at the heart of the Early Modern sequel” (16) but also that many of these “rhetorical tools” persist in the sequel’s form long after they have “migrated from [their] biblical roots” (see pp. 14–15 and 124–25). For Austin, “narrative is the primary mechanism through which myths resolve contradictions” (14), and a sequel requires, by Austin’s definition, an extension in “narrative time” (xi). These remarks create a kind of tension for the title New Testaments in that, while Austin’s own New Testament interests lie with the gospel narratives (see pp. 20–22), most of the books within the New Testament are not in fact “narratives,” but didactic epistles. Similarly, since many self-described eighteenth-century “sequels” similarly lack virtually any narrative component, Austin’s model might have some limitations in its capacity to treat many poems or non-fictional prose “sequels”; Austin’s treatment of Defoe’s Serious Reflections might determine for readers whether he is ultimately successful in accommodating such texts within this “narrative” umbrella. Given Austin’s hints at his work’s relevance for a variety of sequel-genres—the Introduction even begins with a discussion of modern-day movie sequels—I could not help wondering what typological logic (with its narrative emphasis) might offer for an analysis of Restoration and eighteenth-century drama (for example, Aphra Behn’s The Rover Part 2, John Gay’s Polly, or John Vanbrugh’s The Relapse), or for primary texts which seem less overtly explicitly “Christian” in orientation than texts such as Pilgrim’s Progress, Paradise Lost, and such like. Also, although Austin does offer a few remarks on Eliza Haywood’s Anti-Pamela (just over a page), he lacks in-depth analysis of any of this period’s women sequel-writers (such as Aphra Behn or Jane Barker). This causes a missed opportunity to engage with Betty A. Schellenberg’s provocative argument that eighteenth-century sequels written by men and women differ extensively in their purposes, quality, and form (92). Given the potential scope of Austin’s claims, it would have been helpful to have seen a little more diversity in his textual selection. However, such omissions suggest room for further exploration rather than weaknesses in the argument.

This incitement to further exploration is a part of what makes reading Austin’s work so worthwhile. The “sequel” can be a difficult concept to pin down—some critics may take it essentially as chronological extension and leave it at that—and Austin offers us a thoughtful definition (see above) that can help focus future debate. Austin is interested in a specific understanding of a “sequel”; the term for him refers to a later work unanticipated by the first author and which thus must “carry the entire burden of making plausible connections between stories” (xi). Even if I am unpersuaded that Defoe’s Farther Adventures entirely fits this definition (Robinson Crusoe concludes with hints of a sequel and even summarizes much of the future sequel’s plot), whether we nuance the definition or not, Austin still raises important questions and provides engaging, reflective answers concerning what a sequel is and how it develops during this period. Ultimately, Austin’s book seeks not simply a connective logic between a sequel and its original, but a unifying logic that can make sense of the discontinuities between sequels themselves, across different cultures and eras. Austin offers a strong, coherent account of the sequels he analyzes, and his theoretical concerns (narrative theory, cognitive studies, and religious typology) broaden the work’s appeal to different potential audiences. Austin provides a very valuable approach for looking at the eighteenth-century sequel and leaves room to explore its wider applicability; ultimately, Austin’s account is not simply about providing us with some sense of “closure” in our understanding of the sequel, but also prompting our continued cognitive imperative to revisit old questions, explore new directions, and suspend our sense of an ending.

John C. Traver
California State University-Chico


WORKS CITED

Auerbach, Erich. “Figura.” 1938. Scenes from the Drama of European Literature. Trans. Ralph Manheim. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1984. Print.

Brewer, David A. The Afterlife of Character, 1726–1825. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2005. Print.

Budra, Paul, and Betty A. Schellenberg, eds. Part Two: Reflections on the Sequel. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1998. Print.

Korshin, Paul. Typologies in England, 1650–1820. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1982. Print.

Schellenberg, Betty A. “‘To Renew Their Former Acquaintance’: Print, Gender, and Some Eighteenth-Century Sequels.” Part Two: Reflections on the Sequel. Ed. Paul Budra and Betty A. Schellenberg. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1998. Print.

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Elizabeth Singer Rowe and the Development of the English Novel, by Paula R. Backscheider

Reviewed by Dustin D. Stewart

Paula Backscheider’s most recent book is, by a wide margin, the best study of Elizabeth Singer Rowe that has yet been written. But to praise the book in such terms is to understate its range. Consider a paragraph appearing on page 111. “Rowe,” the paragraph begins,

addresses most of the problems and situations faced by women in the stories of the women writers of the 1720s, but one marked contrast is that she omits or elides the implications and sometimes prolonged suffering of women entrapped by a tyrannical father or husband or suddenly impoverished and on their own. Her heroines are not maimed as Aubin’s are; women are not married to rapists as Davys’s are, fighting feelings of freakishness as Barker’s are, or experiencing the “resolutions” in Haywood’s fiction, as exemplified by The British Recluse and The Rash Resolve.

Backscheider proceeds to describe J. Paul Hunter’s contention, in Before Novels, that early novels took up concerns previously addressed by a “lost tradition” of oral narrative. She brings the paragraph to a close by rejecting this point: “Traditions, however, are never lost; we just temporarily lose our ability to follow the thread” (111). Her objective in this ambitious study is to recover Elizabeth Singer Rowe’s necessary place in the unspooling of the English novel. Her method is everywhere contextualizing and often, as in the above passage, analogical. As she situates Rowe’s fiction within an array of literary forms and genres, and aligns Rowe’s cultural authority with far-reaching social movements, Backscheider accumulates comparisons between her subject and other writers (especially women writers) who are more familiar to twenty-first-century readers. She likewise accumulates references to other scholars, as the notes, bibliography, and index to this volume readily attest. From the first paragraph of the book, in which she quotes from articles by Sharon Achinstein and Norma Clarke, to the last, where she quotes Stuart Curran, Backscheider orients her claims to the language of other critics who have worked on Rowe and her world, the eighteenth-century novel, and women’s literary history. Backscheider establishes the scholarly record in the process of superseding it.

The basis for Backscheider’s argument is properly bibliographical. She contends that in the 1730s, the “absolute low point of the production of new novels, histories, and romances” in Britain (2), Rowe began publishing works that not only revitalized moribund forms (amatory fiction, epistolary narratives, and loose collections of tales, in particular), but also reinvented novelistic discourse, taming its language and unifying its contradictions with a “new non-patriarchal ideology” and a “controlling narrative sensibility” (124, 126). Textual support for such claims comes primarily from the four volumes of Rowe’s epistolary fiction. These volumes were first published together in 1734 and then throughout the eighteenth century as Friendship in Death in Twenty Letters from the Dead to the Living. To which are added, Letters Moral and Entertaining, in Prose and Verse, in Three Parts. Backscheider refers to this collection simply as Letters, and she leads with the stunning fact that “by 1825, there had been at least seventy-nine editions of Rowe’s Letters, and by 1840, eighty-nine” (2). By the numbers alone, Backscheider succeeds in identifying Rowe as a writer with whom serious students of the novel must reckon.

The introductory chapter’s admirable synthesis of biographical accounts brings out Rowe’s friendship with Frances Thynne Seymour, Countess of Hertford and later Duchess of Somerset. As the book unfolds, this friendship, seen in tandem with the other relationships it helped to facilitate, increasingly defines the career of a writer most often described as a recluse. (At one point, in fact, and rather too cursorily, Backscheider acknowledges that “Hertford may have collaborated with Rowe throughout the Letters” [93].) The first two chapters treat Rowe in relation to the genres that shaped English prose fiction during the second two decades of the eighteenth century. Amatory fiction, apparition literature, and patchworks (sometimes called “olios” after “a heavily spiced stew of meat and vegetables” [69]) come in for sustained attention in chapter 2, and chapter 3 is devoted exclusively to fairy tales (“defined by their plot trajectory rather than the inclusion of fairies” [87]). In each instance Backscheider depicts Rowe as a bold experimenter who opened up new possibilities for the novel.

Chapter 4 pursues this case in more abstract terms. Here Rowe is said to have created a newly unified narrative sensibility, using interpolated poetry to “neutralize” gendered authority (132) and taking strategic advantage of her contemporary reputation to correlate aesthetic production and reception. “Rowe’s most artistic composition,” Backscheider asserts, “was her lifestyle and constructed identity, and she uses the same methods repeatedly to construct characters and passes them on to her readers” (161). The characters exchanging letters in this unapologetically ideological fiction, in other words, are at work fashioning selves, and their qualities “duplicate those [Rowe] was known to have” (153). Rowe’s epistolary fiction, then, presupposes as well as distributes her independent and harmonious way of life. Accordingly, in one of the book’s most persuasive arguments, the fifth chapter maintains that Rowe initiated an alternative politeness movement for women. Rowe’s Letters serve as a “technology” of this movement, helping readers do what Rowe and many of her novelistic characters do: cultivate self-discipline and build up a revisionary domestic economy, an “elsewhere of imagination” (188) that can eventually sustain a “subaltern counterpublic” (201). In the short run, Rowe cleared the way for such works as Mary Collyer’s Felicia to Charlotte (1744), Sarah Fielding’s Adventures of David Simple (1744), and Sarah Scott’s Millenium Hall (1762). In the longer run, as Backscheider’s conclusion demonstrates, she forged a legacy that was taken up by the Bluestockings. This discussion of “congruences” (218) between Rowe and the Bluestockings is especially illuminating on the significance of outdoor walks, the challenges of public passion, and the implications of the “feminization of politeness” (234).

Backscheider sorts through a dizzying amount of material along the way, seeming to desire total contextualization. Readers will therefore wonder at times which of the classifications or innovations proposed for Rowe stand out as the most significant. Epistolarity provides a dominant interpretive category throughout, but none of the genres or subgenres mentioned above reaches clear priority over the others. The author’s analogies intensify this challenge. At different points in chapter 1, for instance, the reader will find Rowe compared to Addison, Richardson, Haywood, Behn, Defoe, Gildon, Manley, Austen, Barker, and Davys. By no means can one examine the prose that Rowe both inherits and reworks without reference to other novelists—her predecessors, contemporaries, and heirs—and Backscheider knows this terrain better than anyone else. The sheer abundance of these comparisons, however, tends to normalize more than distinguish Rowe’s achievement. The comparative approach also puts pressure on Backscheider’s own contention that Rowe’s fictional writings should be seen as “‘pivotal,’ more dramatically different than transitional texts” (39). This distinction between pivotal and transitional hovers over the entire book (see for instance 44–45, 124, 155, 161, 170, 194) and appears fraught at moments when Backscheider refers to her subject as “a key transitional adapter” or observes that she “fill[ed] a gap between the fiction of the 1720s and the Richardson era” (121, 231). No sensible reader can come away from this book doubting that Rowe was an influential transitional figure in the history of the English novel. Yet even though I am persuaded, and even though Backscheider has mounted the strongest case I can imagine, there will surely be those who disagree that she was a transformative figure and who will prefer to say that Rowe reformed prose fiction rather than “revolutionized” it (231).

Even admiring readers can retain some distance, that is, from an author’s point of view. It is one of the great virtues of this book that Backscheider accounts for the attractiveness of Rowe’s life story as an indispensable feature of her fiction’s appeal for its first audiences. “Rowe herself became a text,” Backscheider urges early on, “to be read and imitated” (3), and she insists in her conclusion that dissenters of Rowe’s ilk saw people as “the authors of their own lives, their historians and interpreters” (221). Lives as well as texts can be misread, however. Indeed, the introductory chapter shows in exemplary bibliographical detail that by the beginning of the nineteenth century publishers had skilfully solidified a misleading new image of Rowe, a profoundly selective portrait of a death-obsessed devotional poet “associated with evangelicals, enthusiasts, and mystics” (35). Whether we like it or not, Rowe invited some of these characterizations, and they too represent part of her legacy. Piety still sells, at least here in the USA, and perhaps it was this sort of otherworldly author for whom many eighteenth-century readers clamored and whose identity they partially constructed. By presenting instead a novelist who remade her audience in the sensible image of herself and her characters, Backscheider succeeds in securing Rowe’s agency as an embodied woman writer, but she seems to undersell the agency of those early readers and thus the impact of the “reading revolution.”

Elizabeth Singer Rowe and the Development of the English Novel has already indicated its reply to this small concern. If traditions are never lost, then Backscheider has restored our attention to a fundamental truth that was there all along: we cannot follow the thread of the English novel without making sense of Elizabeth Singer Rowe. This book has recovered afresh the loveliness and bravura of Rowe’s accomplishments, the fictions of her life and the life of her fictions. What twenty-first-century readers will do with these insights—what tools they will take from Paula Backscheider’s monumental achievement—is now up to them.

Dustin D. Stewart
University of Colorado at Colorado Springs


WORKS CITED

Hunter, J. Paul. Before Novels: The Cultural Contexts of Eighteenth-Century English Fiction. New York: W. W. Norton, 1990. Print.

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Ends of Enlightenment, by John Bender

Reviewed by Nathan Gorelick

Beyond its brief introduction, John Bender’s Ends of Enlightenment contains nothing new. Instead, it is a collection of ten separate articles and book chapters – some co-written, all previously published – from as early as 1987 and as recently as 2010. While it is unfortunate, or at least curious, that Bender does not revisit or revise some of his conclusions in light of more recent and sometimes more sophisticated interpretive trends, the book does testify to the impressively interdisciplinary breadth of his scholarly expertise; as a broad compendium of his various projects, it also exposes a number of subtending thematic continuities in his own thought and thus raises new and important questions concerning the connections and correlations among his apparently disparate subjects. Its strength, in other words, is its novel organization of his established conclusions. This is an almost performative illustration of the basic hypothesis that informs the whole book, namely, that intellectual systems are not logically prior to the substance they organize, but rather that modes and objects of thought are mutually constitutive: the organization of knowledge implicates, even determines, its effects.

The few new pages that open Ends of Enlightenment situate this hypothesis with respect to Bender’s long-standing scholarly agenda: to bring contemporary critical strategies to bear upon Enlightenment texts and the social formations they developed in order to incorporate the early novel into the pantheon of practical philosophy. To this end, he fashions himself after both David Hume and Michel Foucault. He is a self-described “skeptical historicist” whose use of empirical evidence frames the past “in the manner of the vignette rather than of the grand narrative” (17). Bender’s, in other words, is a postmodern Enlightenment, which is to say, an Enlightenment reconceived not as a unified historical event but as a set of discrete, sometimes overlapping, and often contradictory narratives, most of them emerging in the eighteenth century and all of them orbiting around a common crisis of authority brought about by that period’s epochal destabilization of traditional structures of knowledge and power. Hume receives extensive treatment in the following chapters, but the clear methodological resonance with Foucault’s work and legacy is only briefly noted; like his earlier Imagining the Penitentiary, Bender explains, some of the essays in this new collection “were written under the sign of Foucault” (15) – in the same critical spirit, we might say, if not always according to the same investigative tactics or with Foucault’s overtly political implications. Be that as it may, this is a welcome articulation of the value for eighteenth-century scholarship of what Bender (following Diderot) calls “contemporaneity” (3–4), and a reminder of the restrictions that the field’s often antiquarian sensibilities can impose against its potential relevance to the present.

In addition to these primary influences, and despite an extensive range of scholarly sources, a short list of contemporary texts orients Bender’s various lines of inquiry. The several chapters concerning the historical correlation between the rise of modern science and the rise of the novel all lean upon the notion of “virtual witnessing” developed in Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer’s Leviathan and the Air-Pump; his account of the emergence of rational deliberation as a basic principle of social organization closely follows Jürgen Habermas’s The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (without, however, accounting for Foucault’s famous disagreement with Habermas, which leaves us to wonder whether and how Bender conceives of his work as an implicit synthesis of the two); Dorrit Cohn’s Transparent Minds orients his claims concerning the epistemological stakes of the early novel and the emergence of free indirect discourse; and behind much of this is a tacit and deferential elaboration of Ian Watt’s basic premises joining empiricism with narrative realism in The Rise of the Novel. Indeed, these texts appear so regularly that in some cases the same passages are quoted in one chapter and the next, the same concepts defined and then severally repeated. This reminder of the text’s inherent disunity and absence of revision seems both unfortunate and unnecessary, although they do demonstrate a deep conceptual consistency.

Such consistency is not always patent, however, and requires that the reader establish and develop connections, or at times discern possible contradictions, across these essays. Example: the first chapter, which originally appeared in Clifford Siskin and William Warner’s recent collection, This Is Enlightenment, follows Watt’s notion of “realism of assessment” by tracing the development not only of empiricism (Watt’s primary concern), but more specifically of inductive scientific reasoning, from Bacon, Newton, and Boyle to Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding. Here, Bender quotes Samuel Richardson describing to a friend the “Air of Genuineness” with which he wished to imbue his Clarissa, and borrows Catherine Gallagher’s term “ironic credulity” to characterize how Richardson places his reader “on a skeptical knife-edge between acceptance of his novelistic letters as real and awareness that they are fictions” (30–31). In other words, Richardson wanted to compose a novel that was false but also probable, thereby illustrating and popularizing the growing power of what Bender calls “surrogate observation” (28) to truth claims in the eighteenth century. Now, the same passage from Clarissa appears just ten pages later in chapter 2, the topic of which is (relatedly) the early novel and the history of the scientific method. This time, however, Richardson is quoted in the context of Hume’s notorious skepticism from his Treatise on Human Nature; in lieu of ironic credulity, Bender now calls Richardson’s fiction a “provisional reality” (41). Far from consolidating the new hegemony of the scientific method, novels like Clarissa posed a major threat to scientific authority and its assertions of material truth by revealing that, if strategically framed, any testimony to scientific fact might really be a work of fiction.

Certainly, both claims can be true: Clarissa could reflect and reify the formal demands of inductive reasoning – of ascending from particular observations to general truths – and, precisely because it so effectively mimics this scientific frame, expose the potential for untruth intrinsic to every translation from the laboratory to the public. If this is so, it falls to the reader to reach such conclusions and to work out their implications. So be it. But this analytic gap also raises questions about theoretical consistency. Does the concept of ironic credulity not at least complicate that of provisional reality, or are they mere synonyms? Is Hume’s link between probability and uncertainty really commensurate with Richardson’s ironic “skeptical knife-edge” strategy? Is the oppositional articulation of science and fiction across the eighteenth century at odds with the latter’s instrumental role in validating the new empiricism? If so, are there perhaps two competing tendencies in the early novel, one validating science and the other radically undermining its epistemological foundations?

Chapter 5, “The Novel as Modern Myth,” further indicates why these are far from rhetorical questions. Bender groups Robinson Crusoe, Frankenstein, and Dracula together and speculates that their lasting power may result from their “stylistic vaporization” – their use of verisimilitude to erase the fact of their historicity, the fact that they are recent fabrications, such that here fiction reflects or refracts reality in ways that essentially mirror the power and social function of myth. On this view, these “metanovels – modern myths – in their revelation of unreality within the real” (107) continue to captivate because of the exceptional degree to which they “enable us to assume, through surrogate projection, the illusion of sharing the firsthand experience of others” (106). This is an intriguing idea, to be sure, and one which Bender claims would install the gothic novel as the paradigm of novelistic discourse as such – but which again begs the question of narrative realism’s relation to scientific truth. For if these novels, these paragons of realism, attain the status of myth not despite their realism but because they are so nearly real, then what does this reveal about the early novel’s filiation with the rise of materialism, naturalism, and induction? Would this imply a mythology at the heart of scientific knowledge, or at least of its contemporary valorization? What would this mean for the very idea of truth, after its Enlightenment iteration? Again, the strength of Ends of Enlightenment is its capacity to provoke such questions; its weakness, however, is that the essays collected here are largely preliminary – understandable for a stand-alone article or book chapter – and therefore evade the deeper conceptual precision that one would expect from a complete volume.

Despite these drawbacks, the theoretically preliminary chapters prove useful to establishing the grid of historical phenomena into which Bender can install his more patient readings of specific texts. Chapter 4 (co-written with Robin Valenza) considers Hume’s reasons for trading the technical philosophical precision of his Treatise on Human Nature for the less sophisticated but more popular style of his later essays and Enquiries, and evaluates what is lost in the translation from a specialized discourse into the “conversible world” of the new public sphere. The earlier chapters outlining the strategies by which experimental science dealt with the same problem of maintaining intellectual rigor while also convincing a general public of the validity of its experimental results provide an excellent general background against which this specific, and especially compelling, case is illuminated.

Chapter 3 clusters William Hogarth’s experimental aesthetic sensibility apropos of non-human objects, Habermas’s position on the value of experiment to the emergence of a rational public sphere, and Martin Heidegger’s notion of “facticity.” The last of these is a rather clumsy addition – facticity and instrumental rationality are far from consistent; the only footnote to Heidegger’s work refers readers to Being and Time in its entirety, a citation which is, to say the least, not helpful; and the argument seems to gain nothing from this ontological intrusion. But pairing Hogarth with Habermas does paint a clear image of Habermas’s version of Enlightenment, which clarifies later chapters addressing novelistic contributions to this culture of rational deliberation, idealized though it may be. This prepares the claim in chapter 6 that Tom Jones “is governed by an ideal of intelligent, broadly educated sociability that lies at the heart of Fielding’s achievement as an author no less than of the eighteenth century itself” (116). These two chapters also lay the groundwork for the volume’s final essay, a collaboration with David E. Wellbery which considers the resurgence of rhetoric in the twentieth century, after the Enlightenment’s communicative rationalism had rendered its classical form obsolete.

Chapters 7 and 8, on Oliver Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield and William Godwin’s Caleb Williams, respectively, nuance the theoretical framework Bender first developed in Imagining the Penitentiary, but also exemplify the skeptical historicism outlined above: both essays excavate in each novel a tension between its apparent, explicit ideological commitments and the emergent ideologies, especially of modern subjectivity and its attendant mechanisms of social control, to which the texts unknowingly contribute. Chapter 9 reveals a similar tension in Choderlos de Laclos’s Les liaisons dangereuses between an increasingly archaic use of love as a means of acquiring social status and a new ideal of romantic love, though here this tension is the organizing principle around which the novel’s whole plot circulates, and not, as in the other novels, an accident of historical myopia.

This brief, necessarily fragmentary summary perhaps indicates the chief difficulty that Ends of Enlightenment presents to its readers. On the one hand, almost all the essays are thoughtful, provocative, and worth reading, separately or together; on the other hand, and because they were never meant to form a unified work, their reproduction here introduces new problems, questions, tensions, and occasional confusions. While elaborating his operative notion of contemporaneity, Bender writes that “Enlightenment repeated itself in the twentieth century and is doing so still today, but with the differences inevitably present in return and with the productive dissonance that belated repetition entails” (4). Ends of Enlightenment, too, is a differential repetition – at times belated, at times dissonant, but ultimately productive. Even the title announces a plurality of possible conclusions, objectives, or limits to the idea and reality of Enlightenment. Throughout, the book demands that we contend with the ambiguities and inconsistencies that a skeptical historicism means to uncover, though not to resolve.

Nathan Gorelick
Utah Valley University


WORKS CITED

Bender, John. Imagining the Penitentiary: Fiction and the Architecture of Mind in Eighteenth-Century England. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1987. Print.

Cohn, Dorrit. Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Representing Consciousness in Fiction. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1978. Print.

Gallagher, Catherine. “The Rise of Fictionality.” The Novel. 2 vols. Ed. Franco Moretti. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2006. 1:336–63. Print.

Habermas, Jürgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. 1962. Trans. Thomas Burger. Cambridge: Polity P, 1989. Print.

Shapin, Steven, and Simon Schaffer. Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1985. Print.

Siskin, Clifford, and William Warner, ed. This is Enlightenment. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2010. Print.

Watt, Ian. The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding. London: Chatto and Windus, 1957. Print.

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The Snare in the Constitution: Defoe and Swift on Liberty, by Zouheir Jamoussi

Reviewed by Christopher Borsing

Zouheir Jamoussi allows in his opening sentence that the “temptation” to compare Daniel Defoe and Jonathan Swift is not new, which suggests that others have considered but rejected this attractive but perhaps risky enterprise. James Sutherland’s oft-told tale, a tale always worth repeating, may sound an appropriate note of caution for anyone considering placing these particular authors into the same space. According to Sutherland, Robert Harley understood the diplomatic necessity of keeping his foremost press propagandists apart from one another to the extent that “as Swift walked up by the front door Defoe was being let out quietly by the back” (Sutherland 185). Jamoussi’s title, The Snare in the Constitution, would appear inadvertently to underscore the wisdom of a tentative approach to comparative treatments of his subjects. Jamoussi’s caution, however, proves to be the trap in his otherwise thoughtful and comprehensive study of these famously contrarian writers.

Jamoussi cites two book-length treatments that have compared these authors since the publication of John F. Ross’s Swift and Defoe: A Study in Relationship (1941). J. A. Downie’s Robert Harley and the Press: Propaganda and Public Opinion in the Age of Swift and Defoe (1979) analyzes Harley’s professionalization of journalism as a tool for government propaganda. Carol Houlihan Flynn’s The Body in Swift and Defoe (1990) addresses the “epistemological bind of the age, the confinement of thought to matter” (1). Both studies, in other words, fulfil the promises of their titles. Jamoussi argues that Defoe and Swift grappled with a “snare,” a root-problem, that they believed bedevilled the political, religious, and psychological constitution of their world. He explains that he opted for the concept of liberty from this snare as enabling the most comprehensive and inclusive approach to their prolific and generically varied literary production. The main problem of Jamoussi’s study is that its encyclopedic narrative of events and historiographical interpretation of texts threaten to obscure any argument that he may be making of his own. In his introduction, Jamoussi deplores anachronistic twenty-first-century attitudes toward eighteenth-century practices such as slavery and declares an ambition to recover the contemporary perspective. This could be useful to discussions of Defoe’s Crusoe as empire-building Englishman or of Gulliver’s Yahoos and Swift’s Irish experience, chiming with other postcolonial critiques such as Srinivas Aravamudan’s Tropicopolitans (1999) and Enlightenment Orientalism (2012) or Daniel Carey’s “Reading Contrapuntally: Robinson Crusoe, Slavery, and Postcolonial Theory” (2009). Jamoussi promises to add to such critical reassessment but this perspective becomes largely lost as his study progresses.

The greater part of the book follows a steady and persuasive strategy of relating works to their historical context. On the one hand, Jamoussi’s scrupulously fair-minded treatment ensures a clear narrative of the polarized see-saw politics of Dissenter and Episcopalian, Whig and Tory. On the other hand, the approach can frustrate progress as when, for example, Jamoussi balances and calibrates the differing attitudes held by Swift and Defoe toward Charles I’s regicide, a pattern of excessive checks and balances that continues throughout the book. The perceived ideological and literary differences of these two authors may well offer themselves as useful tools for undergraduate discussion of early eighteenth-century culture wars, but it is an approach that reinforces a rather simplistic, binary structure of thought. Whether Harley was Machiavellian or simply pat at comic timing, it becomes still more entertaining to realize that he also hired John Toland, the outspoken deist who was probably despised by Defoe and Swift in equal measure. I imagine Harley hastily closeting Toland below the staircase in the hall, Harry Potter-like, before he ushers Defoe out and Swift in. Jamoussi similarly peoples his book with voices that jostle and conflict or, as he prefers to put it, “are juxtaposed and made to respond to each other.” His critical self-effacement has the advantage of ensuring that his featured authors do “speak for themselves” (16) as Freethinker Toland, High Church Henry Sacheverell, and non-juror Charles Leslie extend heated arguments past the conventions of Dissenter Defoe and Anglican Swift. Certainly, Jamoussi offers a very useful introduction to the political and religious networks of affiliation shaken and stirred by the 1688 Williamite Revolution.

Jamoussi’s discussion of religious liberties moves seamlessly into the question of civil liberties. There is no danger of under-representation as Jamoussi trawls contributions ranging from James Harrington’s Oceana (1656) to James Thomson’s Liberty (1735–36). G. A. Starr makes an observation in his edition of Religious Courtship (1722) that Defoe was discomfited by the term “liberty” as it was “fraught with difficulty” and was often “invoked in bad causes” (Defoe 294). Jamoussi draws attention to intellectual and ideological anomalies that may have created difficulty for Defoe and Swift. Defoe’s adulation of William III as England’s savior, for example, all but invokes a divine aspect that he frequently condemned in the doctrine of a divine right of kings. Principles of religious and civil liberties certainly became more complex and confused as Defoe and Swift grappled with English governance of Ireland and Scotland. As he worked for Harley in Scotland, Defoe sought to bypass popular hostility to the Union through dialogue with Tory landowners and Episcopalian Dissenters, quite opposite to his position within the English nation. Swift may have enjoyed popular acclaim as an “Irish Patriot” for his campaign against suspect English coinage in Drapier’s Letters (1724–25), but his primary grievance remained that the English authorities treated the Anglo-Irish as Irish subjects even though they were the descendants of those original English who had conquered and subdued the native Irish population.

Defoe and Swift received pay to promote government interests in their journals, the Review and the Examiner. They also suffered government reprisals for their manipulations of public opinion, as with Defoe’s The Shortest Way with the Dissenters (1702) and Swift’s Drapier’s Letters. In light of their preference for print camouflage and misdirection, the role of authorial anonymity receives surprisingly brief treatment in Jamoussi’s study. It is even more odd that Jamoussi should draw upon A General History of the Pyrates (1724–28) for quotations from “Defoe” with not a whisper of its reattribution to Captain Charles Johnson (though, without wishing to rekindle controversy, I welcome such natural acceptance of Defoe’s authorship). Also without irony, Jamoussi cites Defoe’s promotion of authorial responsibility through enforced legal attribution in An Essay on the Regulation of the Press (1704). Perhaps, though, this is meant to be The Shortest Way to demonstrate Defoe’s lasting reputation for saying one thing while meaning another. The contemporary author of Judas Discover’d (1713) had no trouble in denouncing Defoe as “a thorough-pac’d, true-bred Hypocrite, an High-Church Man one Day, and a Rank Whig the next.”

Sometimes it may seem that Jamoussi is so prepared to maintain his air of studied neutrality that he will incorporate somebody else’s literature review of a topic. However, his deployment of Robert Mahony’s critical history of Swift as “Irish Patriot” unexpectedly heralds Jamoussi’s arrival on the field of critical battle. Jamoussi makes short work of Carole Fabricant’s suggestion that Swift actually welcomed his return to Ireland for the opportunity to renew old ties. Jamoussi agrees, though, that there is more to Swift’s life in Ireland than a campaign of petty revenge against Walpole and the Whigs, driven by the disappointments of his clerical and literary ambitions. Instead, he celebrates Swift’s rage at exile amongst slaves for triggering “one of the most decisive turning points in his political and literary career” (153). The Snare in the Constitution is always more engaging when Jamoussi lets slip his own point of view. It is fascinating to follow the author’s progress from mild critical dissension—“John Richetti is possibly wrong” (306)—to full-tilt battle with George Starr, David Blewett, J. Paul Hunter, and Maximillian Novak. The difference in tone in the latter part of his study—confident, authoritative, and stimulating—may be explained by a footnote that sources much of his material in an earlier monograph, La Liberté dans L’Oeuvre de Defoe: entre la realité et la fiction (2001). As he settles into the fictional works, clearly his first love, Jamoussi’s style becomes far more relaxed and liberated. From an exploration of Defoe’s “entanglements of movement and meaning” to an analysis of Gulliver’s progression through boxes, from farmer’s crate to bespoke luxury to eagle-tossed drop in the ocean, Jamoussi radiates an enthusiasm that would spur readers at any level of interest or expertise to pick up Defoe and Swift and read afresh. It is as though after supplying all the dutiful fruits of contextual and critical history, the book may finally begin.

There is much to recommend this well-organized and comprehensive study, which provides an invaluable resource for contemporary debates on constitutional and religious liberties, press freedoms, the lures and traps of money and trade, and the speculative attractions of literary fiction. In Jamoussi’s assessment, Defoe and Swift both recognized and tackled a “constitutional snare” that hobbled modern hopes and fears of “liberty.” What was a terminus for Swift, however, was the starting point for Defoe. Swift loses hope but Defoe holds faith in human invention and progress. However, despite the standard dualistic reading of Defoe’s modern optimism and Swift’s preference for a classical past, Jamoussi’s closing sentence suggests that Swift’s passion for universal justice above narrow national interest makes his work “particularly appealing to large sections of world public opinion in these difficult times” (409). This bold statement excites new and interesting questions but then the page falls blank. Professor Jamoussi surely has much more to say and this ending would make a good beginning.

Christopher Borsing
Trinity College Dublin


WORKS CITED

Aravamudan, Srinivas. Enlightenment Orientalism: Resisting the Rise of the Novel. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2012. Print.

– – –. Tropicopolitans: Colonialism and Agency, 1688–1804. Durham: Duke UP, 1999. Print.

Carey, Daniel. “Reading Contrapuntally: Robinson Crusoe, Slavery, and Postcolonial Theory.” The Postcolonial Enlightenment: Eighteenth-Century Colonialism and Postcolonial Theory. Ed. Daniel Carey and Lynn Festa. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009. Print.

Defoe, Daniel. Religious Courtship. Ed. G. A. Starr. Religious and Didactic Writings of Daniel Defoe. London: Pickering and Chatto, 2006. Print.

Downie, J. A. Robert Harley and the Press: Propaganda and Public Opinion in the Age of Swift and Defoe. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1979. Print.

Fabricant, Carole. Swift’s Landscape. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1982. Print.

Flynn, Carol Houlihan. The Body in Swift and Defoe. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990. Print.

Jamoussi, Zouheir. La Liberté dans l’oeuvre de Defoe: entre la realité et la fiction. Tunis: Centre de Publication Universitaire, 2001. Print.

Ross, John F. Swift and Defoe: A Study in Relationship. Berkeley and Los Angeles: U of California P, 1941. Print.

Sutherland, James. Defoe. 1937. London: Methuen, 1971. Print.

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A Spectacular Failure: Robinson Crusoe I, II, III, by Virginia La Grand

Reviewed by Margaret France

For a writer as prolific as Daniel Defoe, sequels seem like inevitable literary industrial by-products, the tailings left behind after the extraction of superior narratives. Ian Watt said as much in his dismissal of the sequels to The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719)—The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719) and Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe (1720)—in the work that secured Defoe’s place in the canon, The Rise of the Novel (1957). Though many critics followed Watt in disregarding the sequels, interest in understanding Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe books as a trilogy has increased markedly in the last fifteen years. Critical approaches to the sequels supplied two well-attended panels at the 2013 meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, as well as ample justification for John Richetti and Rivka Swenson’s forthcoming Broadview Press edition of the second book in the series, The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. In the wake of this uptick in scholarly interest, Virginia La Grand’s A Spectacular Failure: Robinson Crusoe I, II, III seems timely but fails to incorporate recent scholarship. La Grand contributes valuable insights by taking an innovative linguistic approach to the material. The first three chapters lay out the historical contexts for reading the series, the first in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the second during Defoe’s time, and the third as part of Defoe’s oeuvre. In chapters four through eight, La Grand demonstrates the way pamphlets on and abridged versions of the novels reveal a popular interpretation of Crusoe’s morals that Defoe did not intend, and which he definitively contradicted in Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe. Her final chapter concludes that despite the sequels, Defoe never regained control of the Crusoe story. She notes that even in Thomas Gent’s 1722 version—which incorporated events from all three books—the moral derives from the island sequence, making it a triumphant story of individualism, rather than a parable of the necessity of trade. La Grand’s ease with German allows her to bring in previously obscure secondary sources, and she can be a close, careful reader of primary texts, but overall the book feels strangely hermetic, referencing none of the recent studies that would provide context for her argument.

The “spectacular failure” of the title derives directly from the theoretical framework La Grand employs. La Grand uses discourse analysis, particularly Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson’s concept of relevance, to understand the Crusoe series as speech acts. Relevance Theory contends that the comprehension of speech acts requires contextual cues, particularly echoic speech. When repeated the same utterance can mean total agreement with the speaker or total disagreement, a difference easily detected in oral communication, or signaled in writing by shifts in persona. This is the heart of irony, a mode which produced unsettling results for Defoe. La Grand explains:

Compared to other writers of his day, Defoe did not always give his readers clues to his ironic intention by changing voices in the texts that he claimed to be ironic. The convention of anonymous publication prevented readers from inferring his irony from his identity. Fast readers misread him. Again and again, these readers felt tricked by Defoe. Sperber and Wilson’s Relevance Theory provides a framework for addressing the confusion between author and narrator that plagued Defoe. (28)

To gauge the extent of this misreading La Grand combines the tools of contemporary socio-linguistic theory with careful study of the views of Defoe’s contemporary audience as represented in pamphlets and abridgements of The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. La Grand concludes that Defoe uses the sequels as correctives to pirated versions of the original, which he thought omitted too much of the religious content, and uses the Serious Reflections in particular to counter Charles Gildon’s critique in his 1719 pamphlet, The Life and Strange and Surprizing Adventures of Mr. D— De F–. In her examination of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century abridgements, La Grand contends that Defoe’s intended interpretation of Crusoe’s adventures was eclipsed by those of his critics and editors. Of particular interest to those of us who do not read German, this section leans heavily on Erhard Dahl’s study of the first century of English editions of Robinson Crusoe, Die Kürzungen des “Robinson Crusoe” in England zwischen 1719 und 1819 vor dem Hintergrund des zeitgenössischen Druckgewerbes, Verlagswesens und Lesepublikums (1977). Despite the durability of Defoe’s premise as a meme, La Grand judges the series a failure as a speech act.

La Grand contends that The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe and Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe promote Defoe’s vision for England’s international trade in ways that could easily be cropped from abridgments of the first novel, which tend to favor the island sequence. Taken on its own, the island sequence gives readers Crusoe as a heroic model of self-sufficiency, inconsistent with the “naïve observer . . . [whose] suffering is more ridiculous than pathetic” that La Grand identifies in The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (95–96). Thus, Defoe’s messages about the unerring voice of Providence and the necessity of trade were lost both on his contemporary audience and the generations that came later, raised on ever more condensed versions of Crusoe’s story.

Classifying the Crusoe books as speech acts rather than approaching them solely as literary texts allows La Grand to judge their communicative efficacy without slipping into the mire of authorial intent. According to La Grand, Defoe deploys levels of irony in the Crusoe series that eluded both the critical and popular audience for his work. After laying out her methods in the first chapter and giving a brief background in eighteenth-century print culture in the second, in the third chapter La Grand discusses Defoe’s most famously misread work, The Shortest-Way with the Dissenters (1702). This discussion does not really pay off until chapter eight, where it leads to La Grand’s most tantalizing suggestion: that like The Shortest-Way with the Dissenters, Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe is, at least in part, an exercise in provocative irony. She gives her section discussing “Of the Proportion between the Christian and Pagan World” the title, “The Shortest Way with the Pagans.” In La Grand’s reading, conflating Crusoe’s persona with his creator’s is just as dangerous in Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe as in The Shortest-Way with the Dissenters, though no one would have pilloried Defoe for suggesting a crusade-like invasion of Japan in 1720. Crusoe is not Defoe’s avatar but his drone. Defoe uses Crusoe as a problem-seeking missile, and, in La Grand’s view, the solutions he pronounces in Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe must be understood as the product of Crusoe’s spiritual weakness catalogued in first two volumes (202). La Grand, by analyzing Crusoe’s narrative voice throughout the series as similar to the ironic “written speech act” Defoe deploys in The Shortest-Way with the Dissenters, argues that he presents Crusoe as a monitory—not an exemplary—Englishman.

As this précis makes clear, La Grand intersects with many contentious points in the conversation around the Crusoe series. La Grand underlines the way the Crusoe books represent Defoe’s position on international trade and stresses that one should read the Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe as the product of the fictional Robinson Crusoe, not of Defoe himself. La Grand enters these debates without referring once to Robert Markley or Maximillian Novak, critics who have multiple publications wrestling with these same issues. Acknowledging Markley and Novak would certainly help in framing her argument, but other scholarship La Grand neglects would catch her completely flat-footed. George Starr’s reading of Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe in his introduction to the Pickering and Chatto edition poses significant challenges to La Grand’s claim that the book is written from a consistent fictional persona. In addition, Melissa Free’s 2006 essay, “Un-Erasing Crusoe: Farther Adventures in the Nineteenth Century,” directly contradicts La Grand’s claim that The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe simply “fell out of circulation” (La Grand 165). Free’s meticulous study of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century editions demonstrates that it was not until the twentieth century that The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe was definitively separated from The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe.

La Grand’s A Spectacular Failure is the first book-length study of Defoe’s Crusoe series, a frustratingly obscure topic until the last few decades. Unfortunately, she approaches the sequels as if they were still obscure. La Grand’s methods and conclusions, while intriguing, feel unfinished, unfurnished by the thoughtful work Defoe’s sequels have begun to inspire.

Margaret France
Augustana College


WORKS CITED

Dahl, Erhard. Die Kürzungen des “Robinson Crusoe” in England zwischen 1719 und 1819 vor dem Hintergrund des zeitgenössischen Druckgewerbes, Verlagswesens und Lesepublikums. Frankfurt-am-Main: Peter Lang, 1977. Print.

Free, Melissa. “Un-Erasing Crusoe: Farther Adventures in the Nineteenth Century.” Book History 9 (2006): 89–130. Print.

Markley, Robert. The Far East And The English Imagination, 1600–1730. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006. Print.

—. “‘I Have Now Done with My Island and All Manner of Discourse about It’: Crusoe’s Farther Adventures and the Unwritten History of the Novel.” A Companion to the Eighteenth-Century English Novel and Culture. Ed. Paula R. Backscheider and Catherine Ingrassia. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005. 25–47.

—.“Teaching the Crusoe Trilogy.” Approaches to Teaching Defoe’s “Robinson Crusoe.” Ed. Maximillian E. Novak and Carl Fisher. New York: MLA, 2005. 96–104.

Novak, Maximillian E. Daniel Defoe: Master Of Fictions: His Life And Ideas. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2001. Print.

Sperber, Dan and Deirdre Wilson. Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Oxford: Blackwell, 1995. Print.

Starr, G. A. “Introduction.” Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. Ed. G. A. Starr. The Novels of Daniel Defoe. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2008. Print.

Watt, Ian. The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding. 1957. Berkeley: U of California P, 2001. Print.

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The Man That Never Was: Daniel Defoe 1644-1731 — A Critical Revision of His Life and Writing, by John Martin

Reviewed by Sheldon Rogers

The Man That Never Was is John Martin’s second biography of Daniel Defoe. His first, Beyond Belief: The Real Life of Daniel Defoe, received mixed reviews for its provocative and often unorthodox view of the life and works of Defoe. The point that Martin returns to in this second biography is that Defoe’s year of birth was unknown until he discovered the writer’s birth record, which indicates that the writer was born in 1644, some fifteen or sixteen years before his supposed birth year of 1659/1660. Martin also pursued this claim in another book on Defoe: Alien Come Home: The Story of Daniel Defoe’s Missing Years, 1644–1680.

In The Man That Never Was, Martin claims that Defoe was the son of Daniel Foe and that James Foe was his uncle, not his father, as has been posited by Defoe scholars (xi). Martin explains that James Foe’s brother Daniel took over the family farm in Northamptonshire after the death of their father, who was also named Daniel Foe. The biographer Frank Bastian, in Defoe’s Early Life, notes that James Foe’s brother Daniel married and mentions a family, though he claims his children were the writer’s older first cousins. Martin disagrees, arguing that since Daniel Foe was the oldest male in the family, tradition dictated that the first born male would be named after the father: hence Daniel Defoe the writer was his eldest son rather than his nephew.

When we delve into this and other fascinating claims made by Martin, they soon begin to unravel, as J. A. Downie recently pointed out in “Defoe’s Birth,” a note in The Scriblerian and the Kit-Cats. First, Daniel was a very common name among the (De) Foe families of Northamptonshire, where Martin claims Daniel Defoe was born. It is, therefore, difficult to associate the writer with one of the several Daniel Foes listed in the records of that region. Second, although Martin suggests that all historical facts are open to “misunderstanding” and are “a complex matter” (xv), he does not adequately address or explain away critical documents associated with the writer. This is evident time and time again, and I will offer four representative examples here.

First, in a marriage license dated December 28, 1683, Defoe’s age is given as about 24 years. For a man to state that he is fifteen or sixteen years younger than he is to his twenty-year-old wife and her wealthy father seems fanciful in the extreme. Further, in 1726, Defoe writes the following as “Andrew Moreton, Esq” in the preface to The Protestant Monastry: “[I] am in my 67th Year, almost worn out with Age and Sickness” (vi). If one deducts 67 years from 1726, we arrive at the year 1659 as Defoe’s birth year.1 Second, Martin tries to persuade us that Defoe did not attend Morton’s Academy in or around 1676 because he was working in Brazil on his sugar plantations from 1663 to 1680, but he fails along the way to tackle the evidence in The Present State of Parties (1712), in which Defoe mentions three “Western Martyres” from that academy, not by name but nickname: Kitt. Battersby, Young Jenkins, and Hewlin. These are certainly the sorts of schoolboy nicknames that would have been used at Morton’s Academy. Third, according to Martin, Defoe visited North America from September 1699 to August 1700; however, during that time, Defoe was in London arranging a lease for a house at 87 Woolstaple Round, Westminster, which was on Christ’s Hospital land (Peterson 325). Fourth, Martin has Defoe visiting Brazil and Madagascar in 1705/1706 as does Crusoe in The Father Adventures (1719). However, it appears from Defoe’s letters that he had returned to London from a long trip around England for Robert Harley on November 6, 1705, and was hard at work establishing a distribution network for his Review until the spring of 1706. According to John Robert Moore, Defoe wrote The Apparition of Mrs Veal (1706) on his return from this trip (168–69).

Martin’s claims about Defoe’s origins and life also result in self-contradiction. For example, Martin argues that the first part of Memoirs of a Cavalier (1720) should be read as allegorical autobiography. If this is the case, the dreams of the protagonist’s mother, which she records in her prayer book, must be those of Defoe’s own mother (xix). In the invocation, the Cavalier mentions “several strange Dreams” his mother “had while she was with Child of her second Son, which was myself” (1). However, according to Martin’s own chronology, Defoe was the first son of Daniel and Ellene Foe (xxxi). Martin does try to establish that Defoe’s father was married before and had a son with his first wife, Defoe’s half-brother Thomas King (53), but he later claims that Defoe had another older brother, Roger Fenwick, who served as Lieutenant-Colonel in Colonel Lockhart’s Regiment of Foot; Fenwick is identified by Martin as the older brother reported in the opening pages of Robinson Crusoe (1719), although he never provides any biographical evidence in support of this supposition (453). While he states that he has made room for this brother in the family chart on page 417 of Beyond Belief, there is no such chart on that page. Martin goes to some lengths to connect Defoe with Fenwick, but lacking evidence, he settles for trying to convince the reader that the connection could be possible. Martin seems to miss the point that the allusion to Lockhart in Robinson Crusoe serves a literary rather than a biographical purpose, with Defoe referring to Lockhart to connect Crusoe with the Commonwealth.

Martin also pursues at length the possible connection of Defoe to William Penn, querying Defoe’s connection with the Jacobites. However, Martin’s biography is so tainted by fiction, inaccuracies, and an unreliable chain-forging of evidence that any claims he makes on this topic are unconvincing. However, there is perhaps some measure of truth in Martin’s assertion that the lives of Defoe’s relatives, who clearly settled in Essex, inspired his works of fiction just as Henry Foe’s journal may have led, in part, to the production of A Journal of the Plague Year (1722).

Martin has clearly carried out a lot of research in Northamptonshire and the United States, and he has made some effort to link those records to the life and writings of Daniel Defoe. However, what he has not done is satisfactorily tackled the body of evidence that runs counter to his biographical conclusions.

Sheldon Rogers
University of Portsmouth

NOTES

1. I do not doubt, however, that Martin is correct in his assumption that Defoe could not have been born in 1659 as the legitimate son of James Foe, as one of James’s two daughters was born on June 19, 1659.


WORKS CITED

Bastian, Frank. Defoe’s Early Life. London: Macmillan, 1981. Print.

Defoe, Daniel. The Letters of Daniel Defoe. Ed. George Harris Healey. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955. Print.

—. Memoirs of a Cavalier. London: A. Bell and others, 1720. Print.

—. The Protestant Monastery. London: W. Meadows and others, 1727 [for 1726]. Print.

Downie, J. A. “Defoe’s Birth.” The Scriblerian and the Kit-Cats 45.2 (2013): 225–30. Print.

Martin, John. Alien Come Home: The Story of Daniel Defoe’s Missing Years, 1644–1680. Sandy: Anglia Publishing, 2009. Print.

—. Beyond Belief: The Real Life of Daniel Defoe. Pembrokeshire: Accent Press, 2006. Print.

Moore, John Robert. Daniel Defoe: Citizen of the Modern World. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1958. Print.

Mundy, P. D. “The Ancestry of Daniel Defoe.” Notes and Queries 197 (1952): 382–83. Print.

Peterson, Spiro. “Defoe and Westminster, 1696–1706.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 12.3 (1979): 306–38. Print.

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The Practice of Satire in England, 1658-1770, by Ashley Marshall

Reviewed by Emrys Jones

The business of defining satire, let alone assessing its uses and motivations, is fraught with difficulty. Much of the early part of Ashley Marshall’s study is devoted to establishing that previous scholarly accounts of satire’s history in the long eighteenth century have been misguided, or at least incomplete: they extrapolate broad conclusions from a small number of not-very-representative canonical texts; they tend to impose an inappropriate coherence upon a genre diverse in its tones, aims, and techniques. In fact, Marshall does not see satire as a genre at all, but follows Alastair Fowler in identifying it as a mode capable of inhabiting multiple genres (5). Marshall rejects a number of traditional ideas about satire’s common components—not all satires are indignant, for instance—and offers in their place a “descriptive characterization” that points to satire as an elaboration of critique: “critique plus distortion, critique plus humorous ridicule, or critique plus gratuitousness in motive” (3). The nuance and flexibility of this characterization lay the groundwork for a thorough exploration of the mode’s true significance within seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English culture. Marshall does not seek to offer a unified theory accounting for the many, diverse satires her work discusses. Indeed, at times it seems that her most important argument is for the mode’s overwhelming multifariousness, an argument which occasionally calls into question the very utility and value of satire as a literary category. However, The Practice of Satire also offers a number of more distinct, localized insights, which justify the endurance of the term in scholarly discourse. Marshall encourages her readers to think about the prices of specific satires, who would have been able to buy them, and whether such financial considerations align with the literary and academic considerations that have since shaped the satirical canon. And although she warns against simplistic narratives of satire’s ascent in the period, her close, taxonomically-minded attention to individual sub-periods demonstrates that certain aspects of the satiric mode did dominate at particular times and in particular political contexts.

Marshall’s discussion of satire in practice is usefully complemented by a chapter on how satire was envisaged and theorized at the time. Here again, variety is key. Where P. K. Elkin’s The Augustan Defence of Satire (1973) was willing to divide commentators into those for and those against, Marshall shows that such binaries are too simplistic (39). Contemporary commentary disagreed over what satire was and over its general literary importance: “nothing in the eighteenth century suggests that they saw it as a significant mode” (40). Moreover, Marshall exposes huge discrepancies between the methods and arguments adopted to defend or, alternatively, rebuke satirists. Opposition could stem either from an association of laughter with atheism or from a sense of satirical enterprise as fundamentally mean-spirited (44). Defoe sees himself as writing “for his allies, not his enemies” (53), a distinction which Marshall invokes at several points throughout this study in order to correct traditional views of satire as an inherently hostile mode. The various concerns that affect commentators’ attitudes toward satire’s propriety also affect their views on how to ensure its efficacy and whether it should be general or particular in its choice of targets. This is certainly a familiar debate, foregrounded repeatedly by satirists themselves, but for those whose main point of contact with the issue is Pope’s Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot or similar canonical works, it is refreshing to be confronted with a wider range of motivations for those engaged in this theoretical controversy. Marshall cites some commentators who viewed general satire as blasphemous, a libel against creation (61); on the other hand, one has the arguments of John Dennis, who favored general satire simply because it was, in his view, likely to bring about genuine moral change rather than retaliation or defensiveness (60). Once more, Marshall’s key message is one of discrepancy and disagreement, though the very nature of such disagreement tells us more about the era’s prevailing concerns than a single canonical work ever could.

Chapters 3–7 of Marshall’s study provide detailed and wide-ranging accounts of the state of satire at particular historical moments, and it is these survey chapters that are likely to prove most valuable to students and scholars of the period as a whole. Chapter 3, on Carolean satire, establishes the template that these overviews follow: fairly brief discussions of individual canonical authors—in this case, Rochester, Dryden and others—balanced out by less canonical material, and leading to observations of the sub-period’s general character insofar as this can be established. For Marshall, satire of the Carolean period was characterized by seriousness and ferocity; to a greater extent than any later satire, it lacked humor and rarely aspired to the status of literature (72–73). Further distinctions are also necessary, however. Marshall makes a strong case for seeing the later part of this sub-period, represented most notably by Part III of Butler’s Hudibras, as gloomier than the years immediately following the Restoration. She also argues, counter to a number of prevailing critical narratives, that there was a great level of continuity between pre-1660 and post-1660 satire (what came immediately before and after the Restoration), and that there was less continuity than one might expect between seventeenth-century satire and what followed it. Marshall is in general skeptical about terms like “Augustan,” and she is certainly opposed to any story of satire’s rise that would see the works of Dryden and Rochester as prototypes for those of Pope and Swift (111). In fact, though her attention to such canonical figures is at first surprising given the work’s attested commitment to a wider range of sources, one often ends up with a more complex view of writers too easily subsumed and diminished within grander narratives. The Dryden of the 1670s and 1680s is a different satirist from the Dryden of the 1690s, with a propagandistic edge which has often been overlooked by those overly beholden to notions of his high-mindedness (75). Bunyan’s place in the satiric tradition has likewise been neglected or distorted because, like Defoe, he is “strongly positive” in his approach to satire, at odds with our scholarly fixation on satiric aggression (109).

Subsequent chapters yield similarly nuanced reassessment. Just as Marshall objects to the notion of Augustanism, she also describes as a “critical delusion” the idea that the variegated satiric styles and agendas of Pope, Swift, Gay, and Arbuthnot can be explained through reference to a single “Scriblerian mode” (180). Devoting a chapter to the years 1700–1725 allows Marshall to isolate the earlier satiric works of such writers from later, more eye-catching achievements like The Beggar’s Opera or The Dunciad, thus emphasizing that the “canonical masterpieces […] were by no means obvious, necessary, or an inevitable development from the work of the previous two decades” (193). In fact, it is startling just how anomalous Pope’s position was in the earlier part of his career, The Rape of the Lock possessing dubious satiric credentials and suggesting little common ground—or even grounds for comparison—with the works of his friends. Defoe is, in many ways, a more representative figure in this early eighteenth-century satirical landscape, although, as Marshall notes, his goals have often been misunderstood through a lack of appreciation for satire’s flexibility. Marshall takes issue with the standard reading of The Shortest Way with the Dissenters as “the work of a failed ironist or a too-successful impersonator” (156). This is a reading which stems, again, from the misguided expectation that satire should attack or deceive. In Marshall’s view, Defoe is seeking to do neither of these things, but aims to “undeceive those with whom he identifies” through the production of “an intentional fake not meant to be decoded” (157). Early eighteenth-century satire as a whole is noted for its extreme multiplicity, but also for its “concentration of difficult, sober, argumentative satires” (298), a phenomenon particular to these few decades. The two following chapters, covering satire’s apparent Walpolean heyday (1726–1745) and its fortunes after the deaths of Pope and Swift (1745–1770), stress fragmentation, on one hand charting a movement towards more humane and sympathetic satiric conventions, and on the other documenting some of the most “abusive and cynical political satire” of the entire century (237).

This is an engaging and necessary work, one which corrects many enduring misunderstandings and oversimplifications regarding its subject matter. Marshall’s approach to the period and to literary history as a discipline is concisely summed up in a sentence from her epilogue: “The literary historian should not be seeking—and certainly should not be finding—anything like a coherent narrative” (289). If one disagrees with this statement, then the book is likely to frustrate; even those who agree might find themselves slightly at a loss when faced with the full, multi-directional array of evidence that Marshall has assembled here. But those willing to assess writers and works on an individual basis and to identify general trends without imposing uniformity, will find much that contributes to a more sophisticated appreciation of satire in the period. The book is not without some flaws. The arguments of its first chapter are perhaps slightly labored. Marshall offers a numeric table and several pages of discussion in order to establish that previous scholars of satire have concentrated on canonical works. Most readers would probably be content to take her at her word on this point. The extent of her commitment to a taxonomical methodology is also somewhat uncertain. She acknowledges that characterizing satires can be a problematically subjective process; making “reasonable guesses about motive and intensity” (105) is a worthwhile endeavor, but on balance, it is for the best that Marshall does not pursue this taxonomical agenda too systematically throughout her readings. Sensitive discussion is still more effective than statistical tabulation in conveying the complexity and diversity of satire in the long eighteenth century.

Emrys Jones
University of Greenwich


WORKS CITED

Elkin, P. K. The Augustan Defence of Satire. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973. Print.

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Daniel Defoe, Review, Volume 9, 2 parts, 1712-1713, edited by John McVeagh

Reviewed by David Walker

Volume 9 in two parts completes John McVeagh’s magisterial nine-volume, eighteen-book edition of Defoe’s Review, a work of scholarship that has been greeted justly by Defoe scholars in particular, and by eighteenth-century scholars generally, with considerable acclaim. It consists of all numbers published between August 2, 1712 and June 9, 1713, 107 in total, plus an index covering the entire edition. The index is a splendid creation in itself. Tracking Defoe’s opinions on the state of religion and the Protestant Succession, the Pretender and the Jacobite threat, one can see clearly the role that periodical literature played in the formation of public opinion, and in Defoe’s aggressive responses to perceived attacks on his opinions we see the daily cut and thrust of the early eighteenth-century press in action.

In the opening lines of his introduction to volume 9, John McVeagh informs us that this volume “turned out to be the smallest of all.” Technically, it is not part of the Review proper. Defoe closed down A Review of the State of the British Nation after eight volumes before immediately re-launching it with the much shorter title of Review (vii). Despite its relative brevity, however, there is much in the two parts of volume 9 to savor. Social, economic, and political life in the near-final years of the Stuart regime is chronicled by Defoe, and reproduced meticulously by McVeagh, in all of its glory. The most pressing political issue in the volume is the looming demise of the Stuart dynasty and the proximity of the Hanoverian succession. The last years of Anne were, in the words of one historian, riddled with “intrigue and dissimulation, … strife, chaos, and the real possibility of bloody civil war.” The grounds for some of these fears were all too real; others were engineered by the Whig propaganda machine. Fear of Jacobitism was based on “fiction as well as facts,” with both Hanoverians and Stuart supporters keen to serve their own interests by “play[ing] up the Pretender’s prospects” (Hoppit 306). Unsurprisingly, then, issues of politics and religion – Jacobitism and anti-Catholicism, Anglicanism and Dissent – are prominent in the final volume. Here, as one might expect, Defoe’s voice is strident in its condemnation of the Pretender and Jacobites.

Defoe’s commentary on and interpretation of the pressing issues of the day contributed significantly to the whipping-up of the kind of fear to which Hoppit refers. In the Spectator number 125, July 24, 1711, Addison addresses this very topic, pointing to the insidious nature of political division. Taken to its extreme, the logical outcome is civil war. “There cannot a greater Judgment befall a country,” he writes, “than such a dreadful Spirit of Division as rends a Government into two distinct People.” And, he goes on, “If this Party-Spirit has so ill an Effect on our Morals, it has likewise a very great one upon our Judgments.” The Tatler of August 15 to August 22, 1710 similarly comments on the topsy-turvy, seemingly unstable political world: “I have formerly known a very well-bred Person refuse to return a bow of a Man whom he thought in Disgrace, that was next Day made Secretary of State.”

The periodicals of the day helped shape public opinion and the political culture of the day. The other periodicals published in the first decade of the eighteenth century, such as The Tatler, The Guardian, The Examiner, and The Spectator, along with The Review, did not simply report and reflect public opinion. They informed, but they also endeavored to persuade. Much like a modern newspaper, the periodical and news press of the early eighteenth century were culturally and politically influential. Defoe’s critical relentlessness about the dangers faced by the country should the Jacobites be successful in their intentions was echoed and contested across a range of periodical literature, all of which was highly partisan. Andrew Pettegree has recently pointed out in The Invention of News that the appearance of The Review was culturally and commercially timely. Although the “news” industry had been in existence long before Defoe et al. contributed to it, the early eighteenth century expansion of the reading public combined fortuitously with a considerable increase and interest in current affairs, domestic and foreign (Pettegree 1).

In Number 18, September 30, 1712, for instance, we read that a pre-occupation with an external threat – i.e. the Pretender – is as nothing compared to the danger to hearth and home represented by the internal menace that is Jacobitism. “I wonder to see those People,” writes Defoe, “who talk so much of the Danger of the Pretender, overlook the Growth and Increase of Jacobitism at home.” Such people have put their trust in “Foreign Alliances and Guarantees” (9: 69). Contemporaries were not blind to Defoe’s rabble-rousing rhetoric. Number 15 of The Examiner, November 16, 1710, sees Swift describe the editors of The Review and the Observator newspaper as “two stupid illiterate Scribblers, both of them Fanaticks by Profession.” For Swift, Defoe and his rival are no better than rabble-rousers, demagogues who appeal to the “lowest part of Mankind.” In Numbers 30 and 32, issued on November 11 and 18, 1712, Defoe responds to those who complain that they are tired of hearing him on this issue in a typically unapologetic fashion, and continues to question critically his readers’ loyalty and their duty as citizens. Accordingly, the opening sentences of Number 30 are trenchant: “I Have stated the Case of the Succession with what clearness I can; I have told you where your danger lies, and from what cause it proceeds. If what I say is just, I care not how much my Noise offends you, for I write to please none of you, but to waken you” (9: 116). As an editorial position this leaves little room for doubt. The danger to the Protestant Succession personified in a Catholic pretender was keenly felt in 1712–13. It continued to plague the political life of the nation until 1745, and beyond.

Although Defoe here treats the Pretender, and the Jacobites within Britain, as distinct and separate issues, this is not always the case in other numbers, as his sentiments aired in Number 32 demonstrate: “Nobody would be willinger than I,” he offers, “to forward any Thing that would secure us against the Pretender.” Not, however, at any price. Although “Whiggish” in his views – on commerce, on Jacobitism, on the importance of the Hanoverian Succession, and on good relations with the Dutch – he was not averse to criticising the Whigs where he thought it necessary. These views were extended in pamphlets published in the last years of Anne’s reign such as A Defence of the Allies, An Essay on the Treaty of Commerce with France, and, with its heavily ironic title, Reasons against the Succession of the House of Hanover. As Paula Backscheider has pointed out in Daniel Defoe: His Life, these works are bitingly and blatantly sarcastic: they argued that if the Pretender was successful in his return the country would learn the meaning of slavery (323). He returns to the subject in Number 23, October 18, 1712, where once again he points out that more, not less, needs to be said in defence of the Protestant Succession. The war for hearts and minds is being lost in the provinces and in the countryside more generally: “These are the Artifices of the Jacobite Party over the whole Kingdom, and by these methods they prevail but too much over the common People … [if] the interest of the Pretender becomes Popular, I speak it plainly, I’ll not give a farthing for your Protestant Succession” (9: 93).

For anyone interested in the culture and politics of the early eighteenth century, then, McVeagh’s edition is essential reading. The Review in the older facsimile edition has served scholars well. McVeagh’s edition, re-set, annotated, and properly edited with an excellent index, is an outstanding replacement.

David Walker
Northumbria University


WORKS CITED

Backscheider, Paula R. Daniel Defoe: His Life. Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 1989. Print.

Hoppit, Julian. A Land of Liberty: England 1689–1727. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000. Print.

Pettegree, Andrew. The Invention of News: How the World Came to Know About Itself. New Haven: Yale UP, 2014. Print.

Rogers, Pat. Ed. Defoe: The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge, 1972. Print.

Ross, Angus. Ed. Selections from The Tatler and The Spectator. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982. Print.

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Daniel Defoe: Contrarian, by Robert James Merrett

Reviewed by Elizabeth R. Napier

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a “contrarian” as “a person who (habitually) opposes or rejects prevailing opinion or established practice; someone who behaves in a contrary manner; (Finance) an investor who goes against the current consensus when trading, e.g. by buying shares in a company when their price is falling.” In my meager slate of investments, a contrarian fund, shares of which I bought when it was touted in the 1990s, rises and falls at alarming rates. It is a fund whose philosophy goes against the grain; it is managed in counter-intuitive, oppositional ways. This is effectively Merrett’s view of Defoe: contrary, “contrariant,” oppositional, “mutually antagonistic.” His works progress, as Blake would have it, and as Merrett underscores in one of the many arresting epigraphs to his book, by “[c]ontraries,” by a judicious (and sometimes, I might add, a not so judicious) alignment of opposites: secular and spiritual imperatives, rhetorical styles, generic modes, and social and cultural attitudes and norms. The whole exposes an “imaginary” (a term that Merrett adopts from the French) that is fueled by Defoe’s energetic curiosity about point of view, his tendency to adumbrate multiple sides of a question. Hence, Defoe is drawn to plurality, irony, and paradox, strategies that favor—indeed, often embrace and encourage—opposing views. Merrett argues that such a proclivity is deliberate, a sign of Defoe’s conscious art. Deploying, loosely, methods of discourse analysis, reader-response theory, and explication de texte to reveal the system behind Defoe’s apparent proteanism, Merrett contends that Defoe aligns conflicting claims with care, intent thereby “to make accessible the deep structures of cognitive and spiritual awareness” (xi) and to challenge his readers to ponder more deeply and dynamically the issues of his works. It is a heavy claim, and it may be true—as may be Merrett’s contention that Defoe “to a degree anticipated developments in semiotic and speech-act theory” (xii). Merrett offers repeated evidence of Defoe’s “polarity thinking” across a broad spectrum of texts and emphasizes, especially in the fiction, Defoe’s unusual attentiveness to (and demands upon) his readers.

Merrett covers a wide expanse of Defoe’s work—fiction; political, theological, and economic tracts; prefaces; manuals of matrimony—and canvasses Defoe’s views on subjects as varied as philology, music, and pulpit oratory. Such a comprehensive approach suggests that Merrett is making a claim for how Defoe’s mind works: dialectically, polymorphically. This dynamic marks, Merrett observes, Defoe’s fictional and non-fictional texts, and he therefore (in a deliberate departure from critical tradition) finds it fruitful to examine them under a similar rubric.

The evidence for “polar,” “dialectical,” or “contrarian” thinking, as Merrett variously calls it, is abundant in Defoe’s corpus: it is noticeable in Defoe’s excurses on love, domesticity, and spiritual health in marriage and in the fraught issues of male dominance and female subservience, which Defoe alternately and complexly critiques and endorses. It characterizes Defoe’s political commentaries on kingship and liberty and his theological-cultural observations on Quakerism, Catholicism, and Islam. It is a distinctive feature of his fictional narratives, in which characters, or characters and their creator, embrace multiple attitudes toward secular and spiritual issues.

Merrett’s study is divided into eight chapters. The first chapter argues that Defoe’s attention to polysemy (what E. Anthony James called Crusoe’s “semantic quibbl[ing]” [167]—“Shovel or Spade,” “a Thing like a Hodd”) conveys Defoe’s awareness of spoken English and his characters’ recognition that language conveys opposing views, creating, in Merrett’s opinion, “dispersions” rather than synonymies of meaning (9), juxtapositions rather than reinforcements of concepts. In Robinson Crusoe, such strategies subtly convey Crusoe’s “ambivalent moral and spiritual condition” (9). Captain Singleton, more dramatically afflicted with spiritual ennui, adopts a similar narrative habit.

Time schemes and place schemes (in A Journal of the Plague Year, Colonel Jack, and Roxana, for example, and in the circular geographical trajectory of Moll Flanders) further complicate and “stretch” Defoe’s fictional plots, highlighting his interest in causation, an interest that Merrett contends has a deeply theological foundation. Indeed, as he describes it, Defoe’s allegiance to dialectical thought processes stylistically informs his theological and political writings as well (writings that Merrett feels provide a basis for Defoe’s fictions), resulting in fictional and factual narrations of “rich textual plurality” (42).

Defoe’s characters’ reflective and reflexive thinking is conveyed by Defoe’s frequent use of the phrase “just Reflections,” an imperative for both his (all too often insufficiently reflective) characters and for his readers, an adjuration for moral and spiritual contemplation, and a reminder that profane acts are capable of—and almost inevitably demand—translation into religious insights. Merrett accordingly tracks Crusoe’s errant course toward spiritual truth, arguing that his reflections remain incomplete and anticlimactic until the work’s third volume, Serious Reflections, the method and substance of which Merrett discusses in a subsequent chapter. Similar avoiders (or non-starters) of spiritual self-examination are Captain Singleton, Moll Flanders, and Colonel Jack, and, most emphatically, Roxana, from all of whom Defoe passes the baton to the reader in a quest to improve the reflections of these masters and mistresses of spiritual ineptitude. The “evasions inherent in reasoning” (71) that are often exemplified in Defoe’s narrators’ cunningly contorted tales is similarly a topic of implicit and explicit emphasis in his conduct manuals, Religious Courtship, The Complete English Tradesman, and Conjugal Lewdness.

Dialectical tensions between secular and spiritual domains are prominent in Serious Reflections and, according to Merrett, inform all of Defoe’s narrative projects, indicating that for Defoe narrative meaning derives from a grasp of particular event and general truth. That all of Defoe’s narratives depend heavily upon the Bible clarifies that reading, in Defoe’s view, is a hermeneutic exercise, involving a careful balancing of tensions between secular and religious values. This idea is extrapolated in the following chapter in which Merrett explores the astonishing range of biblical allusions embedded in Defoe’s work as well as the various creative adaptations and refashionings of these allusions in texts from The Complete English Tradesman to Roxana. (In the index, biblical allusions and typology take up an eye-opening four columns.)

The relevance of the Bible to Defoe’s political ideas (his allegiance to monarchy, his belief in the limits of religious liberty) and his penchant for impersonation are taken up in the next chapter, in which Merrett also discusses Defoe’s distaste for Catholicism and his mingled censure of and curiosity toward Islam, the latter of which attitudes confirms, in Merrett’s view, Defoe’s resistance to contemporary prejudices against Islam and an interest in challenging cultural norms in his characteristically contrarian way.

Similar ideas inform Defoe’s fictions, which repeatedly elaborate concerns about the exercise of political authority, a concept that is intimately related to a sense of God’s jurisdiction over the affairs of men. Thus, in Robinson Crusoe, as in Captain Singleton and Colonel Jack in particular, Defoe is overtly preoccupied with inappropriate political and religious imaginings and their interconnection (also examined in A Journal of the Plague Year, Moll Flanders, and Roxana).

A related dialectic informs the marital tracts and those fictions in which marriage is a central problem (that is, all of them except the first volume of Robinson Crusoe). In these works, Defoe propounds both traditional and untraditional attitudes toward marriage, love, and sexuality, and underscores the relationship between healthy domesticity and spiritual self-examination as well as registering a progressive sensitivity to gender inequality in courtship and marriage.

The longest of Merrett’s chapters, which concludes his study, explores more closely the ways in which Defoe’s narratives are necessarily (by virtue of his dialectical method) recursive and multiform: generically mixed, both historical and proleptic, amusing (“descriptive”) and moral (“prescriptive”). In this section, Merrett examines Defoe’s fictional prefaces and their conflicting claims of utility and entertainment, and the attention to reading throughout, as well as the instability of Defoe’s narrators’ tales and their vacillation between public (audible) and private (often inaudible) discourse.

If Merrett’s claims about Defoe’s “polar sense” seem occasionally a bit obtrusive and translate a bit woodenly into his analyses of Defoe’s fictions (the treatment of which tends on occasion to be overly elaborated and descriptive), his point that Defoe’s narrators seem constitutionally unable or unwilling to “solve the problem[s] of personal integrity and moral will” (230) that confront them is well worth making. Defoe’s contrarian stance refracts and complicates any injunctions to problem-solve, on the part of Defoe’s characters and on the part of his readers. I would argue that Defoe’s narrators, preternaturally concerned (even more so than Merrett contends here) with telling their stories and covering their tracks, cease (guiltily or cavalierly) to heed the moral demands that have propelled their narratives in the first place, and so their attention to readers’ reception of these strange and turgid tales is unusually high. Shuttling, as Merrett claims, as in the non-fictional works, between “description and prescription” (232, 234), with narrators “deficient in narrative integrity” (235) at the helm, Defoe produces recursive tracts that display repeated tensions between secular and religious values (as critics of Defoe have long noted), audition and silence, public and private, and diverse generic modes.

I do not share Merrett’s sense of Defoe as a highly deliberate artist, creating fictional characters that reflect in coherent ways on selfhood and narration, but I do agree that these are aspects of Defoe’s work that are among the most vivid and original and that deserve more critical attention. It may be a bit extreme to argue that Defoe embraces the “bicameral mind” (as Merrett does in his final chapter), but perhaps this is semantic quibbling: this work brings into focus the deep divisiveness and contrarianism of both Defoe’s fictions and his social and political tracts and of the contrarian pattern that is the hallmark of both his writing and his mentalité—as Merrett would have it, of his imaginary.

Elizabeth R. Napier
Middlebury College


WORKS CITED

James, E. Anthony. Daniel Defoe’s Many Voices: A Rhetorical Study of Prose Style and Literary Method. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1972. Print.

Oxford English Dictionary. www.oed.com. Web.

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Daniel Defoe et l’écriture de l’histoire, by Emmanuelle Peraldo

Reviewed by Baudouin Millet

Emmanuelle Peraldo’s Daniel Defoe et l’écriture de l’histoire reflects on the relationship between Daniel Defoe’s “historical” writings (this problematical term is abundantly analyzed throughout the book) and his later fiction, in the wake of Robert Mayer’s History and the Early English Novel: Matters of Fact from Bacon to Defoe (1997) and Maximillian Novak’s Daniel Defoe: Master of Fictions (2001). Although Peraldo acknowledges a debt to recent Defoe scholarship, her study is also informed by the work of several contemporary historians (Hayden White among others) and theorists of history such as Paul Ricœur, who, unlike early modern British historians, is regularly mentioned in the course of her study. The book is divided into four sections, with each chapter usually laying stress on a particular work by Defoe, although some of the works mentioned in one section occasionally reappear later for the purpose of argumentation.

The first section, entitled “Defoe and scholarly history” (“Defoe et l’histoire savante”), examines Defoe in his historical context. In chapter 1, Peraldo studies Defoe’s “monumental” (31) contributions to the history of the Anglo-Scottish Union of 1707. She reminds the reader that Defoe’s works in that period, including The History of the Union (1709) and numerous briefer pamphlets, are perhaps the most important sources on the history of the Union, even though they are the products of the pro-Union camp (39). The History of the Union is also seen as more than a work of mere propaganda, since it already seems to prefigure, in Maximillian Novak’s words, “the kind of fiction Defoe would eventually write” (47, quoting Novak 349). The other major works Peraldo scrutinizes in this chapter are the Review (1704–13), which performs the same propagandist functions, through different modalities, as the History; Memoirs of the Church of Scotland (1717), presented as private memoranda that allow Defoe to write a history of the Church of England from both an individual and a global perspective; and poems such as The Vision (1706) and Caledonia (1706). As an aside, Caledonia has been recently translated into French by Peraldo and will be published in a forthcoming book by Honoré Champion.

The next important work which the author studies in detail (chapter 2) is A Tour thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724–26). Peraldo argues that the numerous and not always trustworthy details about the places Defoe visited can be interpreted as “realistic tools” (“instruments réalistes”), the purpose of which is to make the narrative seem more credible, in the manner of Roland Barthes’s effet de réel. Here, she primarily analyzes the book as a work of fiction. Similarly, in the same chapter, Peraldo applies Gérard Genette’s Fiction et diction (1991) to assert that a text like the Tour, with its “pseudo-references,” does not ultimately “referentialize itself” but “fictionalizes” its references (69). Hence, like The History of the Union, the Tour is seen as a forerunner of Defoe’s later fictions, especially A Journal of the Plague Year (1722). The Tour is considered as a narrative that also allows its author to draw maps of the British Isles: Peraldo shows that Defoe’s linguistic strategies can be compared with the geographer’s techniques, both of which make, for example, history more visual and “palpable” (89–90). In her third chapter, Peraldo studies the use of numbers and figures in A Journal of the Plague Year and Due Preparations for the Plague (1722). These narratives are analyzed as the two parts of a diptych, whose innumerable dates, toponyms, and numbers, but also lacunae, create a “saturation” (100), so that the reader is not ultimately asked to give them credence but, rather, is expected to believe in a kind of truth that is more exemplary than properly historical (107).

The second part of Daniel Defoe et l’écriture de l’histoire examines Defoe’s personal involvement (“participation”) in his own stories, either as a private witness or as a political propagandist. It begins with a consideration of the anonymity adopted by Defoe, who almost systematically cultivated the authorial posture of a “veracious narrator” (123, quoting Damrosch 153) imposed by duty, necessity, or choice, or even sometimes by the writer’s own “delectation” (134). Peraldo analyzes the connection between the truth claims made by Defoe in the introductory parts of his narratives and the posture of anonymity. In the next chapter, she wonders whether, as a historian of his own time, whose political writings dealt with contemporary history, Defoe was in a position to attain a certain degree of “objectivity” (142). This leads her to study the political journals of the period and to concentrate again on Defoe’s celebrated political periodical the Review, whose historical purpose is clearly stated by Defoe himself (163). Peraldo shows how, paradoxically, the narratives embedded in the Review’s essays are often secondhand fictional stories, which leads her to wonder whether this periodical could be regarded as a literary work, and to suggest more generally that the fictionality that pervaded periodical essays in the early eighteenth century played an important part in the rise of the novel (167–74). In this section, Peraldo builds on, among other critical works, Lennard Davis’s Factual Fictions (1983), as well as Alain Bony’s Leonora, Lydia et les autres (2004). She concludes that Defoe’s journalistic discourse has literary value, lying halfway between historical and fictional discourses (171).

The third part of Peraldo’s study focuses on the theological writings of Defoe, produced during his later career, a lesser-known corpus of writings that includes demonological treatises such as The Political History of the Devil (1726), A System of Magick (1726), and An Essay on the History and Reality of Apparitions (1727). These texts are analyzed in terms of providential history, strongly influenced by the biblical narrative (206), as well as, paradoxically, by the rationalism of the Royal Society (211–12). These considerations are followed by an examination of the providential patterning of Defoe’s major fictions, including Robinson Crusoe (1719) and the narratives focusing on natural disasters, such as tempests (The Storm [1704]) or epidemics (A Journal of the Plague Year), in which divine Providence is considered to be a “structural principle of Defoe’s fictions” (“principe structural des fictions de Defoe” [215]). Peraldo then takes up Defoe’s views on demonology and on the supernatural as they are dramatized in his theological writings, offering an original account of the author’s devotion to factual history. Finally, the third chapter of this section offers a reflection on the kind of history Defoe produces, “History/ history/ histories/ his story” (243), and insists on the importance of Defoe’s major contribution in these fields, namely his study of history from the point of view of dropouts—among these she concentrates on pirates (like several contemporary critics, she includes A General History of the Pyrates [1724–28] in her examination of Defoe’s corpus [132]).

The last part of Peraldo’s study considers the structural relationship between historiography and fictional narrative, borrowing from Ricœur’s theory of “emplotment,” common to both historical and fictional narratives, and applying it to Defoe’s travel narratives, which she locates on an unstable boundary between the historical and the fictional. She then examines Robinson Crusoe again to suggest that it offers a kind of allegorical counterpoint to the Tour (271), Defoe’s “novel” being seen as a political and economical allegory, and the Tour as a disguised novel (277). After a discussion of Defoe’s “proto-historical novels,” his works on the plague as well as Memoirs of a Cavalier (1720), Peraldo concludes with the elusiveness of Defoe’s narratives which tend to blur generic categories (305), illustrated by the problematic reception of A Journal of the Plague Year in the centuries that followed its publication. The narrative techniques of the Journal (the use of charts, lists, and inventories), Peraldo suggests, are borrowed from the historians of the period, as are H.F.’s “truth claims.” In this section, more explicit references to the works of historians contemporaneous with Defoe would have been welcome, as they might have shed greater light on the originality of his own pseudo-historical practices. The final chapter of this section attempts to assess in a few pages Defoe’s importance in the development of a new kind of writing, namely, the novel. This chapter locates Defoe’s writings in the heated debate on the “origins” of the English novel in the wake of Ian Watt’s pioneering study, insisting on the status of Defoe’s novels as workshops in which narrative experimentations are being conducted, some two decades before “novelists” embarked on generic considerations about the new “genre” they illustrated.

In Daniel Defoe et l’écriture de l’histoire, Peraldo sheds light on a variety of works written by Defoe himself, but also on works by such philosophers and historians as Paul Ricœur, Hayden White, and Paul Veyne, whom she regularly mentions in the course of her study. The reader will appreciate the numerous pedagogical introductions that contextualize the various works or concepts she discusses, especially for those who are unfamiliar with the lesser-known titles attributed to Defoe. Peraldo also shows she has a precise knowledge of many of Defoe’s works, including the proliferation of pamphlets that appeared in the wake of the publication of The Shortest Way with the Dissenters (1702) or when Britain was preparing itself for the plague in the early 1720s, to name but two instances. Another achievement of the author is her skilled rhetorical analyses of several extracts from Defoe’s works (see especially 85, 174, 297, 299, 313), which indeed might have been fruitfully developed at greater length. This well-informed study takes into account the recent scholarship on Defoe, as well as contemporary theories of history, and offers a useful and impressive bibliography of 873 items together with no less than sixteen substantial annexes. Finally, Peraldo’s analyses of Defoe’s “cartographic narration” (91) have been interestingly pursued in three recent articles (see the Works Cited) which develop some of the ideas formulated at the end of the first part of her book.

Baudouin Millet
Université Lumière-Lyon 2


WORKS CITED

Bony, Alain. Leonora, Lydia et les autres: Etude sur le (nouveau) roman anglais du XVIIIe siècle. Lyon: PU de Lyon, 2004. Print.

Damrosch, Leopold Jr. “Defoe as Ambiguous Impersonator.” Modern Philology 71 (1973): 153-59. Print.

Davis, Lennard. Factual Fictions: The Origins of the English Novel. New York: Columbia UP, 1983. Print.

Genette, Gérard. Fiction et Diction. Paris: Le Seuil, 1991. Print.

Mayer, Robert. History and the Early English Novel: Matters of Fact from Bacon to Defoe. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997. Print.

Novak, Maximillian E. Daniel Defoe: Master of Fictions: His Life and Ideas. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2001. Print.

Peraldo, Emmanuelle. “‘Gulliver, Robinson et les autres…’: Espace du texte et textualisation de l’espace au XVIIIe siècle.” Revue de la Société d’Etudes Anglo-Américaines des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles HS3 (2013): 91–111. Print.

—. “Narrative Cartography in the Eighteenth Century: Defoe’s Exploration of Great Britain in The Tour.” Narratives of Travels and Tourism. Ed. Jacqueline Tivers and Tijana Rakić. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2012. 97–108. Print.

—. “Telling Figures and Telling Feelings: The Geography of Emotions in the London of Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year and Due Preparations for the Plague (1722).” Revue de la Société d’Etudes Anglo-Américaines des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles 69 (2012): 167–83. Print.

Ricœur, Paul. Time and Narrative. Vol. 1.Translated by Kathleen McLauglin and David Pellauer. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984. Print.

Watt, Ian. The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding. London: Chatto and Windus, 1957. Print.

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Dating Warning or Lanthorn to London

Holly Faith Nelson and Sharon Alker

IT WOULD be helpful, when possible, if digital archives such as Early English Books Online (EEBO), the Bodleian Libraries’ Broadside Ballads Online (BBO), and the University of California, Santa Barbara English Broadside Ballad Archive (EBBA) included the estimated date of first printing of ballads in their collections to avoid misreadings of the circumstances of a ballad’s production and transmission. Such information would also inform accounts of the adaptation and redeployment of a ballad in particular historical periods. The dating of the ballad Warning or Lanthorn to London, by the doleful destruction of faire Jerusalem in EEBO and BBO is a case in point.

The English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC) dates the ballad Warning or Lanthorn to London “[1655-1658].” The copy mentioned was printed in London for “F. Coles, J. Wright, Tho. Verse and W. Gilbertson.” The citation/ reference is given as “Wing (2nd ed.), W925A.” In EEBO, the 16-stanza version printed with another ballad, Of the horrible and woful destruction of Jerusalem, is also said to have been “printed for F. Coles, J. Wright, Tho. Vere, and W. Gilbertson.” The Wing (2nd ed.) catalogue date of “[1658?]” is given along with the date of “1690.” The bib name/numbers are listed as “Wing (2nd ed.) / 0144” and “Wing (2nd ed.) / W925A.” In BBO, the date of publication of the 16-stanza version of the ballad, again printed alongside the second ballad, is given as “between 1655 and 1658” and the imprint indicates that it was “Printed for F. Coles, J. Wright, Tho. Vere, and W. Gilbertson.” The copies listed are “Wood 401(81)” and “Harding B 39(51).”

Evidence suggests that the version of Warning or Lanthorn to London referred to in the ESTC and reproduced in EEBO and BBO is a later edition of an Elizabethan siege ballad. An edition of Of the horrible and woful destruction of Jerusalem appeared in the sixteenth century. EBBA includes a photofacsimile of the Huntington Library`s copy of the ballad Of the horyble and woful destruccion of Jerusalem, on which the Elizabethan Thomas Colwell is named as the printer (Huntington Library Britwell 18266). The EBBA gives the approximate date of publication of Of the horrible and woful destruction of Jerusalem as “1569?” That Warning or Lanthorn to London was also first published in the Elizabethan period is supported by the research of Andrew Clark. An 18-stanza version of Warning or Lanthorn to London is included in the first volume of Andrew Clark’s The Shirburn Ballads, 1585-1616. Clark provides some prefatory information on the ballad and its sources: “A Black-letter copy in Wood, 401 fol. 81, omits stanzas 5 and 11. The ultimate source of the ballad is, of course, the much-read Josephus. John Stockwood, ‘Schoolemaister’ of Tunbridge, published at London, 1584, ‘A very fruitfull and necessarye sermon of the moste lamentable destruction of Ierusalem,’ which contains, and may have suggested, most of the points in the ballad” (31). More recently, Michael Hattaway dates a ballad with the same first line, “When fair Jerusalem did stand,” 1586 (42), relying on the details from Appendix A of Tessa Watt’s Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550−1640. Watts writes of the dates of entry of the ballad in the Stationer’s Register: “?ent. 15 au. 1586; 8 jn. 1603; 14 de. 1624” (334).

Therefore, while the sixteen-stanza version(s) of Warning or Lanthorn to London reproduced in EEBO and BBO, and listed on the ESTC, may be correctly dated, it is likely that the eighteen-stanza version first appeared in or around 1586.

Trinity Western University

Whitman College

WORKS CITED

Broadside Ballads Online. Bodleian Libraries. Web. 29 Aug. 2014.

Clark, Andrew, ed. The Shirburn Ballads, 1586-1616. Oxford: Clarendon, 1907. The Internet Archive. Web. 29 Aug. 2014.

Early English Books Online. ProQuest. Web. 29 Aug. 2014.

English Broadside Ballad Archive. U of California, Santa Barbara. Web. 29 Aug. 2014.

The English Short Title Catalogue. The British Library. Web. 29 Aug. 2014.

Hattaway, Michael. Renaissance and Reformations: An Introduction to Early Modern English Literature. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005. Print.

Watts, Tessa. Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550-1640. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991. Print.

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Paying for Poetry at the Turn of the Eighteenth Century, with Particular Reference to Dryden, Pope, and Defoe

J. A. Downie

IT IS SOMETIMES insinuated that author-publisher relations changed once and for all as a consequence of Dryden’s contract with Jacob Tonson to publish a subscription edition of his translation of Virgil, and Pope’s subsequent agreement with Bernard Lintot to publish a translation of the Iliad. Both poets unquestionably made a lot of money out of these publications. Dryden should have received the proceeds of the 101 five-guinea subscriptions in their entirety, in accordance with his contract with Tonson, as well as an additional sum from the cheaper second subscription. In addition to agreeing to pay Dryden £200 in four instalments for the copyright of his translation of Virgil to encourage him to complete the project as speedily as possible, Tonson also paid the capital costs of the plates and alterations and the costs of the 101 copies for the first subscribers. He even made a contribution towards the costs of the copies of the second subscribers. John Barnard calculates that “in all Dryden received between £910 and £1,075 from Tonson and the subscribers, and probably £400 or £500 for his [three] dedications” (“Patrons” 177). Yet Dryden fell out with Tonson, and William Congreve and one Mr Aston were called in to mediate. “You always intended I shou[l]d get nothing by the Second Subscriptions,” Dryden complained to Tonson, “as I found from first to last” (Letters 77). After shopping around among other booksellers, however, Dryden came to think rather differently. “Upon trial,” Dryden wrote to Tonson, “I find all of your trade are Sharpers & you not more than others; therefore I have not wholly left you” (Letters 80-81).

As this does not seem to me to be overwhelmingly indicative of a new-found confidence in the relationship between author and bookseller, perhaps we should exercise caution before rushing to use the example of Dryden’s contract with Tonson as evidence of the rise of the professional writer. On the contrary, an examination of the arrangements surrounding Dryden’s translation of Virgil suggests that they were actually a sort of adaptation of the system of “literary production based on patronage”, which, according to Jürgen Habermas, was superseded “in the first decades of the eighteenth century, after the publisher replaced the patron as the author’s commissioner and organized the commercial distribution of literary works” (38). “Publication by subscription was not a new idea, and both Dryden and Tonson had experience with it,” James Winn points out: “For the Virgil project, Dryden and Tonson correctly anticipated persuading one hundred aristocrats to pay the substantial sum of five guineas for an expensive edition on fine paper, adorned with engravings, by promising that each subscriber would have one of the engravings dedicated to him, with his name and coat of arms. They also expected to sell several hundred copies of the same edition at two guineas to subscribers who would simply have their names listed” (Winn 474-75). The attraction of this method of publication as far as Tonson was concerned was that he would not have had to underwrite the costs in terms of paper, printing, marketing and distribution of such a huge financial undertaking. By publishing “by subscription,” Dryden, on the other hand, could look forward to receiving “half in hande” from the subscribers for the five-guinea edition—and 250 guineas was not to be sneezed at—“besides another inferior Subscription of two Guinneys” (Letters 64). This was one of the principal attractions of subscription publishing for authors. They could be paid a considerable proportion of the amount of the edition in advance, and in fact Dryden was paid three guineas down by the five-guinea subscribers, and two more on receipt of the book.

If on first blush this arrangement appears to anticipate the advance on signature of more modern contracts between author and publisher, in other key respects it seems to be more of an adaptation of the older system of patronage which, according to Habermas, had been superseded “after the publisher replaced the patron as the author’s commissioner.” As Thomas Lockwood has perceptively observed, subscription publishing was actually “an intensely nostalgic replication of personal patronage within a publishing system long since operating on market motives—a commercialization of patronage, or even a democratization of it, but in the sense only of a commercially expanded opportunity for lots of people to play cheaply at being patrons as of old” (32). This certainly seems to have been the case as far as Dryden’s translation of Virgil is concerned. Winn notes that “the final list of 101 five-guinea subscribers is by no means restricted to people sharing his beliefs” (475). Headed up by Princess Anne and her husband, Prince George of Denmark, it comprised a representative cross-section of the nobility and gentry of England. Perhaps of even more significance, the long list of two-guinea subscribers “includes military officers, postmasters, architects, doctors, clergymen, and cabinet ministers” (Winn 475). In sum, Dryden’s translation of Virgil offers strong supporting evidence for Professor Lockwood’s suggestion that subscription publishing allowed “lots of people to play cheaply at being patrons” (32).

It was not plain sailing, however. Dryden had anticipated making a considerable additional amount from the two-guinea subscribers. Before he fell out with Tonson over what he felt to be sharp dealing on the bookseller’s part, he wrote to him to explain that, “if the Second Subscriptions rise, I will take so much the more time [over the rest of the translation], because the profit will incourage me the more” (Letters 75). Doubtless it was because he was so disappointed that Dryden subsequently accused Tonson of intending that he should “get nothing by the Second Subscriptions” (Letters 77), and it probably also had a bearing on his decision “to make three severall Dedications, of the Eclogues, the Georgics, and the Eneis” (Letters 86). In any discussion of changes in author-publisher relations after the Revolution of 1688, it is important not to overlook the several ways in which writers could make money from their works, because selling the “copies” or copyrights to booksellers was not necessarily the most lucrative method, particularly after the expiry of the Printing Act in 1695. Almost certainly Dryden sought to compensate for the failure of the two-guinea subscriptions to live up to his expectations by exploiting the old-fashioned means of dedicating his translations to three separate patrons in hopes of financial reward.

He had good reason to be optimistic about the prospect of benefiting in this way. In 1692 he had been generously rewarded by the Earl of Abingdon for his poem, Eleonora, written in memory of the Countess who had died the previous year. One tradition claims that Dryden was given 500 guineas, although Winn is surely right to believe that figure to be “wildly exaggerated” (474). My point is that even Dryden, the best-selling writer of the age, would have been unable to make anything like that sort of money had he sold the copyright of any of his works to a bookseller in the 1690s. He would have been acutely aware that this was the case as he had sold the copyright of his play, Cleomenes, to Tonson for the large sum of 30 guineas the previous year; hence the attraction of a subscription edition. Although he was urged by Tonson to dedicate his translation of Virgil to William III, Dryden’s decision to “make three severall Dedications” was dictated partly by the exigency of the publishing schedule—which meant that as the work was “already in the Press,” he could no longer delay publication “in hopes of” the “return” of James II (Letters 86)—and partly by the desire to maximize his profits. “Whichever sum, £1,075 or £910 6s. 8d., is accepted as being the closer to Dryden’s earnings, it is clear that the larger part of the total profits for the Virgil was dependent upon copy money and subscriptions,” Professor Barnard has argued: “At the very outside Dryden received perhaps one third of his gains from patrons, and the greater part of that was probably in the form of payment for the three dedications” (“Subscriptions” 140). It is for this reason, presumably, that Professor Barnard suggests that “the Virgil would seem to represent a transitional phase in the changeover from patron to bookseller” (“Subscriptions” 130). 1

The same might reasonably be argued about Pope’s contract with Bernard Lintot for his translation of Homer’s Iliad. Although he had publicized the venture as early as 1713, the only extant version of the proposals is to be found at the end of the third edition of The Rape of the Lock (1714) under the heading, “BOOKS printed for Bernard Lintott”:

PRoposals for printing, by Subscription, a Translation of Homer’s Iliad into Verse and Rhime. By Mr. Pope. To which will be added, explanatory and critical Notes; wherein the most curious and useful Observations, either of the Ancients or Moderns, in relation to this Author in general, or to any Passages in particular, shall be collected and placed under their proper Heads.
This Work shall be printed in six Volumes in Quarto, on the finest Paper, and on a letter new Cast on purpose; with Ornaments and initial Letters engraven on Copper. Each Volume containing four Books of the Iliad; with Notes to each Book.
It is proposed at the rate of one Guinea for each Volume: The first Volume to be deliver’d in Quires within the space of a Year from the Date of this Proposal, and the rest in like manner annually: Only the Subscribers are to pay two Guineas in hand, advancing one in regard of the Expence the Undertaker must be at in collecting the several Editions, Criticks and Commentators, which are very numerous upon this Author.
A third Guinea to be given upon delivery of the second Volume; and so on to the sixth, for which nothing will be required, on consideration of the Guinea advanced at first. Subscriptions are taken in by Bernard Lintott. (Pope 53)

What I find particularly interesting about this novel arrangement, over and above Pope’s control of paper quality, letterpress, ornaments and engravings, was how subscribers were to pay the six guineas for the six-volume set. As David Foxon points out: “Publishing in six volumes on the instalment system also meant that subscribers could be asked for more money because it was spread over six years” (Pope 51). Whereas the initial outlay for the subscribers to Dryden’s Virgil was three guineas, Pope’s subscribers were only asked to “pay two Guineas in hand:” one for the first volume itself; and one in advance “in regard of the Expence the Undertaker must be at.” The rest of the six guineas was to be paid in installments as the volumes came out year by year and were delivered to the subscribers. As Pope’s contract with Lintot stipulated that the latter would print 750 copies of each volume of his translation of the Iliad “on a Royall Paper of a Quarto size,” he could anticipate total receipts from 750 subscribers of 4,500 guineas, of which 1,500 guineas would be paid up front, as opposed to the 500 guineas in total that Dryden received from his one hundred five-guinea subscribers. In addition, Lintot was to pay Pope 200 guineas per volume for the copyright, as opposed to the £200 in four installments that Dryden received from Tonson. When he signed the contract with Lintot, therefore, Pope might have expected to receive a total of 5,700 guineas for his translation of the Iliad—around £6,000 2—at least four times as much as Dryden made out of his Virgil, assuming Professor Barnard’s estimate of between £1,310 and £1,575 is accurate.

As in the case of Dryden’s Virgil, Pope found that publishing by subscription proved to be far from straightforward, however. The list of Dryden’s first subscribers was filled so speedily that he actually complained to Tonson that “I cou’d have got an hundred pounds more: and you might have spard almost all your trouble, if you had thought fit to publish the proposals for the first Subscriptions: for I have guinneas offerd me every day, if there had been room” (Letters 80-81). 3 Pope’s experience was rather different, as he had to work much harder than he had anticipated in order to attract his 654 subscribers. And although he had been sufficiently canny in negotiating his contract with Lintot to ensure that, as Pat Rogers has pointed out, “he took all the subscription money, without the deductions for printing, paper, distribution etc. which normally came off the author’s share” (30), this arrangement had a corresponding disadvantage. “Lintot had no particular interest in assembling a large corps,” Professor Rogers points out, “since he was to make his profits out of the separate trade edition” (8). Hence the burden of getting subscriptions fell on Pope’s own shoulders. “I have been a long time very much taken up [sic] ingaged in all those Inconveniences which one must necessarily, more or less, endure from the world, whenever one expects to be serv’d in it,” he explained to Sir William Trumbull on 26 February 1714: “This Subscription having forced me upon many Appointments, Visits, & Tavern-Conversations, which as little agree with my Nature & Inclination, as with my Constitution” (Sherburn 402).

One final important point needs to be made about the experiences of Dryden and Pope in translating Virgil and the Iliad, respectively: they were by no means typical of the considerable number of ventures by authors who wished to make money out of publishing by subscription. Dryden was indisputably the foremost writer of his day, appreciated across the political spectrum regardless of his personal opinions, and yet he was in serious financial difficulties throughout the 1690s until his death in 1700. It is against this background that his unhappiness with what he suspected had been sharp practice on Tonson’s part with regard to the second subscriptions must be viewed. In Pope’s case, it was Lintot who seriously overestimated the profits to be made from a trade edition of a translation of the Iliad by “a distinguished writer at the height of his fame.” “Subscription ventures went on unabated, but few—if any—authors could demand Pope’s terms,” Professor Rogers observes: “The whole episode was less typical than historians of literature and of the book trade have chosen to believe” (29-30). Pope’s contract for his translation of the Iliad may have been “one of the most lucrative in literary history” (McLaverty 206), but, as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu observed in “An Epistle from Pope to Lord Bolingbroke,” Pope “Outwitted Lintot in his very trade” (qtd. in Foxon, Pope 63].

By way of illustrating the difficulties facing those who sought to make money by subscription editions of large works at the turn of the eighteenth century, perhaps we need look no further than the very different experience of Daniel Defoe. The Review for September 26, 1704 carried the following advertisement:

To be Printed by Subscription;
JURE DIVINO: A Satyr against Tyrranny and Passive Obedience; in Twelve Books. By the Author of the True born Englishman.
The whole will be near 100 Sheets in Folio, with Large Annotations, Printed on the finest Paper; No more to be Printed than are Subscribed. The Price to be Ten Shillings, Half a Crown only to be paid Down, the Remainder on Delivery: Subscriptions are taken in at the following Places … (1:251)

Quite clearly, Defoe’s project was of a different order from Dryden’s translation of Virgil or Pope’s translation of the Iliad. Instead of two or three guineas in advance of publication, Defoe asked for a mere two shillings and sixpence. Moreover, it is apparent from the Preface that Defoe did not anticipate he would be offered a huge sum of “copy money” by booksellers eager to purchase the copyright of Jure Divino. “Subscriptions are in their Nature design’d for two ends,” he explained:

     First, To enable the Authors by the Money advanc’d, to go thro’ the Expence of Printing, which every Man, that undertakes to publish a Book on his own Risque, cannot do, now which these Gentlemen did not know I could do without them.
Secondly, To secure the Author that the Subscribers will take it when ’tis finished … (Jure Divino 1:xxvii)

Unfortunately, Defoe was thwarted in both of these ends. By January 1706 he was reduced to complaining in the Review that “of the Subscriptions taken in London, tho’ Advertisements were frequently Publish’d, not half of them have paid the Money to the Author, nor can be prevail’d on, to let him know how many hands they have; by which he is kept from knowing his Number, tho’ they must know, he having promis’d to Print no more than are Subscrib’d, he could not go on without it” (3:12). Evidently rumors had been circulating that Defoe had no intention of printing Jure Divino, “and only form’d the Subscription as a Cheat, to get the Money in hand”—a “hard Suggestion,” which he sought to rebut as “Absurd in it self False, and without Ground, and meerly Malicious” (3:11).

Worse was to follow. The subscription edition of Jure Divino was finally advertised in the Review for July 18, 1706:

Saturday next will be publish’d,
JURE DIVINO, a Satyr in twelve Books, Folio. Written by the True-Born-English-Man, is now printed and ready to be delivered to the Subscribers, either bound or in Quires—For the Convenience of the Gentleman, who have subscrib’d, or are willing to have the said Book; Numbers are left at the following Places. (3:344)

But Defoe had delayed publication so long that he had been beaten to it. Two days later the Review carried the following long notice:

ADVERTISEMENTS.
There being Notice given in Print, of a base and villainous Design of Printing in small Character and less Volume, a Book Entitled Jure Divino, written by the Author of this Paper.
The Author setting aside the Arguments against the Honesty of the thing, as what is no way moving to those, who commit so manifest a Robbery on the Property of another, desires the World but to consider the Justice of the Pretence, Viz. That this Book is sold for the sole Benefit of the Author.
The Author thanks the Pyrater of this Book for taking off the Mask, and showing the Thief so plain, that any Man may see it himself without a Comment.
If not for the Benefit of the Author, why did the Author propose it by Subscription?—Why did he not rather, having labour’d to finish a Tract of that Size, come humbly to the Bookseller, and beg him to receive the Benefit of his Work?
I think, therefore, that there can be no stronger Argument than this; That this Design is a Robbery on the Author, by a Sort of Men, who will neither give Authors valuable Considerations for any thing they do, nor suffer them to publish it themselves.
I can therefore no more question, but those Gentlemen, who have had so much Respect to the Author, as to encourage him to print the Book on their Subscription, will be mov’d by such foul Practises, to stand the firmer by their Subscription, which now becomes a Justice to the Author.
As to the Pretence of imposing on the Subscribers, ’tis a manifest Forgery; a Print having with great Charge been prepar’d to go with the Book, it has been offer’d to such as pleas’d voluntarily to pay for it, but never impos’d upon any; for the truth where-of, the Author appeals to the Gentlemen themselves.
As to the spurious Edition, its Corruptions, Errors and false Representations, accompanying such a Work, more shall be said hereafter, and a Proposal made to the Subscribers of this Book, that shall effectually suppress so scandalous an Attempt; and whenever the Author thinks fit to print it in 8vo. with Additions, the Subscribers to this shall be made Amends for those Additions, and the Price be much lower than 5 s.
As to those Gentlemen who have subscrib’d, the Author refers them to the Book for the Performance, whether the Terms on his side are not comply’d with, even beyond his Proposals; assuring them, he could have sav’d 40l. in number of Sheets, Goodness of Paper and Workmanship, and yet have come within the Bounds of his Proposal. If after this, any of the Subscribers, to save a Trifle, shall take up with a spurious Copy, to the encouraging a Thief in the robbing the Author, and thereby become accessory to the Crime—I submit to their Honesty, and had rather recieve [sic] Wrong than do it. (3:347-48)

On August 3rd, the Review concluded a mock advertisement for the pirated edition with the wry proposal that: “Whoever has a Mind to encourage such Robbery of other Men’s Studies at their own Expence, may be furnished with the said Book at Mr. Benjamin Bragg’s, Publisher in ordinary to the Pyrates. As appears by setting his Name to their Advertisements” (3:372). Whereas Dryden and Pope made small fortunes by publishing by subscription, Defoe’s very different attempt proved to be an unmitigated failure. “Defoe later claimed that he had lost £1,500 because of the pirated editions,” Paula Backscheider observes: “His dreams of establishing himself as a major poet could never be realized” (193).

II

Dryden’s translation of Virgil was finally delivered to subscribers, unbound, in August 1697. Two years earlier, the parliamentary session ended before the renewal of the Printing or Licensing Act, and subsequent attempts to introduce a bill for “the better Regulating of Printing, and Printing-Presses” in the succeeding session came to nothing. What has not been sufficiently taken into consideration in accounts of the alleged transformation in author-publisher relations on the expiry of the Printing or Licensing Act is the likely effect on the purchasing by booksellers of the “copies” or copyrights of poems, especially longer poems. The “consequential chaos in the book trade” (Astbury 322) seems to have had a serious impact on the amount of income which might otherwise have been derived from publishing poetry, as Defoe graphically explained in relation to The True-Born Englishman. Estimating that he would have “gain’d above … 1000 l. … had he been [able] to enjoy the Profit of his own Labour,” Defoe pointed out that he had been badly disadvantaged as a consequence of pirated editions of his best-selling poem, which was:

a Book that besides Nine Editions of the Author, has been Twelve Times printed by other Hands; some of which have been sold for 1 d. others 2 d. and others 6 d. the Author’s Edition being fairly printed, and on good Paper, and could not be sold under a Shilling. 80000 of the Small Ones have been sold in the Streets for 2 d. or at a Penny: And the Author thus abused and discourag’d had no Remedy but Patience. 4

Although Foxon succeeded in identifying only five authorized and five pirate editions rather than the “Nine Editions of the Author” and twelve pirate editions which Defoe asserted had been published in the Preface to the 1705 edition of A True Collection of the Writings of the Author of the True Born English-man (Foxon, English Verse 1:173), it is clear that the pirates benefited at Defoe’s expense. One of the cheaper pirated editions (ESTC T070653) took pleasure in announcing in Black Letter on its truncated title-page: “Note, This is Printed Word for Word from the Shilling Book.”

As the title-page of this pirated edition of The True-Born Englishman suggests, separately published poems usually cost either a shilling or sixpence, depending on length and format. 5
Individual plays and lengthy political pamphlets also normally cost a shilling—although some, such as Swift’s Discourse of the Contests and Dissentions, published in the autumn of 1701, cost a whopping four shillings. This leads on to an important consideration which tends to be overlooked. While Defoe inveighed against “this Piratical Printer, as such are very rightly called, who unjustly Print other Mens Copies,” 6
it is imperative not to underestimate the possible effects of the “legal hiatus” between 1695 and April 10, 1710 when the provisions of the Copyright Act of 1709 came into force. As William St Clair explains: “In the absence of a law of licensing or of intellectual property, the two main agents of literary production, publishers and authors, were both in danger of being unable to recoup their investments” (89). One of the unforeseen consequences of the expiry of the Printing Act was that the privileges of the Stationers’ Company perished along with the licensing system. More importantly, the Stationers’ Company had hitherto functioned as the mechanism by which the state sought to regulate and control illicit printing. As booksellers no longer had the ability to impose sanctions on those who infringed their copyright, they were highly unlikely to pay the “great Sums of Money for Copies” which they claimed had been their practice prior to the expiry of the Printing Act. As The Case of the Booksellers Right to their Copies, or Sole Power of Printing their Respective Books, represented to Parliament argued: “The Expense preparatory to the Printing of a Book, that is to say, the Setting the Letters together is such, that nothing less than the Printing off and selling Five hundred, and in many case a Thousand, will refund it.” Given these conditions, it was imperative that the trade was protected against “the Invasion of Interlopers” who by printing “Counterfeit Copies”—as Defoe found to his cost—jeopardised the income of both bookseller and author. As The Case of the Booksellers Right to their Copies proceeded to explain, “the greatest Charge in Printing is setting the Letters together; If he [the bookseller] be secure that no body else can print the Book, he will venture to print off a much larger Number than with the danger of that Book being Printed by another he durst do.” 7

After 1695, it appears, poets could no longer look forward with confidence to making money out of selling the copyrights of their poems to eager booksellers. This complicates any straightforward account of the rise of the professional writer following on from the end of pre-printing censorship. Interestingly, as J. Paul Hunter points out, “the late seventeenth century, especially after the expiration of the Licensing Act in 1695, elevated the miscellany to new levels of frequency, popularity and sophistication” (169). Not long before the Act was allowed to lapse, Jacob Tonson published Examen Poeticum: Being the Third Part of Miscellany Poems, Containing Variety of New Translations of the Ancient Poets. Together with many Original Copies, by the Most Eminent Hands which is dedicated by Dryden “To the Right Honourable, my Lord Radcliffe.” The section which followed, entitled “From the Bookseller to the Reader” and signed “JACOB TONSON,” is of such interest to the publication of poetry in the period that it merits quoting at length:

Having formerly Printed two Parts of Miscellany Poems, they were so kindly receiv’d, that I had long before now Endeavour’d to obtain a Third, had I not almost ever since the Publishing of the Second been Solliciting the Translating of Juvenal, and Persius. Soon after the Publication of that Book I waited upon several Gentlemen to ask their Opinion of a Third Miscellany, who encourag’d me to endeavour it, and have considerably help’d me in it.
Many very Ingenious Copies were sent to me upon my giving publick notice of this Design; but had I printed ’em all, the book wou’d have swell’d to too great a bulk, and I must have delay’d the Publishing of it ’till next Term: But those omitted, shall upon Order from the Authors be restored; or if the Gentlemen will be pleas’d to stay ’till next year, I shall take it as a favour to insert them into another Miscellany, which I then intend, if I find by the Sale that this proves as Entertaining as the former.
Several Reasons encourage me to Proceed upon the endeavouring a Fourth Volume: As that I had assurance of several Copies from Persons now out of England; which, though not yet arriv’d, I am confident will be sent in a short time, and they come from such Hands, that I can have no reason to doubt of their being very much esteem’d.
I would likewise willingly try if there could be an Annual Miscellany, which I believe might be an useful Diversion to the Ingenious. By this means care would be taken to preserve ev’ry Choice Copy that appears; whereas I have known several Celebrated Pieces so utterly lost in three or four years time after they were written, as not to be recoverable by all the search I could make after ’em.
I was for some years together possest of several Poems of Sir Carr Scrope’s, written with his own Hand, which I in vain of late strove to recover; for as I forgot to whom I lent ’em, so I believe the Person to whom they were lent does not remember where they were borrowed; But if the present Possessour of them reads this, I beg their being return’d.
If I should go on with the Design of an Annual Miscellany, after I have procur’d some Stock to proceed upon, I will give Publick Notice of it. And I hope the Gentleman who approve of this Design, will promote it, by sending such Copies as they judge will be acceptable.
                                                                                                                                                                   Your very humble Servant
                                                                                                                                                                                           JACOB TONSON

As the publication in the following year of The Annual Miscellany: For The Year 1694: Being the Fourth Part of Miscellany Poems strongly suggests, Tonson seems to have been perfectly serious when he put forward his proposal for “an Annual Miscellany,” even if he did not succeed in his “Design” of publishing one year on year. Whether this was because he found it an unprofitable enterprise or was unable to procure sufficient “Stock” of “Copies” to maintain an annual publication, the content of Tonson’s notice in Examen Poeticum is of significance to our understanding of the production and circulation of poetry at the turn of the eighteenth century.

Tonson does not appear to have been exaggerating when he stated that he received a large number of “very Ingenious Copies” on giving “publick notice” in Motteux’s The Gentleman’s Journal for June 1693 of his intention to publish “a third Volume of Miscellany Poems, written by Mr. Dryden and other eminent Hands.” 8
As Charles E. Ward notes: “The response seems to have been immediate; for in July Motteux announced, prematurely as it would appear, that Examen Poeticum had been published” (Letters 166). This did not please Dryden, who complained to William Walsh in August 1693 that “Tonson has … fayld me in the publishing his Miscellanyes” (Letters 56). Whether Dryden felt he had been let down because of delayed payment for his contribution to the so-called “Third Part of Miscellany Poems,” or because he went unrewarded for his lengthy dedication, “To the Right Honourable, My Lord Radcliffe,” is uncertain:

            My Lord,

THese Miscellany Poems, are by many Titles yours. The first they claim from your acceptance of my Promise to present them to you; before some of them were yet in being. The rest are deriv’d from your own Merit, the exactness of your Judgment in Poetry, and the candour of your Nature; easie to forgive some trivial faults, when they come accompanied, with countervailing Beauties. But after all, though these are your equitable claims to a Dedication from other Poets, yet I must acknowledge a Bribe in the case, which is your particular liking of my Verses. (Dryden, Examen Poeticum sig. A3)

The “bribe” Dryden was actually looking for was a financial return for his sycophantic dedication, but this failed to materialise. “I am sure you thought My Lord Radclyffe would have done something,” he wrote to Tonson on August 30th: “I ghessd more truly, though he cou’d not; but I was too farr ingagd to desist; though I was tempted to it, by the melancholique prospect I had of it” (Letters 58). Given the context, Dryden is almost certainly referring to his hopes of a reward for his lengthy disquisition attacking Rymer’s denigration of modern drama which, on account of its political overtones, Winn describes as “the least cautious piece of prose he had published since the Revolution” (463).

The big question with regard to the “[m]any very Ingenious Copies” Tonson apparently received from “Gentlemen” was the basis on which they were submitted. Would we be right to assume that these contributors expected to be paid for the privilege of seeing their poems in print? After all, at this juncture booksellers routinely referred not to “copyrights” but to “copies.” It was one of their great grievances that the “great Sums of Money for Copies” which they had paid prior to the expiry of the Printing Act on the understanding that it gave them “the sole Power of Printing that Book for ever after” had effectively been rendered virtually worthless by the dismantling of the regulatory machinery of the Stationers’ Company. But Tonson was writing prior to the failure to renew the provisions of the Printing Act. When he published not only Examen Poeticum but also The Annual Miscellany: For The Year 1694 he had no reason to suppose that the licensing system was about to come to an abrupt end.

Before we jump to the conclusion that Tonson paid not only Dryden, but all the other contributors to his miscellanies, we should take into account the financial implications of his so doing, because they are likely to have been prohibitive. There were over twenty named contributors to Examen Poeticum in addition to Dryden himself, several of whom, including Joseph Addison and Henry Sacheverell, were appearing in print for the first time. Had Tonson paid all his living contributors for the “very Ingenious Copies” he solicited, then he would have had to sell a huge number of copies of his miscellany simply in order to break even. On the contrary, Tonson represented his project to publish “an Annual Miscellany” as a public-spirited gesture “to preserve ev’ry Choice Copy that appears” lest any “Celebrated Pieces” were to be lost to posterity. Thus it is hard to escape the conclusion that when, after seeking public approbation of his “Design,” he ends by hoping that those “Gentleman who approve of this Design, will promote it, by sending such Copies as they judge will be acceptable,” Tonson is anticipating that they will submit their work without any thought of financial reward.

III
Almost certainly, this was how those celebrated early examples of literary periodicals, The Athenian Mercury and The Gentleman’s Journal: or the monthly Miscellany operated. While the former sought to resolve “all the most Nice and Curious Questions. PROPOSED BY THE INGENIOUS Of Either SEX,” the latter carried an advertisement in each monthly number desiring the “Ingenious” “to send such Pieces in Verse or Prose as may properly be inserted in this Miscellany, directing them to be left at either of the Places mention’d in the Title, or at the Black-Boy Coffee-house in Ave-Maria Lane, for the Author of the Gentleman’s Journal; not forgetting to discharge Postage.” Patently, the “authors” of these periodicals attempted to solve the problem of providing copy for each issue simply by soliciting it from their readers. Pierre Motteux, the editor of the Gentleman’s Journal, even puffed the merits of a miscellany over other forms of publication:

We must indeed confess that the goodness of a Book many times causes it to be thrown by, and that serious and learned Tracts often lye heavy on the hands of the disappointed Bookseller, while gay Trifles have a happier Fate. The best way is to weave the pleasing with the profitable, and that can never be done better than in a Miscellany, wherein different Matters, like various Colours, set off each other, and by frequents Transitions we wander agreeably from one subject to another. (2:231)

On December 1, 1691, Dunton published the following question, which was one of the earliest acknowledged by the editors to have been submitted to The Athenian Mercury by a woman:

Whether Songs on Moral, Religious or Divine Subjects, composed by Persons of Wit and Virtue, and set to both grave and pleasant Tunes, wou’d not the Charms of Poetry, and sweetness of Musick, make good impressions of Modesty and Sobriety on the Young and Noble, make them really in Love with Virtue and Goodness, and prepare their minds for the design’d Reformation [of manners]

The question proved of less significance than the specific literary query tagged on at the end: “And what are your Thoughts on the late Pastoral Poem, &c.” The querist, Elizabeth Singer, was actually puffing a poem of her own, subsequently published by Dunton in 1696 in her Poems on Several Occasions under the title, “Upon King William’s passing the Boyn, &c.” But for some reason, observing that “this Querist seems not only to be Poetically enclin’d, but to desire our Thoughts on the late Pastoral Poem, we shall here add Two or Three Lines to the Author of it.” Why Dunton or Samuel Wesley, the Athenians’ literary expert, chose to describe the poem in this way, particularly as it had not been published in the Athenian Mercury, is a question which recent commentators on Singer’s championing by the Athenians have not thought to address. Dunton’s championing of Singer as the “Pindarick Lady” has been presented as evidence of a new sensibility as far as women’s writing is concerned, and it is undoubtedly true that she was praised in extraordinarily effusive terms:

All the Poems written by the Ingenious Pindarick Lady, having a peculiar Delicacy of Stile, and Majesty of Verse, as does sufficiently distinguish ’em from all others; and having much gratified many of our Querists, by inserting in our Oracles those Poems she lately sent us, we are willing to oblige them once more with the following Pindarick Poem, which we have here Printed Word for Word, as we receiv’d it from her. (The Athenian Oracle, 3:523)

But one of the reasons which occurs to me is that Dunton, like Tonson and Motteux, was hoping to make money out of a poet’s efforts by publishing her work without paying her for the copyright. In 1696 Singer’s Poems On Several Occasions. Written By Philomela was published, “Printed for John Dunton at the Raven in Jewen-street.” Whether Dunton bought the copyright of Singer’s Poems remains a question. While the biographical “Preface to the Reader,” signed Elizabeth Johnson, is effusive in its recommendation of “that vivacity of Thought, that purity of Language, that softness and delicacy in the Love-part, that strength and Majesty of Numbers almost every where, especially on Heroic Subjects, and that clear and unaffected Love to Virtue; that heighth of Piety and warmth of Devotion in the Canticles, and other Religious Pieces,” it offers no information about the contractual arrangements leading to the publication of the “young Lady … whose NAME had been prefix’d, had not her own Modesty absolutely forbidden it.” That it should not do so is not itself unusual, but the fact that the young female poet allegedly sought to conceal her identity from the reader perhaps indicates that she was more concerned with seeing her poems in print than in making money.

Supporting evidence that this was indeed the case comes from Edmund Curll’s “Second Edition” of Singer’s Poems On Several Occasions. According to Curll’s preface, the poems in Philomela: Or, Poems by Mrs. Elizabeth Singer, [Now Rowe,] Of Frome in Somersetshire (1736, but dated 1737 on the title-page) were “faithfully Re-printed from the Copy published in 1696, except a little Reformation in the Numbers of some of them, and the Addition of a few later Compositions substituted in the Room of others, which the Writer’s Friends were desirous of having omitted” (Rowe, Philomela xvii). But this was not Curll’s only attempt to establish his right to publish the poems. He included a letter:

TO
Mr. R * * * * *
Frome, 30 Aug. 1736
                          SIR,
I AM infinitely obliged to you for your Concern for my Character. Assure Mr. CURLL, that, in Printing my POEMS, no Body will dispute his Right, or give him any Opposition. I only desire him to own, that it’s his Partiality for my Writings, not my Vanity, which has occasioned the Re-publishing of them …

I am, Sir,

                                                                                                                                                                                                  Yours, &c.
ELIZ. ROWE.

There is no way of knowing for certain whether this is genuine, but quite clearly Curll was seeking to establish his right to publish Rowe’s works. More importantly, the wording attributed to Rowe in the letter—“in Printing my POEMS, no Body will dispute his Right, or give him any Opposition”—is perhaps significant, suggesting that she had not sold the copyright of her poems to Dunton.

CONCLUSION

Dustin Griffin begins his new book, Authorship in the Long Eighteenth Century by observing that “Samuel Johnson declared with some ironic amusement in 1753” that the eighteenth century “could rightly be called ‘The Age of Authors,’ as never before had so many authors found their way into print” (1). 9 While scholars have concentrated on the “great Sums of Money” which authors, particularly after the provisions of the Copyright Act came into force on April 10, 1710, are supposed to have been paid for selling the copyrights of their works to booksellers, little interest has hitherto been shown in the other ways in which writings could find their way into print. I have recently drawn attention to the continuing practice of authors, including poets, paying for their works to be printed. In The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period, William St Clair notes that, as late as the turn of the nineteenth century, many aspiring poets, including Byron, Keats and Shelley, either paid for their poems to be printed or published them “on commission” (586, 611, 649). This almost certainly was the case around 1700 when the title-pages of most of the pamphlets now attributed to Defoe, including those in verse, carried the names of neither printer nor bookseller, but simply stated that they were “Printed in the Year X”—a practice which, as Foxon pointed out forty years ago in his Lyell lectures, indicates that the work was distributed by “what the eighteenth century called ‘a publisher,’” i.e. “one who distributes books and pamphlets without having any other responsibility—he does not own the copyright or employ a printer, or even know the author” (Pope 2). Even though they are rarely discussed, considerations such as these surely have a bearing on the increasingly debated question of “the rise of the professional author” in the eighteenth century. 10 It is with this in mind that I raise the further issue of whether poets were paid for their contributions to miscellanies and periodicals at the turn of the eighteenth century, or whether, as seems to me much more likely, those who submitted “ingenious Copies” to booksellers like Tonson tacitly gave permission for their poems to be published without payment. And if this does indeed prove to be the case, perhaps we would be wise to exercise a little caution before assuming that, notwithstanding the examples of Dryden and Pope, authors made “great Sums of Money” from writing poetry at the turn of the eighteenth century.

 

Goldsmiths, University of London

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The Difficulties of Quantifying Taste: Blackmore and Poetic Reception in the Eighteenth Century

Adam Rounce

WHILE the attempts of many writers to secure patronage have led to setbacks over the centuries, it was the unfortunate fate of Samuel Pordage in 1673 to receive the equivalent of a giant blown raspberry. Seeking support for his heroic tragedy, Herod and Mariamne, Pordage decided to try to find it from that erratic source, John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester. Not known to Rochester personally, Pordage left him a copy and waited:

At the expiration of about a week he went a second time to my Lord’s house,
where he found the manuscript in the hands of the porter, with this distich
writ upon the cover of it:

Poet, whoe’er thou art, God damn thee,

Go hang thyself, and burn thy Mariamne.
(qtd. in Boyle 2.951–52)

In another version of the anecdote, a more metrically correct variant of the couplet softens Rochester’s scorn slightly,1 but still urges Pordage to get rid of his wretched tragedy.

The initial publication of this story in 1723 was in the History of Herod and Mariamne; Collected and Compil’d from the Best Historians, and Serving to Illustrate the Fable of Mr. Fenton’s Tragedy. Mariamne, Elijah Fenton’s version of the tragic story of the fall of Herod’s second wife, was apparently more successful than Pordage’s, as it evidently warranted a volume of contextual and explanatory writings. The writer of the history quotes the Rochester story as evidence to conclude that “we have Reason to suspect that this [i.e., Pordage’s version] was of no great Reputation” (History A4). Yet the same year also furnished an appearance for Pordage in Giles Jacob’s Poetical Register: “This Play was writ many Years before it could be brought on the Stage, but when it appear’d, it was well receiv’d” (1.204, drawing on Langbaine 406).

How can these conflicting accounts of Pordage’s play be reconciled? One endorses Rochester’s view by quoting his contempt; the other claims that the reception of Pordage’s work was favorable. Such a combination of approval and contempt dogs the career of Pordage (c.1633–c.1691). The son of John Pordage (1607–1681), a follower of Jacob Boehme, Pordage is most widely known as one of Dryden’s poetic enemies during the Exclusion Crisis, and his Azaria and Hushai (1682) is respected as one of the best of the ripostes to Absalom and Achitophel (1681). Pordage’s description of Dryden as Shimei pays the more famous poet back in his own coin:

Shimei the Poet Laureate of that Age,

The falling Glory of the Jewish Stage,

Who scourg’d the Priest, and ridicul’d the Plot,

Like common men must not be quite forgot.

(Azaria and Hushai 29)

There was more in the same vein in the self-explanatory The Medal Revers’d (1682); Pordage’s reward was to appear the same year in the Second Part of Absalom and Achitophel, as “lame Mephibosheth the Wisard’s Son,” one of those “Poor Slaves in metre, dull and adle-pated” who have attacked Dryden (2.74). The insulting remarks were part and parcel of such conflicts. In “Spencer’s Ghost,” John Oldham refers to writers who “Have grown contemptible and slighted since, / As Pordidg, Fleckno, or the British Prince” (241). Apart from Richard Flecknoe, immortalized by Dryden, The British Princes (1669) was a poem by the Honourable Edward Howard (1624–c.1700); Howard features in the Dunciad, and his poetry was also the subject of squibs by Dorset, Butler, and Rochester (see Dunciad 136–37). Edward Thompson, Oldham’s eighteenth-century editor, described Pordage as one of “two wretched Dramatick writers” when glossing the passage (Compositions 3.45). Pordage is thus placed amongst the Dunces, an embodiment of mediocrity, a designation repeated in Oldham’s Satyr, In Imitation of the Third of Juvenal, where his poverty is both artistic and literal: Pordage “had nothing, all the world does know,” and his miserable circumstances are a reflection of his negligible abilities (Poems 255).

The depth of such contempt reveals a problem that has dogged the reception history of the period from Dryden to Pope, particularly. Pordage’s fighting on the other side of the literary and political divide did not necessarily vitiate his writings. Yet, as Samuel Johnson wrote (describing the reputation of Sir Richard Blackmore, targeted far more substantially by two generations of satirists), “Contempt is a kind of gangrene, which, if it seizes one part of a character, corrupts all the rest by degrees” (3.83). The low opinion applied repeatedly to Pordage would rub off on the reception of his works: a reader introduced to Pordage by Rochester’s anecdotal disdain, or the insults of Dryden or Oldham, would be more likely to find (or rather assume) such apparent failings and weaknesses in his writings.

Whereas reception history is meant to present a balanced narrative of how works were received, the contempt directed towards Pordage by Rochester and Oldham disturbs the evidence amidst which such a balance is sought. Rochester’s view of Pordage is a witty affirmation of his unashamedly subjective taste (an aristocratic virtue, though not the sole preserve of the nobility), Oldham’s a more bitter version of the same. Modern criticism attempts to understand the reception of literary works through quantifiable evidence, such as sales figures, editions and reprintings, anthologizing, allusions or mentions in other writings, and other indications of reputation. The dismissals of Rochester and Oldham are part of a process which recurs a few decades later (discussed in more detail below), when Pope, Swift and Gay condemn their own enemies to the duncehood of posterity by creating the sort of triumphalist narrative of literary history that is most appealing to their posthumous audiences. Their consequence and poetic success, so the argument runs, ensures that the estimation of Pope or Rochester is accepted, and the mediocrity of a writer like Pordage assured.

The present essay offers some reflections on this anti-Scriblerian counter-narrative, and the modern reception of poetry from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries more generally, looking at the difficulties inherent in fully understanding the workings of such reception. It is also concerned with some qualifications to be considered when interpreting the increased amount of information about the period now available through databases, and other generally enhanced digital and print resources. It does not endorse Rochester’s breezy dismissal, but instead attempts to show how difficult the precise understanding of literary taste remains, for all our apparent modern advances.

I

The possibilities for the modern literary researcher are summed up by Ashley Marshall’s recent discussion of the amount of satiric material now available:

The release of the digitized Burney newspaper collection in 2007 adds immensely to the possibilities already opened up by EEBO and ECCO. The change has the potential to revolutionize the field: we can now test generalizations about this period, generalizations made on the basis of very limited evidence. (37)

To Marshall’s resources can be added the Digital Miscellanies Index at the University of Oxford, a searchable database of the contents of many poetry anthologies from the eighteenth century. 2 The general point is that selectivity in reception history, given the widespread accessibility of research databases, is no longer an option: appeals to a taste being representative or widespread at a certain time can apparently be examined and verified. Quantities of new materials have been unearthed or made widely available through digital resources, and the circulation of older ones revealed in different lights; consequently, by certain measurements, received ideas of taste can potentially be challenged. The question is partly how to interpret this extra information.

Some of these questions of interpretation are self-evident: one obvious caveat concerns the calculation of the influence of a source. If one anthology, for instance, has multiple editions and a large print run, then its use of the poetry of, say, Blackmore or Cowley will reach a wider readership, and it is a more significant vehicle of their reception than a localized publication with few readers. The problem of a database research culture is also its apparent strength: it is a mechanism for producing data, rather than interpreting it, so citations and flattened out results lack context. A reference to a miscellany containing a Cambridge college’s drinking songs could appear as influential, in the abstract, as more important and widely-read anthologies like Edward Bysshe’s Art of English Poetry (1702), or periodicals such as The Spectator. All contain poetry published at the same point, but one has a far smaller readership and effect. The relatively simple solution is to acknowledge and build in such degrees of influence and popularity (through such factors, where known, as sales figures and circulation, range of readership, and published responses) into ideas of reception.

A more difficult, related problem concerns the need for criticism to attempt to recreate the workings of a past; this can be summarized as the age-old tension between aesthetics and commerce. A modern critical reading of the choices and motives of an eighteenth-century anthologizer or editor, for example, is sometimes predicated on their making decisions for inclusion and exclusion of authors and works upon principles of taste or literary judgment, yet there is evidence that such choices were often made on far more prosaic grounds. The result can be that the apparent basis of a reception history—the supposed evidence for an authorial influence—sometimes has to be heavily qualified.

Examples of such pragmatism by editors or publishers are especially abundant in anthologies. The whole culture of poetic commonplace books and anthologies was rooted in unacknowledged borrowing, where collections were constructed using their predecessors as building-blocks. This seems alien to a world much more attuned to originality and the rights inherent in individual authorship, but the reason for this serial process of lifting from previous works was the simple one of convenience, as using selections from previous anthologies obviated the need to find fresh illustrations for thematic sections, and offered a text ready to be marked up for the printer.

So, the best-known of such anthologies (and the first major one of the century), Bysshe’s Art of English Poetry, was readily cannibalized even by sources that claimed to be offering something different, and correcting Bysshe’s supposed errors of taste: Charles Gildon, in The Complete Art of Poetry (1718) was happy to indulge in such hypocrisy, and copy large parts of his predecessor, while decrying Bysshe’s alleged omissions and lapses. The compilers of the Thesaurus Dramaticus (1724; reprinted in 1737 as The Beauties of the English Stage) also copied huge sections verbatim from Bysshe’s collection (which had by 1724 gone into a fifth edition). By 1757, the truncated title of Samuel Derrick’s The Beauties of Poetry Display’d … Addison, Akinside [sic], Blacklock, Dryden, Gay, Garth, Grey [sic], Milton, Pope might suggest a more contemporary feel, but these recent authors mingled with sections inherited from Bysshe’s arrangement, a process continued when the work was retitled A Poetical Dictionary (1761).

The effect of all this unowned plagiarism on critical understanding of the culture of anthologies and extracts is profound. Given such borrowing, how can it be known that the retention of what appears to a modern critical eye to be a passage from an obscure poem in anthologies through the century is any measure of the influence, relevance, or popularity of the passage or its author? Do such judgments of supposed obscurity have to be re-evaluated, or is it merely a form of recycling and adapting, in a literary milieu where authorship and property was less immediately important than providing relevant matter for print? Or is this latter view in turn a value-judgment about the ways in which an eighteenth-century reader perceived and consumed anthologized materials? The result is that it is impossible to measure such extracts using conventional understandings of their influence; their presence may instead be indicative only of the editors’ skill in utilizing whatever materials they inherited.

An example of this can be found within the thematic heading, popular to all such anthologies, of “Beauty,” where a glance at the best-known collections reveals some significant congruence: Bysshe, in 1702, uses the first stanza of Cowley’s “Beauty” (1.22). By 1761, and Derrick’s A Poetical Dictionary, the thematic heading is greatly enlarged, with a much wider range of texts before 1650 (Bysshe’s general starting point) and after 1740 – from Ben Jonson and Shakespeare up to Thomson and Lyttleton. This obviously reflects the shifting popularity of certain poets since Bysshe’s first appearance in 1702, but there is still some overlap: the same quotation from Cowley’s “Beauty” is included (1.83), and presumably copied from Bysshe.

What is striking, given the subject with which this essay began, is that two more illustrations of beauty are taken from Elijah Fenton’s tragedy Mariamne of 1723: “What art thou beauty! / Whose charm makes sense and valour grow as tame / As a blind turtle,” and the longer description of how “Mariamne with superior charms / Triumphs over reason … majesty / Streams from her eye to each beholder’s heart, / And checks the transport which her charms inspire” (1.88). It might appear, superficially, that Fenton’s most effective or memorable passages had survived in anthologies for nearly forty years, with their artistry endorsed by Derrick. But such longevity is soon called into question by these same passages being selected to illustrate “Beauty” in 1724, in the Thesaurus Dramaticus (1.28) from whence (or from the 1737 reprint) Derrick probably copied them. Furthermore, examining Fenton’s text shows that they are from two speeches on consecutive pages so early in the play (pages 3 and 4) as to imply a functional rather than aesthetic process of selection by the editors of the Thesaurus, scanning plays for requisite dramatic illustrations. This could still be evidence of the popularity and influence of Mariamne, of course, in Fenton’s original or in its stripped-down garb; it cannot be assumed that repeatedly anthologized materials were included only for practical purposes, and did not please readers at all. Equally, though, Derrick’s use of materials from decades earlier could show that such extracts were only kept in circulation within the unchanging aspic of a thematic anthology, rather than being widely read or appreciated, and are not remotely reflective of taste. Such are the peculiarities of the constructions of eighteenth-century poetic anthologies, which require a different and more flexible mode of understanding than the traditional assumptions of a printed presence being commensurate with (and evidence of) influence and popularity.

Another salient factor in the understanding of poetic reception, given the recent large increase in information through databases such as EEBO and ECCO, is not often given sufficient attention. This is the considerable problem inherent in the assumption of a homogenized taste that can be assumed to reflect a period, whether a span of years or era. Such a unified readership has never existed.

It is entirely plausible that the taste of a readership is always rooted a generation at least in its separate pasts; that is to say, formed at a certain point, with corresponding values and models of literary taste which are the basis (consciously or not) for future judgment. This is not procrustean, and dismissive of works which differ from its ideals (though this can, of course, happen) so much as rooted in a formative experience which evolves into a critical standard, whether in agreement with or reaction against cultural norms. This can in some respects be explicated via an ambiguous chestnut of reception theory, Hans Robert Jauss’s “Erwartungshorizont,” translated as the “horizon of expectations,” that readers bring to a text. Although these horizons are more often examined today as a sociological phenomenon, they also indicate shifts in taste: as these expectations alter and shift through generations, “the audience experiences formerly successful works as outmoded, and withdraws its appreciation” (Jauss 26–27). This can also be inverted, so that readerly expectations rooted in the past define their judgment toward works of the present, sometimes negatively. Jauss saw the need for reception history to “achieve the dimension of a literary history of readers” (27), and acceptance of the heterogeneity of taste across the generations of experience amongst any readership is a necessary part of such a process: every readerly horizon is potentially different, and the critic cannot assume stability or fixity of taste within an audience.

These ideas become helpful when considering the example of the foremost English literary critic of the century, Samuel Johnson. Even in his lifetime, much of the controversy surrounding Johnson’s tastes (and particularly his less than glowing descriptions of recent poets such as Gray, Collins, and Akenside, in The Lives of the Poets) concerned Johnson’s failure to appreciate modern and contemporary poetry. Anna Seward, who accused Johnson many times of critical perfidy following the completion of the Lives in 1781, bemoaned once that Johnson would not “allow Chatterton a place in these volumes in which Pomfret and Yalden were admitted. So invincible were his grudging and surly prejudices—enduring long-deceased genius but ill—and contemporary genius not at all” (5.273). That the (to Seward) grudging “Life of Milton” endured its subject is exacerbated by the folly of his including such poetasters, while rejecting a poet such as Thomas Chatterton. This ignores the salient fact that Johnson was commissioned by booksellers to write biographies to accompany their choices. This consortium of booksellers, obviating piracy, included works for which they owned the copyrights. There was some flexibility, and Johnson could have tried to persuade Thomas Payne, part of the consortium, to include Chatterton, but it is hardly surprising—given the opprobrium surrounding the authenticity of Chatterton’s Rowley poems in the 1770s—that he chose not to do so.

Johnson argued with the booksellers who commissioned the Lives for the inclusion of four poets (Bonnell 139). These were John Pomfret (1667–1702), Thomas Yalden (1670–1736), Isaac Watts (1674–1748), and Sir Richard Blackmore (1654–1729). All these writers belong to Johnson’s youth: born in 1709, his literary judgment and standards would have developed and been confirmed in the 1720s and 1730s. A poem like Blackmore’s Creation (1712) would thus be of more significance, hence his lobbying for the inclusion of Blackmore on the strength of the Creation alone. Given that his poetic taste was rooted in the years before 1740, it is not surprising to find him sometimes lukewarm about some more recent writers, whom he wrote about in the Lives because he was paid to do so, rather than out of profound enthusiasm.

Johnson’s dislike of much modern poetry mingled with his suspicion of the excessive praise of the contemporary and new for its own sake. This explains some of the more trenchant parts of the Lives: in Johnson’s eyes a poet like Thomas Gray had been flattered and over-praised by admirers (Johnson 4.478–80), and it is this false critical currency that mistakes the pretentious fashionability of his Pindaric Odes for the sublime; Gray’s “art and his struggle are too visible, and there is too little appearance of ease and nature” (4.183). Johnson’s hostility to such poetry according to Roger Lonsdale “is in itself a perverse tribute to the fundamental change in poetic taste” embodied in such works (Johnson 1.163). This change of taste is also reflected in William Collins, who for Johnson obscured the lyric clarity of his poetry in a “deviation in quest of mistaken beauties” (4.121). Even when praising Thomson, it is notable that Johnson’s analogies are to the past: “his mode of thinking, and of expressing his thoughts, is original. His blank verse is no more the blank verse of Milton, or of any other poet, than the rhymes of Prior are the rhymes of Cowley” (4.103). The frame of reference stops where Thomson starts, in the 1720s (see also Reddick 138–40, on Johnson’s reduction of citations to Thomson in the Dictionary). When this idea of his poetic canon being relatively fixed by 1740 is considered, the elderly Johnson’s partial critique of Gray, Collins and others seems entirely predictable.

Johnson’s disdain for contemporary poetry is a useful example of how difficult it is to assume that the reception of a writer at a certain point represents a consensual or universal view. Earlier in the century, a different lack of consensus would operate: readers of, say, Abraham Cowley in the 1730s would include those who grew up on his writings toward the end of the seventeenth century, those (like Johnson) who can be presumed to have read him frequently, and those for whom he was of less relevance than contemporary writers such as Pope and Swift. How can such a diversity of reading experiences and inherited tastes be unified, except with reductive simplifications about the zeitgeist or temper of the time ensuring that Cowley’s writing fell into disrepair? Only through according evidence of reception with different levels of significance. Given instances of many citations to poets in databases, allusions to them in the writings of others, and references to them in literature generally, some such instances must be of greater consequence, and some of less. The difficulty is in assigning these degrees of consequence.

II

A pertinent example of distinguishing between types of evidence in poetic reception is Sir Richard Blackmore. For most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Blackmore’s critical appearances were infrequent, and the opinion of one who had turned the pages of some of his vast epic poems seemed representative: “I have not read all of his verse, but my bibliography will show that I have suffered enough” (Fairchild, 189, qtd. in Boys 35–36). This was the image of the poet captured by Dryden’s travesty of Blackmore’s composition in his “Prologue” to The Pilgrim (1700): “At leisure Hours, in Epique Song he deals, / Writes to the rumbling of his Coaches Wheels” (16.264), a mockery of Blackmore’s declaration of writing some of his many lines of verse between his appointments as a physician; what could now be described as multi-tasking becomes a symbol of his meretricious production of endless poetry to the dull predictable rhythms of his transport, without requiring much individual agency or control.

The same image would be invoked by Pope in the mock-notes to the second book of The Dunciad Variorum, where Blackmore wins the tedium contest: “All hail him victor in both gifts of song, / Who sings so loudly, and who sings so long” (Dunciad 187). Less well-known but even more contemptuous is a stinging poem associated with Gay into the nineteenth century, but now attributed to Pope, “Verses: to Be Placed under a Picture of Sir Richard Blackmore, England’s Arch-Poet:”

See who ne’er was, nor will be half read!

Who first sung Arthur, then sung Alfred,

Praised great Eliza in God’s anger,

Till all true Englishmen cry’d,
hang her!

Made William’s virtues wipe the bare A—

And hang’d up Marlborough in Arras 3 (Poems 494)

The mockery runs from Blackmore’s epic Whig allegories on the English monarchy, Prince Arthur (1695), King Arthur (1697), Eliza (1705) and Alfred (1723), to his more topical celebration of the Duke of Marlborough’s victory at Ramillies, Advice to the Poets (1706). Works that seem intended as Whig panegyric are quickly condemned, it would appear, as obsequious poetasting.

This description of Blackmore’s career has recently been challenged, with the suggestion that it is a critical view that distorts the very possibility of reading and comprehending such writers: David Womersley has argued that it is impossible to look at poems like Advice to the Poets objectively, “so thoroughly have our ideas of the poetry of the period been saturated with the inimical values and preferences of the Scriblerians” (xxiv). The potential critic of Blackmore has been unconsciously jaundiced by the successful absorption of the witty views of his enemies into the critical mainstream. History is, as usual, written by the winners. Similarly, Abigail Williams has suggested that the “essentially ad hominem” Tory and Scriblerian attacks on Blackmore (like the satire of the supposed pedantries of Richard Bentley) were motivated by their target’s qualities, including “earnestness,” alongside “a disregard for fashionable savoir faire” and “relatively humble social backgrounds” (37).

Such arguments have opened up the once moribund world of Blackmore’s Whig poetics to unlikely attention. They also point to the wider premise of the present essay – that some elements of poetic reception are of far more importance than others, as opposed to a flat enumeration of reception through weight of results, citations, or appearances. The mockery of Dryden and Pope egged on the impression of readers, and perhaps ensured that Blackmore was not given the attention he deserved.

Yet this in turn points to a wider problem, and a sort of hermeneutic circle about how predictive and effectual such a Tory criticism of Blackmore could be. Blackmore’s career follows a trajectory, where the initial popularity of Prince Arthur and its author’s battles with the Wits up to the second decade of the eighteenth century is followed by a drop in his appeal, with some alleviation, notably the huge, atypical success of his Creation: A Philosophical Poem (1712), a defense of Christianity and refutation of Lucretius. 4 He then fell further away, in terms of poetic reputation, with little evidence of a readership after the 1720s.

It is the nature of this falling-away, whether it was the inevitable fate of a topical and politically involved writer, or a result of the attacks of Blackmore’s enemies, which is disputed. Harry Solomon has pointed to Pope’s repeated use of Blackmore’s poetry in Peri Bathous, or the Art of Sinking in Poetry of 1727 (as examples of redundancy, mixed metaphor, emptiness, and generally false profundity) as having a devastating impact on his reputation. Certainly it did Blackmore little good to be described as “The great Author, from whose Treasury we have drawn all these Instances (the Father of the Bathos, and indeed the Homer of it)” (Art 25). Conversely, as the editor of Pope’s mock-poetic recipe book points out, by the time of Peri Bathous “the feud between Blackmore and the Wits had all but subsided,” as had much of Blackmore’s public career” (107). It is thus impossible to support Solomon’s claim that “Pope’s destruction of Blackmore in Peri Bathos had ended Creation’s astonishing popularity” (26), when it is considered that such popularity might well have dwindled anyway, given that Creation had been published fifteen years before, had gone through new editions (in 1713, 1715, 1718, and 1727 in Dublin) and would see another issue of the fourth London edition in 1736. Then, the rest is silence, until 1780, when the poem was republished alongside Johnson’s “Life of Blackmore.”

The problem is that it is impossible to prove that Pope’s scorn precipitated a decline: as Solomon admits (45), Pope never mocks the poem itself in Peri Bathous, and it is significant in its absence from his repeated satire of its author elsewhere. Furthermore, the erosion of Blackmore’s poetic fame had already begun. In the second book of the Dunciad, the mocking note on Blackmore’s sonorous strains quotes selectively from a description of Blackmore in Characters of the Times, a pamphlet defending writers attacked in the preface to the 1727 Pope/Swift Miscellany, the full passage of which declares that “Sir Richard has not for many years been so much as nam’d, or even thought of among Writers, as such; and whom no-one except P-pe, would have had ill-nature enough to revive” (Dunciad 188). Pope did not publish the comment critical of his “ill nature” in the variorum notes, the clear implication of which is that rather than destroying Blackmore’s respectable post-Creation reputation, Pope was the only person who was rude enough to draw attention to him and his otherwise forgotten verse. While Pope’s representation of Blackmore might indeed be a mean-spirited caricature, by 1728 he seems already to have begun to be forgotten; the degree to which Pope could prejudice Blackmore’s potential readership was as limited as that readership itself.

Blackmore maintained a considerable reputation before this decline: John Dennis in 1716 damned Pope’s facetiousness by praising the Creation, “which Poem alone is worth all the Folios, that this Libeller [Pope] will ever write, and which will render its Author the delight, and Admiration of Posterity” (2.107). Such praise of Blackmore is often in defiance of the implied criticism of him by the Wits. Richard Boys quotes the anonymous contemporary marginalia in a copy of Prince Arthur, which shakes its fist at the assumed denigration of the author by the fashionable: “Let them say what they please, damn them, this is a great epick poem” (36). Even if this was in reaction, it is part of the wider praise of Blackmore, which gives the lie to the impression of his being universally assailed by enemies, whether followers of Dryden, or Scriblerian. On the contrary, there was always some support for him, from Isaac Watts in his preface to Horae Lyricae (1706), and William Molyneux’s claim to John Locke in 1700 after reading King Arthur, that Blackmore was second only to Milton amongst English poets, and the rest “mere ballad-makers” in comparison (qtd. in Boys 26). It is a surprising verdict, but not one that Locke contradicted, and as Boys suggests (while compiling such examples), “This sympathy points out once again the error of regarding the views of the fashionable poets as the only opinions of the times” (32).

Blackmore found influential supporters during his battles with Dryden and Pope; as his audience lessened, far fewer voices can be found, but this is not necessarily a consequence of Scriblerian mockery. The ostensibly neutral evidence from databases is that reprintings of Blackmore’s work and his appearances in anthologies and miscellanies became less frequent after 1720. He is cited in the Digital Miscellanies Index forty-eight times: twenty-nine of these are before 1720, and he does not appear after 1760. The majority of these citations are to his most popular and widely-read poems, Prince Arthur and Creation.5

Such statistical evidence is telling. After the mid-century and before Johnson’s Lives, the most positive view of Blackmore is the short biography of him by Robert Shiels (erstwhile amanuensis on Johnson’s Dictionary) in the collection of Lives of the Poets of Great Britain published under Theophilus Cibber’s authorship in 1753. Shiels approves of Blackmore’s taking a stand for virtue and morality (bohemian ne’er-do-wells Samuel Boyse and Richard Savage are condemned in the same volume), chides the wits for their unfair attacks, and presents Blackmore generally as a dignified figure in the face of unwarranted criticism: “The poem for which Sir Richard had been most celebrated, was, undoubtedly, his Creation, now deservedly become a classic” (Cibber 5.182). On his death in 1729, Blackmore “left behind the character of a worthy man, a great poet, and a friend to religion” (5.184). How lasting this stature actually was, rather than what Shiels’s considered Blackmore deserved, is ambiguous. The reader has to decide whether this view is representative, or a singular and eccentric judgment which asserts something it cannot support.

The antitype to Shiels can be found in the poetry of Robert Lloyd, friend of Charles Churchill, member of the “Nonsense Club” and erstwhile satirist of poetic styles, who opined in 1763 in his “On Rhyme,” after praising Milton and Dryden,

For who can bear to read or hear,

Tho’ not offensive to the ear,

The mighty BLACKMORE gravely sing

Of ARTHUR PRINCE, and ARTHUR KING,

Heroic poems without number,

Long, lifeless, leaden, lulling lumber;
Nor pity such laborious toil,

And loss of midnight time and oil?

(2.114)

It is telling here that Blackmore’s verse might be monotonous, but not incompetent so much as redundant in its glib immensity and absence of wider imaginative spark, a claim often made about writings whose time at the forefront of public taste has passed. Lloyd might not be representative of opinions of Blackmore’s poetry in the 1760s, but his is the only one that has come down to posterity.

In the same decade, Blackmore still appeared in the ninth edition of Bysshe’s Art of English Poetry (1762), though this is ambivalent proof of longevity, as not every edition of Bysshe’s anthology added new extracts. The expansion stopped, as A. Dwight Culler demonstrated, in the sixth edition of 1718, by which point it had reached 2,693 quotations, consisting (intriguingly, for understandings of taste) of the following authors: “Dryden (1,201 quotations), Pope (155), Cowley (143), Butler (140), Otway (127), Blackmore (125), Shakespeare (118), Milton (117), Rowe (116), Lee (104), Garth (59), Waller (44), and a number of minor Restoration poets” (868). This shows how relevant Blackmore may have been to a readership in the 1710s, but by 1762, the contents of Art of Poetry had not been revised for forty-four years, nor reprinted since 1737. Its quotations from Blackmore’s works are therefore happenstance, and not obviously relevant to the contemporary poetic world of Gray and Ossian; indeed, Blackmore is entirely absent from anthologies based on Bysshe’s thematic model but using more explicitly contemporary verse, such as Derrick’s Beauties of Poetry Display’d (1757).

One other pertinent example of mid-century anthology reprinting was an allusion to Blackmore in Robert Dodsley’s hugely popular and influential Collection of Poems by Several Hands, which started out in 1748 as a three-volume work, and had expanded to six by 1758. The first volume of 1748 contains two satires by James Bramston (1694?–1744). The second of these, The Man of Taste (first published in 1733), acknowledges its debt to Pope’s Epistle to Burlington, though Bramston’s satire is a blunt instrument in comparison. Bramston’s narrator’s supposed taste is notable by its absence, as he makes one clumsy erroneous judgment after another, including his thought that “Though Blackmore’s works my soul with raptures fill, / With notes by Bentley they’d be better still” (Dodsley 1.314). This precursor to Johnson’s Dick Minim manages to fit in two of Pope’s leading butts, drawing on the notoriety of Richard Bentley’s edition of Paradise Lost in 1732, the previous year to Bramston’s poem. It is neither a profound nor damaging dig at Blackmore’s reputation and more of an ancillary to Pope’s ridicule elsewhere, but its presence in Dodsley’s Collection ensured that Bramston’s whimsical satire reached a large audience for decades after its conception, as part of a hugely influential, often reprinted and widely circulated miscellany.

Sifting through the various pieces of evidence for Blackmore’s reception strongly suggests that, Shiels apart, there was little positive attention paid to him by the middle of the eighteenth century; it is true that the available databases do not claim to be entirely comprehensive in their contents, and that some mentions of Blackmore might have escaped notice. Yet on the existing evidence, Blackmore was not often anthologized between 1740 and 1780, and allusions to his work tend to the pejorative: James Beattie, in his Essays of 1776, discusses laughter and the bathos, citing Blackmore’s biblical paraphrases as examples of ludicrous composition, where the “meanness of his words and figures” produce unintentional hilarity because Blackmore lacked “an adequate sense of the dignity of the subject” (364).

With these examples in mind, it can perhaps be argued that the insulting attacks of Pope and others hastened the decline of Blackmore’s canon, yet there is scant evidence that he would have maintained a readership anyway: it may be that his works, even with the partial exceptions of Prince Arthur and Creation, would not have found a lasting readership beyond the immediate decades of their publication and initial reception, regardless of the squibs directed against their author. Writers like Bramston may have jumped on the Popean satiric bandwagon in the 1730s, but there is no such impetus or motive behind the dismissals of Blackmore’s work by Lloyd, or Beattie.

Amongst these suggestive citations and allusions, some (such as the printing in Dodsley’s Collection) are more influential and widespread than others, and there is one decisive indicator of Blackmore’s reception: Johnson’s “Life” of him and the circumstances of its inclusion in the Lives of the Poets in 1780, which is far easier to interpret in intention and effect than anecdotes or parodies. Johnson intervened, and added Blackmore to the collection planned by the booksellers to prevent possible pirated editions of British Poets; that the booksellers did not originally intend Blackmore to be one of the many poets comprising the edition implies that his stock had fallen considerably by the 1770s. Johnson’s inclusion of him in the Lives gave his reputation some impetus, which would be sustained in collections of poets into the early nineteenth century.

Johnson’s pragmatic reason for the inclusion of Blackmore was the importance of his Creation, as a religious poem, and on its own merits: “This poem, if he had written nothing else, would have transmitted him to posterity among the first favorites of the English muse,” he declared (3.79). In arguing for a specific part of the poetry of someone from the early century, Johnson guaranteed that he would be accused of supporting the obsolete at the expense of the contemporary, and so it proved; William Cowper mockingly suggested in a letter that Johnson might aid his reputation: “Let him only speak as favorably of me as he has spoken of Sir Richard Blackmore (who, though he shines in his poem called Creation, has written more absurdities in verse than any writer of our country), and my success will be secured” (18 September 1781; 1.521). Cowper, no friend to Johnson, knew that the latter was right at least in his praise of Creation. Others were less charitable, and the following epigram is characteristic:

Yon Ass in vain the flow’ry lawns invite;

To mumble thistles his supreme delight.
Such is the Critic, who with wayward pride

To Blackmore gives the praise to Pope denied;

(Potter 11)

That Robert Potter interpreted the “Life of Pope” as mean-spirited suggests the extent of his poetic idolatry, and ensures a misreading of Johnson’s views of both him and Blackmore.

Johnson’s standing up for Blackmore was not widely approved; his transparent inclusion of him in the Lives because of the importance of Creation (and pointedly not for most of his other poetry) was ignored, and his supposed motives ridiculed. But nevertheless, his defense of Blackmore is the most significant example in his reception, in that it offers direct evidence for the decline in Blackmore’s critical fortunes; the flat information offered by databases informs the researcher that new editions of Blackmore’s work and references to him emerge from 1780 after decades of relative neglect, yet the necessity for Johnson’s “Life” of him both shows his stock had fallen, and reminds the modern reader that Johnson’s own view of poetry had, by the 1770s, largely been challenged by the emergent tastes of a younger generation. This is not proof of such things (nor does it show why Blackmore’s audience declined), but it is as near to it as patterns of reception in something as often arbitrary and anecdotal as literary history will offer.

The modern critic is better placed than ever to understand the mechanics of such history, in terms of raw data. The challenge is to draw from this information a nuanced interpretation of a quality as malleable as taste. It is a challenge that can be fulfilled only by considering some kinds of evidence to be of greater importance: throwaway remarks or incidental mentions do not have the momentum or consequence of something like Johnson’s “Life of Blackmore” as an intervention in his reputation; a prevalence of critical material might indicate a consensus, but there is still likely to be dissent. Some information might appear to be richly suggestive, but cannot be reconciled with the idea of homogenous, widely shared taste: reasons for the anthologizing of popular works or extracts can be ambiguous, and prosaic, rather than artistic; the modern perception of an author might exaggerate the extent to which their works were widely regarded. The general need is for the gauging of what evidence of reception might mean, without excess of speculation, resisting the assumption that all material concerning an author’s reception is as equal in significance as in its appearance in a citation index. Taste cannot be fully quantified, but the most important factors behind it can be separated and better understood.

 

University of Nottingham

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“In Prose and Business lies extinct and lost”: Matthew Prior and the Poetry of Diplomacy

Conrad Brunström

THE REIGN of Queen Anne (1702−1714) is cited throughout the Anglophone eighteenth century as a brief, gleaming exception to the Dunciadic norm of neglected literary merit, the age in which Joseph Addison was made Secretary of State and Matthew Prior was sent to negotiate the end of the war with France. During the co-premiership of Robert Harley and Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke, writers of a Tory persuasion enjoyed the confidence of politicians of remarkable literary sensitivity. Accordingly, the dramatic military and diplomatic events of these years were overstocked with poetic recognition. As Johnson ruefully remarked, in comparing the literary response to the Nine Years’ War, the War of Spanish Succession and the Seven Years’ War:

Every thing has its day. Through the reigns of William and Anne no prosperous event passed undignified by poetry. In the last war, when France was disgraced and overpowered in every quarter of the globe, when Spain, coming to her assistance, only shared her calamities, and the name of an Englishman was reverenced through Europe, no poet was heard amidst the general acclamation; the fame of our counsellors and heroes was entrusted to the Gazetteer. (3.51)

While subsequent literary critics have found it difficult to build a canonical bridge between “Restoration Literature” (1660−1690) and the maturity of Alexander Pope (1710−1744) for much of the eighteenth century this critical twenty year “gap” was perceived as a golden age of public poetry, an age when gifted writers enjoyed unprecedented and unrepeated access to the corridors of very serious decision making. The fact that the Seven Years’ War (1756−1763) was productive of military victories rather more sweeping and impressive than those gained at the beginning of the century only reinforces a sense of strange relative literary decline. It is as though, in the course of five decades, poetry succeeded in losing in prestige what it had gained in autonomy.

The nineteenth century had little time for Matthew Prior, regarding him as somewhat trivial and lightweight. A post-romantic critical landscape lacks the categories to appreciate Prior’s distinctive strengths. Furthermore, the nineteenth century, following Wordsworth, tended to regard poetry as a distinct vocation, incompatible with high-level professional public engagements. The project of this article, however, is to recover an appreciative context for Prior which regards political diplomacy not as a distraction from Prior’s poetic vocation but rather as something that defines the shape and the scope of his literary imagination. I will suggest that the exercise of diplomatic accommodation informs both the preoccupations and the techniques that sustain Prior’s enduring interest.

More recent Prior scholarship is bafflingly meagre enough to summarize within a paragraph. In 1939, Matthew Prior, Poet and Diplomatist by Charles Kenneth Eves appeared, offering a careful and detailed biography which serves to reinforce an essential bifurcation of Prior’s identity as poet and diplomat. Indeed, the book is awkwardly poised in terms of vindicating the significance of its subject and the reader is left suspecting that Prior’s poetry is brought in when the diplomacy is less than impressive and that Prior’s diplomacy is discussed when the poetry appears to drag. Frances Mayhew Rippy’s Matthew Prior, published in 1986, attempts a survey of Prior’s entire body of work, but the brevity of the volume precludes any extended interpretive effort.

These studies stress the peculiarities of Prior’s social position. Prior was acutely conscious of punching above and below his weight. Famously of very humble birth (in Johnson’s phrase “one of those that have burst out from an obscure original to great eminence”) the London-raised son of a Dorsetshire joiner was socially over-promoted and personally under-promoted, hitting a glass ceiling imposed by the snobbish Queen Anne. While Prior performed many, if not most, of the duties of an ambassador, the official post of ambassador to the Court of Versailles would actually be enjoyed by the Earl of Shrewsbury. Indeed, Prior serves to problematize the entire concept of “working-class poet.” There is a tendency to remove poets from such categories if they succeed in bettering themselves to the extent to which they rub shoulders with the great and the good on something like equal terms. The case of Matthew Prior invites discussion of the extent to which the term “peasant poet” demands that its representatives “play the part” of recognisable rusticity like Stephen Duck? Although Prior’s father appears to have acquired enough property to appear on tax records, Prior’s grandfather is generally assumed to have been a farm labourer, evidencing a remarkably rapid trajectory of advancement within just two generations (Eves 2-6).

The perception of Prior as an occasional or amateur poet is all the more paradoxical given that he was the author of that rarest of things, a volume of original poetry which netted a significant amount of money. He became, as Rippy notes, “one of the earliest examples of a writer supported handsomely by the reading public rather than by wealthy patrons” (43). This is especially striking when it is recalled that Pope’s significant literary earnings came from his Homeric translations. The 1718 edition of Prior’s Poems on Several Occasions secured no fewer than 1445 subscribers, thanks chiefly to the active solicitations of his influential friends (a circumstance which perhaps threatens Rippy’s sharp distinction between “reading public” and “patronage”). Despite this commercial success the vision of Prior as a careless and congenial vers de societe poet persists, and with good reason, since Prior himself was eager to cultivate it. The fact that Prior can “pass” as an aristocrat is itself a tribute to his own powers of persuasive self-fashioning. He is not to be blamed for his inability to anticipate the fact that his pedagogic canonicity would have been better served, three hundred years on, had he played up his gnarly plebian professionalism.

A kind of social ambivalence is to be found at the heart of many of Prior’s most personable and confessional poems. He is simultaneously successful beyond the hopes of almost anyone from his background, and uniquely vulnerable to the snobbery and condescension of his contemporaries. Small wonder that his most successful long poem, “Alma,” written while under house arrest in the year of purges and persecutions associated with the Hanoverian and Whig take-over of 1714−1716, is about how identity itself is nomadic and uncertain. “Alma” is a defiantly anti-Cartesian poem that rejects the prison cell of the pineal gland in favour of a very fleshly consciousness that works its way up from the tippy toes of prenatal kicking to the senility of the flaky scalp. A poet who does not know his place considers the philosophical significance of consciousness never knowing its place, based on a kind of organic materialism associated with free-thinking philosophers such as Spinoza and John Toland.1

“Alma” is, of course, a comic poem and its learned wit encourages us to suspect any overt proposition it offers. Fellows is right to provoke suspicion of the assumption that the sympathetic trajectory of the poem is necessarily to be identified with a persona who happens to be called “Mat” rather than “Dick.” Final closure on the “side” of either Mat or Dick is no very necessary expectation of the poem and Dick’s preference for the “belly” as the stabilizing signifier within the system of the human body may merely suggest the current location of Dick’s own “Alma” within its lifelong upward ascent through Dick’s person.

While Prior’s personal identity may seem very fluid and contingent, his sense of national identity appears rather more secure. Although never officially poet laureate, Prior was the most effectively patriotic English poet of his day, the poet with the most efficiently focused sense of national identity. In the 1690s, Prior’s verse was predominantly panegyric, and political panegyric is not a form which has endeared itself to a skeptical posterity. Patriotic panegyric flourished in and yet was troubled by the context of military rivalry. As Arthur S. Williams notes, the “artistic problem – similar to that encountered by Andrew Marvell during the Commonwealth and Restoration – was to deflate the overblown rhetoric of absolutist propaganda without discrediting heroic verse itself” (62). One solution to this problem was to introduce political panegyric in surprising contexts. Even when introducing his longest and most serious religious poem “Solomon,” an over-extended anticipation of Johnson’s “Vanity of Human Wishes,” Prior ensures that the King of Israel sings the praises of a future Britannia – a digression that he unapologetically signposts in his introduction:

I need make no Apology for the short Digressive Panegyric upon GREAT BRITAIN, in the First Book: I am glad to have it observed, that there appears throughout all my Verses a Zeal for the Honor of my Country: and I had rather be thought a good English-man, than the best Poet, or greatest Scholar that ever wrote. (Literary Works 1:309)

Prior is here making no apologies for his patriotism while making extensive apologies for his poetry. This kind of diplomacy informs a peculiar poetic credo that refuses to privilege any kind of autonomous poetic realm or suggest that poetry can survive on “its” own merits. The digressive panegyric to which this signpost refers is not as “short” as his apology suggests:

E’er the progressive Course of restless Age
Performs Three thousand times it’s Annual Stage;
May not our Pow’r and Learning be supprest;
And Arts and Empire learn to travel West?

Where, by the strength of this Idea charm’d,
Lighten’d with Glory, and with Rapture warm’d,
Ascends my Soul! what sees She White and Great
Amidst subjected Seas? An ISLE, the Seat
Of Pow’r and Plenty, Her imperial Throne,
For Justice and for Mercy sought and known;
Virtues Sublime, great Attributes of Heav’n,
From thence to this distinguish’d Nation given:
Yet farther West the Western ISLE extends
Her happy Fame; her Armed Fleets She sends
To Climates folded yet from human Eye,
And Lands which We imagine Wave and Sky;
From Pole to Pole she hears her Acts resound,
And rules an Empire by no Ocean bound;
Knows her Ships anchor’d, and her Sails unfurl’d,
In other INDIES and a second World.

Long shall BRITANNIA (That must be her Name)
Be first in Conquest, and preside in Fame:
Long shall her favour’d Monarchy engage
The Teeth of Envy and the Force of Age;
Rever’d and Happy, She shall long remain
Of human Things least changeable, least vain;
Yet All must with the gen’ral Doom comply,
And this Great Glorious Pow’r tho’ last must dye.
(Literary Works 1:323)

This passage is almost shamelessly obtrusive in the context of a theological extrapolation of the satiety of an Old Testament monarch. The heavily caesural lines in praise of Britain’s maritime splendour gives way at last to the more fluid lines that conclude the section that anticipates the inevitable extinction of British power, carrying the implication that even British imperial decline will be a dignified affair. It is never explained why King Solomon should be granted a vision of British naval imperialism except (ostensibly) to mark the ultimate transience of the most stable and long lasting political realities. The effect of the passage in context is to make the reader feel taken out of the poem on a maritime excursion and the obtrusive quality of the digression provokes a sense of imbalance within the poem as a whole. It is notable that a poet who has given up writing military panegyrics and who has been a political victim of political interests opposed to this negotiated conclusion to the war praises a maritime/commercial Britain rather than its continental army. This digression praises Britain but ignores Blenheim, in part because his Tory sympathies were now estranged from the supposed ambitions of the Churchills. By the latter part of Queen Anne’s reign, the glories of the Battle of Blenheim (1704) appeared, from a Tory perspective, tarnished by the warmongering vainglory of John and Sarah Churchill. Indeed, Prior’s metrical acceptance of the eventual limits placed on any nation’s martial glory may represent an implied rebuke to whiggish warmongering.

For most of Prior’s adult life, English and (after 1707) British national identity had been defined in terms of an on-and-off conflict with France. As a consequence a poet who celebrates England and/or Britain defines himself in terms of an on-and-off conflict with Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux, dominant figure within the académie française and, since 1677, historiographer royal to Louis XIV. Prior’s relationship with Boileau becomes intertwined with England (and later Britain’s) relationship with France and the consequent sense of Britain’s relative status and purpose within a larger European context.

Boileau, celebrated author of Lutrin, translator of Horace’s Ars Poetique and of Longinus’s On the Sublime, is less celebrated as the author of a number of military odes to Louis XIV. The evident relish with which Boileau balanced his iambic lines with piles of dead Englishmen made it inevitable that when fortune turned against the French cause, Boileau would be caught in the poetic firing line. Boileau’s reputation did and did not suffer in England as a consequence. For example, Nicholas Rowe, in his introduction to John Ozell’s 1708 translation of Boileau’s Lutrin, regards translation itself as a form of appropriation, while Ozell’s own dedication to the same translation makes explicit reference to recent military victories so as to argue that Lutrin itself has become, in a sense, spoils of war and can submit to the rule of the English language just as various Flemish towns have been wrested from French control. The “prisoner of war” idea is made even more explicitly when Ozell politely declares, “I hope I have us’d him with that Civility which is due to one of the First Figures in the Commonwealth of Learning. I was going to say, with that Civility with which our Country-Men treat His at Litchfield and Nottingham” (Boileau’s Lutrin xvii). Indeed, the entire tenor of the dedication indicates not so much a faithful rendering of the great Boileau as a capture of Boileau, who is to be paraded in English dress for the amusement of post-Blenheimite readers:

[I]t has been thought by some as rash an Attempt to translate this French Author, as for an English General to attack an army of theirs. The late Successes of some former Campaigns have sufficiently prov’d that their Heroes are not Invincible; and the happy Imitations of some of their best Pieces, that their Writers are not Incomparable. (Boileau’s Lutrin xvi)

The history of Prior’s relationship with Boileau is complicated. The earliest reference to Boileau in Prior’s work is at the conclusion of his ambitious military “Ode in Imitation of Horace” (1692):

In vain Ye Gallic Muses Strive
With Labour’d Verse to keep his Fame alive.
Your costly Monuments in vain you raise
On the weak Basis of his mould’ring Praise.
Against his will you chain your frighted King
To rapid Rhines divided Bed,
Whence in the Anguish of his Soul he fled;
You mock the Hero whilst you Sing,
The wounds for which he never bled:
Falsehood dos Poyson on your Verse infuse
And Loüis fear gives death to Boileau’s Muse.
(Literary Works 1:117)

The imbalance between propaganda and reality is so extreme that panegyric itself becomes a kind of torture. A further prod at Boileau is provided by “On the taking of Huy” (1695). Huy had surrendered to the French two years earlier without a shot being fired. 1693 was also, significantly, the last occasion on which Louis XIV saw fit to command his forces in person.

THE Town which Loüis bought, the King reclaims
And brings instead of Bribes avenging Flames.
Now Louis take Thy Titles from above,
Boileau shal Sing and We’ll believe Thee Jove.
Jove gain’d his Mistress with alluring Gold
But Jove like Thee was impotent and Old:
Active and Young he did like William stand,
And Stunn’d the Dame, his Thunder in his Hand.
(Literary Works 1:130)

The diminutive William of Orange (the extent of whose full bloodied commitment to heterosexual congress was the subject of much speculation in the 1690s) is inflated by Prior into a bold ravisher of “Huy,” while Boileau’s inflated Jovian Louis is reduced to a geriatric plutocratic impotence.2 The gold which purchased Huy has also prostituted the talents of Boileau. Jove, like William, “stands” priapic with masculine confidence—a confidence that is immediately transferred from the Olympian deity to the Orange monarch. The focus of Prior’s abuse remains Louis and not Boileau, and indeed Boileau is implicitly complimented for doing so well with such unpromising materials.

Boileau is also Prior’s direct addressee on a number of occasions. “An English Ballad” (1695) commemorates the retaking of Namur and is a satire on a rather sanguinary poem that Boileau had written upon the occasion of the original taking of Namur. It is published side by side with Boileau’s original poem and although not a line by line parody, is a deliberate and careful exercise in one-upmanship in which military and literary conquests go hand in hand.

Now let us look for LOUIS’ Feather,
That us’d to shine so like a Star:
The Gen’rals could not get together.
Wanting that Influence, great in War.
O Poet! Thou had’st been discreeter,
Hanging the Monarch’s Hat so high;
If Thou hadst dubb’d thy Star, a Meteor,
That did but blaze, and rove, and die.
(Literary Works 1:149)

Again, Boileau’s talent for panegyric turns out to be self defeating, creating a star that Louis cannot embody, and Louis’ hubristic talent for military bathos is transformed from the intended fixed star into a mere shooting star. Prior illustrates an inherent difficulty with all panegyric verse, the difficulty that the success of such verse is largely contextual and therefore beyond the control of the poet.

Prior did not, of course, have the same European reputation as Boileau, and does not today. It may be conjectured that Prior saw the chief difference between the two poets’ relative status as inextricably bound up with the relative statuses of the two languages, between the lingua franca of international diplomacy and a peripheral language of the north west European archipelago. The Nine Years’ War is fought therefore not merely between the the French and the English, but between French and English. In between the composition of “An English Ballad” and “An Epistle to Boileau” (1704) the Battle of Blenheim transformed the balance of power in Europe and led to the beginnings of an imagined peace. In addition, during the brief interval of peace between the two major wars Prior finally met Boileau in Paris and the two socialized during the summer of 1699. Prior records Boileau going so far as to say that Prior had more genius than anyone in the entire French academy. Accordingly, “A Letter to M. Boileau” (1704) is by far the most polite of Prior’s addresses to his French counterpart:

I grant, old Friend, old Foe (for such We are
Alternate, as the Chance of Peace and War)
That we Poetic Folks, who must retrain
Our Measur’d Sayings in an equal Chain,
Have Troubles utterly unknown to Those,
Who let their Fancy loose in rambling Prose.
(Literary Works 1:222)

Prior was also thirty years younger than Boileau, which makes claims of “Old Friendship” (as well as Old Foeship) somewhat implausible. Again, Prior never criticizes Boileau’s verse but only his enforced subject matter, offering bantering mock sympathy for his plight in having to deal with the Battle of Blenheim. It is notable, of course, that Homeric banter can be no feature of an excruciatingly loud eighteenth-century battlefield. As John Richardson notes, “the great majority of poets simply leave speeches out of the busy, noisy, modern battlefield” (563). Yet Richardson does not enforce the consequence of this cacophony, which is that the Homeric responsibility for vaunting (or sledging) speeches becomes transferred to the poets themselves. Marlborough and Tallard are inaudible to one another on the battlefield and so Prior and Boileau take on this rhetorical obligation themselves, albeit from a very, very safe distance. Indeed, Prior and Boileau are “embedded” commentators in relation to the conflict, not unlike modern uniformed network television “reporters,” part of the conflict they describe and making no effort to disentangle themselves from the events they narrate.

Meanwhile, Prior amusingly points out that many of the Dutch and Germanic victories achieved by Churchill and Savoy are remarkably difficult to either rhyme or scan. By advertising his own lack of facility he is of course advertising his own facility. Self deprecation again serves a patriotic purpose. Prior claims that Boileau is bigger than the cause he serves, while he himself is a good deal smaller. Louis XIV is unworthy of Boileau but William, Anne and Churchill deserve better than Prior. The author of Lutrin, itself a pioneering example of the mock heroic, is not inflated in the same way as Dryden inflates Shadwell but rather illustrates that it is Boileau’s theme, not Boileau himself, that is mock heroic. Of course, argues Prior, Boileau can make a hero out of Louis XIV, but then Boileau can make a hero out of a piece of furniture.

The enforced performance of friendship is only to be expected of a professional diplomat. As a diplomat rather than a soldier, it is Prior’s task to imagine how each military victory affects the terms of a possible negotiated peace. Indeed, peace will be necessary to pay adequate tribute to the achievements of war:

But We must change the Stile — Just now I said,
I ne’er was Master of the tuneful Trade,
Or the small Genius which my Youth could boast
In Prose and Business lies extinct and lost;
Bless’d, if I may some younger Muse excite,
Point out the Game, and animate the Flight:
That from Marseilles to Calais France may know
As we have Conqu’rors we have Poets too;
And either Laurel does in BRITAIN grow.
That, tho’ amongst our selves, with too much Heat,
We sometimes wrangle when we should debate;
(A consequential Ill which Freedom draws;
A bad Effect, but from a Noble Cause:)
We can with universal Zeal advance,
To curb the faithless Arrogance of FRANCE.
Nor ever shall BRITANNIA’s Sons refuse
To answer to thy Master, or thy Muse;
Nor want just Subject for victorious Strains,
While MARLBORO’s Arm eternal Laurel gains,
And where old SPENCER sung, a new ELISA reigns.
(Literary Works 1:226)

While disavowing any particular claim to be a poet, Prior goes on to suggest that military and artistic conquests go together. The final line of this poem evokes a line from Boileau, itself highlighted by Claude Rawson: “Pour chanter un Auguste, il faut être un Virgile” (441). Yet Prior both mocks and inverts this maxim. Prior disavows any claim to be Virgil (perhaps secure in the knowledge that Virgil himself did not claim to be Virgil) while suggesting that new Virgils are inevitable. Strategic modesty (i.e, diplomacy) defines the dominant register of the poem. As Rippy notes, “this is laureate verse in which Prior, amidst praise of Anne and of Marlborough, declines to be a laureate” (53). It is Boileau who makes Louis, but it is Marlbro’s Arm that will make the new Spenser. This suggestion is built upon the implications of a passage close to the conclusion of Prior’s “Carmen Seculare” (1699):

XXXIV
Let Him unite His Subjects Hearts,
Planting Societies for peaceful Arts;
Some that in Nature shall true Knowledge found,
And by Experiment make Precept sound;
Some that to Morals shall recal the Age,
And purge from vitious Dross the sinking Stage;
Some that with Care true Eloquence shall teach,
And to just Idioms fix our doubtful Speech:
That from our Writers distant Realms may know,
The Thanks We to our Monarch owe;
And Schools profess our Tongue through ev’ry Land,
That has invok’d His Aid, or blest His Hand.

XXXV
Let His high Pow’r the drooping Muses rear.
The MUSES only can reward His Care:
‘Tis They that guard the great ATRIDES’ Spoils:
‘Tis They that still renew ULYSSES’ Toils:
To Them by smiling JOVE ’twas giv’n, to save
Distinguish’d Patriots from the Common Grave;
To them, Great WILLIAM’s Glory to recal,
When Statues moulder, and when Arches fall.
(Literary Works 1:177)

This poem praising a monarch who devoted his life to fighting the French culminates with a celebration of a quintessentially French cultural programme. If William’s fame is to endure indefinitely when even marble decays and collapses, then the French example of a literary academy devoted to linguistic consistency needs to be emulated. A monarch who spends most of his reign on horseback is perhaps unlikely to initiate any such cultural patronage. “Carmen Seculare,” the product of a fin de siècle interbellum, therefore marks a moment of professional transition from panegyric applause to diplomatic reflexivity. It is frequent enough habit to elide the Nine Years’ War into the War of Spanish Succession. Certainly the latter grew directly out of the unresolved consequences of the former and these adjacent conflicts are characterized by an uneasy alliance of nations seeking to check the territorial ambitions of Louis XIV. In terms of Prior’s literary/diplomatic career, however, there is a very real distinction to be made between these wars. In the Nine Years’ War it was Prior’s part to inflate England’s feats of arms in order to help secure the best possible peace terms. Prior’s role in forging the Peace of Utrecht, however, involved a far more complex series of accommodations in a context where opposition was as much domestic as foreign. Prior’s changing relationship with Boileau is illustrative of this shift.

French foreign minister Torcy’s account of Matthew Prior’s Negotiations at Fontainebleau in July 1711 evidences Prior as a master of Kissingerian triangular diplomacy. As a diplomat, Prior was acutely aware of the need to permit one’s antagonist a fall back position, to imagine a position which an opposite number can find a way of honourably accepting. The fall back position was, of course, to concede to France, the original and official casus belli – the right of the house of Bourbon to the Spanish throne. The Torcy account also reveals Prior as someone who was able to convert actual weakness into negotiating strength, to the extent to which political vulnerability may even be exaggerated in order to give urgency to a political objective. Accordingly, Prior urged upon France an early peace with “good cop” England in order to stave off the growing power of the “bad cops,” Austria and the Netherlands. Torcy paraphrased Prior accordingly: “Prior… m’asseura que le Roy seroit plus content de la maniere de traitter des Anglois que de celles des Hollandois.”

The Peace of Utrecht required the suspension of long held prejudices. As the most famous Tory apologist for peace, Jonathan Swift remarked in Conduct of the Allies (1711):

To have a prince of the Austrian family on the throne of Spain is undoubtedly more desirable than one of the house of Bourbon; but to have the empire and Spanish monarchy united in the same person is a dreadful consideration, and directly opposite to that wise principle on which the eighth article of the alliance is founded. (Works 6:51)

Swift alludes to the most consistent objective of British foreign policy since the days of Elizabeth: to secure maritime trading routes and avoid large scale continental European entanglements unless it becomes necessary to prevent any one European power from gaining continental hegemony. Ninety per cent of the time this one European power will be France, but on occasion it may be some other power, and foreign policy needs to adjust its practice in order to sustain its central rationale. Once the Austrian House of Hapsburg begins to achieve a degree of pre-eminence that rivals that formerly enjoyed by the French Bourbons, then it is time to negotiate a peace that will preserve a desirable state of European equilibrium. These losses became more keenly appreciated in the wake of the bloody Battle of Malplaquet (1709), a phyrric victory for Marlborough and the allies in which twice as many “victorious” allied forces were casualties than “defeated” French. Malplaquet becomes an occasion when the very meaning of “victory” becomes problematic.3

When attacking the “Conduct of the Allies” who would seek to prolong the War of Spanish Succession, Swift is at his most persuasive when he describes the human and material cost of war, and when he reminds his readers that the end of any war must be a lasting peace, and peace is a prize to be seized as soon as a reasonable percentage of realistic objectives have been secured. As Swift observes:

It pleased God, in the course of this war, to bless the armies of the allies with remarkable successes; by which we were soon put into a condition of demanding and expecting such terms of a peace as we proposed to ourselves when we began the war. But instead of this, our victories only served to lead us on to farther visionary prospects; advantage was taken of the sanguine temper which so many successes had wrought the nation up to; new romantic views were proposed, and the old, reasonable, sober design, was forgot. (Works 6:48)

Diplomacy is the enemy of hubris, personal as well as national. Prior’s longer mature poems, “Alma,” “Solomon,” and “Henry and Emma,” are exercises in argument and diplomacy and each of them lacks closure except of a rather arbitrary kind. Prior was well placed to develop the maxim that all political careers end in failure. The period 1713−1716, between the Treaty of Utrecht and the failure of the first Jacobite rising, appears in retrospect to vindicate a version of peaceful constitutionalism, but for Bolingbroke, Harley and Prior, the lived experience of these years was considerably more frightening. The distinction between support for a politically unpopular cause and outright treason was still evolving.

All of Prior’s dialogic poems represent a quest for a third term, a negotiated space where opposed viewpoints can feel at home. It is tempting to triangulate some of Prior’s more Chaucerian bawdy fables involving various love triangles, in terms of diplomatic strategy. A poet, like a diplomat, confronts divergent elements and strives to bring them to a point of harmonious and elegant closure.

Claude Rawson has argued that Boileau, whose Lutrin was published in the same week as Milton’s revised Paradise Lost, adopts a frankly celebratory attitude to the carnage of modern warfare that is essentially alien not only to the English mock-heroic tradition, but also to Milton himself whose chief and decisive conflicts are bloodless and rhetorical. Rawson, like Richardson, addresses the larger problems with military epic in an age of heavy artillery, the disqualification of individual physical strength as well as the impossibility of staging Homeric taunting exchanges in such a loud environment. However, he also suggests that French literature retained an investment in “straight” military epic long after the most influential of English poets had abandoned it. A critical feature of this disengagement from epic militarism involves the prioritizing need to imagine a peace.

As Prior satirizes Boileau’s sanguinary odes, it is made clear from both text and context that Boileau’s overall reputation remains largely intact. What is being deflated is not so much Boileau the poet but a version of Boileau as the servile panegyrist of Louis. By refusing to offer any hostile commentary on Boileau’s acknowledged masterpieces, Lutrin, Art de Poetique, or his translation of Longinus, Prior is able to make a political point that it is the tyrannical nature of the French polity that sponsors a kind of military bathos and that Boileau lives in a state of mauvais foi not as a result of personal venality but because of the mauvais foi that attends all public jollification within an absolutist polity. In other words, Boileau is both victim of an authoritarian regime and to be commended for the extent to which he can still function at a high level within such a regime. It is both paradoxical and illuminating therefore that Boileau has translated Longinus on the sublime, which contains the following memorable passage:

There is nothing perhaps, added he, which more elevates the Souls of great Men than Liberty, nor that more powerfully excites and awakens in us that natural Sentiment which leads us to Emulation, and that glorious Ambition of seeing our selves rais’d above others: Add to this, that the Prizes which are propos’d in Common-wealths, sharpen, if I may so say, and polish the Minds of Orators, teaching them to cultivate with care the Talents they have receiv’d from Nature; insomuch, that one may see the Liberty of their Country shining forth in their Harangues.

But we, he continu’d, who from our Infancy have been taught to submit to the Yoke of lawful Rule, who have been inur’d by Custom to bend under Monarchy, while as yet our Minds were tender and capable of receiving all Impressions; in one word, we who have never tasted of that enlivening and fruitful Source of Eloquence, I mean Liberty, the highest Pitch that we can generally arrive at, is making ourselves great and egregious Flatterers. (Longinus 126)

As a loyal servant to an absolute monarch, therefore, Boileau himself cannot help but fall short of the sublime principles he translates. Part of the difference between the two panegyricists involves the question of personification. Boileau’s adult life coincided with just one monarch, whereas Prior’s rather more truncated adult life coincided with six sovereigns. It was therefore much easier for Boileau to use “Louis” and “France” as more or less interchangeable terms and to conflate the functions of serving his nation and flattering his king. Given the greater political volatility evidenced by England and Britain’s recent political experience, the relationship with power that Prior “enjoys” is inevitably of a different and more complex nature.

Prior apologized for his poetry by claiming that his hours were absorbed by public business, the business of diplomacy. The apology is of course itself, highly diplomatic. Diplomacy, far from annoyingly “interrupting” his career as a poet, defined his most successful and mature works. Prior, defined not as “poet and diplomat” but as “poet-diplomat,” is very much the product of his unusual career. Whether defined as a diplomatic poet or as a poetic diplomat, his habitual register offered a version of careful persuasion that his more aristocratic colleagues, cursed by a sense of innate entitlement, typically lacked.

A more humorous defense of the art of diplomacy is offered in the course of Prior’s “A Dialogue between the Vicar of Bray and Sir Thomas More,” part of a remarkable sequence of “Dialogues of the Dead” that went unpublished in Prior’s lifetime.

More. … A Man must do his Duty what soever may be the Event of it: in the high
Station wherein I was placed I was keeper of the Kings Conscience, how then could I possibly dispence with the Dictates of my own?

Vicar. That was a pleasant employment indeed. Keeper of a Mans Conscience who never knew his own Mind half an Hour. What could the Chancellor think should become of him; if he contradicted his Highness, who Beheaded one of his best Beloved Wives upon meer Suspition of her being false to him, and had like to have played the Same trick upon another only for attempting to Instruct him. You that used to Puzzle Us with your Greek and Latin Should have minded what Your Friend Cicero said in otio cum dignitate, but to be sure in negocio sine periculo.

More. And yet, Vicar, Cicero himself was beheaded as well as I.

Vicar. Why that is just the thing I have often taken into my consideration, he lost his Life when he forsook his Maxime, to say the Truth on’t his Case in some respect was not unlike Yours.
(Literary Works 1:642−43)

The dialogue is far from one-sided. Prior does not burlesque Sir Thomas More, but merely subjects his principled obstructionism to some refreshingly practical rejoinders. Prior’s Vicar of Bray, who survives the theological turmoil of the sixteenth century with his vicarage intact, is revealed not as a man without principle but as a man with an intelligently flexible and relational notion of public service. In many ways this dialogue reads as a prose equivalent of “The Turtle and the Sparrow” in which obsessive fidelity and relational flexibility are engaged in sprightly and inconclusive dialogue. The More-Vicar dialogue is dated (roughly) 1718−1721 by Wright and Spears, representing the experience of a man with no further political future but with considerable hopes for economic security, someone with a keen sense of what can be preserved from the turmoil of political conflict. Rippy notes that “the ambivalence of the debate resembles that of Prior the politician, who at one point votes to impeach his childhood friend in order to protect his king and himself, yet at a later point saves his old friend from the Tower at the risk of his own neck” (113). Like the inconclusive conclusion to “Alma,” Prior does not simply endorse flexibility at the expense of rigidity, but occupies an unstable point in between stability and fluidity.

Diplomacy resists closure. When diplomats speak of a “lasting peace” they are rarely duped by the misconception that any single piece of paper can determine the relations of nation states for all eternity. Diplomacy is necessarily an ongoing process. Documents need to be reinterpreted, stretched and reconceived in light of constantly shifting circumstances. Prior’s mature work, his supposedly “post-political” work is similarly resistant to closure. Prior the poet and Prior the diplomat are defined by two peace treaties—the Treaty of Ryswick (1697) and the Treaty of Utrecht (1713). The difference between these two achievements informs a decisive difference between the body of poetic work that informs the experience of these two events. The Treaty of Ryswick essentially involved dealing with one antagonist and asserting a position of confidence and military strength in respect of this antagonist. The Treaty of Utrecht was a more complex and triangulated agreement in which a far more oscillating sequence of rapprochements and estrangements was called for. Unsurprisingly, the poetry that informs the Utrecht experience is rather more interesting than the verse which informs that of Ryswick.

Prior’s poetry of war and peace has engaged rather less critical appreciation than Prior’s scenes from the sex wars. However, such diplomatic skills are transferrable. Faith Gildenhuys’ interpretation of Prior’s love lyrics concludes with a reading of his distinct amatory satisfactions that again celebrates the power of diplomatic artifice:

[I]t is in fact appropriate to see him as a part of the growing eighteenth-century interest in women as subjects rather than simply objects of male passion. His use of anacreontic and pastoral conventions is more than a nostalgic appeal to outworn fashions, as it becomes a subtle means of exploring the contradictions and limitations of the myths of masculine desire. Perhaps the fact that Prior’s best lyrics are suggestive of reciprocal relationships in love accounts for their continuing appeal. (452−53)

An appreciative feminist reading of “Prior’s best lyrics” would work on the principle that (in the time-honoured phrase) “the personal is political.” Diplomacy is inherently dialogic and therefore resistant to courtly objectification. Flattery is replaced by reciprocity.

It is unreasonable to expect any imminent renewed appreciation for Prior’s political poems of the 1690s. Indeed, all prevailing norms of critical applause prefer Tory Prior to Whig Prior, the Prior defined by an unpopular peace rather than a popular war, the nervous diplomat rather than the boisterous cheerleader. Indeed, given the widespread and convincing argument that an embedded journalist is not really a journalist, it may be popular to infer that a panegyric poet is not really a poet. The poets who enjoy pedagogic canonization are those who demonstrate some “distance” from their subjects, a distance which is perhaps incompatible with conspicuous political success.

Prior would have tactfully agreed with W.H. Auden’s over-quoted line that “poetry makes nothing happen” (142), and his agreement would have been all the more enthusiastic and eloquent at the very point when his diplomacy was busy redrawing the map of the world. Diplomacy is the ultimate example of ars celare artem since it can never claim the credit for its own accomplishments. As Welsted’s 1712 translation of Longinus observes, “there is no Figure so excellent as that which is entirely conceal’d, and which one shall not apprehend to be a Figure at all” (66). Prior’s modesty connects with the diplomatic necessity of removing the suspicion that persuasion has performed any “added value” to the supposedly natural justice of the outcome. More than any of his contemporaries, therefore, Prior enjoyed an Austinian sense of performative speech and a more focused yet occluded sense of “how to do things with words.”

 

Maynooth University

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Metropolis and Experience: Defoe, Dickens, Joyce, by Hye-Joon Yoon

Reviewed by Jacinta Maria Matos

The explosion of studies attending to urban experience in recent decades has renewed our interest in cities as sites of material, social, and cultural production. Urban studies has emerged in the last few decades out of a perceived crisis of the urban which owed as much to the implosion of urban cores and the globalized nature of a dispersed urban field as to the need for a change in the representational paradigm of the city. The “science of the city” as proposed by Lefebvre correctly suggested that its object could only be approached through an integrated theory “using the resources of science and art” (158). The symbolic and the metaphorical – privileged domains of the literary – cannot and should not be ignored in this inquiry about the present state of a civilization in which the experience of space is increasingly mediated by images and cultural discourses that decisively shape and mold its future.

Hye-Joon Yoon’s Metropolis and Experience is to be welcomed as part of this inquiry into the representation of urban experience in the past, an inquiry which may throw light on the present and future of an ever more complex and seemingly illegible urbanized world. Intent on the exploration of “the manner and the mode in which the metropolis becomes a form, as well as the content, of experience” (296), the book stands squarely and unashamedly within the tradition of literary critical discourse and textual analysis, while acknowledging its debt to a wider theoretical framework ranging from (among others) Georg Simmel to Giorgio Agamben, Pierre Bourdieu to David Harvey.

Critically up-to-date and well-grounded in a variety of scholarly studies, Metropolis and Experience both benefits from and contributes to the interdisciplinary nature of the field, making use of close reading, attention to textual detail, and a focus on literary modes and strategies in order to foster our understanding of how the metropolis has been experienced and signified from Defoe to Joyce. The choice of writers under scrutiny hardly needs justification, given their unquestioned status and relevance to the topic in question. What Hye-Joon Yoon calls “professional monogamy” (the exclusive focus on individual authors) is here deliberately eschewed in favour of a more inclusive and expansive view, which retains the three canonical figures as a pivotal centre but branches out to reach and accommodate a myriad of others. No one can accuse this book of monogamy or even bigamy; it presents us with a veritable harem in which the three favourite wives are surrounded by a whole cohort of concubines all vying for attention. Pepys and Baudelaire, Behn and Flaubert, Dampier and Bunyan are only some of the figures who are called in to help paint this vast canvas of urban literature.

The book is comprehensive in its scope, and its chronological span is also ambitious, drawing on expert knowledge of three distinct phases of the urban as well as of the vast bibliography that accompanies the development of cities in the past three centuries. But this wide scope undoubtedly affords Hye-Joon Yoon interesting possibilities for a comparative study which engages as much with unsuspected genealogies and new lineages as with the genetic (dis)similarities to be found in texts sharing a historical moment.

The book’s method, combining a wide diachronic dimension with extensive synchronic analysis, needs a clearly-defined guiding principle to create order and cohesion out of an immense and amorphous multitude of texts. This is provided by the two interrelated concepts of Erfahrung and Erlebnis, German equivalents of the English term ‘experience’ which carry significant (and in this case strategically important) nuances of meaning. Erfahrung is here understood as experience gained through travel and acquired over time, a “philosophical labour for investigating the basis of knowledge through reason and sensation” (9). Erfahrung, although subjectively constructed, can therefore be conceived “in terms of inter-generational communication” (11), comprising a distinctively communal and collective dimension. Erlebnis, on the other hand, is fleeting, momentary and instantaneous, emerging out of an individual’s sensory and psychological perception. By nature irreproducible, Erlebnis is experience which begins and ends within individual consciousness and cannot therefore be shared in any meaningful way with the rest of the community.

Laid out in the Introduction, this conceptual framework presides over the discussion of Defoe, Dickens, and Joyce, generating three different versions of the dynamic between Erfahrung and Erlebnis which both enhance our understanding of each author and convincingly display how metropolitan experience has evolved over time and in the process given rise to specific forms of writing. Defoe’s vision of the city as the domain par excellence of the private sphere in which Erlebnis reigns supreme is followed by Dickens’s attempts to balance a highly individualized urban experience with a network of connections which will turn the city into a legible communal entity. The last chapter is devoted to Joyce’s metropolitan subjects, who for Hye-Joon Yoon are “far too heterogeneous and centrifugal to be subjects of either Erlebnis or Erfahrung” (297). This registers the disintegration of both private and public spheres – a “dead end […] for the metropolitan novel” (298) as the author understands it.

The general argument of the book is persuasively presented and (although not startlingly original or radically innovative in some respects) provides the reader with a fresh perspective from which to appreciate the contradictory pulls between public and private spheres, between subject-centred or communally-orientated discourses on the city. And if we are occasionally left wondering whether this conceptual scaffolding can support the weight of a critical study which spans three centuries and dozens of texts, we must recognize that in many ways this is a book which seems to avoid grand narratives and eschew the dominant vistas of the terrain. Instead, it prefers to work at street level, walking along some well-trodden thoroughfares but above all exploring the forgotten nooks and hidden corners of the labyrinthine writing on the city. (The analysis of the seventeenth-century “character pamphlet” and that of Dujardin’s influence on Joyce come to mind.) Always thorough, occasionally digressive, and somewhat overcrowded, Metropolis and Experience confronts the multitudinous diversity of urban texts with the same fascinated attention to detail and nuance in which the genre itself delights.

One of the foundational concepts of the book, should, however, have been given deeper consideration. Defoe’s eighteenth-century London, Dickens’s industrial capital, and Joyce’s “colonial” Dublin are very different places, and to define all three as ‘metropolises’ is perhaps to stretch the concept beyond its permissible elasticity. The loosely defined use of the term (together with its companion key word “modernity,” which is also applied unproblematically across the board), immediately creates connections where we might want to consider ruptures or at least significant divergences. Simmel’s notion of the metropolitan psyche (emerging out of the need to understand the new and unprecedented consequences of an industrialized and mechanized twentieth-century civilization) does not sit comfortably alongside the demands made on the subject by Defoe’s mercantile city. But this is a reading that the book encourages, or at least tacitly allows. A more rigorous qualification of its key terminology would have added depth and validity to the general argument, enabling it to unfold in a more authoritative and nuanced way.

This, however, is not to detract from the valuable insights that Metropolis and Experience has in store. Clearly aimed at an academic audience, the book has much to offer the general reader with an interest in the evolving fate of the city and the literature that helped shape its form and meaning. Eighteenth-century scholars and other Defoe enthusiasts will relish, for instance, its incisive interpretation of Defoe’s “paratactic prosaics” and his use of the “disjunctive conjunction” as part of a revolution in English prose which liberated it from classical paradigms and enabled it effectively to dramatize the experience of a new urban reality. Equally compelling is the discussion of Pepys’s obsession with bodily functions (such as ejaculation and defecation) as an attempt to maintain control over the private body in an age in which the circulation and fluidity of the money markets are about to become threatening and pervasive.

The book’s Conclusion does, however, strike a discordant note in a study which otherwise celebrates the vibrancy of the field. The demise of the metropolitan novel, already imputed to Joyce in the book’s last section, is here explained in terms of the unfolding world of postmodern, global capitalism. The “rabid tyranny headed by developers and the construction industry” (298), responsible for the disappearance of the civic and cultural centre of post-war cities, has relegated “meaningful human relationship … to the margins and interstices,” impeding any “imaginative intervention for the sake of human experience” (299). The ‘anti-city’ we live in today has, in short, dealt the final blow to the metropolitan novel as we know it.

This apocalyptic view of the present and future of the city and of culturally significant urban writing, debatable as it is, may stem partly from the book’s exclusive concentration on the novel. Hye-Joon Yoon early on elects the genre as the one that can “best come to terms with the problem of experiencing the metropolis, for the novels mediate between the excess and dearth of experience” (5). But in controversially relegating other forms (like poetry and drama) to a marginal role in this process, the author has left himself with nowhere to go on the contemporary literary and cultural scene. “Novels after Joyce, after Hollywood, after television, after computer games, are content or grateful to take up one corner in the Vanity Fair of our entertainment industry” (301) is his lament for the fate of the genre in our time, a failing from which only Calvino and Saramago are exempted. But the lost centrality of the novel, concomitant with the decentring of the urban, has provided new spaces of signification and eclectic modes of confronting and appropriating metropolitan experience. The demise of the metropolitan novel, even if granted, may be part of a changing paradigm which now, as in the past, will successfully rise to the challenge of dealing with the city’s plasticity and constantly shifting boundaries, and hopefully will continue to produce vibrant accounts of our experience as urban dwellers. The utopian impulse has always been indissociable from the city. This is no time to give up on its limitless possibilities.

Jacinta Maria Matos
University of Coimbra


WORKS CITED

Lefebvre, Henri. Writings on Cities. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996. Print.

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Defoe in the Miscellanies

Andreas K. E. Mueller

AS A RESULT of the enormous success of his verse satire The True-Born Englishman (1700), Daniel Defoe was for some time one of the best known authors of verse in early eighteenth-century London. Moreover, the poem maintained its appeal and continued to be a bestseller for the rest of the century, reaching a twenty-fifth official edition in 1777. To place this in a commercial context, Defoe’s perhaps most famous publication, The Life and Most Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719), reached ‘only’ its fourteenth official English edition in 1779. The True-Born Englishman was no fluke: several of Defoe’s other poems, A Hymn to the Pillory (1703), A Hymn to Victory (1704), and Jure Divino (1706), to name but three, equally required multiple editions, official and pirated, to satisfy market demand. Although not as successful as The True-Born Englishman, A Hymn to the Pillory inspired an anonymous broadsheet imitation as late as 1760.1 We might also note that, while Defoe’s plans to have Jure Divino printed by subscription were sorely disappointed, the subscription edition of Caledonia (1706) fared rather better: as Pat Rogers (102-103) has pointed out, the list of subscribers to Defoe’s last major poem could plausibly be described as a more distinguished one than those achieved by Pope, Gay, or Prior. Debates may certainly be had with regard to the merits of Defoe’s poetry, but the popularity of several of his verse publications seems to be beyond doubt. There were usually enough buyers to warrant the printing of further editions of Defoe’s poems and both his commercially most successful and his most ambitious verse tracts, The True-Born Englishman and Jure Divino, had the power to transcend their specific historical moments by appealing to later readers.2 We should also remember that Defoe wanted his versifying to be recognized as an important aspect of his identity as a writer: while the vast majority of his prose publications were published anonymously, he signalled his authorship of almost all of his poems, often by proudly declaring on title pages that this was “the Author of the True Born Englishman.”

Defoe’s desire to be recognized and remembered as a poet met with some success. Influential men such as Charles Montagu, Lord Halifax, remarked about two of Defoe’s poems that they “have some turns in them that are pretty” (Charles Montagu to Sarah Churchill, 12 May 1705, cited in Snyder 57)3 and was instrumental in arranging a financial reward for Defoe for the tracts. Giles Jacob included a short entry on Defoe in his Poetical Register (1723), commenting that he had “thrown into the World two Pieces [The True Born Englishman and Jure Divino] very much admir’d by some Persons,” qualifying the entry with the assessment of Defoe’s poetic descriptions as “generally very low” (293). Three decades later, Robert Shiels, in Theophilus Cibber’s The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain (1753), dedicated a twelve-page entry to Defoe. The entry is a rather curious performance in its obvious contradictions, but it usefully illustrates the combination of approval and dismissal that has characterized the reception of Defoe’s poetry to this day. Shiels begins his entry by asserting that Defoe “acquired a very considerable name by his political and poetical works” (313), but the account of Defoe’s achievements is in fact strongly dominated by a focus on those of Defoe’s prose publications that engage with questions of political philosophy. Shiels describes The True-Born Englishman as the work by which Defoe is “most distinguished” (313), but then strangely fails to include the poem in a list of Defoe’s “principal performances” (323), while Caledonia and Jure Divino are listed. In his initial discussion of Defoe’s famous verse satire Shiels remarks that it is “written in a rough unpolished manner, without art, or regular plan” (315), only later to quote twenty lines from The True-Born Englishman because he considers them to be “harmoniously beautiful, and elegantly polished” (324). In spite of lamenting the “carelessness” displayed by Defoe when composing verse, Shiels ends the entry with a categorical rejection of Pope’s inclusion of Defoe in The Dunciad: “De Foe can never, with any propriety, be ranked amongst the dunces” (325). The sense conveyed by Shiels in the entry is typical of much of the commentary on Defoe’s verse: there is enough in the poetry that warrants explicit commendation, elevates Defoe above the mass of poetasters, and therefore deserves to be preserved in the canon of English poetry. But Defoe’s poems also suffer from a carelessness and unevenness that causes frustration, even annoyance, in the reader and somewhat undermines any potential claims for his poems to canonicity.

A point of some interest with regard to the eighteenth-century reception of Defoe’s poetry is the extent to which the relative popularity of Defoe’s poems, when published as single works, is reflected in the hold-all of popular poetry, the miscellany verse collection. If these collections “paved the way for a canon” by helping to “establish ideological and aesthetic schools of verse,” while also allowing readers “to compare and rank authors and works” (Benedict 68), then the most popular of the miscellanies ought to offer some indication concerning the perceived importance of a given poet’s work. The recently established Digital Miscellanies Index (DMI) (University of Oxford) represents an important new tool for investigating the role played by individual authors in these collections. While the creators of the DMI seem to disagree somewhat with Benedict’s assertions concerning the canon-forming power of miscellany collections (and with Paul Hammond, who makes a similar point in The Making of Restoration Poetry, 8) by stating that miscellanies “tend to reflect the literary taste of the moment, rather than a canonical history of poetry,” there is some validity in the notion that a consideration of a number of these historical moments will tell us something about the development of literary tastes and the canon. However, an important caveat is offered by Adam Rounce, who points out that the “whole culture of poetic commonplace books and anthologies was rooted in unacknowledged borrowing, where collections were constructed using their predecessors as building-blocks,” often for the pragmatic reason of convenience rather than careful selection (22). Rounce cautions us against assuming that inclusion in anthologies automatically offers a “measure of the influence, relevance, or popularity” of particular authors and their poems, and he rightly suggests that a more reliable picture may be constructed through the inclusion of factors such as the status of a given miscellany (e.g. sales figures and circulation) and published responses (23).

What, then, may we learn from Defoe’s presence in eighteenth-century miscellany collections? The first point to make is that, in spite of the good and occasionally excellent sales figures for his single edition poems, Defoe’s verse was included not nearly as often as that of some of his well-known contemporaries. A basic name search of the DMI yields the following number of “roles,” or citations, for a small but at least vaguely representative range of poets: 48 for Richard Blackmore, 65 for John Dennis, 1241 for John Dryden, 69 for Anne Finch, 839 for Alexander Pope, 383 for Matthew Prior, and 278 for Jonathan Swift. Defoe registers a mere 25 roles.4 Using these statistics alone, we ought to reach the conclusion that the appeal of Defoe’s poems simply did not extend beyond the literary taste of the moment of their publication. More importantly, these figures possibly also speak to the strong occasionality of Defoe’s verse: once the political issue to which Defoe’s poems responded had run its course (and it was most often political and associated moral matters that inspired Defoe to write verse), Defoe’s works perhaps lacked the necessary relevance – and possibly also the consistently high artistic quality – to continue to be of interest.

The political topicality of Defoe’s verse is reflected very clearly in his strong presence, mainly in 1703, in the “leading poetic miscellany for thirty years” (Lord xxvi), Poems on Affairs of State. But the relatively large amount of space given to Defoe’s verse in this popular miscellany also reveals an intriguing paradox with regard to the reception of Defoe’s poetry specifically, and our ideas concerning influence more generally: while the comparatively few instances of inclusion in miscellany collections seem to make Defoe a marginal figure in the landscape of eighteenth-century verse, the healthy sales figures for several of his single works and his inclusion in the leading miscellany of the period potentially suggest a somewhat more significant role and a wider circulation of some of his poetic works than the above DMI figure leads one to belief.

The publisher of the 1703 edition of Poems on Affairs of State evidently responded to Defoe’s rise to poetic prominence by early 1701. Beside Defoe’s The True-Born Englishman, which, after John Tutchin’s The Foreigners, is the second poem in the second volume of the miscellany, his The Mock Mourners (1702) and Reformation of Manners (1702),5 as well as a poem that is possibly by Defoe, The Patriots (1700), were also selected for inclusion. In other words, over 3,000 lines of Defoe’s verse were reproduced in this popular miscellany, with The True-Born Englishman representing the longest poem included, followed in second and third places by Reformation of Manners and The Mock Mourners. We should also take note of the publisher’s stated rationale for the selection of poems: “they either come from Considerable Hands, or the Dignity of the Subject requir’d their being preserv’d,” and, more generally, “the Design of Collections of this kind, is to afford some assistance to History,” in this case apparently above and beyond party bias (iv). It does not appear too much to suggest, therefore, that the relatively extensive presence of Defoe in this volume of Poems on Affairs of State and its stated function of preserving for future generations thematically and/or artistically important verse that mattered to its first readers tells us something about the early eighteenth-century reception of Defoe’s poems: at least some of them were considered valuable enough not to be forgotten. One might point out here that the publisher of the volume succeeded in assisting posterity in its effort to (re)construct a literary history of the period: half of the lines reproduced in Volume 6 (1697-1704) of the twentieth-century Yale version of Poems on Affairs of State are by Defoe.

In addition to the poems mentioned above, Defoe’s ballads England’s Late Jury (1701) and The Address (1704) were respectively anthologized in the 1704 and 1707 editions of Poems on Affairs of State (the 1707 volume also contains a satirical poem that engages directly with Defoe’s versifying activity, “Jure Divino toss’d in a Blanket: Or, Daniel de Foe’s Memorial”). John Dunton’s typically idiosyncratic Athenianism: or the New Projects of Mr. John Dunton (1710) integrated selected lines from The Character of the Late Dr. Samuel Annesley, By way of Elegy (1697) and The Mock Mourners. Extracts from The True-Born Englishman and Jure Divino were included, alongside extracts by John Milton, John Philips and Richard Steele, in the miscellany The Bee. A Collection of Choice Poems (1715), and selected lines from Reformation of Manners were given a place in Fables, and other Short Poems; Collected from the most Celebrated English Authors (1731), alongside works by Addison, Dryden, Gay, Prior, and Swift. The inclusion of extracts from Defoe’s long poems obviously indicates deliberate choice on the part of the publisher, and it is this act of conscious selection that makes another miscellany, A Collection of the Best English Poetry, by Several Hands (1717), particularly interesting, because it allows us to explore the more detailed matter of the arrangement of poems in a collection. Five of Defoe’s poems were included in this unusual miscellany.

The two-volume A Collection of the Best English Poetry was, as W. J. Cameron has explained, a “made up miscellany” (301) collated from already printed verse pamphlets that simply had a title page added to them; the collection lacks its own preface and has no contents list. These verse pamphlets were originally printed by Henry Hills, who, during the early years of the century, had “become notorious for pirating every good poem or sermon that was published” (Plomer 155). Having bought what was left on Hills’s shelves after the printer’s death in 1713, the bookseller T. Warner, suggests Cameron, combined the verse pamphlets, of which there were unequal quantities and all of which were printed between 1708 and 1710, into the miscellany, randomly adding alternatives when he had exhausted the stocks of certain pamphlets. The consequence of this was that “[n]o two copies of Warner’s collection are identical in make-up” (301), although the similarities between the five surviving copies of the miscellany, in terms of content rather than arrangement, are significant.6 What is perhaps of the greatest interest for my purposes is not so much that Warner added new pamphlets to fill the emerging gaps, but that he varied the order in which he arranged the poems. It is in this respect that one of the five versions of the miscellany, the British Library copy, differs most significantly from the other four copies.

Cameron theorizes, with some plausibility if not conclusively, that the New York copy of the miscellany was collated later than the Newberry (possibly the earliest issue), Harvard and Yale copies and that the British Library copy was likely to have been assembled after the Newberry and before the Harvard copies, that is, relatively early in the process of production of the different versions. This is important since it suggests that the contents and arrangement of the British Library copy were not determined, in the main, by the (non-)availability of individual pamphlets. Moreover, Cameron explains that “the single Yale volume is identical with volume I of the Newberry and Harvard copies” (301), and additionally suggests that they are “very similar” (302) to the second volumes of the British Library and New York copies. The latter assertion is misleading in its implicit linking of the British Library and New York issues, however: while there is some overlap in terms of content between these two volumes, the New York copy follows the distribution of pamphlets between the two volumes established in the Newberry and Harvard issues more closely than the British Library one.

The difference in arrangement of the first volumes is striking and allows us to make some observations concerning the reception of Defoe’s verse, even if only on a speculative basis. Volume one of the Newberry and Harvard issues begins with John Denham’s Cooper’s Hill (1643), Jonathan Swift’s Baucis and Philemon (1709), and Robert Howard’s The Duel of the Stags (1709). Defoe is a marginal presence in this volume: only one of his poems, An Elegy on the Author of the True-Born-English-Man, is included here at position fifteen. The other three Defoe poems listed by Cameron for these issues, A Hymn to the Pillory, A Hymn to Peace and The True-Born English-Man, all appear in the second volume at positions 42 through 44, that is, in the final third of the entire collection; the New York issue retains this pattern and also offers these three poems in its second volume, at positions 7 through 9.7 Cameron surmises that, while certain pamphlets “may be linked deliberately, the general arrangement seems haphazard” (302). It is, of course, difficult to ascertain whether or not a rationale existed for the arrangements chosen by Warner, but it seems questionable that no thought whatsoever went into the way in which the miscellany was collated – after all, there is every reason to believe that Warner wanted to make the materials he had to hand as appealing as possible to his customers. Whatever the case, one thing is clear: Defoe’s work was not afforded pride of place in either the first or the second volumes of the Newberry, Harvard, Yale and New York issues of the miscellany.

This is dramatically different in the British Library issue. Volume one opens with The True-Born English-Man, followed by An Elegy on the Author of the True-Born English-Man, The Storm. An Essay (not mentioned by Cameron), and A Hymn to the Pillory. It takes 100 pages or so before the reader will encounter lines not by Defoe, Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel. In addition, Defoe’s A Hymn to Peace appears later in volume one, at position sixteen. The first volume of the British Library issue of A Collection of the Best English Poetry thus appears strongly dominated by Defoe’s poems. Among the poets that follow Defoe are Rochester, Dryden, Denham, Addison, Swift, Waller, Congreve, and Milton, all occupying less space than Defoe in that volume.

That the British Library issue, sandwiched as it was between the identical Newberry and Harvard issues, was not merely an afterthought is suggested by the similarities of pamphlet distribution between the early Newberry issue and the late New York issue. Instead, it does not appear too much to suggest that the British Library issue, also collated early in the process, represents a consciously arranged alternative to the other four issues. In this context, Cameron intriguingly suggests that “[t]he change in sequence [in the British Library issue] could be accounted for in many ways” (303), but, unfortunately, immediately dismisses the matter as foreign to his purpose. One way in which we can account for the arrangement of the British Library issue is that Warner was aware of the continued popularity and saleability of Defoe’s verse, which is of course also signalled by the fact that Hills was still pirating Defoe’s poems between the years 1708 and 1710, several years after they were first published. That this is one plausible way in which to account for the British Library issue is supported by the reissue in 1716 of the 1703 edition of Poems on Affairs of State that contained several of Defoe’s poems. To be sure, the choice of Defoe’s verse pamphlets was not Warner’s, but the way in which he arranged them in the different issues of his miscellany was not imposed on him by anything other than market forces and perhaps his own aesthetic ideas concerning poetry.8 In 1717, Defoe’s poems, it seems, were considered one of the more appealing assets among Hills’s stock.9

Warner’s A Collection of the Best English Poetry was not quite the end of Defoe’s presence in eighteenth-century miscellany collections: sections from Reformation of Manners were reproduced in Select Tales and Fables with Prudential Maxims in Prose and Verse (1746, reprinted in 1756 and 1780).10 While some of Defoe’s verse thus remained in circulation into the late eighteenth-century, the statistics offered by the DMI cannot be ignored: Defoe was not a frequently anthologized poet. This is perhaps not unsurprising given that some of Defoe’s contemporaries, such as Giles Jacob, considered Defoe’s poetic efforts to be of the low sort and that Defoe’s reputation had suffered significantly as a result of the fiasco of The Shortest Way with the Dissenters (1702). However, this needs to be counterbalanced with the evidence presented in this note: especially during the first two decades or so after Defoe’s poems were published his poetry enjoyed a healthy level of popularity and was even considered a commodity that had the potential to generate good sales figures. In addition, that some publishers consciously chose to reproduce specific sections from Defoe’s poems in their miscellanies indicates that there was some recognition of the rhetorical force of his verse publications, if not their artistic value. The opinion of the eccentric Dunton that Defoe was one of the “chief Wits of the Age” (258) was certainly not one shared by all eighteenth-century consumers of poetry, but neither would it be accurate to claim that Defoe was no more than one of the also-rans among the early eighteenth-century poets.

University of Worcester


NOTES

1. Justice W-’s Case, or, a New Hymn to the Pillory (London, 1760).

2. An example of this for Jure Divino is discussed in Kyle Grimes, “Daniel Defoe, William Hone, and The Right Divine of Kings to Govern Wrong! A New Electronic Edition.”

3. Halifax’s comment concerns A Hymn to Victory (1704) and The Double Welcome (1705). The Duchess had a “sizeable monetary” reward conveyed to Defoe via Halifax. See Paula R. Backscheider, Daniel Defoe: His Life, 196.

4. The actual number for Defoe is probably even lower if we account for misattributions. For example, the DMI includes the broadsheet ballad The Age of Wonders: To the Tune of Chivy Chase (1710), which is unlikely to be Defoe’s. When Defoe wrote ballads, such as Ye True Born Englishmen Proceed (1701) or The Address (1704), he employed five-line stanzas rhyming abaab, rather than the four-line abab stanzas in this poem. Moreover, by 1707 Defoe had effectively ceased to produce public poetry.

5. It might be noted that both the unauthorized A Collection of the Writings of the Author of The True-Born English-Man (1703) and Defoe’s A True Collection of the Writings of the Author of The True Born English-man (1703) offer the same opening sequence of poems.

6. Cameron identifies the five copies by their location: Newberry Library, Chicago; Houghton Library, Harvard University; British Library; New York Public Library; Yale University Library (Volume 1 only). The British Library issue is now held in the British Library and is the only digitized copy, available via Eighteenth-Century Collections Online. The New York Public Library no longer appears to hold the issue to which Cameron refers, but I have been unable to identify its current location. The English Short Title Catalogue’s record for the miscellany is of strictly limited use: further issues of the miscellany have apparently been identified since 1958 (Emmanuel College, Cambridge; Memorial Library, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Fondren Library, Rice University; United States, Library of Congress; University of Houston; Auckland Public Library), but librarians at Emmanuel College, the University of Houston and the University of Wisconsin-Madison have confirmed to me that their respective libraries do not in fact hold a physical copy of A Collection of the Best English Poetry. Most of library catalogue records for the item link to ECCO, that is, the British Library issue, without noting the differences in arrangement. An exception to this rule is the Fondren Library, which includes a contents list for each volume.

7. Cameron’s brief article is at times confusing in its cross-referencing of the contents of the five issues he discusses. I was not able to discern with sufficient clarity the contents of the first volume of the New York issue from Cameron’s comparative lists and commentary, but, on page 303, he states unambiguously that the three poems by Defoe mentioned here appear in that issue’s second volume. The issue held in the Fondren Library has A Hymn to the Pillory, A Hymn to Peace and The True-Born English-Man at positions 7 through 9 in volume one and therefore appears to be similar to the second volume of the New York copy.

8. Admittedly, there could also have been more mundane reasons for the different arrangements: for example, the different piles of the pamphlets could have been moved around the workshop to create space, affecting the order in which the poems appear in the miscellany. That this accounts for the British Library copy’s offering four of Defoe’s poems successively at the beginning of volume one seem unlikely to me, however.

9. It might be noted that the poems are not attributed to Defoe in the miscellany. However, The True-Born Englishman, An Elegy on the Author of the True-Born-English-Man and A Hymn to the Pillory were well known to be Defoe’s works even decades after their first appearance.

10. The DMI also lists a poem integrated into Defoe’s The Political History of the Devil (1726) as appearing in The Christian Poet, or Divine Poems on the Four Last Things (1735). The poem is 74 lines in length and untitled in the Political History; the publisher of the miscellany titles it “On the Fallen Angels.”

WORKS CITED

Anon. Poems on Affairs of State, from the Reign of K. James the First, to this Present Year 1703. Vol. 2. London, 1703. Print.

Backscheider, Paula R. Daniel Defoe: His Life. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1989. Print.

Benedict, Barbara M. “Publishing and Reading Poetry.” The Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth-Century Poetry. Ed. John Sitter. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001: 63-82. Print.

Cameron, W. J. “A Collection of the Best English Poetry 1717.” Notes and Queries CCIII (July 1958): 300-303. Print.

Digital Miscellanies Index. University of Oxford, 2010. Web.

Dunton, John. The Life and Errors of John Dunton, Late Citizen of London; Written by Himself in Solitude. London, 1705. Print.

Lord, George deForest, ed. Poems on Affairs of State: Augustan Satirical Verse, 1660-1714. Vol. 1, 1660-1678. New Haven: Yale UP, 1963. Print.

Hammond, Paul. The Making of Restoration Poetry. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2006. Print.

Jacobs, Giles. The Poetical Register: or, the Lives and Characters of all the English Poets. Vol. 2. London, 1723. Print.

Justice W-’s Case, or, a New Hymn to the Pillory. London, 1760.

Plomer, Henry R. A Dictionary of the Printers and Booksellers Who Were at Work in England, Scotland and Ireland from 1668 to 1725. Oxford: Oxford Bibliographical Society, 1922. Print.

Rogers, Pat. Robinson Crusoe. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1979. Print.

Rounce, Adam. “The Difficulties of Quantifying Taste: Blackmore and Poetic Reception in the Eighteenth Century.” Digital Defoe: Studies in Defoe and His Contemporaries 6.1 (Fall 2014): 19-35. Web.

Shiels, Robert, and Theophilus Cibber. The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain. London, 1753. Print.

Snyder, Henry L. “Daniel Defoe, the Duchess of Marlborough, and the ‘Advice to the Electors of Great Britain.’” Huntington Library Quarterly 29.1 (1965): 53-62. Print.

Warner, T. A Collection of the Best English Poetry, by Several Hands. 2 vols. London, 1717. Print.

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Feminist Recovery Practices & Digital Pedagogies: Teaching 18th-Century Women Poets

Ula Klein

IN THE SUMMER of 2012, I was given the opportunity to teach a summer poetry course, and I chose to teach a course on female poets of the eighteenth century. My rationale for the course was that it would allow students to come into contact with poetry that, even as English majors, they would not likely read elsewhere. As I began planning the course, it became clear to me that given certain limitations on our time and prior student knowledge, it would neither be possible nor useful to conduct the course in the manner of a “typical” upper-level literature course during a regular semester. Instead, after some consideration, I decided that the course would combine my desire to trouble the “typical” eighteenth-century canon, as it is conceived in survey courses, with my growing interest in digital humanities and multimodal composition.

As the title of this website indicates, the course was devoted to exploring how to use feminist recovery practices and digital pedagogies in the classroom. The course objectives (below) also included more “traditional” objectives of a literature or poetry course. The objectives for this web presentation (also below) are also multifold. First, I present this information in order to suggest ways in which to create literature courses that are more interactive and digitally-oriented as well as more attuned to feminist recovery practices. Second, I hope that this presentation will make clear the possible “payoffs” for including lesser-taught texts in the classroom.

Course Objectives

The main goals of the course were to:
» introduce students to eighteenth-century British culture and eighteenth-century British women’s poetry;
» explore the interactions between the poetry of women and men in eighteenth-century Britain;
» understand the position and oppression of women in eighteenth-century Britain;
» gain an appreciation of eighteenth-century poetic forms and styles; and
» contribute to the popularization of understudied women’s literature.

This website explores the various pedagogical and scholarly tools that went into designing the course, sets out the operation of the course, and describes the final projects prepared by the students. In addition to sections on students’ previous knowledge, my expectations for the course, the course framework, and information on our materials, there is also a section on the final assignment and an example of one of the student projects submitted for this assignment.


Web Presentation Objectives

The main goals of this website are to:
» introduce scholars of the eighteenth century to digital projects for the literature classroom;
» demonstrate that digital projects actively generate student interest in research and broaden their abilities to
write in a digital medium;

» examine the limitations of students and literature courses at the university undergraduate level, especially with
regard to eighteenth-century literature broadly and women’s literature specifically;
» suggest methods for making students more aware of canon-formation and feminist practices; and
» open up a discussion among scholars on the relation of digital pedagogy and feminist recovery practices in the classroom.

I explain the rationale for using digital pedagogies and feminist recovery practices and their interconnectedness in the sections on rationale, prior student knowledge, and the final student wiki assignment, while the section on the course materials suggests how to make a course of this nature inclusive and diverse.

Ula Klein
Texas A&M International University

Next Section: Rationale . . .

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“The Critick and the Writer of Fables”: Anne Finch and Critical Debates, 1690 – 1720

Sharon Young

AFTER several decades of scholarship devoted to the recuperation of marginalized writers and texts, the issue of the eighteenth-century canon continues to vex literary scholars. For Paula R. Backscheider the position is clear:

[l]iterary movements are not made by single great poets, as the canon of Great Men implies; they are collective efforts that express a number of things – the taste of a time, the longings and aspirations of a people, the creative genius of a poet, and the feeling of individual writers. (14)

Backscheider’s statement raises two important issues. Firstly, the poetic practices of any period are complex, representing multiple poets, forms and genres. For the poetry of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries this is a particularly apposite observation, as the century was “a miscellaneous age, when ideas of mixture entered cultural and constitutional debate,” not a period “of certainty, stasis, consensus, and restraint” (Fairer x-xi). Secondly, modern critical methodologies need to reflect this diversity in the scope of and approach to readings. Over the past few decades, this has meant a reconsideration of literary histories previously dominated by figures such as John Dryden and Alexander Pope, and the reassessment of the need for such a concept as the canon. Consequently, the corpus of poets and texts studied and anthologized has expanded to include many long unheard poetic voices.

Few scholars would argue against these moves; however, there are several points about the reconsideration of the canon that warrant examination. Perhaps most importantly, even as the grounds of canonization have shifted with emerging theoretical approaches, the traditional canon persists as a critical frame. In other words, the recuperation of female and laboring class voices, for example, has not necessarily diminished the dominance of Dryden or Pope. This is, in part, because of modern critical biases which still privilege certain writers, genres and production contexts and, as a result, the complexity and variety of the poetry produced during the period is to an extent invisible to modern literary historians and critics (Fairer 124). In addition, the resilience of long established literary reputations is bolstered, as J. Paul Hunter explains, by our desire to construct neat literary histories and our tendency to rely on rigid periodization. Such critical habits, based as they are on boundaries and discontinuities, deal inadequately with complexity and intersection, resulting in collateral damage to the literary reputations of those writers who “fall into the cracks” between periods or categories (“Missing Years” 434−35). For Hunter the period 1690−1720 demonstrates these issues as it appears to include no notable poetic figures. Despite its “poetic plenitude,” the period represents a transitional phase of literary or poetic practice between the eras of Dryden and Pope (“Missing Years” 437). The reasons for the appearance of an empty and transitional phase in English poetic practices are numerous and complex; however, modern methodological biases and habits cannot alone explain the missing years of Hunter’s thesis. It is therefore necessary to consider other possibilities which have less to do with modern critical practices per se than with contemporary contexts which have not yet been fully explored. One key context that helps to shed light on this is that of the contemporary critical debates, which, for Robert J. Griffin, remain a frame for modern approaches to eighteenth-century poetry (378).

Paul Trolander and Zeynep Tenger provide an inclusive and useful definition of critical practices which include personal and communal responses to texts. These range from:

acts of preference, taste, or discrimination in any age that are felt and thought but never voiced (and thus can be inferred but not known), or voiced but not printed (and thus go unrecorded), to print culture of the present and past out of which critical histories are most often constructed. (40)

This broader definition of practice offers a better understanding of the connections between contemporary literary reception and the professional critical debates. More specifically for this present essay, it prompts us to examine a broader range of texts which engage not only with questions of literary taste but also with the roles of poet, critic and reader alike. Anne Finch voices her opinions on such matters quite clearly in a range of poems which form the main discussion of this essay; however in many of these poems Finch also raises the dangers of active participation in the mainstream critical debates and questions the validity of professional criticism. Critical debates were complex and influenced by political and financial motives as much as artistic shifts. Roger Lonsdale explains that

[i]t is commonly assumed that the restraints imposed by polite taste were so pervasive that it never occurred to eighteenth-century poets to write in certain ways or on certain topics. [However] the success of that taste lay less in governing what was written than in influencing what would be allowed to survive. (xxxvi-vii)

Lonsdale’s observation that contemporary critical debates had a greater impact on reputation and the longevity of both writer and text than on the type of text produced is important: it points to contemporary critical discussions as the potential cause of the longstanding occlusion of notable poetic figures from the canon that has only in recent years been addressed.

Many of the key theorists of the period had dual roles as poet and arbiter of poetic taste. This twofold position was a powerful one: it raised the poet’s profile and it mutually reinforced literary reputations, establishing a form of “self-canonization” (Hammond 4). It also strengthened the political and social relationships which were the foundation of a hierarchy of poetic practices. Dryden and Pope were perhaps the most celebrated of these poet-critics and this may account for the persistence of their reputation compared to those of equally prolific or well-regarded poets, such as Finch or Matthew Prior. Despite their dominance across literary and critical discourses, Dryden and Pope were not, of course, the sole voices in these critical debates nor were their chosen modes of discussion—the poetic essay and the preface—the only avenues open to aspiring critics. However, direct participation in critical debates was not a given, with many poets unable or unwilling to engage in what could be a fruitful but dangerous activity to emerging poets conscious of their literary reputation but keen to expand their writing career. Discussions of the canon frequently do not adequately distinguish between the success of a literary career and the enduring reputation of a writer. These are not necessarily the same thing, although the collective memory of the established canon largely collapses these differences.

Finch was a prolific and skillful poet who has received an increasing share of critical attention. However, while Finch now belongs to a newly important literary history, her poetry still suffers from what Carol Barash terms an “under-reading” based on the assumptions that women poets wrote only from their own experience and that the poetic voice used translated this directly and simplistically (English Women’s Poetry 20). However, her poems display an acute awareness of the importance of poetic theory and Finch’s engagement with critical discussions on her own terms; she draws a distinction between theory and criticism. Finch is wary of the critics who dominated the literary scene despite sharing many of their literary preoccupations and political allegiances, and her texts are, to use Michael Gavin’s phrase, “haunted by critics” (633). The poems reveal a strategic positioning by Finch of her texts, away from the direct glare of critical reception. In this article I shall examine some of her many poems that explore her complex relationship with the dominant poetic and critical debates of the period described by Hunter as the ‘missing years.’ In particular, I shall argue that Finch’s decision to distance herself from direct engagement with such critical debates contributed to her late inclusion in the canon or canons of eighteenth-century poetry. Although not the sole criterion for inclusion in the canon, contemporary literary reputation was consolidated through critical practice or what Backscheider terms poetic “agency” (22). In distancing herself from the debate, Finch may have neglected an important component in the management of her own reputation.

The self-management of literary reputation had been a key skill for emerging and celebrated writers from 1660 onwards, as they sought to distance themselves from the individuals and practices of the Civil War era (Parker 7−17). At the Restoration, “established writers hastily repositioned themselves” through selective publication and critical texts in a more general reassessment of the literary canon and poetic practices,” and by 1700 “the classical and contemporary canons were each being reshaped by a process of interaction and reciprocal criticism” (Hammond 4, 11). In “To My Lord Chancellor” (1662), Dryden exhibits a keen interest in asserting the boundaries between his own and prior literary practices not merely in the interest of political expedience:

When our great Monarch into exile went,
Wit and religion suffered banishment
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
At length the Muses stand restored again
To that great charge which nature did ordain.
(Kinsley 28, lines 17−18, 23−24)

Similarly, in his Essay on Criticism (1711) Pope is clear about the literary uses of conceit and his distance from earlier poetic practices:

Some to Conceit alone their Taste confine,
And Glitt’ring Thoughts struck out at ev’ry line;
Pleas’d with a Work where nothing’s just or fit;
One glaring Chaos and Wild Heap of Wit.
(Rogers 8, lines 289−92)

Also key to this process of canon reassessment and formation were miscellany collections published by booksellers such as Henry Herringman and Jacob Tonson: “[B]y providing a home for shorter poems and translations, and by collecting prologues, epilogues, epistles and commendatory poems, these volumes shaped a literary world of mutual obligations and defined a canon of contemporary writers” (Hammond 6, 8). In the increasingly commercial medium of print culture, the management of a literary career was financially useful and potentially easier. Dryden, for example, made such strategic use of miscellany publication through his collaboration with Tonson (Hammond 14; Tomlinson 11). In both print and scribal forms, the miscellany was, for Barbara Benedict, especially important in establishing literary reputations at a time when writing was gradually becoming a paid profession (68, 63). Moreover, the growing power of the publisher and the declining influence of the bookseller led to the phenomenon of the fixed catalogue; this not only allowed increased sales but was crucial to the maintenance of a literary reputation and, in the long term, helped to form a lasting canon.

The careful presentation of one’s own work was very important in a full and increasingly competitive literary scene. All poets needed to define their own work in contradistinction to that of a largely homogenous field of writers. This need not only relate to financial and social pressures, but in a political situation that was increasingly predicated on a two party system, the need to be associated clearly with one side could be both very beneficial and dangerous. As a result, the critical rhetoric shared many similarities with political debates, not least its oppositional dynamic. Indeed, Backscheider and Ingrassia assert that “the kinds of poetry an individual read functioned as a marker of political allegiance, degree of sensibility, and intellect; poetic taste became another cultural code” (xxiii). Although this does not necessarily reflect the realities of political allegiance or of poetic practice, this dynamic, “the aesthetic of party,” has been identified by Abigail Williams as a contributory factor in the disappearance of Whig writers from both the academic and general canon for the early eighteenth century. These rhetorical strategies and structures of Whig cultural politics are characterized by what Stephen Zwicker terms the “politics of contest” (7). This is remembered most clearly in the derogation of Whig writers as hacks and dunces by key Tory writers such as Dryden and Pope (Williams 22−25). However, as Williams points out, “the distinctions between high and low culture that seem so central to the construction of [this] Tory myth are far less stable than they seem and mask the common ground which is shared by many writers of the first few decades of the eighteenth century” (32). In a further qualification of the notion of politically bipolar poetics, Christine Gerrard notes that “[r]ecent critical work, particularly on the Whig literary tradition, has revealed how the aesthetic value judgments we have inherited from Pope and his literary associates—judgments uncannily persistent in shaping later generations’ perceptions of the period—were driven as much by political as by literary bias” (2). One consequence of the binary dynamic promoted by party political interest was the occlusion of other participants in the debate—in Williams’ argument a generation of Whig writers. However, political allegiance cannot always be neatly mapped onto poetic theory and although Williams argues for a political context to the diminished reputation of Whig writers, the actual position is more complicated with writers such as Finch similarly marginalized by other equally important factors.

During the political chaos of the 1670s, in addition to distancing himself from earlier poetic practices, Dryden focused in numerous texts on the function and nature of poetry and yet, as Kyle Pivetti observes, his ideas on poetry remained constant across his career (86−87). Dryden was conscious of a “sense of the judiciousness required by classical art,” literary judgment which could accommodate difference and which was not associated with pedantry (Myers 74). However, as his preface to Sylvae (1685) makes clear, criticism was not necessarily associated with poetic discrimination:

There are a sort of blundering half-witted people, who make a great deal of noise about a Verbal slip; though Horace wou’d instruct them better in true Criticism…True judgment in Poetry, like that in Painting, takes a view of the whole together, whether it be good or not; and where the beauties are more than the Faults, concludes for the Poet against the little Judge. (n. pag.)

Dryden’s dismissal of “the little Judge” can be seen in his own efforts to offer constructive feedback to protégés such as William Walsh (Tomlinson 4; Ades 265−67). It also acknowledges the aggressive nature of much contemporary criticism:

’tis a sign that malice is hard driven, when ’tis forc’d to lay hold on a Word or Syllable; to arraign a Man is one thing, and to cavil at him is another. In the midst of an ill natur’d Generation of Scriblers, there is always Justice enough left in Mankind, to protect good Writers: And they too are oblig’d, both by humanity and interest, to espouse each others cause, against false Criticks, who are the common Enemies. (Preface, Sylvae n. pag.)

Dryden was acutely aware of the confrontational nature of criticism: in a letter to John Dennis in 1694 he writes that “we poor Poets Militant (to use Mr Cowley’s Expression) are at the mercy of Wretched Scribblers and when they cannot fasten upon our verses, they fall upon out morals, our Principles of State and religion” (qtd. in Ades 269). The link between critical and political debate is clear here and for Dryden it is evident in both form and content. He is also clearly aware of the dangers this posed for his and other poets’ reputations. However, like Pope after him, Dryden could also engage in ad hominem attacks: his MacFlecknoe (1682) was designed to ruin the reputation and career of his rival Thomas Shadwell and, in the process, establish Dryden’s own reputation more firmly.

Despite Pope’s claims to the contrary in a letter to Caryll in July 1719, Pope’s Essay on Criticism (1711) attracted a significant amount of contemporary attention, not least from co-religionists who found certain passages heterodox and, more famously, from Dennis (Audra and Williams 203−5). Dennis’s response was to accuse Pope of “servile Deference” to the Ancients. While, as Seth Rudy points out, Pope undoubtedly saw himself as “the scion of a literary bloodline that extended straight back to his revered ancients” (4), Pope reveals in the essay that his relationship to classical antecedents was, like Dryden’s, not deferential but a far more active engagement with the key ideas of classical literature:

Some on the leaves of ancient authors prey,
Nor time nor moths e’er spoil’d so much as they.
Some drily plain, without invention’s aid,
Write dull receipts how poems may be made.
These leave the sense, their learning to display,
And those explain the meaning quite away. (Rogers 3-4, lines 112−17)

Indeed, as Audra and Williams point out, Dennis and Pope shared many ideas about literature and the role of criticism, and any argument between the two men seems likely to stem from religious and political differences as much as literary matters (206). However, Dennis had long been an object of ridicule amongst the wits and had in 1702 identified himself clearly with the critics rather than the wits. In the initial allusion to Dennis, Pope may have been responding merely to Dennis as indicative of problematic critical behaviour (Audra and Williams 207). Whatever the exact cause of the argument, its effect was to ruin Dennis’s contemporary reputation (Nokes 29). Despite clearly distinguishing between the need for literary taste and the perils of criticism, both Dryden and Pope engaged in its most aggressive forms, hampering the career and consequent reputations of fellow writers. For their contemporaries, such as Finch, it was perhaps a salutary lesson.

Finch is with some justification the best-known of all female poets of the early modern period (Barash, English Women’s Poetry 259; Ezell 127−29). Her poetry was well regarded in her lifetime and she “enjoyed the friendship of major contemporaries, such as Pope, throughout her productive career as a poet” (McGovern and Hinnant xv). As a result, the scholarship on Finch is far more substantial than that on the majority of her contemporaries. However, the degree of contemporary critical acclaim was not matched by the extent of the publication of her work or by a sustained literary reputation. There was no collected edition of her poetry issued between her death in 1720 and the publication of Myra Reynold’s edition in 1903. This, as Hunter’s discussion expounds, partially explains her limited presence in critical accounts of the period. Although several of Finch’s poems did appear in published miscellanies, she increasingly withdrew from this mode of circulation and focused her attention on her published collection Miscellany Poems, on Several Occasions (1713). This volume was published in a particularly propitious political climate for Finch; however, as it receded after the failed Jacobite rebellion of 1715, she continued to write and circulate her poetry within a coterie context and more informally in letters (Gavin 649; McGovern 91). Throughout her writing life, Finch relied on the support of a community which shared certain values: loyalty to the Stuart monarchy, Tory political sympathies, and High Church Anglicanism. For Barash, this “politically oppositional community of pro-Stuart women” in the tradition of the femme forte is central to Finch’s work (“Political Origins” 346). However, this thriving culture is not exclusively female, as an examination of the extensive body of manuscript verse attests: many of her poems are addressed to male relatives, friends or literary contemporaries. Furthermore, Finch does not avoid “polemical arguments on behalf of women’s equality” or fail to “defend the rights of women to inhabit the then almost exclusively masculine republic of letters,” as Barbara McGovern and Charles Hinnant claim (xxxii). In fact, many of the poems engage directly with critical debates and her role as a poet in these discussions. Finch’s stance is, however, different from that of Dryden and Pope and many of her male contemporaries.

Finch as a writer, whose political affiliations caused her personal, financial and career problems, was perhaps understandably wary of debates which could ruin her literary reputation, despite her prestigious and well-connected circle of friends. That she is a female writer probably adds to this caution, but is not, I suggest, its primary cause. As with other discussions concerning women’s writing, we need to exercise great care in laying a grid of gender across this poetic debate, as many women, including Finch, were more concerned with political and literary matters than gender relations. As with so many things, Finch showed a loyalty to older poetic forms and conventions. The relationship between political and literary production observed by Dryden underlines her support for a literary and political network which functioned along older and coterie lines. Despite the fact that after 1712 Finch’s personal position improved—Heneage Finch inherited the family estate at Eastwell and she published Miscellany Poems in 1713—she remained a selective publisher of her own work. Many more pieces remained in manuscript at her death in 1720; yet not all of these texts were early or unfinished pieces but poems of her mature career.

Finch was well aware of both the benefits and dangers of participating in the on-going debate about the function and nature of poetry. In fact, she was, like many female writers, wary of the critics regardless of her own participation in the discussion. Despite her reticence to engage publicly in criticism as either a reader or a poet, Finch invested in the same broad discussion as her peers. The bulk of Finch’s texts which engage with criticism were left in manuscript form at her death (Gavin 633). This was presumably in part to avoid controversy, either as a non-juror during her early career or in the wake of the Jacobite rebellion of 1715 and the consequent hostile political environment for those, such as Finch, who remained loyal to the Stuarts. As a result, the nature of her critical engagement with post-1688 poetic culture has largely gone unremarked (Gavin 634). However, as “Mercury and the Elephant. A Prefatory Fable” shows, Finch not only had clear views on the state of critical debate, she also offered an alternative that avoided the petty rivalries magnified by political or financial concerns (Reynolds 3−4). Finch was a powerful advocate of writing “with studious care” and to “agreed upon standards of good composition” (Gavin 638). This is visible in her preface to a manuscript collection from the early 1700s (Reynolds 6−12):

I am besides sensible, that Poetry has been of late so explain’d, the laws of itt being putt into familiar languages that even those of my sex (if they will be so presumptuous as to write) are very accountable for their transgressions against them. For what rule of Aristotle or Horace is there, that has not been given us by Rapin, Despreaux, D’acier, my Lord Roscomon etc.? What has Mr. Dryden omitted that may lay open the very misteries of this Art? And can there any where be found a more delightsome, or more usefull piece of poetry, then that, ‘correct essay, / Which so repairs, our old Horatian way’ If then, after the perusal of these, we fail, we cannot plead any want, but of capacity, or care. (9−10)

As she does in “Mercury and the Elephant,” Finch is at pains to separate out two distinct strands of criticism to which she is subject in this preface: that she is a female writer and that she is a bad writer. She dismisses the first out of hand as she does in the poem itself, but she is willing to submit herself to the latter (Gavin 638). Indeed, she welcomes the theorizing of Dryden and his fellow critics of the late seventeenth century as a new and accessible scale of merit which should be used to scrutinize all poets.

In “The Introduction,” Finch makes clear her views on appropriate forms of criticism:

Did I, my lines intend for publick view,
How many censures, wou’d their faults persue,
Some wou’d, because such words they do affect,
Cry they’re insipid, empty, uncorrect. (Reynolds 4, lines 1−4)

While this poem is a counter to those who argued that female writers were at best ill-advised and at worst a dangerous example to others, it amply demonstrates Finch’s own poetic skill. It also tells us much about Finch’s and contemporary opinion about the critical debates. The poem continues by making a distinction between criticism, true judgment and public opinion:

And many, have attain’d, dull and untaught
The name of Witt, only by finding fault.
True judges, might condemn their want of witt,
And all might say, they’re by a Woman writ. (lines 5−8)

The concerns of gender she assigns to—and dismisses—as public opinion. The critic is characterized as ignorant and self-serving, whilst those with true judgment offer what we might now call constructive feedback. It is revealing that Finch does not see the opposition as between critic and wit, which customarily structures the critical debates of the period. Instead, she flattens this distinction to present a more complex picture of not only the critical debates but also the reception of texts beyond this small urban clique.

Elsewhere, Finch distinguishes between past and present uses of wit, identifying the reign of Charles II as an era when wit was prized. In “The Tale of the Miser and the Poet,” Finch introduces a miser who explains:

I hid this Coin, when Charles was swaying;
When all was Riot, Masking, Playing;
When witty Beggars were in fashion,
And Learning had o’er-run the nation. (Reynolds 192, lines 31−34)

The miser, a reflection of an increasingly marketized literary economy, however, can now dig up his coin. It is a time when “Mankind is so much wiser, / That none is valued like the Miser (lines 35−36). In contrast, the fortunes of the poet are waning and now it is the poet who must bury his treasure:

Till Time, which hastily advances,
And gives all new Turns and Chances,
Again may bring it into use;
Roscommons may again produce;
New Augustean Days revive,
When Wit shall please, and Poets thrive. (Reynolds 193−94, lines 94−99)

Part of Finch’s broader critique of society, “The Tale of the Miser and the Poet” challenges the commercial literary world, in which “Fights and Fav’rite Friends” are the norm. The poet asks the miser:

                                     can you raise,
As well as Plumb-trees, Groves of Bays?
Where you, which I wou’d chuse much rather,
May Fruits of Reputation gather?
Will Man of Quality, and Spirit,
Regard you for intrinsick Merit?
And seek you out, before your Betters,
For Conversation, Wit and Letters? (Reynolds 192, lines 41−48)

The miser cannot offer the poet any reassurance; literary reputation is now decided by favor, partiality and market forces in contrast to an older model of coterie circulation and collaboration.

For Finch the difference between poetic theory and trivial criticism is clear: the guidelines offered by Dryden are descriptive rather than prescriptive and contrary to much critical debate should not be played out in public or in the ad hominem fashion of the most celebrated disagreements. Indeed, as Sitter notes, most poets of the period felt the rules to be less prescriptive or rigid than the contemporary commentary would suggest (134). Yet, as Gavin observes, “[f]or Finch, criticism is not the best employment for a poet’s acumen, a significant point of departure for someone who venerated Dryden and would later befriend Alexander Pope” (639−40). Dryden is clearly valued by Finch for his work on theorizing poetic practice and his mentorship of numerous poets. Pope, too, was valued as a literary peer. Despite this encomium, Finch, unlike Dryden and Pope, did not engage in the self-promotion through strategic publication and overt participation in critical discussions. She refused to provide a preface to her 1713 Miscellany Poems, replacing it with “Mercury and the Elephant,” which offers a critique of the preface as a weapon of critical conflict. Although it works in the same way, the position of Finch is clear: not only should all right-thinking poets beware the barbarian critics and the commercial market they underwrite, but poets should not encourage this sterile debate by their own participation, even if politically or financially expedient.

In its place Finch suggests an informed, constructive but ultimately private readership. We glimpse Finch’s ideal reader at various points of her work: the epistolary network witnessed by the poems in the Wellesley manuscript; the friends mentioned in the manuscript preface and “Mercury and the Elephant,” and her evaluation of fellow poets such as Dryden and Roscommon. She contrasts this to a literary scene which is urban, cruel and trivial. Although she argues against a financial imperative to writing, her stance is perhaps more accurately a promotion of coterie practices rather than an attack on the literary market—a comment on the difference of critical modes rather than a detailed observation on the marketization of publication. By distancing herself from the market of public opinion as well as the market of literary publication, she acknowledges in “To a Fellow Scribbler,” that all literary careers end and that ultimately reputation is ephemeral and deceptive, a “False appearance”: “Grotesque and trivial shun’d by all, / And soon forgotten when we fall (Reynolds 106, lines 32−33). Coterie circulation includes rather than rejects critical discourses but was felt by Finch to be more constructive and less arbitrary than mainstream published criticism that was led by the dual forces of money and fashion. In “To Mr Prior from a Lady Unknown,” we get a sense of what, for Finch, the literary coterie can offer in its place:

In either sex You never fail, we find,
To cultivate the heart, or charm the mind,
In raptures lost. I fear not your disdain,
But own I languish to possess your vein.
As a fond bird, pleas’d with the teacher’s note,
Expends his life to raise his mimic throat,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Such is my verse, with equal zeal I burn,
Too happy, shou’d I meet the same return. (Reynolds 102, lines 9−14, 20−1)

Crucial too for Finch is self-discrimination, as she explains in “To Mr Pope”: “’Tis not from friends that write, or foes that read; / Censure or praise from ourselves must proceed” (Reynolds 104−5, lines 42−43).

Finch again addresses the distinctions between true judgment and professional criticism in “Mercury and The Elephant.” Gavin explains that Finch punctures the pride of the elephant, victorious in war over the boar and yet whose fame is rightly seen as illusory or trivial by Mercury (650). This petty conflict is, like contemporary critical argument, characterized by “foul Play” and “twenty-thousand Scandals” (Reynolds 3, lines 16, 22), yet presented as momentous by the self-aggrandizing participants. Finch’s voice then intercedes as she makes clear the parallel between this unedifying and violent account and the mauling frequently given by the critics or rival poets. She continues:

Tis for themselves, not us, they Read;
Whilst that proceeding to requite,
We own (who in the Muse delight)
’Tis for our Selves, not them we Write. (Reynolds 4, lines 41−44)

The critic here is both professional and self-serving. Her answer is to “fix our scatter’d Papers” away from this corrupting debate, which she explicitly links to a commercial press: “Tho’ whilst our Labours are preserv’d,/ The Printers may, indeed, be starv’d” (Reynolds 4, lines 49−50). Finch does gender the distinction here. It is the male critical audience which is derogated and Charles Hinnant sees this poem as expressing an acute awareness of the hostility of a male-dominated literary market and suggests that gender is a main focus here (76). Gavin goes further, explaining that: “Finch imagines this hypercritical readership as an always present spectre of male disapproval” and she uses this threat as justification for not publishing more widely (633). Perhaps more persuasive is Backscheider’s reading of the poem which identifies Finch’s rejection of the reading public, despite expecting and wanting an audience for her work (59). This audience was, for Finch, an elite and influential network of male and female friends that represented a targeted and significant audience for her ideas and texts. Finch also saw this coterie as a refuge from various forms of conflict, an idea she explores further in “The Critick and the Writer of Fables” (Reynolds 153−55).

“The Critick and The Writer of Fables” is ostensibly a discussion of the hierarchy of poetic genres. It is written skillfully in the mode of the genre raised and then rejected. Her first target is epic and she uses the Trojan War as her point of discussion. She then maintains the same martial theme across the poetic discussion of genre, and both the epic and satire sections focus on the siege of Troy. However, it is not merely the genres of epic and satire which are to be regarded as “old Bombast” (Reynolds 154, line 28) but the critical debate itself. The critic paradoxically argues that the writer of fables “seeks to purchase Fame by childish Tales” (Reynolds 153, line 13); yet for Finch it is the critic who at a cost to others’ reputations, buys fame with petty and pedantic argument. We know from the other poems that Finch associates the petty rivalries of critical debate with an increasingly marketized literary economy, but here Finch’s poet is “easily persuaded” (Reynolds 154, line 15), gullible and unaware of either the ill-founded judgments or cruel comments of many critics. Finch, like Dryden and Pope, argued for the ethical dimension of poetry:

Whilst aery Fictions hastily repair
To fill my Page, and rid my Thoughts of Care.
As they to Birds and Beasts new Gifts impart,
And Teach, as Poets shou’d, whilst they Divert. (Reynolds 153, lines 5−8)

There is certainly a clear polemical strand to her texts, for all that they are imbricated in polite coterie culture. The poem is a lesson, not necessarily for Finch herself but for her peers swayed by fashion and financial considerations.

The choice of the siege of Troy is significant. In her broader challenge to contemporary critical rhetoric, the passages suggesting violence and conflict reflect her opinions on the aggressive nature of contemporary critical practice expressed in “Mercury and the Elephant” and “To a Fellow Scribbler.” However, in the final passage, where Finch’s own voice emerges, she presents Troy as London, besieged by a trivial and violent critical discourse which demands not only a restricted range of literary genres but requires all to engage in a cruel but futile conflict. This besieged community relies on satire as a “single Stream” supplying its needs and keeping its “Fancies warm” (Reynolds 155, lines 51, 55). Finch’s poetic voice wonders at the rejection of “so many choice Productions” available to the poet and reader, “[a]s if you’d in the midst of Plenty starve” (Reynolds 155, lines 54, 57). By implication, this stream is not only insufficient, but stagnant and potentially corrupting. Gavin notes that Finch felt “bad poets catered to an ill-natured urban readership, that critics valued nothing but back-biting satire, and that these two factors engendered a culture of mutually assured detraction” (644). Important here is the distinction Finch lays bare between the bad or ill-advised poet and the sensible poet who writes only with regard to the twin aims of instruction and entertainment. This offers a parallel between the witty self-serving critic focused solely on fashion or trend and the constructive evaluation or intellectual theorizing of poetic practice that belongs to an earlier age or to an alternative literary community such as the one Finch enjoyed. Her poetry often expresses an awareness of both the dangers of criticism and the need for high poetic standards to which all writers should be accountable. For all her wariness, “Mercury and the Elephant” and “The Critick and the Writer of Fables” were included in Miscellany Poems; however, ultimately, Finch’s strategic withdrawal from the more public aspects of critical debates meant that, despite a contemporary readership of influential friends and family, her texts were quickly lost to a wider readership after her death.

Writing two decades before his article on the apparently missing poets and texts of 1690−1720, Hunter was clear that

Even though our criteria for analysis of literature have changed considerably and change more with every passing years, we seem not to have altered substantially our view of what [is] most distinctive, original, valuable, and lasting in writers we put in—or leave out—of our syllabi. (38-39)

Regardless of concerted efforts, the poetic canon and the critical account of poetic practices between 1690 and1720 are still partially obscured and skewed by several things. Modern critical and methodological biases continue to favor not only male authors but publication modes, genres and forms associated with privileged or more vocal writers active during period. The canon of great writers seems particularly resistant to challenge, as contemporary cultural reputations were influenced by several mutually reinforcing factors: the literary (self)promotion of the emerging marketized publication industry, the political debates that underpinned social, political and literary patronage and, most importantly, a professionalized critical practice. For poets such as Dryden and Pope, this debate was vital to their cultural reputation and financial security, despite misgivings about its confrontational and unedifying aspects. For others such as Finch, criticism as practiced by her contemporaries was a dangerous rhetoric which contaminated literary practice and deflected it away from its main objectives to give pleasure and offer instruction.

Dryden, Pope and other late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century theorists operated in a conflicted field; however, the impetus of most writers was not division but a form of critical synthesis of which Pope’s Essay is perhaps the clearest example (Audra and Williams 209). In reality the development of neoclassical ideas in poetry was a long and complicated project which blurs the boundaries between the artificial constructs of “The Age of Dryden” and “The Age of Pope.” Pope writes in An Essay on Criticism:

Some foreign Writers, some our own despise;
The Ancients only, or the Moderns prize:
(Thus Wit, like Faith, by each Man is apply’d
To one small sect, and All are damn’d beside.)
Meanly they seek the Blessing to confine,
And force that Sun but on a Part to Shine;
Which not alone the Southern Wit sublimes,
But ripens Spirits in cold Northern Climes;
Which from the first has shone on Ages past,
Enlights the present, and shall warm the last. (lines 394−403)

As such, many of Pope’s statements about the form and content of poetry are, like Dryden’s before him, similar to those of his contemporaries, including Finch; however, his need to manage a career may account for the emphasis on oppositional critical discussion. Controversy not only ensures sales, it can also cement a reputation. Yet, not all poets engaged in direct and confrontational debate; Finch rejected the binary logic of such discussions and evolved a far more nuanced critical stance as several of her poems demonstrate. Ultimately, this critical reticence may have meant her poetry was not as visible to later generations of readers, despite a contemporary reputation which was the match of many.

 

University of Worcester

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