PDF hosted at the Radboud Repository of the Radboud University Nijmegen The following full text is a publisher's version. For additional information about this publication click this link. http://hdl.handle.net/2066/104308 Please be advised that this information was generated on 2021-10-05 and may be subject to change. /b< ι M. Robertson: ^9 Rationalist and ' 1 T . à . _ „ -- • • s...... L I* ' "ary Critic i ODIN DEKKERS J.M. Robertson: Rationalist and Literary Critic J.M. Robertson: Rationalist and Literary Critic een wetenschappelijke proeve op het gebied van de Letteren PROEFSCHRIFT ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen, volgens besluit van het College van Decanen in het openbaar te verdedigen op woensdag 24 juni 1998 des namiddags om 1.30 uur precies door ODIN DEKKERS Geboren op 14 augustus 1969 te Susteren Promotor: Prof. Dr. F.J.M. Korsten Co-promotor: Dr. J.M. Blom Leden manuscriptcommissie: Prof. Dr. W.J.M. Bronzwaer Prof. K. Fens Prof. Dr. M. Demoor, Rijksuniversiteit Gent Contents Acknowledgements vii Preface ix 1 TheLifeof J.M. Robertson 1 2 Robertson and nineteenth-century rationalism Introduction 51 Part 1 : British rationalism in the nineteenth century 52 Part 2: Robertson as a rationalist thinker 72 3 Robertson and scientific literary criticism Introduction 93 Part 1 : Victorian scientific criticism 94 Part 2 : Robertson as a theorist of scientific literary criticism 134 4 Robertson on drama, fiction, and poetry Introduction 163 Part 1 : Robertson on drama 164 Part 2: Robertson on fiction 192 Part 3 : Robertson on poetry 221 Bibliography 257 Index 277 Acknowledgements This book could not have been written without the generous help I have received from many quarters. I am particularly grateful to Prof. Dr. F.J.M. Korsten and Dr. J.M. Blom, whose support and scholarly advice have never failed me in the course of this project. I wish to thank the authorities of the following libraries for allowing me permission to quote from manuscript sources in their possession: Bishopsgate Library, London; Bodleian Library, University of Oxford; British Library, London; Durham University Library; Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin; Houghton Library, Harvard University; Lilly Library, Indiana University; National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh; Princeton University Library. The staffs and authorities of the following libraries and institutions have also been most helpful in answering my queries and allowing me access to manuscripts and printed books: Cambridge University Library; Duke University, Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library; House of Lords Record Office; International Institute for Social History, Amsterdam; Reading University Library; Royal Library, The Hague; University of Iowa, Special Collections Department; University of Michigan, Special Collections Library; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Wilson Library. Special thanks are due to the staff of the South Place Ethical Society library at Conway Hall, London, for letting me browse their unequalled collection of freethought literature to my heart's content. I am much indebted to Jim Herrick of the Rationalist Press Association for sharing his knowledge of Robertson's life and the secularist movement with me, and also for introducing me to Terry Mullins, former Secretary of the National Secular Society. My time spent in London doing library research would not have been half as fruitful or enjoyable without him. I am also grateful to Mrs Monica German for her hospitality in Great Missenden. I thank Dr. Marysa Demoor of Ghent University for all her advice and for having followed the course of my research with such kind interest. My former students Pascal van den Heuvel, Fieneke Hoens, Mira van Houten, Marieke Niezen, and Annette Verhoeven have earned my gratitude by spending many hours among dusty bookshelves collecting material for me. Also, I could not have done without the continuous support of my friends and former colleagues viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS at the English Department of Nijmegen University, in particular Henk Dijkgraaf, Astrid van Hoek, and Robin Leavis. Finally, my greatest debt is to my wife, Martine Swennen, for believing in me and in my work. Preface Of the very few studies devoted to the life and work of John Mackinnon Robertson (1856-1933), the most thorough is undoubtedly Conrad J. Kaczkowski's unpublished Ph.D. thesis John Mackinnon Robertson: Freethinker and Radical (St. Louis University, 1964).1 In over 600 pages, it attempts to discuss nearly every aspect of Robertson's dauntingly copious oeuvre, which embraces, with a comprehensiveness no longer a feature of our own highly specialised age, philosophy, economics, sociology, religion, and politics alike. However, what the thesis conspicuously does not do is pay any attention to Robertson's work on the topic that was in the end perhaps closest to his heart: literature. Kaczkowski's thesis even ends on the ominous note that 'it may be observed that if Robertson followed the same "critical" norms in his literary efforts as he did in his Biblical criticism, there would be little value in attempting an investigation of this area.' Leaving aside for the moment the question of the validity of Robertson's biblical criticism, I had better not hesitate to state outright that the present study represents precisely that which Kaczkowski advises against: an investigation into Robertson's work as a literary critic. It is, in fact, my conviction that of all of Robertson's writings, those on literature and literary criticism are by far the most interesting. What I will attempt to demonstrate in the course of the following pages is that within the context of his time, Robertson was a noteworthy literary critic and theoretician of literary criticism, whose writings do not deserve the general neglect into which they have very clearly fallen. In his own spirit, the investigation will be a critical one, and one conclusion may well be that Robertson does not always attain the ambitious goals he sets himself. However, this does not mean that the goals themselves and the attempts to reach them should be any less interesting from a literary-historical point of view. The claim for Robertson is not that he succeeds in solving the problems literary critics and theoreticians before and after him have struggled with, but rather that his own struggle shows him to possess a powerful and independent mind, contact with which may significantly increase our 1 The other two are Martin Page, Britain's Unknown Genius. The Life-Work ofJ.M. Robertson (London, 1984), and JM Robertson (1856-1933): Liberal, Rationalist, & Scholar, ed. G.A. Wells (London, 1987). χ PREFACE understanding of the late-nineteenth, early-twentieth century literary landscape. From the very start of my research I have been aware of the problem that I would be discussing the work of an author with whose life and writings hardly anyone is familiar nowadays. Chapter 1 represents a first step towards remedying this situation by providing an outline of Robertson's life, paying due attention to the historical context in which Robertson rose to relative fame and notoriety as one of the most combative rationalists of the age. Whether he was discussing free trade or Tennyson's Maud, pagan mythology or the rhythms of Shakespeare's verse, Robertson would never let his readers forget that he was a rationalist first and foremost (which is not to say that he was always rational!). Chapter 2 takes up the theme of Robertson's rationalism, and is divided into two parts. Part 1 aims to establish the appropriate historical backgrounding for Part 2 with a general discussion of the rise of rationalism in Britain in the nineteenth century; Part 2 then takes a more detailed look at the philosophical foundations of Robertson's particular brand of rationalism. In Chapter 3, which is again divided into two sections, we will see how Robertson's faith in reason led him to the conviction that literary criticism could and should be based on a scientific footing. Part 1 will show that Robertson was by no means alone in this conviction by representing the ideas of a number of Victorian critics who all believed (though in different ways) that science could raise criticism to a higher plane; in Part 2 I will investigate Robertson's own thoughts and theories on the subject. Moving from theory to practice, Chapter 4 finally focuses on Robertson's concrete approaches to a number of literary figures and their work, in drama (Part 1), fiction (Part 2), and poetry (Part 3) respectively. As in the two previous chapters, I will attempt to place Robertson's writings in the contextual framework of the contemporary literary scene, not with a view to breaking new ground in topics like the rise of the novel or the aesthetic movement, but primarily in order to promote a better understanding of Robertson's viewpoints. Throughout all four chapters I will make frequent use of quotations from his work, which should at least give readers a 'taste' of Robertson's vigorous and always somewhat eccentric style of writing and may perhaps inspire them to look up the original book or article.2 2 Although generally the titles of Robertson's books and articles are given in full, for convenience's sake I have consistently abbreviated Essays towards a Critical Method and New Essays towards a Critical Method as ETCM and NETCM respectively, both in the main text and in the footnotes. Chapter 1 The life of J.M. Robertson Introduction J.M. Robertson has not made life easy for anyone who chooses to write his biography. In fact, the scarcity of available biographical material is remarkable for a man who led so public a life. No full-length biography was ever written, nor did Robertson himself, unlike many of his friends and acquaintances, put his reminiscences to paper.