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Revealing Character and Concealing Identity in the Romantic Familiar Essay

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Revealing Character and Concealing Identity in the Romantic Familiar Essay Traynor F. Hansen III A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2012 Reading Committee: Raimonda Modiano, Chair Marshall Brown Charles LaPorte Program Authorized to Offer Degree: English ©Copyright 2012 Traynor F. Hansen III University of Washington Abstract Revealing Character and Concealing Identity in the Romantic Familiar Essay Traynor F. Hansen III Chair of Supervisory Committee: Professor Raimonda Modiano English This dissertation argues that the elements of informality, self–revelation, and direct address in the Romantic familiar essay are evidence of concerted efforts for securing a relationship with readers and setting up standards of proper reading. In other words, what appears to be the strong presence of a writer’s personality in the essays is really a means for constructing sympathetic readers in an age of increasingly hostile criticism. While other scholarship on Romantic essayists has focused on individual writers or, more narrowly, on particular essays, this is the first major study of the genre of the familiar essay in the early nineteenth century since 1934. This is a significant contribution to studies of Romanticism, which tend to ignore the genre and dismiss the essays as dated or quaint. By focusing on the generic components of the essays of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Leigh Hunt, William Hazlitt, and Charles Lamb in the political and social context in which they were written, I show that these writers used their essays to intervene in contemporary critical discussions about authenticity and the relationship of authenticity to writing. The complexity of the familiar essay was intensified in the Romantic period by the emergence of several social formations, including a rapidly expanding reading public; the proliferation of mass–market periodicals and literary criticism aimed especially at the middle classes; anonymous publication practices; and emerging constructions of identity and authenticity. In other words, the self–fashioning and audience formation in the familiar essays in the Romantic period are determined neither by the generic conventions of the essay nor by the spirit of the age, but rather by an intersection of the two. Despite their diversity, the essays share a preoccupation with cultivating a relationship of familiarity with sympathetic readers in the midst of a volatile periodical scene. Although writers of the familiar essay frame their projects differently, each points to the importance of establishing an intimate relationship with his unknown readers. This emphasis on relationships over mere rhetoric is symptomatic of a desire for change in the dynamic between readers and writers in the early nineteenth century. i Table of Contents Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: The Romantic Familiar Essay as Form ......................................................................... 6 Treating the Essay as an Aesthetic Form .................................................................................. 11 The Romantic Familiar Essay, Autobiography, and the Question of Genre ............................ 26 Reading the Familiar Essay for Form ....................................................................................... 39 Chapter 2: A Tradition of Familiarity ........................................................................................... 44 Montaigne’s Friendly Readers .................................................................................................. 45 Style and Self ............................................................................................................................ 52 “To Print My Self Out”: The Rise of the Periodical Essay ....................................................... 64 Changing Expectations and the Novel ...................................................................................... 75 Chapter 3: Friends and Companions: Coleridge’s and Hunt’s Periodical Projects ...................... 91 “Assuming the Privileges of a Friend”: Coleridge’s Periodical Effort ..................................... 93 “Without Reminding the Reader Obtrusively of Myself”: The Problem of Reputation ......... 102 Hunt’s Prose and Politics ........................................................................................................ 110 Taking a Seat at Hunt’s Round Table ..................................................................................... 120 Chapter 4: Hazlitt’s Search for Familiarity in an Age of Personality ......................................... 136 Hazlitt and the Romantic Ideology of Authenticity ................................................................ 138 “Impudent Charlatan”: The Challenge to Hazlitt’s Authority ................................................ 144 The London Magazine and the Friendly Table–Talker ........................................................... 155 The Collected Table–Talk and “The Style of a Discontented Man” ...................................... 167 Chapter 5: The Character of Elia in the London Magazine ........................................................ 178 Playing with Authenticity and Identity ................................................................................... 179 ii Elia’s Life in the London Magazine Context .......................................................................... 192 The Difference a Name Makes ............................................................................................... 200 Elia’s Afterlives ...................................................................................................................... 208 Conclusion: Women’s Writing and the Romantic Familiar Essay ............................................. 216 Works Cited ................................................................................................................................ 227 iii Acknowledgements This dissertation would not exist without the careful and thoughtful guidance of Raimonda Modiano. Thank you for your time and insight, your commitment to seeing this project through from start to finish, and most of all your friendship. Thanks also to my dissertation committee members, Marshall Brown and Charles LaPorte, for your advice and encouragement over the years. I would also like to express my gratitude to the following people for their support and friendship: Anis Bawarshi, John Bean, Jane Brown, Jessica Burstein, Jessica Canton, Faye Christenberry, Anne Dwyer, Nicholas Halmi, Caitlin Hansen, Jeff Johnson, JoAnn Kelly, Thomas Lockwood, Danielle Magnusson, Kathy Mork, D.C. Nelson, Vincent Oliveri, Brian Reed, Jennifer Siembor, Henry Staten, Heather Stansbury, Thomas Stuby, Mischa Willett, and Xuan Zheng. And thank you to my family: Frosty and Cathy Hansen, Dan and Dawn Nelson, Johannes and Jennifer Aubrecht, Peter and Danielle Dykhuis, Gary and Rachel Hansen, and Chris and Ashley Nelson. Most importantly, thank you to my wife, Tricia, and our children, Traynor IV and Naomi. None of this would have been possible without your love and support. Thank you for taking this journey with me, for sharing in the excitement and frustrations, and for encouraging me through everything. I love you all very much. 1 Introduction If I had written to seek the world’s favor, I should have bedecked myself better, and should present myself in a studied posture. I want to be seen here in my simple, natural, ordinary fashion, without straining or artifice; for it is myself I portray. My defects will here be read to the life, and also my natural form, as far as respect for the public has allowed. Michel de Montaigne, “To the Reader” That I am fond of indulging, beyond a hope of sympathy, in such retrospection, may be the symptom of some sickly idiosyncrasy. Or is it owing to another cause; simply, that being without wife or family, I have not learned to project myself enough out of myself; and having no offspring of my own to dally with, I turn back upon memory, and adopt my own early idea, as my heir and favorite? If these speculations seem fantastical to thee, reader—(a busy man, perchance), if I tread out of the way of thy sympathy, and am singularly–conceited only, I retire, impenetrable to ridicule, under the phantom cloud of Elia. Elia (Charles Lamb), “New Year’s Eve” This dissertation is a study of the familiar essay, a genre which flourished during the Romantic period in England. Like the personal essay to which it is closely related, it is characterized by a focus on the life and experiences of its writer. There is, however, a significant difference between the two genres. Unlike the personal essay, whose primary goal is self– expression and which attempts to convey some sort of the idea of the character of its author, recording his or her thoughts, foibles, observations and life experiences, the familiar essay is much more focused on securing a casual intimacy with readers, either hinting at a pre–existent, co–operative alliance, or by simply instantiating one on the spot. The familiar essay cultivates an informal prose style. This informality is often characterized by random associations that appear to record unmediated, spontaneous thoughts, as well as digressions and non–sequiturs that would not be appropriate in more thesis–driven prose.
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