The Modern Muse: Inspiration in the Age of Enlightenment A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy By Sarah Emily Eron May 2011 © 2011 Sarah Emily Eron THE MODERN MUSE: INSPIRATION IN THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT Sarah Emily Eron, PhD Cornell University, 2011 This dissertation argues that eighteenth-century literature is shaped by the modern encounter with—and transformation of—enthusiasm. By examining the rhetorical paradigms of invocation in the eighteenth century, this approach redefines the relationship of secularization to literary history and casts new light on the assumption that the Enlightenment represents a straightforward movement toward secularization. Literary critics have long agreed that the political and religious turmoil of the seventeenth century set the stage for widespread critiques of enthusiasm in the early eighteenth century. But early eighteenth-century literature did not simply reject enthusiastic expression; rather, this period saw a secularization of enthusiasm—a change that arose as a need to preserve inspiration’s instrumental relationship to artistic production. The inception of this secularization is linked to the rise of aesthetic philosophy and to modernity’s shifting relationship to the public sphere. The anxieties about enthusiasm in the Restoration period cause Augustan authors to reconsider the role of inspiration in modern writing and to reform enthusiasm through innovations in genre. These evocations of inspiration both exhibit an aestheticization of a theological category and import the affective fervor of an ancient theological practice into their modern redactions. This dissertation examines rhetorical paradigms of invocation in the works of Milton, Shaftesbury, Pope, and Fielding. These writers formally revise enthusiasm in a way that generates a new and distinctive representation of the author, in a process that relies on a rhetorical device that reformulates the passive structure of ancient invocation by subjecting it to the more dialogical methods of modern apostrophe and address. Incorporating invocation into their experiments in genre, these authors allow the figure of the muse to survive, but she is now construed as something secular, an apostrophe to a friend or judging spectator, or at times an allusion to the mental or aesthetic faculties of the author himself—his genius. This dissertation, therefore, argues that secularization impacts literary form long before the Romantic period and that secularization, in its relationship to aesthetic form and experience, is not merely an effect of Enlightenment rationality. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Sarah Emily Eron was born in the Catskill region of upstate New York. She received a B.A. with honors in English Languages and Literatures at Brown University in 2005 before pursuing her Masters and Doctoral degrees in English at Cornell University. Sarah has published articles in a number of journals and online publications on issues of religion and aesthetics, time and form, gender and genre, secularization, and Romanticism. Her publications engage the works of a variety of authors of eighteenth and nineteenth-century poetry, prose, and philosophy such as: Henry Fielding, William Blake, David Hume, Adam Smith, and A.C. Swinburne. Sarah will be returning to Providence in the fall to work as an Assistant Professor at the University of Rhode Island. iii To Al Wachtel, My First Inspiration And to my family for their constant love and support… iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation would never have been possible without the persistent dedication and work of the members on my advising committee. I want to thank Fredric Bogel for his never- ending attention to and support of my work—also for his undying insight into textual detail. I owe my formalism (or new formalism) entirely to Rick. Since my time at Brown University, I have admired Rick’s work on satiric and poetic form, and especially on Pope. I came to Cornell expressly to work with Rick, and he did not disappoint. Rarely does one find a mentor who is as attentive in his feedback as he is in his own scholarship, but Rick is one such academic. The rather extensive readings on Pope in this dissertation are largely due to him. Secondly, I would like to thank Reeve Parker who continued to read my work and serve on my committee even after his retirement from Cornell. Thank you for instilling a love for Romanticism in me. Although this thesis reads as a work of Restoration and Eighteenth-Century scholarship, it is fair to say (as may be evident in the concluding chapter), that Romanticism was, in a large part, its “inspiration.” I wish you all the best in your retired life. The topic of “inspiration,” of course, brings me to give a most special thanks to Neil Saccamano. When my “enthusiasm” for eighteenth-century studies was flailing, Neil revealed to me, as it were, a new eighteenth century when I took his famed graduate seminar in aesthetic philosophy and theory here at Cornell. Neil, the idea for this dissertation is largely due to my conversations with you. Thank you for renewing my love for eighteenth-century studies; thank you for insisting that I pursue my interests with unflagging efforts and tenacity, and thank you for pushing every concept, every thought, to its limit—to its utmost conception and perfection. I stand ever in admiration of your work as a scholar, a critic, and a teacher. This dissertation arises out of a vision of the eighteenth century, which began under your tutelage. v Last, but not at all least, I know not how to thank Laura Brown enough. Laura has served as my advisor ever since my first year at Cornell and has advised me, in the truest sense of the word, through every step of this process over the course of the past five years. Ready at every moment, at every click of the mouse, with more feedback, more suggestions, more revisions, more advice. Via email, via phone, and in person, Laura has been there when I needed her most. Laura, you helped me to articulate my ideas with precision; you encouraged me to take risks in my thinking, and to pursue my intellectual instincts to greater lengths. Thank you for helping me to craft and form what began as a small idea years ago into this larger, more fully- formed project. There may yet be a long way to go. But I would not have come this far without you. Thanks for your incredible support. You have been like a survival guide to obtaining the PhD at Cornell. I could not have imagined a better advisor, and I feel extremely lucky for having had the opportunity to work with you so closely in this capacity at this juncture of my career. Finally, I’d like to thank my colleagues both here at Cornell and beyond. Thanks to Melinda Rabb (my first advisor in eighteenth-century studies) for instilling that initial love of the field in me years ago. And thanks especially to David Alvarez, Jess Keiser, Bryan Alkemeyer, Ryan Dirks, and Brad Zukovic who have given me additional feedback on this work. Your comments and conversation have been invaluable. vi Table of Contents Biographical Sketch iii Acknowledgements v Chapter One Secular Enthusiasm 1 Chapter Two Amused and Bemused: Shaftesbury’s Enthusiasm on the Social Stage 22 Chapter Three ‘Eyes that Must Eclipse’: Vain Enthusiasm in Pope’s The Rape of the Lock 69 Chapter Four Curtain, Muse!: Invention and Poetic Example in Pope’s Invocations 93 Chapter Five Genius, Muse: Inspiration and Invocation in Fielding’s Tom Jones 134 Coda/Conclusion Lawful Inspiration: Kant’s Spirit of Genius and the Romantic Return 193 Notes 200 Works Cited 232 vii Chapter One: Introduction Secular Enthusiasm Since the publication of M.H. Abrams’s Natural Supernaturalism, literary critics have sought to describe the modern story of secularization in a number of ways. Whereas Abrams’s account focuses on nature, Colin Jager confines his study of the secular to a pattern of design, and Charles Taylor charts secularization along the lines of popular faith, or belief.1 Like Abrams, many of these critics have continued to locate an historical moment of secularization in literature and philosophy with the emergence of Romanticism in the wake of the French Revolution. Looking back to Milton, Romantic secularization entails a break from eighteenth-century theology and Enlightenment rationality. Nevertheless, what lies between Miltonic invocation and a Wordsworthian apostrophe to nature reveals an absorption of the problem of “supernaturalism” into the literary culture of the eighteenth century, an aesthetic development that remains unexplored by modern scholarly approaches to secularization. This dissertation argues that eighteenth-century literature is shaped by the modern encounter with—and transformation of—enthusiasm. Literary critics and historians have long agreed that the political and religious turmoil of the seventeenth century set the stage for widespread critiques of enthusiasm in the early eighteenth century. I argue that, despite or by means of these critiques, early eighteenth-century literature saw a secularization of enthusiasm— a change that arose as a need to preserve inspiration’s instrumental relationship to artistic production. What had hitherto been seen as a religious phenomenon was in the early eighteenth- century appropriated by poets and novelists as a means of figuring poetic inspiration; thus eighteenth-century authors reconsider enthusiasm as an aesthetic rather than a theological issue. 1 What I call the literary reform of enthusiasm in the eighteenth century entails both an aestheticization of enthusiasm and a reconception of its relationship to issues of sociability. The latter transformation makes the reform of enthusiasm the responsibility of the viewer, or reader, and places it within the context of an aesthetic paradigm. Enthusiasm’s reform is entirely dependent upon the reader’s critical faculties of judgment.