BARS
Issue No. 43 December 2013 ISSN 0964-2447
Editor: David Higgins School of English University of Leeds Leeds LS2 9JT [email protected]
Reviews Editor: Susan Valladares Worcester College IN THIS ISSUE: Walton Street Oxford OX1 2HB Editor's Column ...... 1 [email protected] Notices ...... 1 Events ...... 4 BARS Conference Reports . . . . 7 Copley Award Reports . . . 13 President: Nicola J. Watson Early Career and Postgraduate English Department Column ...... 15 Faculty of Arts Reviews ...... 16 The Open University Walton Hall Milton Keynes MK 7 6AA [email protected]
Secretary: Helen Stark Percy Building Newcastle University NE1 7RU [email protected]
Treasurer and Membership Secretary: Jane Moore Cardiff University John Percival Building Colum Drive Cardiff CF10 3EU [email protected]
Editor’s Column Notices
Welcome to the December 2013 issue of the BARS WEBSITE BARS Bulletin and Review. As usual, it contains some important notices, particularly details from Over the past few months, I’ve been revamping Studies Matthew Sangster about the excellent work he is
the BARS website (http://www.bars.ac.uk), doing on the website. It also includes updating the content, checking links and adding
information about upcoming events, including a more information on our past conferences. I’ve reminder of the BARS Early Career and also added two new features: Postgraduate Conference at Grasmere in March, and reports from postgraduate students who BARS Blog were recently awarded Copley Bursaries. In (http://www.bars.ac.uk/blog/) addition, there is a report by Matthew Ward We’ll be using this blog alongside the mailbase about the Creative Communities workshop at for disseminating the association’s news and for UCL in September and I have also included advertising events of interest to Romanticists. Catherine Gadsby-Mace’s report on the very I’m very happy to post notices and links on successful BARS biennial conference at the behalf of members; please email these to me at University of Southampton in July. This report
Romantic Romantic [email protected]. I’m also hoping to publish was first published online, in Romantic more substantial content and would be happy to Textualities; I am grateful to Catherine, and to hear from anyone interested in writing posts. the journal’s editor, Anthony Mandal, for permission to reproduce it here. BARS Exchange The reviews section is as rich and interesting (http://www.bars.ac.uk/exchange/)
for for as always. You might notice that there are Academic blogs often post interesting content,
several older books featured; this is not because but most update only intermittently, making it of tardy reviewers, but testament to Susan’s difficult for them to build up audiences. I efforts in dealing with a backlog of books. We thought that BARS could help with this by both think that, as a general rule, the Bulletin aggregating posts in one place, so I've set up a should in future only review books published in feed on the BARS website that brings together the previous four years, in order to ensure that it content from a number of Romantic Studies is engaging with current research findings and blogs. The aggregation plug-in picks up the first debates. couple of hundred words of each post and I hope that you are all having a good start to provides links back to the rest. Comments are 2014. Feel free to contact me if you have any turned off so as not to adversely affect the material for inclusion in the Bulletin. original sites. Currently, the site aggregates David Higgins society and project blogs, some Romanticists’ Editor personal blogs (with their owners’ permission), [email protected] Association and BARS’ own blog. If any BARS members
have blogs they’d like included, I’d be very glad to add these; all that’s required is that the blog
has an RSS or Atom feed. Please email me on [email protected] with details. I’d be very grateful for any suggestions that will help me improve these new resources and make them more useful to BARS members. Matthew Sangster
Website Editor
British
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BARS MAILBASE Individuals or groups who would like to run a day conference are invited to contact Dr Jane As a BARS member, you are entitled to receive Moore ([email protected]). In the event messages from the electronic BARS mailbase. of possible clashes, BARS will assist by liaising This advertises calls for papers, events, between conferences distributed across the year, resources and publications relevant to Romantic or across regions. BARS will actively solicit studies. If you would like to join, or post a proposals. Proposals are also invited for message on the mailbase, please contact Neil interdisciplinary conferences. Ramsey, the co-ordinator, by email ([email protected]) with your full name and email address. Information about the STEPHEN COPLEY mailbase, along with copies of archived POSTGRADUATE RESEARCH messages, can be found on the mailbase website: www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/bars.html AWARDS
Postgraduates working in the area of Romantic studies are invited to apply for a Stephen Copley BARS MEMBERSHIP Postgraduate Research Award. The BARS Executive Committee has established the awards Members can ask for notices to be placed on the in order to support postgraduate research. They mailbase, on the website, and in the Bulletin. are intended to help fund expenses incurred The annual subscription for BARS membership through travel to libraries and archives necessary is £25 (waged) and £10 (unwaged/postgraduate). to the student's research, up to a maximum of Members receive copies of the BARS Bulletin £300. Application for the awards is competitive, and Review twice a year and can join the and cannot be made retrospectively. Applicants electronic mailbase. Membership is necessary must be members of BARS (to join please visit for attendance at BARS international our website). The names of recipients will be conferences. For a membership form, please announced in the BARS Bulletin and Review, contact the BARS administrator, Fern Merrills, and successful applicants will be asked to at: submit a short report to the BARS Executive [email protected] Committee and to acknowledge BARS in their thesis and/or any publication arising from the research trip. Reports will also be published in BARS DAY CONFERENCES the Bulletin. Please send the following information in BARS day conferences, in almost every case, support of your application: are organised through the host institution. BARS 1. Your name and institutional affiliation. assists by advertising conferences, advising on 2. The title and a short abstract or summary of the format, and giving early warnings of any your PhD project. likely clashes with other planned events in our 3. Details of the research to be undertaken for files. Part of the point of BARS is to act as a which you need support, and its relation to your supportive system nationally, and its PhD project. involvement in planning would partly be to help 4. Detailed costing of proposed research trip. ensure that conferences are as evenly distributed 5. Details of current or recent funding (AHRC across regions as possible in the course of any award, etc.). one year. BARS cannot underwrite day 6. Details of any other financial support for conferences, but it can sometimes make a which you have applied/will apply in support of financial contribution of to help the organising the trip. department with costs.
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7. Name of supervisor/referee (with email THE CHARLES LAMB address) to whom application can be made for a supporting reference on your behalf. BULLETIN ONLINE The next deadline for applications is 1 May 2014. Applications and questions should be The back catalogue of the Charles Lamb directed to the bursaries officer, Dr. Daniel Bulletin (from our first issue in 1973 to issue Cook, Lecturer in English, University of Dundee 143 in July 2008) is now available online at our ([email protected]). Reports by recent website: bursary holders appear later in this number of http://www.charleslambsociety.com/b- the Bulletin. online.html This is a fantastic new resource available to Elians around the world, allowing free access to a range of distinguished scholarship on the HENRY CRABB ROBINSON Lambs and their circle. Issues printed in the last five years, however, Timothy Whelan's edition of The Letters of have not been made available online to Henry Crabb Robinson, Wordsworth Library, encourage continued subscription to our Society. Grasmere, is now available on the website of the Please explore our new website devoted to Dr Williams's Centre for Dissenting Studies, Charles and Mary Lamb. http://www.english.qmul.ac.uk/drwilliams/pubs/ hcr.html, providing a wealth of previously unpublished letters. SHELLEY-GODWIN ARCHIVE
The Maryland Institute of Technology (MITH) ENLIGHTENMENT AND and The New York Public Library, in concert DISSENT with their partners, the Bodleian Libraries of Oxford, the Houghton Library of Harvard, the The website of the Dr Williams’s Centre for Huntington Library, and the British Library, are Dissenting Studies at Queen Mary, University of delighted to announce that the Shelley-Godwin London, is now home to the leading scholarly Archive went live on Halloween, 10/31/13, at journal in this field. All current and back issues 8:00. of Enlightenment and Dissent are available All known manuscripts of Frankenstein, open-access here: including drafts and fair copy, are now available http://www.english.qmul.ac.uk/drwilliams/journ through the Archive's platform, which enables al/intro.html. Founded in 1982 and of special toggling between a number of different views, interest to historians and literary scholars including between MWS's hand and PBS's, as working on the long eighteenth century, the well as zooming in and out of page images, and, journal focuses on key Enlightenment themes not least, a nuanced full-text search capacity. primarily in Britain but also in Europe and the Also available in the Archive are Charlie US. Topics include the relationship between Robinson’s comprehensive Chronology of the religious and secular ideas, the tension between composition of Frankenstein and the universalist ideas and emergent nationalism, the Introduction to his edition of the Frankenstein cross currents between popular and Notebooks (Garland, 1996). Enlightenment culture, the role of women in Try it out! The site is currently in Beta release enlightened Dissent, and the place of science in and works best when viewed in Chrome. Please Enlightenment thought. The editors welcome share with your classes, colleagues, friends, and new readers and contributors! anyone else who might be interested: http://shelleygodwinarchive.org/.
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Thomas’s hospitals, and the Royal Humane Society; Events Debates over quackery, the health of the poor, the politics of scientific “performance,” and the dissection of criminal corpses; JOHN THELWALL AT 250: Theories of life; the “vitality debates” of MEDICINE, LITERATURE, the 1790s and 1810s; emergent sciences of the mind and brain; AND REFORM IN LONDON, Thelwall’s early London connections and CA. 1764-1834 activities (in the law, theatre, debating, journalism, medicine, poetry, politics); The inaugural John Thelwall Society conference Thelwall’s life and career in London July 25-27, 2014 (including his political activism, University of Notre Dame London Centre imprisonment and treason trial, literature, 1 Suffolk Street, London, England journalism, elocutionary theory and practice). Keynote speakers: Sharon Ruston (Professor of The conference will also celebrate the formation English, Lancaster University), Penelope J. of the John Thelwall Society and the acquisition Corfield (Emeritus Professor of History, Royal by the University of Notre Dame of eight Holloway, University of London), and Sir rediscovered letters from Thelwall to fellow Geoffrey Bindman, QC. reformer Thomas Hardy. Other highlights will include: To mark the 250th anniversary of the birth in London of the reformer and polymath John A visit to the Old Operating Theatre at Thelwall (1764-1832), we invite papers and Guy’s Hospital, with reception; panel proposals on any aspect of his diverse A 250th birthday banquet at the Royal career, or on the medical, literary, or political College of Surgeons, with reception in life of London in his time. We are particularly the Hunterian Museum; interested in generating further attention to the A pre-conference visit to the site of interrelations among medical science, literature, Thelwall’s elocutionary institute in and political culture -- a nexus to which Lincoln’s Inn Fields, the site proposed Thelwall greatly contributed. An outspoken for an English Heritage “Blue Plaque” advocate of democratic reform and prolific poet, in his honour (July 23); novelist, dramatist, journalist, and elocutionist, A pre-conference excursion in the Thelwall was also a natural philosopher who, a footsteps of Thelwall’s Peripatetic, led generation before John Keats, attended medical by Judith Thompson (Dalhousie lectures and operations at the London hospitals University) and presented innovative papers on vitality and Please submit titles and abstracts of 250-300 cognition. words to Contributions are welcome from all disciplines [email protected] by February and need not focus expressly on 1, 2014. Proposers can expect to hear whether Thelwall. Topics might include (but are not their abstract has been accepted by March 2014 limited to): and registration will open soon London culture, from the theatres to the afterwards. Graduate students are invited to debating societies to the taverns; apply for (limited) fee-waiver and travel Radicalism and/or Westminster politics; bursaries by including a brief explanation (250- Medical culture, including the medico- 500 words) of how their research relates to the political circles of Guy’s and St. conference themes.
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Registration fees (including three-day TENTH INTERNATIONAL proceedings, Friday reception, three lunches, and all refreshments): before June 30: $100 SCOTT CONFERENCE: (approx. £60) regular/$75(approx. £45) graduate ACTIVATING THE ARCHIVE students; after June 30: $125 (approx. £75) regular / $100 This is a final call for papers for the Tenth (approx. £60) graduate students International Scott Conference. The conference There will be an additional charge for the will take place at the University of Aberdeen Saturday banquet. from 8 – 12 July 2014 and will showcase the Questions may be directed to the Bernard C. Lloyd Collection of Scott materials organizers, Yasmin Solomonescu (University in the Sir Duncan Rice Library. The conference of Notre Dame) will also celebrate the bicentenary of the at [email protected] and Gordon publication of Waverley, although papers on any Bottomley (Lancaster University) aspect of Scott and his world are welcomed. at [email protected] . More information can be found at the link below The conference is made possible through the or by searching Tenth International Scott generosity of the University of Notre Dame's Conference. Abstracts can be uploaded under Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts, the tab CFP and general registration will be open College of Arts and Letters, Henkels Lecture around the beginning of February. Please note Series; Nanovic Institute for European Studies; that the deadline for submission of papers has Department of English; John J. Reilly Center for been extended until 15 February. Science, Technology, and Values; and History and Philosophy of Science Graduate EDWARD RUSHTON AND Program; as well as the British Association for Romantic Studies. ROMANTIC LIVERPOOL: A BICENTENNIAL CONFERENCE MANSFIELD PARK AT CHAWTON HOUSE 14-15 November 2014 University of Liverpool A Bicentenary Symposium at Chawton House Liverpool, UK Library 2014 marks the bicentenary of the death of poet Saturday 8th March 2014: 10.00 a.m. - 4.00 p.m. Edward Rushton (1756-1814), Liverpool’s most radical voice in the Age of Revolution. Rushton Speakers: Katie Halsey, (University of Stirling), was an uncompromising abolitionist and ‘Mansfield Park: Then and Now’; Deidre antislavery fighter, as well as a champion of Shauna Lynch, (University of Toronto), human rights at large. In a varied career, he also ‘Quoting Fanny: On Editing Mansfield Park’; kept a tavern, became a bookseller, edited a Anthony Mandal, (Cardiff University), ‘1814: A newspaper, campaigned against the use of the Bad Year for the Novel’?; Mary Ann O'Farrell, press gang and, as a blind person himself, he (Texas A&M University), ‘The Arbitrary in initiated local efforts to support the visually Austen’ impaired. Liverpool is planning to celebrate his Delegate rate including refreshments and life, writing, and legacy through exhibitions at lunch. £40 Concessionary rate: £33 National Museums Liverpool and the Victoria For more information and to register please Gallery & Museum, a theatrical production of a visit: specially-commissioned biographical play at the www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/mansfield-park-at- Everyman/Playhouse, new publications from chawton-house-registration-8970181053 Liverpool University Press, public lectures, and other events. To coincide with these activities,
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University of Liverpool, in association with the transnational (and especially Atlantic) Università degli Studi di Bari “Aldo Moro” exchange of thought and things, from (Italy), is hosting a two-day academic and to Liverpool during the period conference (14-15 November 2014) which aims Liverpool’s emerging institutions and to evaluate critically Rushton’s life and works, societies, and their role within medical and foster a new sense of the Romantic and practice, education, the commerce of radical writing that emerged within his home letters, and cultures of reading and town during the eighteenth and early nineteenth collecting centuries. The politics of genre and form in The conference is centred upon Rushton but Romantic Liverpool writing: ballad, seeks to encourage more generally the study of eclogue, lyric Liverpool during the period of his life, when the Theatrical culture in Romantic Liverpool town emerged as a place of importance in an Music and the fine arts international network of trade in objects, ideas Liverpool’s Black community and and cultures. The conference will seek to expand writing our understanding of the relationship between Liverpool bookselling, journalism, cultures of writing, reading, publishing, pamphleteering, and radical culture bookselling, journalism and education in during the period Rushton’s Liverpool, and explore the role of Liverpool identities and spaces during imaginative writing in the formation of local, the long eighteenth century global and civic identities.
Confirmed speakers include: Professor John Romantic towns, ports, and provincial networks Oldfield (Director of the Wilberforce Institute for the study of Slavery and Emancipation, Debating race, gender and class in University of Hull), Professor John Whale Romantic Liverpool writing (University of Leeds), Professor Lilla Maria Rushton and disability studies: Crisafulli (Director of the Centro eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Interuniversitario per lo Studio del practices and perceptions of disability Romanticismo, Università degli Studi di Rushton’s legacy and the defence of Bologna), and Professor Paul Baines (University human rights of Liverpool). Influences and afterlives of Romanticism Submissions for 20-minute papers from in Liverpool scholars of all disciplines are invited on subjects including: Abstracts of around 250 words, together with a the place of eighteenth/ early nineteenth biography, should be sent to the organizers Greg century Liverpool and its writing within Lynall, Franca Dellarosa, and Alex Robinson via cultures of abolition, Romanticism, [email protected], by 31st January philanthropy, the maritime, scientific 2014. Enquiries are welcome, and should be sent knowledge, radical politics to the same address. Liverpool as capital of the slave trade, A forthcoming conference website will and its writing of slavery, abolition and provide information about costs, empire; Liverpool’s abolitionists; women accommodation, travel and registration. abolitionists Rushton’s contemporaries, in Liverpool (including William Roscoe and circle, Felicia Hemans, James Currie, William Shepherd, Hugh Mulligan, the Rathbones, Dr. Jonathan Binns) and beyond
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Thursday 25th July
Conference The first plenary was given by Professor Simon Burrows from the University of Western Sydney Reports and was entitled ‘Enlightenment Bestsellers?’. It was an excellent introduction to the conference themes of importation, translation, adaptation and economics. Simon Burrows is the founder and director of the highly acclaimed French book trade in Enlightenment Europe (FBTEE) 2013 BARS CONFERENCE project, and co-author of the project’s freely available on-line STN database. His keynote Romantic Imports andR Exports, 25 – 28 July, presentation was drawn from his current book University of Southampton which is based on the STN database, also entitled Enlightenment Bestsellers. It featured four panels on ‘Romantic America’, ‘Romantic The theme for the 13th BARS international Asia’, ‘Adventure, piracy and renovation in the conference was specifically chosen to draw on booktrade’ and ‘Women writers in a global Southampton’s long history as a port city which marketplace’. These panels demonstrate the has witnessed the launch of Henry V’s invasion wide-ranging approaches to the conference fleet, the Mayflower and the Titanic. It has been theme that delegates had taken, adapting the a centre for trade between England and France topic of Imports and Exports to their own far- since the 13th century, becoming a spa town in reaching research interests. 1740 and a popular site for sea-bathing during Unfortunately, I can only comment on the the Romantic period. The conference organisers, panel that I attended, but my discussions with Professor Stephen Bygrave and Dr Gillian Dow, other delegates proved that all of the panels were chose the conference theme to encourage wide- popular and excited interesting discussions that ranging discussions on cross-cultural exchange, flowed over into the coffee breaks. The ‘Women economics, translation and international writers in a global marketplace’ panel featured networks. Kerri Andrews (Strathclyde) ‘Ann Yearsley and The conference was hosted by the Department the periodical press in the 1780s’, Lucy Cogan of English and the Centre for Eighteenth- (Belfast) ‘Letitia Elizabeth Landon and the Century Studies at Southampton. It spanned four Commodification of Sentiment’ and Jacqueline days, with eight parallel sessions including 43 Labbe (Warwick) ‘Incompetancy: The panels, three plenary speakers, a special panel Economics of Female Authorship’. The papers on Romantic-Period Manuscripts, a private complimented each other very well and sparked viewing of the Hartley Library Special a lengthy discussion about the complexities of Collections exhibition, an interactive concert being a woman writer in the eighteenth century, and a choice of optional excursions followed by and the difficult task of balancing femininity the conference dinner. All of the events were with a desire to publish and engage in commerce. located on the University’s Highfield campus, The next parallel session followed straight after, set in pleasantly landscaped grounds with cafes, with panels on ‘British Romanticism in Japan’, bars and a bookshop. The weather held clear ‘Theatre’, ‘Salon, Tour and Periodical throughout the conference and delegates could Travellers’ and ‘Sympathetic Exchange in the often be seen wandering across the lawns or Historical Novel’. I attended the last panel and sitting by the ponds and water features between heard papers by Fiona Price (Chichester) ‘The panels. Historical Novel and the People in the Post- French Revolution’, Helen Stark (Newcastle) ‘Challenging the European Man of Feeling, Nationalism, and Liberty in Madame de Staël’s
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Corinne, or Italy (1807)’ and Raphaël Ingelbien content and sale of manuscripts. Focusing on (Leuven) ‘Thomas Colley Grattan: a forgotten them as physical objects of interests, the importer/exporter of historical fiction between speakers described the way that manuscripts the British Isles and the continent’. Again, this were made, edited, printed, corrected, and panel generated lively discussions on revised, and the economics of selling them to international concepts of masculinity, the publishers. It raised a lot of interesting questions importation and translation of popular texts, and about the publishing houses, booksellers and the the influence of the French Revolution on Romantic literary marketplace. cultural exchange. Lunch was followed by panels on ‘East/West The first day drew to a close with a wine Romantic Transits and Transferences II’, reception in the Hartley Library. Stephen ‘Romantic Spain I: The Spectacle of Spain: Bygrave and Gillian Dow gave a welcome Peninsularity and Visual Culture in Britain’, speech and invited us all to view the Special ‘Romantic Translations and Adaptations’, Collections Gallery exhibition ‘When a traveller ‘Coleridge’, ‘Imported Commodities’ and is in a strange place’: perspectives on ‘Dissent abroad’. These parallel sessions romanticism and revolution, 1790-1840’. The featured papers on Anglo-Indian cultural exhibition featured images of Netley Abbey – exchange, art prints, translation, Coleridge’s one of the excursion locations – and Romantic imaginative imports, bagpipes, fruit, hymns and perspectives on revolution, travel and the marketplace. The range of subjects attests to importation. the reach of the conference topic and the exciting array of research being undertaken in Romantic studies to date. After a tea break there Friday 26th July were panels on ‘Exploring Walter Scott’, ‘Romantic Spain II: Spain and Romantic Print The first session of the day began with panels on Culture’, ‘Maritime Selves’, ‘Austen at home ‘East/West Romantic Transits and Transferences and abroad’ and ‘Gaelic Imports and Exports’. I’, ‘Transatlantic Romanticism’ ‘Romantic Followed by a final session including ‘Romantic Transports’, ‘Now and in Ireland’, ‘Import, Spain III: The Spanish Front: Fighting, Writing intertext and author’ and ‘European Wars’. I and Remembering’, ‘Navigating Theory’, heard three excellent papers by Octavia Cox (St. ‘Romantic Southampton and Hampshire’, Anne’s College, Oxford) ‘A mutual commerce ‘Home and colonial’, ‘Charlotte Smith’ and makes Poetry flourish’, Angela Wright ‘Histories after Romanticism’. Unfortunately I (Sheffield) ‘Gentlemen behaving badly: the cannot comment on the afternoon sessions as I English author in France’ and Natalie Harries was preparing to give my own paper in the final (Aberdeen) ‘Supreme Reality or Fruitful Falsity: panel: ‘Charlotte Smith: Importing a Revolution. Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the Potentates of I had a walk around the campus grounds and inmost Ind’. Their papers focused on male found a quiet spot near the pond to run through authors during the Romantic period and the my paper. I was joined on my panel by Bethan culture of travel, exchange and adaptation that Roberts (Liverpool) ‘Giddy Brinks and Lucid grew up around and between them. The Lines: Charlotte Smith’s Seascape Sonnets’ and discussion that followed questioned the concept Mark Bennett (Sheffield) ‘Exporting the of plagiarism in Romantic poetry and prose, and Picturesque in Charlotte Smith’s Revolutionary the intricate web of exchange, borrowing, Fiction’. The three papers worked wonderfully reference and repetition that is formed through together, giving an overview of her poetry, early this series of dedications and homages. fiction and later novels. Roberts discussed After coffee, there was a special panel on Smith’s poetry, the narrative voice and the ‘Romantic-Period Manuscripts’ by Kathryn representation of female madness. Bennett Sutherland and Freya Johnston (St Anne’s analysed Smith’s early novels, particularly College, Oxford) and Andrew Honey (Bodleian Desmond (1792), and her use of travel writing Library). Their papers discussed the production, and landscape description to confront issues of
8 ownership and hierarchy raised by the French again reinforced some major themes running Revolution. My own paper assessed Smith’s throughout the conference; those of revolution, changing attitudes towards Britain as the importation and adaptation. Afterwards, there Revolution failed and British politics became was a packed lunch provided to take with us in increasingly reactionary and hostile towards the afternoon as we all embarked on our reformers. The discussion following the papers conference excursions. Some delegates headed tied them all together with a conversation on off to the Chawton House Library and visited Smith’s politics, attitudes towards the domestic Jane Austen’s House Museum, while the rest of sphere and the role of women in British society. us drove to Netley Abbey and then on to To round the day off, there was an interactive Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. concert – ‘The Quadrille and Cotillion Netley Abbey is the most complete surviving Panorama’ – in the Turner Sims Concert Hall Cistercian monastery in southern England, that consisted of a talk, a concert and then a consisting of a 13th century church and several workshop. Musicologist Katrina Faulds gave a monastic buildings. After the Dissolution of the short talk about the export and import of early Monasteries between 1536 and 1541, the nineteenth-century social dancing and the buildings were given to Sir William Paulet and tension between English and continental converted into a mansion house. It was used as a influences at the time. She performed some the country house until the beginning of the little known folk-tunes that became the basis for eighteenth century, after which it was ‘high art’ music designed for the leisured abandoned and descended into ruins. domestic market. Students and staff from the Subsequently, the site became a popular tourist Department of Music then joined in to attraction and provided inspiration for several accompany the dance ensemble La Belle Romantic poets and artists, including Thomas Assemblée in performing some selected works. Gray, George Keate, William Sotheby, and After which delegates were invited to learn Richard Warner who published Netley Abbey, a some of the popular country dances, cotillions Gothic Story in 1795. On the way to the ruins, and quadrilles that made up an evening of we were given an introduction by Diane Regency dancing. Hoeveler, who gave her paper on the abbey the following morning. We also visited the Portsmouth Dockyards where some delegates Saturday 27th July went on board the HMS Victory. Launched in 1765 at Chatham Dockyard and commissioned Saturday began with a parallel session, with in 1778, the HMS Victory continued in active panels on ‘Women Scientific Travellers and service for 34 years which included her part as Writers’, ‘Cross-Channel Imports and Exports’, Lord Nelson’s flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar ‘Imported Pictures’, ‘Borrowing and Lending’, in 1805. We also saw the HMS Warrior, visited ‘Exchanges between science and poetry’ and the Mary Rose Museum, the National Museum ‘The Godwins and the Shelleys’. This was of the Royal Navy and went on a 45 minute boat followed by the second plenary speaker; Paul tour of the harbour to see the modern warships. Hamilton (Queen Mary, London) speaking on The trip was complemented by copious amounts ‘Future Restoration’. His paper focused on the of ice-cream and dockyard souvenirs, before we restoration enacted at the Congress of Vienna returned on the coach to prepare for the following the French Revolution and the conference dinner. Napoleonic Wars. He discussed revolution, heroism and restoration in relation to major Romantic figures such as Coleridge, Keats and Byron, and discussed the multi-layered phenomenon of revisionism with regards to second-generation Romantic writing in English and its European counterparts. His paper once
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Sunday 28th July focused on. This trans-Atlantic ‘traffic in poems’ as Lynch quoted from Meredith McGill, The last day of the conference saw panels on highlighted the increasing mobility of people ‘Exploring Netley Abbey: Text and Contexts’, and things in the Romantic period and the ‘Byron Exported’, ‘Gothic Imports and Exports’, emphasis on nostalgia, nationalism and trade ‘Improvement and Globalisation’, ‘P.B. Shelley that was becoming progressively more important in Athens and Paris’. I attended the Netley at the time. Abbey panel with papers by Dale Townshend The conference was rounded off with a (Stirling) ‘Illusion now repeoples all the Void’: goodbye speech by the organisers and a round of The Poetics of Netley Abbey, 1764–1834’, Jim applause for everyone who had worked so hard Watt (York) ‘Drinking tea among the ruins’ and to plan, arrange and host the thirteenth biennial Diane Hoeveler (Marquette) ‘Richard Warner’s BARS international conference. As delegates Netley Abbey and the Gothic Ruins Discourse’. said their goodbyes and headed to the train The papers gave an excellent and comprehensive station, there was a general buzz of conversation overview of the inspiration that Netley Abbey as the theme of Imports and Exports continued has provided for poetry, prose, art and sight- to generate new ideas and ways of thinking seeing. Jim Watt’s paper focused on the cultural about the Romantic period. aspects of Netley Abbey and the tourism that it Catherine Gadsby-Mace brought to the region, while Dale Townshend University of Sheffield and Diane Hoeveler discussed the range of literature that the ruin has generated. Meanwhile, other papers were being presented on exporting CREATIVE COMMUNITIES, Byron, Matthew Lewis’s The Monk, Charlotte Dacre’s Zofloya, early Jewish-American drama, 1750-1830: ‘METROPOLITAN Charles Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer, Percy INSTITUTIONS’ Shelley and Sir Walter Scott. To end the conference, there was a third The second two-day workshop of the Creative plenary – the Stephen Copley Memorial Lecture Communities, 1750-1830, AHRC-funded – given by Deidre Shauna Lynch (Toronto) Research Network was focused on ‘Books on the Move’. This keynote lecture drew ‘Metropolitan Institutions’ and met in on her new project on reading, collecting, September at University College London. The clipping and scrapbooking, as well as the network focuses its attention on historical case general nature of the book in the early studies in order to investigate the ways creativity nineteenth century. She discussed the friendship can be understood as a communal process, albums that were popular in the late Romantic produced collectively through communities and period and their use as vehicles for transcribing institutions. verse, composing poems, displaying water The productiveness of this approach was in landscapes, silhouettes, pressed flowers and evidence from the very first panel. Matthew handicrafts. It raised once again an interesting Sangster’s paper, ‘Party Like it’s 1842: The topic which had been previously discussed Literary Fund’s Road to Royalty’, and Richard during the conference: that of plagiarism and Salmon’s, ‘“The shoe-black-seraph Army”: borrowing. Lynch highlighted the way that Collective Identity and the Professionalization transcribed poems became assimilated into the of Authorship in the 1830s’ both drew attention writer’s own language, altered, rearranged and to the importance of what Salmon called the denied proper referencing, so that the work of “negotiation” required of individuals in groups. famous poets became inseparable from the It was noticeable, particularly in the case of the writer’s thoughts. This was an interesting emerging field of authorship, that the tension microcosm view of the major issues of piracy, between a more idiosyncratic or amateur way of importation, adaptation and cross-cultural doing things and the increasing exchange that the conference as a whole had professionalization of the market-place led to
10 fruitful if strained co-operation. This idea problems since its lack of rules could lead to touched on what became a recurrent theme of incoherence. the two days: that great if tense creative The final session of the day was a delight, with opportunity came from the fraught development Alison Ohta of the Royal Asiatic Society tracing of the codification of institutions. Matthew in detail the roots and history of both the Sangster also stressed the importance of institution specifically and the fascinating nationalism to the Literary Fund, as beginnings of Asian Studies in Britain more demonstrated by their patriotic toasts, and this broadly. Ohta offered us a glimpse of the focus on nations was a primary concern of Laure wonderful treasures that lie within the Royal Philip’s paper ‘French Émigré Novelists and the Asiatic Society, and this was the ideal invitation London Publishing Community in the 1790s’. for the evening’s wine reception, held at the Philip skilfully drew our attention to the manner RAS. in which the combination of political tensions The second day contained fewer papers, but at and a thriving book-trade provided fertile least as many interesting points about creativity opportunity for French exiles in London. within communities. Where the first day was During questions, John Whale posed a series more deliberately structured as a conference, the of intricately connected points, which seemed to second day’s workshop format allowed for a less frame concerns of the network as a whole. focussed but highly informative discussion to Whale asked that we test our perception that emerge. The first session of the day offered us creative communities tend to be ‘successful’ all the chance to respond to the issues raised when they produce a product. Linked to this, he thus far, as well as putting forward some things also suggested that we think about whether there that had perhaps been neglected. Breaking off was a difference between industry and labour, into small groups, we then fed back into our and freedom and creativity. Then Whale made a larger community. Subjects raised included how subtle point about our seeming need to solidify regulation offers creative possibilities, but also the ephemeral, and the possible danger of concerns of detachment from the wider culture. simplifying in such cases what is complex and The absence of Habermas was noted, and it was indeterminate. He noted the Romantic era’s wondered whether this suggested that the enthusiasm for sketches of its disparate and fluid academy has perhaps moved on from his ideas. creative communities, and pointed to the That said, there was a distinct lack of theory as a apparent eagerness for ‘output’ in modern whole, with only Pierre Bourdieu, Fernand universities, as evidence of this. Such pressures Braudel, and Franco Moretti being referred to seem to be at the core of any creative briefly, and no mention of how Jean-Luc Nancy, community. or perhaps even Georges Bataille, might offer a After lunch, Will Bowers and Cassie Ulph vehicle for the network’s thinking. Mention was showed us not only what Bowers called the made, though, of the need to think more of “transformation of musical taste” in the consumers as well as producers, and how that Romantic period, but also the distinctiveness of communal interplay influences creativity. Also London to this transformation through its skilfully discussed was the significance of the institutions, and the “musical coterie” as Ulph metropolis to institutions, for it was argued that saw it that was formed in homes between friends only a space like London could provide the and families. One of the many interesting resources and infrastructure needed for a questions raised by this panel was that asked by thriving community to be creative. Similarly, Gregory Dart. This was to do with the difference London was discussed as a node that spread out between the requirement in music to have into the rest of the country. But it was also knowledge and expertise in the field, compared pointed out that other cities might well have to authorship, which was still open to anyone. looked away from and beyond London for their This relative freedom was discussed as being inspiration. Perhaps these latter points will be both a benefit, since its licentiousness permitted reflected upon further in the third meeting where a degree of individuality, but also fraught with the role of regional networks will be explored.
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The seminar session just before lunch focused systematising project seeking to shed light on on publishing and periodicals. Robert their history and current meaning would be Morrison’s brilliantly planned seminar provided valuable. Another idea developing out of the us with the chance to consider some key works two-day event was how we might visually of recent literary criticism concerning publishing represent the inter-connections of people and in the Romantic era. Morrison challenged us to institutions in the Romantic period. This, tool, it put under strain three things in particular: was might be hoped, could offer many of us the there something about the periodical press that chance to better understand and thus think about led to many authors writing and being read in a the intermingled nature of creativity. More distinct way than when they published indirectly, it may also help us to better perceive independently? What does the period tell us the web of relations involved in collaboration about the difficulty, and opportunity, of leading between researchers and research institutions. a creative community? And lastly, what role While the workshop did not come to any firm does conflict and antagonism play in the creative conclusions on these matters, the two days process? As with the earlier session, we started produced a level of thinking and analysis that by considering these and other matters in small aptly demonstrated the sorts of creativity that groups, and then re-formed to develop our ideas. can only be fashioned by communities. Discussion was free-flowing, thoughtful, Matthew Ward engaging, and it was good to hear genuine University of St Andrews disagreement as well as accord in our community. In the afternoon, Elizabeth Fay spoke of ‘William Morley and Armchair Institutions’ and deftly illustrated the significance to the Romantic imaginative of Morley and Asia. David Higgins then offered us a more informal paper, which posed fascinating questions about the role of the local and the exotic to Charles Lamb’s work. Higgins’ proposition allowed us all to investigate key matters that had run throughout the two days: asking us to think about what effect institutions have on creativity, the proximity of labour to creativity, ideas of confinement and freedom, and the context of imperialism and nationhood to the position of the capital. One of the aims of the network is to be self- reflexive and to consider our own contextual matters, including the role and function of universities and how they may encourage communal creativity. We therefore fittingly ended the day by considering how as a network we might move our discipline forward. One possibility under proposal is a language usage project that might try to define the terms we use, and see if it is possible to define terms like ‘coterie’, ‘sociability’, ‘community’, and ‘creativity’ more aptly. Inspired by Raymond Williams’ Keywords, it was generally agreed that many terms are used too loosely and thus a
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I also spent a day at the London Metropolitan Archives, where I was able to access the Old Copley Award Bailey Sessions Rolls. This helped provide details of charges, outcomes, and in a few cases, Reports the name of the accusers in sodomy trials held at the Old Bailey. The examination of these primary documents allowed me to explore how, in the absence of other textual records, the Christine Mangan (University College Dublin) names of the accused have become intrinsically linked with their crime. In addition to this, I My thesis focuses on the representation of spent a portion of my time at the Guildhall patriarchal violence R within the Northanger library, where a rare copy of The Humors of the Horrid novels. In particular, my project aims to Old Bailey; or, Justice Shaking her Sides is trace the novelists’ engagement with the issue of housed. The opportunity to examine the violence in 1790s England, with emphasis selections included within this text proved to be placed on marital violence and the ways in invaluable, as the insights gleaned contributed which narratives of abuse are used to highlight not only to one specific chapter, but also to my the subjection women faced under contemporary thesis as a whole. marriage laws. My thesis is heavily research- I would like to thank BARS for their support, based and requires the continual study of as the Stephen Copley Award allowed me the archival materials, in addition to secondary opportunity to access resources essential to the resources written by social and legal historians successful completion of my thesis. My research on the subject of eighteenth-century marriage trip was extremely rewarding as it provided me and violence. Although I am able to access some with numerous ideas for my thesis, eventually resources in Dublin, the wealth of source culminating with the draft of a new chapter upon material on these subjects is located in England. my return to Dublin. As such, I am extremely grateful to be a recipient of the Stephen Copley Postgraduate Research Award, as it funded my return flight Alys Mostyn (University of Leeds) and accommodation for a research trip to London. The Stephen Copley Postgraduate Bursary While in London, I accessed primary source allowed me to fund research trips to Grasmere material housed at the British Library, London and London in aid of consulting the archives at Metropolitan Archives and Guildhall Library, the Wordsworth Trust’s Jerwood Centre and the including eighteenth-century court documents British Library. The main purpose of my trip from the Old Bailey and the Consistory Court of was to examine examples of Coleridgean London, personal correspondence and various marginalia, particularly in the period 1807-1811. newspaper items from the 17th and 18th Century Whilst transcriptions of this material are Burney Collection Database. Prior to my visit, I accessible through his Collected Works, there planned to explore how the embedded narratives really is no substitute for seeing the actual of trial, torture and imprisonment within the documents. It was a real privilege to work with three “horrid novels” written by male authors the books from Wordsworth’s library at the engage with contemporary discourse on the Jerwood and with Charles Lamb’s copy of subject of sodomy and silence. This required the Beaumont and Fletcher’s complete plays at the examination of records housed at the British British Library. In consulting the volumes Library which pertain to men accused of themselves I was able to gain a deeper sodomy during the 1790s, including eighteenth- understanding of the impetus behind Coleridge’s century publications that confirm both annotations: the significance of their positioning contemporary ideology and law’s determination in relation to the printed text; the variations in to silence public mention of sodomy. the appearance of the handwriting; their relation
13 to other annotators’ marks; even pencil smudges, Collected Works. A particular marking on ‘The coffee stains, and blots of ink spoke of the Elder Brother’ seems typical of Lamb’s ironic author in a manner irreproducible in an edited stance on his scholarly endeavours. ‘Fie, fie, collection. Charles,’ one of the characters asks, ‘no hour of At the Jerwood I examined a number of books interruption?’, to which the historical Charles that Coleridge read during his residence in the appears to reply, ‘many’. Lakes. Though the focus of the chapter to which My sincerest thanks go to Jeff Cowton and the this research pertains is Coleridge’s borrowing interns at the Wordsworth trust for their help of Thomas De Quincey and Charles Lamb’s with my researches and, of course, to BARS – books, it was useful for me to observe the way specifically Daniel Cook, Angela Wright, and in which he interacted with Wordsworth’s the BARS Executive Committee – for enabling volumes, too. Overwhelmingly his annotative this trip to take place. mode was corrective or evaluative. Perhaps my favourite addition, to a copy of Ritson’s Ancient Songs, is a short limerick that reveals Bethan Roberts (University of Liverpool) Coleridge’s consciousness of the possible pomposity or imposition of his marginal asides. My research considers the place of Charlotte ‘I trust,’ he scribbles, ‘that the etymological Smith’s Elegiac Sonnets in the eighteenth- informations in these marginal illustrations will century sonnet revival, as well as in literary atone, as intellectual, for the marginal history more widely. It traces the expansion Obscurations, with which they deform the page, of Elegiac Sonnets through its multiple editions visually’. Indeed, Coleridge was no tidy from 1784 to 1800, charting Smith’s changing annotator: this, in contrast to Wordsworth approach to – and the interactions between – himself. Significantly my visit to Jerwood centre form, literary tradition and place. The Stephen provided me with access to Wordsworth’s Copley grant I received was used to meet travel marginalia, too, which allowed me to trace the expenses to the East Sussex Record Office in differences in technique between the two poets. Lewes in May. The purpose of the trip was to Where Coleridge would append his thoughts to study the ninety-nine unpublished letters from the passages which prompted them, Wordsworth Charlotte Smith to her publishers Thomas Cadell tended to make small pencil marks beside those and William Davies written between the years of which he approved, saving his longer 1786 and 1794. The so-called ‘Preston Manor’ thoughts for blank leaves elsewhere in the book. letters were discovered after the publication For instance, his copy of Daniel’s poems – of The Collected Letters of Charlotte Smith, according to his grandson one of his favourite edited by Judith Phillips Stanton (2003). The volumes – contains two full pages of, not always Preston Manor letters span a significant period complimentary, notes preceding the poems in Smith’s sonnet career, covering the themselves. publication of the third (1786), fifth (1789) and In the British Library the importance of sixth (1792) editions of Elegiac Sonnets, with observing first-hand the position of marginalia each edition expanding the last; and the period became especially clear. Coleridge’s agitation of when Smith reached the height of her sonnet mind can be read in his notes on Lamb’s success. Beaumont and Fletcher. An annotation made on Reading the letters was essential to my ‘The Queen of Corinth’, by its proximity to one research. Indeed, they revealed many particularly telling passage in the text, supports a illuminating details pertaining to Smith’s literary number of suppositions I had previously made opinions, influences and relationships during about Coleridge’s conception of annotated this period when she wrote many of her most books as the ‘Relics’ of his authorial legacy. I influential sonnets; which have been was also able to decipher, to an extent, some of incorporated into – and have enriched – my the markings made by Lamb on the volume, thesis. The titles of books Smith requested from which are not included in the transcript of the her publishers to read or consult have been an
14 especially important detail, as a key part of my thesis is considering the influences on Smith’s use of the sonnet, and what literary works she Early Career and knew and was reading contemporaneously. The letters were also illuminating on Smith’s literary Postgraduate relationship with her patron and sonnet predecessor William Hayley, as well as with Column William Cowper and John Sargent. Other interesting and relevant details were also revealed by the letters, such as her plans to publish a collection of sonnet translations, as A reminder that there is still a chance to register well as her activities as an artist – undertaking for the BARS’ Postgraduate and Early Career commissions and planning the illustrations of conference, which will be held on 19-21st her sonnets. March this year. Our theme, ‘Romantic In addition to studying the letters, during my Locations’, will take place in one of the most research trip I also visited some of the locations famous Romantic settings – Wordsworth’s home of Smith’s sonnets, chiefly the South Downs in Grasmere, where the Wordsworth Trust will locations of her childhood home Bignor Park host what we hope will be an inspiring and and the River Arun, which I would otherwise convivial gathering. Our format for 2014, in have been unable to visit. These landscapes have which each paper will be delivered to all a central role in Smith’s sonnets and in my delegates attending, is designed to foster thesis; as well as providing me with some useful geniality and inclusivity, in keeping with BARS’ geographical details, it was also a thoroughly ethos. As part of this approach, BARS’ Early rewarding and enjoyable experience to see these Career and Postgraduate conference will, for the locations, and I returned to my thesis with new first time, be held over three days and two nights. insight into and renewed enthusiasm for Smith’s We hope that this will offer our delegates time sonnets. to engage with and befriend contemporaries as Thus, I wish to thank BARS sincerely for well as opportunities to hone critical skills and awarding me the bursary, and enabling me to discover new developments in the field. As well make this invaluable research trip. as hearing thirty, fifteen-minute papers, delegates will be party to keynote addresses by Professor Simon Bainbridge, and Professor Nicola Watson. The conference will also feature a session on manuscripts run by the Curator of the Wordsworth Trust, Jeff Cowton, and three seminars, which will be based around set texts. Registration closes at the end of January. Our fee of £75 for waged delegates, and £65 for those unwaged provides excellent value, comprising all of the above, as well as dinner on the first night, all lunches, tea and coffee each day. Further details about the conference, including how we aim to support delegates in getting to Grasmere, and offers on accommodation, as well as the registration form, can be found at http://www.bars.ac.uk/locations.php Any further questions can be directed to [email protected]
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criticism of artists, and admirers of painting in general’. Reviews Such contradictions extend to the origins of the Panorama. In one influential account Barker is said to have come up with the idea of a large, Anne Anderson, Sibylle Erle, Laurie continuous circular painting whilst surveying the Garrison, Verity Hunt, Pheobe view from Calton Hill in Edinburgh: this form of Putnam and Peter West, eds, painting would enable observers to feel as if Panoramas, 1787-1900: Texts and they were witnessing reality rather than a mere reproduction of the original scene. In another Contexts. 6 vols. London: Pickering version, Barker gained an insight into the ability and Chatto, 2013. Pp. 2,000. £450. of stark contrasts of light and shade to create ISBN 9781848930155. illusionistic effects whilst imprisoned for debt in a round cell with an aperture in the middle of the When the Irish-born portrait artist Robert Barker ceiling. In the first account the genesis of opened the first Panorama in Edinburgh in 1787 panoramic seeing is related to liberty and he described himself in the publicity for his expansiveness; in the second, it is shown to be exhibition not only as the inventor of a new dependent on restriction and confinement. form of entertainment but as a daring artistic Subsequent commentators, mindful of the innovator whose work marked ‘AN Foucaultian reading of Bentham’s IMPROVEMENT ON PAINTING, Which contemporaneous design for the Panopticon, relieves that sublime Art from a Restraint it has have made much of the tensions and the ever laboured under’. What distinguished connections between these two accounts. It is no Barker’s invention – a vast, 360° canvas housed small irony that the Panorama, in its endeavour in a purpose-built enclosure – from established to go beyond the limits of painting, ended up forms of illusionistic perspective painting was positioning its viewers as docile, disciplinary the apparent eradication of anything beyond the subjects as a condition of its promise of image that would allow the eye to re-establish a unfettered access to the wonders of the world. sense of the distinction between painted surface As evidenced by the wealth of annotated keys and reality. By preventing viewers from getting and narrative programmes reproduced in too close to the canvas, and by flooding the Panoramas: Texts and Contexts, 1787-1900, the enclosure with daylight while, at the same time, enormous popularity of the medium throughout concealing its source, viewers were tricked into the nineteenth century was buoyed along, in thinking that the scene before them was real. large measure, by serial depictions of military Anecdotes abound of credulous responses to triumphs and colonial territories, providing Barker’s displays: Queen Charlotte was further evidence of the Panorama’s role as an reportedly seasick while viewing ‘The Grand enforcer of the dominant ideology. Although Fleet at Spithead in 1791’; the Duke of some critics have argued that the relatively low Wellington was said to have become over- cost of admission to the Panorama helped to blur excited as he strained to get a closer view of the distinctions between classes, enabling ordinary panorama of Sabraon. In addition to serving as people to participate in the ennobling pursuit of testimony to the illusion’s success, stories such grand vistas and allowing them to comment on as these point to the inherent contradictoriness Britain’s martial and imperial accomplishments of the medium: on the one hand the Panorama in a way that would not have been possible in was presented as a form of popular immersive the previous century, the fact remains that the entertainment – audiences were attracted by all-encompassing vision or ‘nature at a glance’, promises of spectacle and scale – on the other it as Barker’s patent specified, laid great store in was regarded as an object of connoisseurship, preventing observers from ‘going too near the ‘intended chiefly’, in Barker’s words, ‘for the painting’ in order to maintain illusionistic and, by extension, ideological consistency.
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As the editors of these volumes attest, a lack Richard Altick (1978), Ralph Hyde (1988), of relevant documentation makes it all but Stephen Oettermann (1997) and Bernard impossible to reconstruct a detailed reception Comment (1999) have provided first-rate history for the Panorama. For anyone general discussions of the medium, and while conducting research into this pervasive and literary and cultural studies of romantic visuality highly successful medium the absence of by, most notably, William Galperin (1993), individual accounts of contemporary displays is Gillen D’Arcy Wood (2003) and Sophie Thomas both baffling and frustrating. Apart from (2008), have pointed to the connections between newspaper advertisements and a scant number of panoramic painting and the visionary ambitions preparatory sketches (hardly any complete of high romantic poetry, with the exception of canvases survive) all that seems to remain to Denise Blake Oleksijczuk’s The First Panorama: testify to the existence of the Panorama Visions of British Imperialism (2011) detailed phenomenon are collections of narrative analyses of how individual displays were programmes and annotated keys. Panoramas presented ‘in the midst of a pertinent cultural, reproduces a considerable number of printed political or imperial context’ have yet to appear. materials, reflective not only of the well-known The ‘raw materials’ contained in the six volumes late eighteenth and early-nineteenth century of this edition, together with the wide-ranging British context but also of the burgeoning and informative headnotes and section American scene of the second half of the century; introductions, will undoubtedly inspire from these materials we can at least gain an researchers to continue this valuable work. impression of the form these displays took and Philip Shaw the means by which audiences were guided, both University of Leicester textually and visually, to interpret the views before them. Aside from scattered comments by Reynolds, John Barrell, Edward Pugh of Ruthin, Constable, Ruskin and Turner, it is 1763-1813: ‘A Native Artist’. Cardiff: Wordsworth’s Prelude that provides one of the University of Wales Press, 2013. Pp. few sustained evaluations of the Panorama. During his stays in London in the 1790s 245. 59 colour. illustrations, 74 black Wordsworth may have visited Barker’s views of and white. £65 hb, £25 pb. ISBN Calton Hill, Albion Mills and the grand fleet 9780708325667 (hb); 9780708325674 lying at Spithead. Although the poet does not (pb). specify which of these shows he witnessed his allusion in book 7 of the Prelude to the painter John Barrell’s publications will be well known ‘fashioning a work / To Nature’s circumambient to all students of late eighteenth- and early scenery, / And with his greedy pencil taking in / nineteenth-century British cultural and political A whole horizon on all sides’ makes explicit a history. In this book, he returns to his early prevailing unease with the rise of visual interest in the politics of landscape, as revealed technology and the commodification of the in his influential studies of John Clare (The Idea romantic sublime strong enough to bely the of Landscape and the Sense of Place, 1730-1840 poem’s concluding insistence on the (1972)) and George Morland (The Dark Side of transcendence of mere material sight. the Landscape (1980)). At first sight, Edward What remains to be examined in this Pugh, the Welsh artist and writer, is an fascinating and increasingly relevant field of unpromising subject for a book of this length enquiry are the precise ways in which panorama and lavishness. With its 133 illustrations, it is displays were related to concurrent longer and more copiously illustrated than many developments in the technologies of warfare, in books on major artists. Pugh’s artistic the management of colonies, in the production is not impressive by the standards of dissemination of knowledge and in the conventional art history: a few undistinguished fashioning of the self. While key works by portraits and a large number of grisaille
17 landscape drawings which were aquatinted and customary rights, and the reactions to the war. issued as prints, and as illustrations to the text of Some of his readings of the images are his 150,000-word travel book, Cambria Depicta, questionable: the figure interpreted as a tragic published posthumously in 1816. Barrell himself ‘war widow’ in Llanfwrog, Ruthin and Llanbedr admits that he cannot get very excited about the is quite unlike the frantic, starving women illustrations to Cambria Depicta. But the depicted in other prints and written accounts, ‘brilliant’ text of that book is a different matter, and is not even wearing black (she is described and so too is the set of Six Views of as ‘nearly black’). Similarly, the ‘industrious Denbighshire that Pugh issued in 1794. In miner’ in Bathafern Hills, from Coedmarchan addition, Pugh produced some lively views of Rocks looks like a stock figure admiring the London crowds for a further publication, view, and his ‘pile of spoil’ might be either a Modern London (1804). These three small hill or an attempt to represent shadow. achievements provide the basic structure for a But the discussions that proceed from these book that is both engagingly written and interpretations are highly illuminating, and well meticulously researched. supported by material from local newspapers The book begins and ends like a detective and enclosure maps. story, conveying a sense of the thrills of research. Barrell is at his best when he can trace the It starts with the purchase of an anonymous occupations, social class and activities of figures watercolour and finishes with the resurfacing of in the landscape, and the marks they leave on it the one view by Pugh that Barrell would have in the shape of such items as cottages and wanted to find – a panorama of Pugh’s beloved churches, lime kilns and boundary stones. This Vale of Clwyd. This work, though technically interest in people is also evident in his accomplished, turns out, poignantly, to be a perceptive descriptions of the tumbling children disappointment as Barrell concludes that Pugh, in Pugh’s views of London. Barrell is animated, towards the end of his life, represents his native too, by a sense of the disservice done by the land as a landscape, not as a place – something predominantly metropolitan bias of art history to be viewed with aesthetic detachment rather and the consequent neglect of figures like Pugh. than known and understood. His book demonstrates the importance of prints For most of his career, however, Pugh, like and book illustrations in spreading a taste for Clare, is depicting and describing places that he landscape, and provides a model for the kinds of knew well, and using strategies and details analysis that can be applied to them. Above all, which convey that knowledge. The other artists he creates an affectionate and convincing and writers who traversed north Wales in this portrait of the artist, walking indefatigably period were predominantly English, unable even around north Wales with his faithful dog, Miss to understand the language (and unashamed of Wowsi, at his heels. This book will, surely, their ignorance in this respect). Pugh, as Barrell achieve its stated aim of restoring Pugh to his rightly argues, offers an authentically Welsh rightful place in the cultural history of Wales, perspective. He could speak Welsh, and the text both as a writer and as an artist. of Cambria Depicta shows that he spent time Christiana Payne talking to the local inhabitants, rich and poor, Oxford Brookes University and appreciating their many acts of kindness to him. His Six Views of 1794 also provide insights into the state of Denbighshire in the early years of the war with revolutionary France. With one exception (an estate portrait, a genre on which, surprisingly, Barrell can find little to say) they provide springboards for fascinating and wide-ranging analyses of, for example, the patterns of land ownership and exploitation, the effects of enclosure and the erosion of
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Genesis: William Blake’s Last in which material creation limits imagination Illuminated Work. Edited, With a and leads to the fall, tragically dividing Commentary, By Mark Crosby and humanity’s androgynous ancestor and dooming us all to death: ‘the creation of gendered states Robert N. Essick. San Marino, initiates the descent into mortality’ (34). This is California: Huntingdon Library, 2012. a venerable story but one it is hard to see told Pp. xi. £58. ISBN 9780873282475. quite as clearly as Crosby and Essick’s theme- fixing titles for Blake’s designs on leaves 5-9 As his life ended, Blake began to re-write the imply: The Creation of Adam, The Creation of Bible. Crosby and Essick’s Genesis shows the Eve 1 and 2, The Judgment of Adam and Eve, glorious result. This first ever complete, full-size, The Expulsion from Eden. For example, outside colour reproduction is a joy to behold. On the of its present context Adam’s ‘Creation’ would manuscript’s eleven mighty pages (379x276mm) not readily be apprehended as a treatment of that we not only have Blake’s revised version of the theme, while the ‘Expulsion’ is little more than King James Bible (1.1-4.15) accompanied by his an arrangement of circles. Also, the more own pungent chapter headings but, naturally, a transparent Adam and Eve scenes may be less collection of illuminating designs too. Genesis is tragic than the editors’ commentary suggests. very much a work in progress – with script For instance, Adam on Leaf 7, recumbent ranging from coloured gothic to rough pencil, beneath a busty, beautiful Eve, is said to have and images that run from two gorgeous title his ‘neck arched back as if in agony’ (43) yet his pages to vague squirls and dashes – whose ’ posture could as easily suggest dreamy sleep – unfinished state...offers a window onto Blake’s he does, after all, smile at her appearance on method of graphic composition’ (36). The Leaf 6. Interpretation of Eve’s gesture and editors identify six layers of lettering which expression on Leaf 8, the ‘Judgement’ scene, bespeak ‘a back-and-forth, non-linear seems excessively gloomy too: ’signifying an process...with every layer, Blake re-formatted awareness of her sexuality and consequent and thus re-conceptualized his preliminary shame’ (43) they contend. Actually, as Eve intentions’. Moreover the ‘same process of re- touches her breasts and genitals, while looking execution and re-conceptualization is evident in toward Adam and cocking her head at an open- the designs’ (32) too. Blake’s belief, ‘The man mouthed serpent, she seems anything but who never alters his opinion is like standing abashed or ashamed. water, &breeds reptiles of the mind’ was clearly Detailed and informative analysis of the two life-long. title-pages further supports their over-arching As its previous editor Robert Wark notes, this arguments. Previously the variants had been sketchy manuscript is ‘a puzzle’ throwing up seen as sublime and beautiful, but Crosby and interpretative challenges which Crosby and Essick feel ‘both can be interpreted as a Essick do indeed ‘assault’ (17,21) and many of movement from the Holy Ghost downward, an their claims are beautifully illustrated. The implicit visual narrative that anticipates Blake’s presentation of parallel Blakean and biblical chapter headings and represents a descent from texts, and their forensic analysis of the designs unalloyed imaginative potentiality to material alongside Blake’s other visual treatments of creation and the subsequent fragmentation of biblical themes, indisputably prove this to be a man into contentious states of consciousness’ ‘Christological version of Genesis’ (46): Elohim (40). They also understandably dwell on the becomes Jehovah, a harbinger of Jesus through significance of the title-pages’ central figure, his forgiveness of Cain. Highly informative identified as Adam, whose enormous column- sections on the Trinitarianism of Blake’s patron penis functions as the “I” of “GE-NE-SIS”. John Linnell and on contemporary debates about Equally understandably, grand claims are made: the Genesis tradition underscore their case. ‘the garment-like “I” covering his loins,[is] Less thoroughly convincing is the editors’ literally clothing the representative of humanity insistence on another underlying meta-narrative, with the word of God’. It ‘serves as a rebus to
19 identify Adam as the literal embodiment of OHCREL 3 covers the period ‘1660-1790’, humanity’ (37,38). These are credible which corresponds with and compliments well assessments, since the “I”/penis is most Stuart Gillespie and David Hopkins’ third flamboyantly brandished, though female viewers volume of The Oxford History of Literary may not easily swallow the notion that ‘Adam’s Translation in English (2005). It is by necessity association with the letter “I” implies a self- no slender tome, since what Penelope Wilson reflexive connection with the reader’ (40). calls the act of ‘recreating Greek and Roman Ultimately Crosby and Essick must be praised texts as vernacular classics’ (31) flourished in for bringing us Blakean treasure, whose value the period and allusion to the classics was lies in the unique version of Genesis Chapters 1- ubiquitous in its literary culture. The book 4 contained in Blake’s designs and titles—and, would have been heavier still had the editors not since these are some of the last words he wrote, made the decision to restrict the scope of the Blake best have the last word here too: (1) ‘The project to ‘literary texts of high quality and of Creation of the Natural Man’, (2)’The Natural the greatest historical importance’ (2). This kind Man divided into Male & Female & of the Tree of language is likely, and perhaps designed, to of life and of the Tree of Good and Evil’, (3)’Of ruffle feathers, especially of those who tend the Sexual Nature and its Fall into Generation towards a Book or Cultural History approach. and death’, (4)’How generation and death took But in spite of an initially provocative staking Possession of the Natual Man & of the out of their position on ‘Literature’ and forgiveness of Sins written upon the Murderers ‘reception’, in which Martindale declares his forhead[sic]’. preference for classical reception as ‘two-way Helen P. Bruder understanding… which illuminates antiquity as Independent Scholar much as modernity’ (5), he and Hopkins have covered a great deal of ground with carefully edited, lean and readable essays. Their definition David Hopkins and Charles of classical reception is not infrequently Martindale, eds., The Oxford History of stretched by the essays that follow, which Classical Reception in English seldom illuminate antiquity for the classicist as Literature, Volume 3: 1660-1790. much as the modern. But to restrict CRS to the Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. admittedly gratifying (especially to classicists) dialogical model would rule out many important Pp. 700. £147. ISBN 9780199219810. studies that have enriched the field, which would
Over the past twenty years Classical Reception in turn seriously limit what CRS can offer the Studies (CRS) has grown into an active and academy, as OHCREL 3 itself shows. A pleasing interdisciplinary field of academic study both example of where it does ‘work both ways’ is within and beyond the classical community. The where Bruce Redford remarks that ‘To Oxford History of Classical Reception in investigate the Pliny-Walpole connection is to English Literature (OHCREL 3) is the third refresh one’s understanding not only of cultural volume (although the first to reach print) of a affinities but also the crucial role played in both literary-historical mountain of a project which oeuvres by patrician self-fashioning’ (435). aims to ‘chart English writers’ engagement and The ‘literary’ inclination of the History dialogue with ancient Greek and Roman obviously omits the chance to see the interplay literature from the early middle ages to the between ‘high literary’ and performance, visual, present day’ (ix). The OHCREL series’ very material and ‘lower’ print cultures, but as a existence bears testimony to the settlement of result it will surely stimulate a good deal of the pioneering field of CRS in the mainstream of further research. The genres of literature Literary Studies, and it is fitting that it should be represented in this book expand the trodden path co-edited by Charles Martindale, who did much to include texts currently underrepresented in to establish the field’s reputation with his English Literature teaching, e.g. translations, landmark book Redeeming the Text (1993). letters, histories and speeches. It is an invaluable
20 resource for understanding the classicism of remedied by use of Victoria Moul’s thorough eighteenth-century Britain, which of course annotated bibliography (647f). significantly informs Anglophone literature of It is impossible to do justice to individual both the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. chapters in the space of this short review. I will This is perhaps its greatest offering to the instead focus on a couple of the book’s myth- readers of this Bulletin. busting elements surrounding eighteenth-century The book is divided up as follows: after the classicism. It ought to be noted that Martindale, introduction seven of the twenty-one chapters Hopkins and ‘The Bristol School’ have recently are given to classical genres (Latin Epic, Roman made an important challenge to much received Satire and Epigram, Pastoral, Criticism, Didactic wisdom regarding Romantic classicism in poetry, Lyric and Elegy, and History). The other Romans and Romantics (Saunders et al. ed., chapters cover engagements with select 2012). In Martindale’s own essay on Milton’s individual classical authors (Homer, Ovid, and classicism he wields the bracket with lucid Horace), engagements by select individual precision, e.g.: ‘(classicism must not be thought eighteenth-century authors (Milton, Dryden, of as something necessarily conservative)’ (61); Johnson), and then the modern ‘genre chapters’ ‘(despite the reputation of the period for stiff include: Letters, Fables, Theatre, Novels, ‘correctness’ and subservience to ‘the Discursive and Philosophical Prose and Travesty [Neoclassical] rules’)…’ (71). OHCREL 3 and Mock-Heroic. Two miscellaneous chapters throughout problematises the prevalent idea that by Penelope Wilson do much to ground the the ‘narrow rationalism’ of the ‘Neoclassical’, or collection by calling attention to women, the ‘Augustan’ period was liberated by ‘The Gothic’ working class, and the publishing trade. ‘The (esp. 14-7). Another relatively well-documented Place of the Classics in Education and concept that the volume challenges is the Publishing’ (29), positioned immediately after apparent division of ‘biblically- and the introduction, summarises and expands our patriotically-inspired Whiggery and a knowledge of the era’s all-important classical classically-influenced Toryism’ (19). The education and usefully presents trends in richness of creative classicism across party lines contemporary print culture. Her second chapter and throughout the long period reminds us to be on ‘Women Writers and the Classics’ (495) wary of such political polarisations. informs its reader of alternative ‘indirect’ routes Other times and social and cultural contexts to classical literary culture used by women, can resonate more easily with certain ancient much of which by extension can be applied to writers than our own. This is patently true for the engagement of informal learners and the eighteenth century, as is revealed by the children looking to supplement/short-cut their prevalence in OHCREL 3 of classical authors classical education). As well as introducing us to rarely read today. The subtle differences and the classicism of Aphra Behn, Anne Finch and similarities between former relationships with Elizabeth Carter, she touches on the ‘labouring- classical writers and our own can often tell us class’ writers Mary Collier, Mary Leapor and much about both the ancient and modern authors Ann Yearsley. and their work. But even if we learn nothing Between many of the chapters of OHCREL 3 new about the ancient author, the complex web there is beneficial interlocking of themes and of attitudes, fashions, tastes and contemporary subjects. In spite of this cross-referencing is events that underlie such differences can also minimal. The eighteenth-century expansion of powerfully illuminate the social, political and the print medium is ever lurking in the cultural contexts of the modern writer and their background, which reminds the reader to temper readerships. OHCREL 3 is a valuable collection with thoughts of continuity the desire to treat the of essays that displays the rich mix of creative succeeding era as one purely of reaction. This classicism in eighteenth-century Britain. theme will no doubt be developed by OHCREL Henry Stead 4 (forthcoming). Any omissions or thin-patches Kings College London in the scope of this ambitious History can be
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Stephen Gill, Wordsworth’s Revisitings. across its entire span, rather than dwelling only Oxford, OUP, 2011. Pp. 265. £26. on early complexities. Gill’s clean direct style ISBN: 9780199268771. gets right to the heart of a poem’s meaning and its centrality to the Wordsworthian message. His succinct account of the questions posed by Stephen Gill’s lifetime of work on Wordsworth The Ruined Cottage is an excellent example of spans three major academic forms as editor of this: ‘What is the proper response to a fate such the Cornell Salisbury Plain Poems and co-editor as Margaret’s? . . . Can it be made productive? of the Norton Prelude; author of the standard Troubling thought, but can Margaret’s death be biography William Wordsworth: A Life; and made to work for our good?’ (56). However critic of Wordsworth and the Victorians. There interested Wordsworth is in suffering or in small can be no-one better placed, then, to look over human tragedies, his ultimate focus is always the entirety of Wordsworth’s writing and upon literature itself; the power of develop a critical approach that enacts the poet’s transformative communication that poetry offers. own ‘habitual return as a poet “into the years Chapters 3 and 4 focus on The Prelude which he himself had lived”’ (2). through four significant acts of revision Gill defines the terms of his engagement occurring in 1804, 1819, 1831-2 and 1839. clearly in his introduction with a subtle, but These chapters are of great interest in terms of important distinction between ‘revisiting’ and the kind of critical response they enable. They ‘retrospect’. As he points out, there is a sense in draw upon and effectively unite Gill’s tri-partite which ‘all Wordsworth’s best poems [are] strengths – editorial, biographical, critical – revisitings’ (9) but this study is centred upon almost to articulate (although it is not explicitly ‘the poet’s continual return not to his past but to articulated) a new kind of form. So, the chapters his past in past writing’ (10). This aligns the work as a kind of text-critical-biography enabled study with recent studies on Wordsworth – such in the case of this particular writer by the as Andrew Bennett’s Wordsworth Writing – that textual self-extension that determines his focus on the processes of the poet as writer, as relationship to all his work, especially this one: well as with studies of the later works of major ‘because it was an autobiographical poem it poets, such as Tim Fulford’s The Late Poetry of continued bone of his bone’ (89). Gill is the Lake Poets: Romanticism Revised. Gill’s particularly good at posing core questions and interest lies in the way that ‘new creation is steadily filtering through the possible answers. generated from earlier’ (10) and he seeks to So, for example, in answer to the question ‘Why make the relationship visible. This also allows not publish?’ (in 1839) there are the poet’s own him to dwell upon the later Wordsworth and literary and financial justifications but also the adopt a Mid-Victorian position from which to possibility of deeper undercurrents of look back on the poet’s acts of self-return – a ‘aggressive self-defensiveness’ (Millgate in Gill, perspective that he uses very effectively. 147) concerning the poet’s relationship to critics, The first chapter is concerned with ‘creative or the refusal to accept that ‘the poem’s creative revisiting’ and ‘how revision worked in practice’ evolution was over’ (148). As Gill succinctly (12). It focuses on the labour of revision for puts it: ‘Wordsworth liked stillness but hated Wordsworth and the extraordinary (hidden) fixity’ (148). efforts involved. Revision is part of a refusal to Chapter 5 develops the textual-biography let go, to allow separation between the poet and model further in a slightly different way by his work, which exists as an ‘evolving whole’: a exploring acts of poetic and physical revisiting ‘being in the continuous present’ (36). It is this by Wordsworth that are also bound up with his odd, open relationship to his own work that relationship with Sir Walter Scott, before the allows for the kind of revisiting that Gill goes on book ends with ‘Salisbury Plain’ which is, of to explore. In Chapter 2 Gill applies the course, a double return, for poet and critic. As totalising retrospective viewpoint to The Ruined Wordsworth re-enacts in 1841 a journey first Cottage to look at revisions made to the poem made in 1793 so Gill returns in 2011 to a text
22 that initiated his career in 1975 to consider why emphasis on empiricism, Byron stressed the poem was left unpublished and the various ‘[a]uthority and accuracy’ (4), insisting that he stages of Wordsworthian ‘dismembering’ that it kept to the facts in his representations of was made to go through. In this chapter too, the historical places and situations. At the same time, true nature of this book (in the terms outlined by reproducing in his notes extensive passages above) is directly stated as ‘Wordsworth’s from historians as varied as Tacitus, Sismonde particular way of conceiving the life of his de Sismondi and David Hume, Byron poems’ (204). As always with Stephen Gill this demonstrates a ‘collector’s approach to history’ is a very useful book. It covers ground so (11) that partakes in the same antiquarian, scrupulously and authoritatively that it invokes bibliophiliac fascination with historical anecdote trust, and the scope and range of knowledge of exemplified by the popularity of miscellanies texts in multiple states is deeply impressive. such as Isaac D’Israeli’s The Curiosities of Gill’s place in the line of Great Wordsworthians Literature (1791-1834) (itself a favourite of the is already assured and this late addition to his poet’s). life’s work, centred on the poet’s late additions In her careful and conscientious attention to to his life’s work, can only confirm it. both Byron’s extensive reading and the Sally Bushell paratextual material that he and sometimes his Lancaster University creative partner John Cam Hobhouse fashioned to accompany the poet’s poems and plays, Pomarè demonstrates effectively the Carla Pomarè, Byron and the interpretative complexity created by the poet’s Discourses of History. Farnham, incorporation of other voices into his texts. In Surrey: Ashgate, 2013. Pp. 192. £55. Chapter 3, for instance, Pomarè argues convincingly that ‘[a]lthough his tragedies are ISBN 9781409443568. commonly read as a decisive contribution to the…popular nineteenth-century perception of Carla Pomarè’s new monograph, Byron and the the [Venetian] Republic as a site of secrecy and Discourses of History, is part of a wave of recent repression…the eclecticism of his sources’ work in Byron studies that explores the poet’s ensure that ‘Byron’s position is more nuanced’ historical concerns, also including the work of (81). In a particularly persuasive passage, Pomar Stephen Cheeke, Jane Stabler and the recent è points out the creative debt that Byron’s essay collection The Place of Lord Byron in scholarly and sardonic annotations owe to the World History (reviewed in the last issue). French Philosopher Pierre Bayle’s Historical Pomarè’s unique contribution to this debate is to and Critical Dictionary (1695-1702; Eng. Trans. place Byron’s eager appropriation of historical 1709), a biographical dictionary with accounts within the context of broader voluminous footnotes. Pomarè explains intellectual developments in Romantic incisively how Byron’s promiscuous use of historiography. At the time Byron was writing, quotation undermines his quest to reproduce history was undergoing something of a historical reality, observing that ‘his use of the revolution: Edward Gibbon’s scrupulous, intertexts of history qualifies in a very modern skeptical and sometimes scurrilous interrogation sense the drive towards historical objectivity that of sources in his The History of the Decline and lies behind his interest in historical matters’ (87). Fall of the Roman Empire (1775-89) marked a Of course, one of the main difficulties that a broader movement in Western historiography; study of this nature confronts is the extent to away from Christian teleology, and towards the which the theoretical complications caused by more empirical practice exemplified by the work Byron’s inclusion of these sources are the result of the German positivist historian Leopold von of accident or design. Pomarè claims that Byron Ranke. As Pomarè observes, Byron and his was engaged in the ‘painstaking tracing of the work have a complex status within these process tying events, documents and historical developments. In keeping with such historians’ representations’ (7), but was nonetheless
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‘fundamentally unbothered by methodological Michael O’Neill, Mark Sandy and considerations’ (4). But Byron’s faith in the Sarah Wootton, eds., Venice and the factual status of historical narrative reveals more Cultural Imagination: ‘this strange than simple naivety. Byron highlights his own accuracy partly to underscore his personal Dream upon the water’. London: acquaintance with the places he describes, and Pickering & Chatto, 2012. Pp. 212. £60. thereby to distance his work from the bookish ISBN 139781848931664. Oriental epic verses of his epic renegade Robert Southey, to which – in their combination of Bernard Beatty opens with a characteristically exotic subject-matter and extensive paratexts – erudite and witty essay about Venetian binaries. they bear an otherwise more than passing To set everything in motion, Beatty resemblance. Byron’s emphasis on the facts also meticulously unpacks the first six stanzas of opens up interesting questions about his work’s Childe Harold Canto IV and asks, ‘When did relationship with genres emerging in the period Venice begin to be enchanting?’ (20). Two that blended fiction and fact, such as the Venetian moments in English history, 1603-5 historical novel and the National Tale. Not only and 1816-20, yield associations of civilization did these new forms lay the foundation for and barbarism; palace and prison; Radcliffean Victorian realism, but – through the massive and Napoleonic space. These binaries coalesce popularity of Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley novels, in Byron, Byron’s Shakespeare, and a in particular – they played a significant role in spectacular portrait of Venice by Pompeo disseminating national consciousness across the Girolamo Batoni. Byron’s address to Venice in globe. Childe Harold resounds through all the essays From his adoption of the Greek cause in Canto that follow. For Mark Sandy, Venice’s fairy II of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812) to his enchantment flows into the works of Percy and valorisation of nascent Italian nationalism in Mary Shelley. From their revisionary works such as The Prophecy, Byron’s works engagement with Byron’s linkage of self and helped spread the idea that the nation was the history, Sandy turns to Thomas Mann’s central organizing principle around which the visionary mix of legal and illegal, civilized and miscellaneous remnants of the past could be uncivilized, history and fiction, life and death, arranged into a coherent narrative. In her delight and decay, light and shade, substance references to Byron's involvement with the and illusion in Death in Venice. The binaries of Carbonari towards the end of this book, Pomarè the Romantic and post-romantic imagination hints at these considerations, but she neglects to deliquesce again in Andrew Wilton’s chapter on provide a fuller examination of Byron’s role in J. M. W. Turner’s images of the floating city, in the rise of nineteenth-century ‘national’ history. which art and architecture merge with air and This is a disappointing oversight in what is light. Following Turner’s re-vision of Childe otherwise a conscientious study that should Harold, Jeremy Dibble focuses on the dark nonetheless prove of considerable interest to political world of Byron’s Venetian plays students and readers interested in Byron, Italian through analysis of the republican and imperial Romanticism, and eighteenth- and nineteenth- aspects of La Fenice, and the way Verdi ‘kept century historiography. his finger on the Italian political pulse’ (65). In a Alex Watson wide-ranging chapter, Dibble traces the Japan Women’s University mutations of the barcarolle across several centuries, dipping into opera’s obsessive recourse to Venetian settings and motifs. Rippling evocatively out of the dream vision of Venice in Pictures from Italy, Michael O’Neill ruminates on the poetry of Little Dorrit and ‘A Toccata of Galuppi’s’ to show how Dickens and Browning inherit the real and unreal accents of
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Byron’s Venice. Perceptive and sensitive close literature’ (143). Harding’s twin dialogues reading allows us to hear how Dickens’s between Eliot and James, and Pound and syllables ‘flow like the waters of the lagoon, Browning end with Pound’s death in Venice and each phrase floated upon the liquefying prose, an eerie photograph of him in Torcello, evoking each “and” a flick of the gondolier’s blade’ (82), Venice as macabre enclosure. The final essay and how both writers anticipate the post- confronts the Venice of shadows and industrial anxieties of Eliot and Pound. Dinah assassination: Rebecca White discusses Daphne Birch’s chapter on Ruskin picks up some of Du Maurier’s Don’t Look Now, its Wilton’s concerns, and deftly summarises the transformation into Nicolas Roeg’s classic 1973 importance of Venice to Ruskin’s understanding film, and the legacy of this film for later of architecture, labour and history. Birch’s directors, who cast Venice as sumptuous assured reappraisal of Ruskin on the gothic leads psychological prison. Brilliantly chosen, to consideration of Venice’s links with the skilfully interwoven and consistently grotesque and fears about mortality; finally, she illuminating, this collection of essays does uncovers ‘Turnerian uncertainty’ (108) in justice to its subject and represents a new high- Ruskin’s softening attitude to Catholicism. Fresh water mark in interdisciplinary literary criticism. binaries come into view in Pamela Knight’s It is an essential companion-volume to Tony chapter on Edith Wharton. Beginning with Tanner’s Venice Desired, sending its readers Wharton’s contempt for the mechanical tourist back to books, pictures, music, and to the city who inhabits the superficial foreground space of itself. the guidebook, Knight scrutinises Wharton’s Jane Stabler elitist claim on Venice’s layered textuality. University of St Andrews Wharton and all the contributors to this book are readers of Venetian background, but Knight traces the increasing difficulty Wharton finds in Joselyn M. Almeida, Reimagining the sustaining her distinction when ‘notes of the Transatlantic, 1780–1890. Farnham: essence of the city, “the very life of Venice”, are Ashgate, 2011. Pp. 294. £66.00. ISBN deadened by convention’ (120-21). Like Henry James, that other scourge of American tourists, 9780754669678. Wharton experiences revulsion at the ‘shallow abyss’ (124), that Venice becomes when flooded In recent years, the field of transatlantic studies with sightseers. Like James too, she becomes a has gained significant momentum. It received revenant, haunting later fiction about the city, special currency, in particular, when it and inextricably bound in the shallow layers she challenged rigid linguistic and political divisions despised. Sarah Wootton expands the trope of in the academy. It has also remained strong disenchantment with Venice. Her essay on Iain because of its capacious theoretical space for Softley’s film adaptation of The Wings of the transnational and transcultural critical work. Dove considers ‘whether Softley’s film fixates When the term ‘circum-Atlantic’ was introduced on surface at the expense of subtle yet thereafter, the term ‘trans-Atlantic’ suddenly suggestive layers of signification’ (128). This seemed delimiting and not altogether inclusive question rewardingly brings into focus the of the Atlantic world’s tri-continental scope. In relationship between viewer and the layers that Reimagining the Transatlantic, 1780-1890, make up Venice. Wootton uses visual texts of Joselyn M. Almeida returns her readers to this Venice by Sargent and Whistler to draw out the discussion by critiquing the shortcomings of alienated perspective of the visitor to Venice both these terms, in fact. In the process, however, who always looks ‘from without’ (137), a she offers us a new approach. She proposes the sensibility analysed with tact and rigour by pan-Atlantic as a multivalent framework that Jason Harding, who navigates the anti-Semitism comprises both the Anglophone and non- of Eliot and Pound in their raids on Venice as Anglophone worlds and disrupts ‘monolingual ‘the great intertextual echo chamber of Western transatlanticism’ (5). Her work captures the
25 authentic portrayal of the interpenetrating analyses the distinct liberation movements of intellectual, cultural, and social forces from abolitionism and Latin American independence 1780-1890. through the cases of Toussaint Louverture and This is not the first time that Almeida offers an Francisco de Miranda, whose efforts helped influential and groundbreaking study. In 2010 create an expansive nexus across imperial she edited a collection of essays, Romanticism centres (London and Paris) and ‘peripheries’ and the Anglo-Hispanic Imaginary, which (Caracas and St. Domingue) alike. Analysing the considers the multiple political, social, and works of José Blanco White and Richard Robert literary connections between Romantic-era Madden, the third chapter examines the role of Britain and Spanish America. Underscoring the translation as a powerful link between British lack of attention that has been given to this abolitionism and reformist projects in Spanish relationship, the book also provides a rich America. Almeida then examines Charles interdisciplinary foundation for what has Darwin’s ‘discovery’ voyage on the H.M.S. become an emerging branch of scholarship. Beagle in the fourth chapter, and considers his Rebecca Cole Heinowitz’s Spanish America and writings as a transformative contribution for British Romanticism, 1777-1826: Rewriting Anglo-Hispanic relations. Darwin’s Conquest, published shortly afterwards, provides contributions, she explains, resulted in South an admirable extension of the work begun by the America’s transition into a tangible, real scholars who contributed to Almeida’s phenomenon for the British. Finally, in her collection. concluding chapter, she analyses the paradoxes Almeida’s monograph is equally important of later Victorian Britain’s commercial and innovative. By reflecting the age’s cross- investments in Latin American slave-holding cultural, fluid interactions, the pan-Atlantic states. theoretical framework helps us refigure With this publication, Almeida has offered an Romantic and Victorian Britain’s relations with elegantly written and important piece of Africa and the Americas. It encompasses various ‘recovery’ criticism. It not only captures the discourses and realities, including the practice of broad and boundary-less space of the Atlantic slavery and the rhetoric of liberation during the and the interconnectedness between politics and ‘reconfiguration of British power in light of the writing, whether fictional or non-fictional. The decline of the Spanish empire’ (11). Almeida book also reconceives, as she explains, the helpfully integrates the contributions of ‘monolingual genealogy of culture’ through the translation, as well as movement and various ethnic, racial, social, and cultural transmission, as they intersect with history and connections provided by her compelling pan- literature. Atlantic conceptualization (238). The book’s chapters advance chronologically Omar F. Miranda and span a broad range of authors describing the New York University ‘hybrid networks of culture that arise from multiple encounters across the longitudes of the Atlantic’ (237). Almeida draws from a generic array that includes histories, abolitionist poems, travel narratives, and a novel. Her first chapter begins with a comparison of Robertson’s History of America (1777) with Ottobah Cugoano’s Thoughts and Sentiments (1787) and Francisco Javier Clavijero’s Storia antica del Messico (1780). By including Native American and African slave voices, she considers how imperial critiques brought about discursive reflections on global justice through ‘Pan- Atlantic relationality’ (14). Her second chapter
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Robin Jarvis, Romantic Readers and approaches of Robert Darnton and William St Transatlantic Travel: Expeditions and Clair, Jarvis organizes the volume into four Tours in North America, 1760-1840. broad chapters. Chapter 1 focuses on the private reading experiences of an array of non- Farnham and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, professional readers. Using the letters, journals, 2012. Pp. 205. £55. ISBN autobiographies, commonplace books and 9780754668602. marginalia not only of well-known figures like Coleridge, William Beckford, and Hester Piozzi Tony Lurcock, ‘Not So Barren or but also of lesser known figures such as Anna Uncultivated’: British Travellers in Larpent, the shoemaker-turned-journalist Finland, 1760-1830. London: CB Thomas Cooper, and the tailor Thomas Carter, Editions, 2010. Pp. 230, £10. ISBN Jarvis reconstructs both contemporary responses 9780956107398. to a range of specific travelogues and also the larger ‘horizon of expectations’ readers brought On the face of it, these two publications will to bear on travel writing in this era. Chapters 2 seem principally a contribution to our growing and 3 then turn principally to the attitudes and understanding of Romantic-era travel writing opinions revealed in contemporary periodical and its pervasive and powerful influence on reviews of travelogues, although the responses Romantic culture. This has been a burgeoning of this professional class of readers are field for some two decades now, yet it is interspersed with more private responses to key probably fair to say that it remains something of texts. Chapter 2 addresses reviews of a niche interest; most Romanticists still concern travelogues to the newly independent United themselves with more conventionally ‘literary’ States, focusing inter alia on debates about forms such as poetry, fiction and drama, even as emigration, American ‘manners’ and their they seek to broaden or indeed explode the relation to the democratic political system, and traditional canon in relation to those genres. the perennial interest in Native American culture, There will be a tendency, therefore, for many while Chapter 3 focuses on the reception of readers of this Bulletin to pigeonhole the two travelogues to British North America. The latter texts under consideration here as relevant to literature encompasses not only tours of Upper travel writing specialists only. Yet this would be and Lower Canada but also the more arduous a significant oversight, at least with regard to exploratory endeavours of figures like Samuel Robin Jarvis’s impressively researched Hearne and Alexander Mackenzie and the quest Romantic Readers and Transatlantic Travels. for the North West Passage, as pursued by the Jarvis’s basic premise seems straightforward Arctic explorers John Ross, John Franklin and enough, and quite narrowly focused, as he aims William Parry. Debates about emigration are to track the reception and contemporary reader again prominent in these reviews, as is the response to a broad range of travelogues about contemporary fascination with Native North America. Yet because of the centrality of Americans and the Inuit, whilst in an enjoyable both America and the travel writing genre to ‘interlude’ on images and accounts of the beaver Romantic-era literary and intellectual culture, Jarvis also probes the period’s taste for natural coupled with the inherent multidisciplinarity of historical curiosities. Finally, Chapter 4 travel writing in this period, Romantic Readers examines the way material from American and Transatlantic Travels sheds light on a much travelogues is reworked in contemporary poetry, wider range of current debates than one might using examples from Wordsworth, Coleridge, initially expect; there are few Romanticists, I Southey, Thomas Moore, Thomas Campbell and suspect, who will not find something to mull Felicia Hemans to gauge how some of the most over in this stimulating volume. sophisticated literary readers of the day read and Bringing the reader-response and reception responded to travel accounts. theories of Wolfgang Iser and Hans Robert Jauss What do we learn from this rich archival trawl into fruitful dialogue with the ‘book history’ through a wealth of little-known material? In
27 terms of over-arching theses, Jarvis attitudes to the USA, Canada and the Arctic, and demonstrates emphatically on the one hand the on attitudes to both the natural world and popularity and fascination of travel writing with indigenous, supposedly ‘savage’ peoples. Yet at all classes and communities of readers in the the same time it will be a useful resource for Romantic period; yet on the other, he scholars interested in tracking contemporary demonstrates equally emphatically that the form debates about emigration and democracy; the those readers were interested in bears little role played by periodicals in Romantic-era print resemblance to modern scholarly generalizations culture (and connected with this, the feuding about so-called ‘Romantic’ travel and travel between leading British reviews in this period); writing. The genre was not prized as a medium the reading habits and education not only of for authorial introspection or the staging of a ‘elite’ readers but also of women and of sublime or sentimental self; rather, readers working-class autodidacts; the interplay of print, wanted what Jarvis terms the ‘harder visual and material culture in relation to currency’(35) of useful or curious information Romantic-era travel and exploration; and several about the wider world, and they consequently other topics besides. I personally would have looked askance at writers who put themselves welcomed more about whether readers too centre-stage. Thus Anna Larpent dismissed responded differently to male- and female- one over-personalized travelogue as ‘a sort of authored travelogues; the book’s implicit twaddle emanating from one point self & what message is that the gender of the author did not self does = & what is done to self’ (qtd. 35), greatly concern most readers, but it would have whilst Fanny Trollope rebuked Basil Hall for been useful to have this addressed explicitly. For giving ‘his own eternal orange-tawny colour to the most part, however, Jarvis does an excellent every object’ (qtd. 29). Concerned in this way job in situating his source material in a broad with the acquisition of knowledge, Romantic-era range of relevant scholarly contexts, on the one readers of travel writing were indeed acquiring, hand offering nuanced summaries of current as many postcolonial studies have alleged, an thinking in each area whilst on the other using implicitly imperialist ‘global consciousness’, in the archive to complicate and qualify any Mary Louise Pratt’s phrase, which led them to tendency to simplistic generalization or view pretty much the whole world as material excessively abstract theorizing. The volume is and imaginative resource. Yet here again consequently something of a treasure-trove; it Jarvis’s scrupulously empirical approach generously opens up a rich seam of material introduces important qualifications to this which may be productively mined by received wisdom about the form. As he Romanticists pursuing a variety of research demonstrates repeatedly, we need to be cautious enquiries. about regarding contemporary readers as merely In comparison, Tony Lurcock’s survey of passive receptacles for the ideologies British travellers in Finland is a more limited promulgated in travelogues. Rather, readers volume. It is essentially an anthology, focusing across the whole spectrum, from those taking up on a different traveller each chapter and offering the form solely for personal pleasure to extracts from their published travelogues framed professional reviewers and leading literary by commentary and a reconstruction of their figures seeking source material, were more than journey as a whole. The travellers include capable of reading actively, selectively and Joseph Marshall (the author in 1772 of independently, often reading ‘against the grain’ seemingly the first firsthand travel account of and resisting the ideological blinkers proffered Finland), Sir Nathaniel Wraxell, William Coxe, by individual travel writers. John Barrow, and Charlotte Disbrowe and the Whilst these are perhaps the main lessons to Marchioness of Westminster – the latter being be gleaned from Romantic Readers and the first women to publish accounts of the Transatlantic Travel, the volume can also be country, although in both cases their profitably read from several other investigative descriptions did not appear in print till the 1870s. angles. It sheds light, obviously, on British Lurcock gives an overview of each traveller’s
28 interests and activities, whilst his general between justice and “asymmetry, complaint, and introduction does a good job of drawing out key disagreement” (4). themes and preoccupations across the source Legal theorists have engaged the role of texts, whilst simultaneously situating them in the aesthetics for justice from a variety of larger contexts of late eighteenth-century perspectives. Ronald Dworkin, in Law’s Empire, primitivism, Enlightenment ethnography, and aligned legal interpretation with literary form the growing taste for sublime scenery. Given the and concepts of integrity, a model that implicitly comparative brevity of both extracts and endorses an aesthetic rooted in beauty to grasp commentary, scholars and students exploring justice as an evolving revisionary process. representations of Finland in this period will Contrasting with Dworkin, Richard Sherwin, in want to dig out the original travel narratives “Sublime Jurisprudence: On the Ethical anthologized here, or else seek a more thorough- Education of the Legal Imagination in our going academic treatment of this theme, such as Time” (2008), draws on Vico’s understanding of H. Arnold Barton’s Northern Arcadia: Foreign the sublime as marking a limit of the empirical. Travelers in Scandinavia, 1765-1815 (1998). Canuel's approach, while consonant with Yet for anyone needing an introductory map of Sherwin, focuses on the wider discursive Romantic-era British travel writing about functions of justice, although his analysis Finland – and indeed, about Scandinavia more implicates the legal sphere. He does not seek to generally, since Finland was generally visited in jettison an aesthetics of justice, but argues for the context of a larger tour of the region – rooting it in the sublime rather than the beautiful. Lurcock’s volume is a useful resource. Doing so, he contends, demonstrates that the Carl Thompson “oscillating structure of the sublime yields a Nottingham Trent University connection with an account of justice based upon argument, complaint, and repair, an account that combines general rights with Mark Canuel. Justice, Dissent, and the allowance for particular rights and seeks to Sublime. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, make room for human desire and passion 2012. Pp. 175. $49.95. ISBN alongside reason” (7). Canuel weaves through 9781421405872. his analysis a corollary consideration of the academy’s investment in preserving the viability Justice, Dissent, and the Sublime, like certain of beauty as a generative aesthetic; he associates strands of ecocriticism, explores how Romantic this tendency with eighteenth-century aesthetic theorizations may remain relevant and theory typified by Joshua Reynolds and with the generative for contemporary society as it academy’s “symbiotic relationship with engages urgent questions. Mark Canuel asks if multinational corporate enterprise” (34). Romantic conceptualizations of the sublime can Each of the book’s five chapters advance a advance an understanding of justice, broadly view of the sublime in relationship to the conceived. He postulates that in recent thought, contemporary moment and draws upon not only by what he delineates as “beauty corrective Romantic texts to illuminate theorists” (31) but within “both queer and potentialities of sublime justice obscured within cosmopolitan theory” (66), justice is primarily critical and popular discourses. The first three associated with beauty and its attendant chapters concern, respectively, theories of the “emphasis on proportion, symmetry and beautiful in relationship to justice (Chapter 1: mutuality” (4) and on “balance, and “Beautiful People”), the Kantian sublime as resemblance” (121). By contrast, Canuel offering “a sense of community beyond proposes that the Romantic sublime, particularly communion” (62; Chapter 2: “Justice and the as articulated by Immanuel Kant and Romantic Sublime”), and the dependence of instantiated in poems by Charlotte Smith and both queer and cosmopolitan theory on the Samuel Taylor Coleridge, offers a compelling “logic of beauty” which Coleridge’s alternative model that reveals the connections Conversation poems “reject” (92; Chapter 3:
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“The Reparative Impulse”). In Chapter 4, Christopher Reid, Imprison'd “Biopolitics and the Sublime,” Canuel, arguing Wranglers: The Rhetorical Culture of an indebtedness by rights theory to beauty, the House of Commons 1760-1800. suggests that the “sublime leads toward a more conflictual mode of configuring the relations Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. between persons; it provides an aesthetic £60. Pp. 288. ISBN 0199581096. vantage point that highlights complaint, dissent, and disagreement in the midst of a larger scheme Imprison’d Wranglers argues that in the late of social cooperation” (97). He turns to a eighteenth century the contexts and registers of reading of Charlotte Smith’s Beachy Head to British parliamentary debate were altered in “focus discussion of the sublime and biopolitics” profound ways by developments in metropolitan because “the poem consistently dislodges its print culture, in particular the expansion of the claims about the rights of individuals from its daily press and the concomitant increase in more obvious celebrations of national territory parliamentary reporting. By the 1780s and internal social harmony” (98). Canuel finds restrictions on the reporting of speeches from the form of the poem consonant with the figure the Strangers’ Gallery of the Commons were of the displaced hermit who rescues, and relaxed – at least in de facto terms – and for the perishes attempting to rescue, “’helpless first time politicians’ words were carried to an strangers’” (108). He contends that registering audience well beyond the confines of St. the poem’s sublimity makes visible a Stephen’s Chapel. Christopher Reid traces the reconceptualization of rights into “a more various ways in which this rhetorical thoroughly politicized right that might be transmission took place; he argues that print, far extended transnationally into new places, and from displacing the culture of speech, in fact new situations, with protections fostering newly generated far greater public interest in the included persons— right for those without debates of the House of Common, and that the rights” (110). He concludes the chapter nature and function of parliamentary rhetoric suggesting that the “example” that Romanticism was necessarily reshaped by orators’ might set “for the present” is to “militate against consciousness that they now addressed not only the logic of exemplification itself” (120). This their colleagues but also a mass of newspaper sublime “aesthetic vantage point on a readers. Of course, as Reid is keen to emphasize, contentious mode of belonging” leads into the these developments were subtended by anxieties final chapter, “Aesthetics and Animal Theory” about the difference between event and report, which asks “How can new members be included and a widespread awareness (not least within the in the scope of justice” (122) and takes the Commons itself) of the transformations, elisions, “treatment of animals” as an “exemplary and inaccuracies that inevitably inhere in the instance of the problem of justice” as it is textual record of an oratorical act. extended—or fails to be—toward “marginal One of the chief virtues of Reid’s study, beings” (122-3). In this chapter, more than the indeed perhaps the reason it works so well, is others, a range of Romantic writers are brought that its structure gives equal attention to the to bear, including Barbauld, Trimmer, Cowper, speeches and speakers themselves – their Coleridge, and Shelley. In many ways, this final strategies and imperatives – and to the manifold chapter serves as an extended test case for dimensions of the wider rhetorical culture that confronting the conflictual nature of the sublime, emerged in relation to, and served to inflect, in opposition to conceptions of beauty, on the political oratory of the late eighteenth century. basis of the theoretical groundwork laid by the In the second half of Imprison’d Wranglers Reid prior chapters. This is a provocative and offers chapters on the education and character of challenging book, seeking the sublime as both the orator, discussions that both note the ways in its subject and its mode. which schools and universities trained upper- Mark Schoenfield class students in the art of declamation as part of Vanderbilt University a pedagogy of public life and also consider the
30 pressures negotiated by a speaker in the might so easily make for a dry-as-dust account Commons as he sought to present and preserve unhelpfully encumbered by the dense minutiae the integrity of his gentlemanly character in the of its archive. Perhaps the greatest of the many face of internecine party-political rivalries. achievements of Imprison’d Wranglers is that it There is also an especially compelling chapter not only avoids this pitfall but succeeds in on the practice of quotation; the invocation of reanimating the rhetorical acts and contexts it literary texts, and of classical works in particular, examines. Reid’s critically adroit history of Reid contends, was a crucial means by which speechmaking in the House of Commons returns cultural community and political alliance were us to the liveliness, theatricality, and excitement created, reinforced, or contested in the of the period’s oratorical occasions. Imprison’d Commons. Wranglers will surely serve as the definitive These chapters offer a much-needed study of late eighteenth-century parliamentary examination of the period’s political oratory. oratory for some time to come. They effectively balance close reading and David Francis Taylor history and combine deep knowledge of University of Toronto classical and Enlightenment theories of eloquence with a sense of the long view (as Helena Bergmann, A Revised Reading references to twentieth-century speakers such as of Mary Hays’ Philosophical Novel Thatcher and Enoch Powell evidence). And they are crucially informed and enlivened by the Memoirs of Emma Courtney (1796): conceptual and contextual groundwork laid in Enlarging the Canon of the Mary the first half of the book. Here Reid considers Wollstonecraft Literary-Philosophical the spatial qualities of the Commons – the way a Circle. Preface by Jacqueline Labbe. speaker’s position within the House gave Lewiston, PA: Edwin Mellen Press, meaning to his words, the use of gesture to mark 2011. Pp. 179. PB $49.95. ISBN or control location, the ‘haunting’ of the Commons by past speeches and orators – and 077343948X. looks in considerable detail at the publication of parliamentary debates. He tracks the various Judith Thompson. John Thelwall in the means by which speeches became printed texts, Wordsworth Circle: The Silenced showing how the very politicians who Partner. Basingstoke and New York: complained openly in parliament about the Palgrave McMillan, 2012. Pp. 313. £58. reporting of proceedings were often themselves ISBN 0230104488. quietly furnishing publishers and editors with copies of their speeches; describing the practices Over the last three decades, British Romanticism by which reporters in the Strangers’ Gallery has undergone major revisions. Both Helena recorded and ‘constructed’ texts of speeches at Bergmann’s A Revised Reading of Mary Hays’ an historical moment when verbatim reporting Philosophical Novel and Judith Thompson’s was not possible; and revealing the cultural John Thelwall in the Wordsworth Circle attempt codings of the different printed venues – further rewriting: Bergmann by insisting on pamphlets, journals, newspapers – in which a Hays’ central place as a ‘female philosopher’, speech might (simultaneously) appear. Reid’s and Thompson by resituating Thelwall as an innovative chapter on the ways that James equal but ‘silenced’ partner to the Coleridge/ Gillray’s caricatures register and relay Wordsworth line of Romantic thought. parliamentary speech in a way that ‘restores a Reading these books together is both visual dimension to rhetorical performance that encouraging and instructive. It is encouraging to is otherwise lost’ (103) is especially welcome. see how enriched British Romanticism—figured The potential peril of Reid’s subject matter – as the ‘Wollstonecraft [...] circle’ or as famed as anyone who has spent time wading through poetic partnership— becomes when we include the Parliamentary Register will know – is that it key figures marginalized under later
31 reconstructions. Bergmann’s interest in on intellectual subjects, attending seriously to reinstating Hays as a feminist foremother that a Hays’ engagement with Helvétius as well as contemporary might recognize stands in curious Godwin and to her youthful intellectualized relation to Thompson’s historicized and romance with John Eccles as well as the textually-oriented study of Thelwall’s disappointing mature one with William Frend. intercourse with Wordsworth and Coleridge. But while usefully situating Hays within a larger Helena Bergmann’s study relies on readily philosophical context, this approach also risks available reprints of Hays’ novel and letters implying that Hays matters only because she (Broadview, Mellen), contrasting with Judith engaged male interlocutors. Hays’ female Thompson’s dependence on rarified library intellectual compatriots—Wollstonecraft and editions (Pickering and Chatto) and archival Fenwick for instance— are largely absent. resources. Bergmann’s book is unusual in reading not Hays is still usually invoked in association only Hamilton’s Memoirs of Modern with other late eighteenth-century women Philosophers as a response to Emma Courtney, writers. Thus, Bergmann intends a real service but Charles Lloyd’s Edmund Oliver and, in giving Hays and Emma Courtney the full crossing the channel, Mme de Genlis’s La benefit of the extended canvas of a monograph. femme philosophe and Guizot’s La chappelle The book is organized into four parts: Chapter 1 d’Ayton, or Emma Courtney. However this ‘An Educationalist out of her Time’ on Hays’ promising move is disappointing in execution; connection both to Unitarianism and to Bergmann takes her cue from Hamilton’s Wollstonecraftian proto-feminism, Chapter 2 ‘A caricatured Bridgetina Botherim to trace all Philosophy of Memoirs’ focused primarily on attacks on the ‘female philosopher’ figure back Emma Courtney, Chapter 3 ‘Dissenting to Emma or even Hays herself. More effective is Correspondence’ traces Hays’ life and her place Bergmann’s use of Gérard Genette’s model of within communities of religious dissent and hypertextual variants. In this analysis, Hays’ radical philosophy, and Chapter 4 ‘Parody and novel is the originary hypotext, while Proliferations’ focuses on fictional responses to Hamilton’s satire falls into caricature as distinct Emma Courtney both English and French. from Edmund Loyd’s more playful novel, which Bergmann writes that the purpose of her study is falls under parody. Both Edmund Oliver and La ‘to rehabilitate Mary Hays’ position as a writer femme Philosophe are identified as ‘transposed’ and educational feminist’ (6). She often seems to versions of Hays’ characters, but Genlis’s be arguing with a selective version of Hays Femme Philosophe is also tagged as ‘forgery’ scholarship. Referencing mostly criticism before for unsympathetic transposition. A Revised 2003, Bergmann points for an instance of Reading misses the opportunity to consider how misogynist dismissiveness to J. M. Tomkins’s Hays’ Augustus and Montague and Lloyd’s study—from 1938. She repeats the charge that Edmund might typify the ‘man of feeling’ or Hays’ work lost its ‘radicalism’ after 1798 (11), perhaps Romantic masculinity in contrast with conflicting with current scholarship on Hays’ the self-controlled female philosopher. later works, including Female Biography. The In discussing the novel, twentieth-century bibliography lacks some cited references and mostly French theorists are referenced (Lacan, references some French names incorrectly; Kristeva, Irigaray, Winnicott), but in glancing typographical or usage errors are noticeable. ways that don’t build to a sustained model. A Focusing on Hays and the novel itself, kind of ahistorical approach is evident Bergmann brings particularly welcome attention throughout, despite references to Helvétius, to Hays’ interest in male interlocutors. Clearly Godwin, Rousseau, Frend, and Hays’ biography. Bergmann is interested in how women negotiate There are advantages to ahistorical theoretical intellectual relationships that may or may not approaches, but also disadvantages; one include a romantic or sexual element. She disadvantage here is that despite references to argues that both the author and her character specific problems in the 1790s (the backlash demand (and earn) male respect and recognition following Godwin’s memoir of Wollstonecraft),
32 the reader doesn’t get much sense of the circles Thelwall becomes a necessary part of reading in which Hays struggled to claim her place. and studying their poetry and significance. Most Judith Thompson attempts to set Thelwall in importantly, the work makes a strong case for his proper place as the third and senior member studying Thelwall’s full oeuvre from his of a foundational Romantic ‘triumvirate’ with political, elocutionary, and pedagogical writings Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William to his poetry and quasi-medical writing. Wordsworth. Building on the turn to Romantic One of the pleasures of Thompson’s The sociability, ‘The Silenced Partner focuses […] Silenced Partner is the space given to careful on modes of exchange and interaction’ arguing readings of Thelwall’s poetry, as well as for ‘paying [Thelwall] the respect of the close rereading the better known work of Coleridge rhetorical attention we have long given’ to and Wordsworth. Thompson’s readings, Wordsworth and Coleridge (5). Uniting particularly in the sections on Wordsworth, the biographical and historical approaches with sonnet and the ode, could be used quite close textual attention and rhetorical analysis, effectively in an undergraduate class on prosody, Thompson patiently traces not only influence exemplifying the value of close-reading and oral but complex dialogue in poetry, anecdote, recitation. Given Thelwall’s own impulse critical reflection, and personal letters that toward instruction, the pedagogical contribution circulated among the three core figures. While of Thompson’s work is a sign of her full the project is both corrective and at times empathy with her subject. One cannot, however, speculative (Thompson elucidates Thelwall’s assume familiarity with Thelwall’s poetry on the lost correspondence by reading between the part of the reader, and the fragments that are lines of Coleridge’s letters and poetry, and in cited make one wish for more available editions another section interprets Thelwall’s cryptic of Thelwall’s writing, particularly of longer marginal annotations of Biographia Literaria), works such as Hope of Albion (published in her detailed textual analysis is intriguing and parts in Poems, Chiefly Written in Retirement often quite persuasive. and The Vestibule of Eloquence). For a reader The book is organized into three sections: Part with only a moderate knowledge of Thelwall, I ‘Coleridge and Co.’ focuses on Thelwall’s the timeframe of his life and his publication friendship with Coleridge and Coleridge’s early history is often confusing; a timeline or table admiration for Thelwall; Part II ‘Annus would have been quite helpful. Mirabilis’ functions as a kind of pivot, situating A key argument of Thompson’s Silenced Thelwall’s ‘Pedestrian Excursion,’ his trip to Partner is that ‘while we no longer know Nether Stowey and Alfoxden and subsequent Thelwall’s work, they [Wordsworth and move to Lyswen where Poems, Chiefly Written Coleridge] did’ (5) —an argument that could be in Retirement was composed, as subtexts for made likewise for Mary Hays (of other key Lyrical Ballads; Part III ‘Re: Wordsworth and figures). It is a measure of the similar project of Thelwall’ traces poetic influence and exchange both works and the difference in their realization between these two poets and Romantic thinkers, that Thompson’s careful balance of historicism tracing Thelwall’s influence particularly on and speculation helps situate Thelwall as an Wordsworth’s troubled Recluse. There is no important interlocutor to these two key framing introduction and no concluding Romantics, while Bergmann’s situates Hays summation. Rather, the book’s dynamic is more unevenly as a figure caught between her own iterative than linear, opening with a prologue time and ours. While Bergmann highlights her and a short introduction to each section, own situation as a full time teacher of English followed by three to four chapters. The book’s and her book echoes its likely classroom origins, form reiterates Thompson’s argument that to it is Thompson’s book that suggestively invokes read Thelwall properly and in proper relation, a conversational and poetic pedagogy. we must focus on conversational exchange, Miriam L. Wallace commentary, and allusion. In so doing, we get a New College of Florida different version of the two founding poets and
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James Vigus, ed., Informal a strong comparative element, evident – to take Romanticism. Studien zur Englischen two examples – in Christian Deuling’s Romantik. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher discussion of Johann Christian Hüttner’s reports on literary London for Duke Carl August in Verlag Trier, 2012. Pp. 214. Pb. €24. Weimar and Franco D’Intinos chapter on ISBN 9783868213911. Giacomo Leopardi’s manuscripts. Perhaps the most surprising aspect of Romantic studies today is the continued scope for new archival What is ‘informal’ Romanticism? In this work in the field, and this collection performs a collection, based on a 2011 conference at LMU valuable role by presenting some of this research München, James Vigus has brought together a together. thought-provoking set of essays, which respond Vigus describes a period of literature driven by to and develop many key themes in Romantic formal experimentation, and yet one dominant studies. However, he also proposes a new way form emerges: ‘the heterogeneous category of of taking hold of them: as Informal Romanticism. non-fictional prose’ (1). This ranges from Not all of the contributors engage with this term marginalia, which Felicitas Meifert-Menhard’s and some, such as Paul Hamilton, brilliantly opening essay identifies as an archetypal reconfigure it – in his case, as ‘Romantic Romantic genre, coined and created by Occasionalism’. However, it succeeds as a way Coleridge, to the more recognisable form of the of approaching the range of material and critical familiar essay. David Duff’s superb account of perspectives on offer and, while it is of course Lamb’s ‘Imperfect Sympathies’ argues that ‘its paradoxical to try and define a term intended to meaning pivots on a previously unrecognized challenge more rigid, hidebound or formal allusion to Wordsworth’s “Ode: Intimations of conceptions of Romanticism, some key features Immortality from Recollections of Early stand out. Childhood”’: the ‘obstinate questionings’, Romantic informalism shows the continued ‘fallings’, ‘vanishings’ and ‘shadowy and often transformative influence of Gillian recollections’ of Wordsworth’s ninth stanza Russell and Clara Tuite’s Romantic Sociability (146). These are picked up in Lamb’s defence of (2006). Of course, sociability is not always an ‘anti-Caledonian’ mode of thought, governed informal – and at the turn of the nineteenth by ‘surmises, guesses, misgivings, half- century was often anxiously codified, as sources intuitions, semi-consciousnesses, partial as divergent as Austen’s novels and Godwin’s illuminations, dim instincts, embryo diary suggest. But, as Vigus argues, the ‘notion conceptions’, and embodied in the essay form. of the ‘informal’ tends to imply sociability’ and, Other chapters take a broader view of the citing recent work by Jon Mee and Susan cultural scene, paying particular attention to the Wolfson, the collection continues to refine ‘the often neglected 1820s. Angel Esterhammer formerly dominant paradigm that distinguished ‘remediates’ Theodore Hook’s silver-fork fiction between a monolithic public sphere on the one through ideas of speculation and spectatorship, hand and the isolated artist on the other’ (2). while David O’Shaughnessy shows how Many of the essays are also based on material William Godwin’s interest in the founding of the which is ‘informal’ in the sense of being London University – or, to John Bull, the unpublished. This is an impressive and exciting ‘Cockney College’ (167) – maintains a feature of the volume, which includes essays on longstanding interest in education within the the recently discovered Steele Collection of fraught educational politics of 1820s London. West Country nonconformist women writers, There are also two fine essays on Henry Crabb Godwin and Henry Crabb Robinson’s diaries, Robinson, by Philipp Hunnekuhl, tracing the marginalia and letters by Coleridge and Southey: development of HCR’s philosophy of all part of the rich Dissenting archive of disinterestedness during his studies at Jena, and intellectual exchange and self-examination, by Frederick Burwick, reading his diary as a rich both individuals and communities. There is also
34 source of ‘informal’ theatre reviews, unfettered Gregory Dart, Metropolitan Art and by commercial considerations. Literature, 1810-1840: Cockney James Vigus’s own essay, ‘Informal Religion: Adventures. Cambridge University Lakers on Quakers’, is lucidly presented and grounded in fascinating and little-known source Press, 2012. Pp. 253. £55. ISBN material. Tracing Coleridge and Southey’s 9781107024922. shifting responses to Quakerism, he shows how both writers were initially drawn to a faith that Romanticists are familiar with the Cockney appealed, in words of its founder, George Fox, School attacks on the Leigh Hunt circle mounted ‘To all that would know the way to the Kingdom: by J. G. Lockhart in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Whether they be in forms, without forms, or got Magazine beginning in 1817. Gregory Dart above all forms’ (97). However, these offers a fine-grained analysis of deployments of sympathies were short-lived and, ‘in the context the term ‘Cockney’ after the attacks, and in so of the Napoleonic wars, both writers stigmatise doing manages to cover a remarkable swathe of the Quaker movement and its peace testimony London’s cultural landscape. The book is a for a failure of patriotism’ (111). It is the end of study of Cockneyism and its transformation these wars that are the key moment in Paul from origins as a synonym for cit (a term Hamilton’s concluding chapter, which follows a meaning ‘buffoonish city-dweller’), to a trajectory from the Revolution Controversy of politicized invective against a new lower middle the 1790s, a time when ‘to discuss the language class pretending to the customs of its betters, of politics has become the way in which to and an affectionate term that invokes the Bob discuss politics’, to the re-imagining of Europe Cratchits and John Wemmicks of Dickens’s in the Congress of Vienna: ‘the effect of this novels. Dart offers this study as the ‘crucial occasion was to suggest that politics could be missing link between [the metropolitan writers] literature or an imaginative activity’ (208). The Keats and Dickens,’ showing the late Romantic burden of Hamilton’s argument is to defend Cockney, with his rhythmic weekday commutes ‘political romanticism’, pace Carl Schmitt, but to the city centre and his absurdly pastoral the essay also implies the significance of 1815 weekend dreams on Hempstead Heath, to be as a point of disjuncture, between a culture of something completely new (25). The popular radicalism and the liberal tradition that introduction turns on Hunt's time at Hamilton is concerned to vindicate. Horesemonger Lane Gaol, which for Dart James Grande represents Hunt’s boundedness. Hunt King’s College London transformed his prison cell into a cozy wallpapered retreat that replicated the homey firesides of a suburban home or the intimate bowers of an Islington pleasure garden. Blackwood’s transformed Cockney tendencies toward littleness of space and enormity of fancy into an invective that registered a particular constellation of class anxieties. Hunt’s grandiose treatment of snug private spaces made him an easy target. The Cockney, that pretentious citified fool who cannot see over the walls of his own suburban garden or past his own self- importance, laid neatly over an emerging class of low-paid professionals who occupied the interstices between the old London bourgeoisie and the laboring classes. Behind grandiose egotistical performances, Dart finds in Cockneyism so much littleness—
35 from the closeness of Hazlitt’s rooming house in modern life,’ (221) but this comes at great cost. Liber Amoris (1823) to the tiny figures in John The Cockney’s unstable position—and with it Martin’s overblown treatment of Belshazzar’s his potential for upward mobility—has been Feast (1821). The problem with the Cockneys, contained into a ‘dynamic stasis,’ an energy that according to conservative critics, was that always returns to the suburbs to rest, lulled to despite their ordinary lives, they were always inaction by the same dull round of weekend thinking further than the cold, small streets that entertainments (239). For Dart, Cockneyism is trapped them. Nothing could be more ridiculous fundamentally modern. Its territory lies than pretending to the pastoral, or to the grand, ambiguously between the country and the city, while really merely inhabiting the stale outskirts. between the enormous and the little, between the The term gained traction from the moment flagrantly fake and the desperately authentic. Blackwood’s ridiculed an apprentice- Dart offers incidences with and without apothecary’s august pretentions to Hellenism, invective, wielded across liberal and although in Dart’s narrative its deployment drifts conservative periodicals, in reviews that take up away from the sharply political as non-Tory literature, art, urban planning and architecture. If critics began to use it. In addition, some works there is one problem with this incisive book, it is that Dart considers Cockney escaped unharmed. that it becomes difficult to think of anything that Neither Charles Lamb nor Pierce Egan were isn’t Cockney; in fact, one might almost scathed by the designation ‘Cockney’. Dart exchange the word modernity for Cockney—and, finds a ‘structural hypocrisy’ in Egan's Life in as Dart would have it, ‘nowadays we are all London that allows for its sustained popularity Cockneys’ (53). (117). While Life in London was marked by Thora Brylowe trappings of Cockney dandyism, its flash style, University of Pittsburgh Dart argues, placed it ambiguously into the ranks of society. Its regency blend of old cant General Editors: Leigh Wetherall and new slang made for a mish-mosh of language so thick that it became unidentifiable Dickson and Allan Ingram; Volume with the newly risen metropolitan upstarts. Editors: David Walker, Anita Evidently, its tension between content and O'Connell and Michelle Faubert. formal qualities, coupled with Egan’s Depression and Melancholy, 1660-1800. association with the popular, Tory-leaning sport London: Pickering and Chatto, 2012. 4 of boxing, was protection enough. vols. Pp.1, 264. £350. ISBN 978 1 84893 In a neat bit of structural symmetry, the book imprisons both the origins and ends of Romantic 086 5. Cockneyism. Hunt’s incarceration for treason is exchanged for Haydon’s time done for debt; the Melancholy and Depression, 1660-1800 essayist is exchanged for the painter, the whole- provides readers with four volumes of carefully hog Cockney untroubled by notions of false selected, predominantly British, primary-source consciousness for the reluctant friend of both texts conveying people’s subjective experiences Hunt and Lockhart. Haydon’s The Mock of, and popular attitudes towards, depression. Election (1828) exposes a performativity that The editors divide the topic into four distinctive makes Cockney persons indistinguishable from areas: religion, medicine, autobiography and Cockney works—the lot of Cockneys are popular culture, which correspond to the themselves pieces of work imprisoned in a space headings of each volume. At the same time, of endless deferral and betweenness. Haydon Wetherall Dickson, Ingram and their co-editors paints debtors prison as a theatrical space, a self- elucidate the historical interconnectedness reflexive spectacle in which those incarcerated between the four sections and, generally, performed for their fellow prisoners. between disciplines; for instance, by In his turn toward Dickens, Dart makes a emphasizing that medicine (Vol II) and religion claim for the Cockneys as ‘true barometers of (Vol I) were seen as equally responsible for
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‘spiritual and physical wellbeing’ (I, xii). The anthology (‘Lesebuch’) would have matched the contrasts between volumes III and IV seem at editors' intention to de-stigmatize depression. first sight stronger than between the first two. As the title of the edition indicates, the period Volume III contains autobiographical writings covered in this collection ends in 1800. This cut- by melancholics, hypochondriacs, and off point seems somewhat tantalizing not only depressives comprising a wide range of diaries, for scholars of the Romantic period but also for journals, letters, poems and private accounts, cultural historians of psychology. ‘The which give readers rare insights: ‘nowhere else Romantic period was’ after all, as Clark Lawlor are we able to come so close to what the notes in From Melancholia to Prozac (2012), eighteenth-century melancholy mind thought of ‘the high point of the cult and culture of itself and how it chose, or was obliged, to melancholy’ (105). The editors explain their express those thoughts’ (I, xii). By contrast, in periodization with their dedication to a volume IV, concerned with the then popular ‘comparatively neglected area of eighteenth- print culture featuring theatrical works, prose century studies’ (I, ix). And so it is that, and poetry, melancholy tends to be ‘represented although Faubert and Ingram mention Romantic as an amusingly displayed set of standard melancholy and some of their representatives (II, symptoms, not as an invitation to enter a xvii), this anthology neither includes excerpts suffering mind’ (IV, ix). But even the seemingly from some of the most influential, and disparate autobiographical and popular, admittedly best known, literary texts on commercial accounts of melancholy overlap depression, such as John Keats’s ‘Ode on sometimes, as the editors show, for instance, in Melancholy’ and his letters, Charlotte Smith’s the case of Wetenhall Wilkes’s The Humours of Elegiac Sonnets, or Coleridge’s notebooks and the Black Dog (1737). While most of the texts in poetry; nor does the collection feature less well- this collection are available online from known but no less significant texts on nervous databases like ECCO, the wealth of materials in diseases like volumes IX and X of Dr Thomas Melancholy and Depression represents an Beddoes’s Hygeia. An inclusion of Coleridge, important contribution to the study of British for example, would have contributed to an even literature and medicine of the period because it better understanding of the changing offers an excellent anthology suited for significations of the term ‘depression’ (see Neil introductory as well as advanced purposes of Vickers, ‘Before Depression: Coleridge’s study. Melancholia’, Studies in the Literary Melancholy and Depression, 1660 – 1800 is Imagination, 44, 85-98). not the first anthology of this kind. The editors Yet concepts of health and illness are a build on and expand previous primary-source slippery slope and the subject of intensive collections, in particular Richard Hunter and Ida inquiry in medical ethics. The editors of this Macalpine’s pioneering publication Three collection engage, albeit carefully and almost Hundred Years of Psychiatry, 1535 –1860 reluctantly, in a form of retrospective diagnosis (1963), which did much to inaugurate the history when they compare the written records of the of psychiatry as a field of enquiry in Britain, eighteenth century with the list of recognized Allan Ingram’s The Madhouse of Language: symptoms of depression in the 4th edition of the Writing and Reading Madness in the Eighteenth Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Century (1991), Voices of Madness: Four Disorders (I, xvii-xviii), published by the Pamphlets, 1683 – 1796 (1997), and others. It is American Psychiatric Association. It remains worthwhile mentioning that one of the unclear why the editors say they ‘must’ (I, xvii) eighteenth-century precursors for this kind of do this, for the classifications in the DSM have anthology, K. P. Moritz’s German Magazine for been widely criticized for pathologizing the Study of the Psychic Experience (1783-1793), common emotions, such as grief (see latest DSM also called the ‘world’s first psychiatric journal’ edition of May 2013), and concomitantly for (Hunter and Macalpine (1963), 559), remains feeding into pharmaceutical profits. The editors unnoted in the edition although Moritz’s observe that the DSM ‘merely offers a
37 description of a cluster of symptoms that denote other things, would allow him to more fully a shared discourse between practicing clinicians understand the role of the ‘Imagination’ in without referring to any underlying causes’ (I, poetic composition, thus arranging and xviii). If this is so and one of the lessons of the interpreting our sense impressions and rendering history of depression consists in the significance our perception of reality more meaningful. of enquiring after causes of mental disorders by Although initially welcoming the value of means of discursive therapies, then the use of “delight in sensation” – here mindful of the DSM is somewhat counterproductive as it Wordsworth’s “sensations sweet” (l. 28) in associates this scrutinous editorial project with a Tintern Abbey – Keats’s greatest preoccupation twenty-first century standardized version of the soon turned into the idea of a reconciliation lowness of moods. between the senses and the reason, eventually However, these are quibbles. Readers will find focusing on the role of ‘a complex Mind – one Melancholy and Depression, 1660-1800 an …. Who would exist partly on Sensation partly extremely helpful resource for their pursuit of on thought’ (LJK, I, 254).1 the fascinating cultural and literary history of It therefore appears as if theory, knowledge, this mental condition. intellectual and philosophical understandings are Monika Class equally evoked in Keats’s ‘Life of Sensations’. King’s College London In light of these concerns, Shahidha Bari’s intention in her recently published Keats and Shahidha K. Bari, Keats and Philosophy: The Life of Sensations is to re- Philosophy: The Life of Sensations. evaluate Keats’s poetry by taking into account London and New York: Routledge, the philosophy of twentieth-century 2012, pp. 184. £80.00. ISBN phenomenology. In comparison to the 9780415888639. philosophy of perception of Keats’s own time – which Bari, despite her book’s subtitle, In a letter to Benjamin Bailey written on 22 surprisingly neglects to illustrate (or even November 1817, John Keats unmistakably mention) – phenomenology argues for the rejects rationalism with his famous exclamation subjectivity of experience – the world to be ‘However it may be, O for a Life of Sensations perceived as it appears to us – and against the rather than Thoughts!’. As definite as this might noumenal reality of ‘Things as They Are’. sound, Keats’s self-declared preference for Written for a specialist audience, Bari’s book ‘Sensations’ over ‘Thoughts’ nonetheless explicitly concentrates on ‘the nature of touch’ indicates an engagement with the philosophy of (Chapter 1) – although it is not entirely clear as perception, in particular the empirical theories of to why the other sensory modes such as sight, Locke, Berkeley, Hume and Hartley, as well as smell, hearing and taste are excluded, given the the ontological issues raised by Kant’s importance of synaesthesia in Keats’s work – perceptive idealism in his The Critique of Pure ‘the evocation of presence’ (Chapter 2), ‘the Reason (1781). To that end, Keats – in the same poetics of ecology’ (Chapter 3), ‘the thinking of letter – deals with the dichotomy between freedom’ (Chapter 4), and ‘the weight of grief’ ‘Genius and the Heart’, and the characteristics of (Chapter 5) (xiii). In order to identify the ‘Men of Genius’ and ‘Men of Power’, ‘phenomenality’ of Keats’s poetry, she emphasising the significance of ‘the authenticity meticulously interweaves a range of Keats’s of the Imagination’ and the function of Truth letters and poems (the odes and the longer (‘what the Imagination seizes as Beauty must be narratives – with the exception of Hyperion and Truth’), and concluding that he has ‘never yet Endymion – are purposefully omitted), and been able to perceive how anything can be moves away from the tradition of earlier known for truth by consecutive reasoning’. As can be seen, Keats went to great length to 1 Quotations from Keats’s letters are taken from The reconfigure the relationship between Letters of John Keats, 1814-1821: Volumes 1-2, ed. Hyder Edward Rollins (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University ‘perception’, ‘reason’, and ‘truth’, which, among Press) and are cited parenthetically thus: LJK, I, 278.
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Keatsian criticism, characterised by what she Kamilla Elliott, Portraiture and British defines as ‘the careful historicisation of a limited Gothic Fiction: The Rise of Picture canon’ (xv). To that end, Keats’s poems are Identification, 1764-1835. Baltimore: read alongside the phenomenological ideas of twentieth-century theorists such as Heiddeger, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Nancy, Derrida, and Lacoue-Labarthe. Kant, 2012. Pp. 336. £ 31. ISBN: somewhat remarkably, is mentioned only in 9781421407173. relation to Lyotard – and not until the end of Chapter 1 (21 ff.) – when it would undoubtedly Angela Wright, Britain, France and the have been more pertinent to commence with a Gothic, 1764-1820: The Import of Kantian reading of the Sublime. Terror. Cambridge: Cambridge Although Bari judiciously points out that ‘the University Press, 2013. Pp. 214. £ 55. philosophical approach to Keats’s work is not a new venture’ (xiv), her particular contribution to ISBN: 9781107034068. knowledge in the field of Romantic studies is to make a distinctive case for Keats’s The introduction to Portraiture and British phenomenological poetry. The book is thorough Gothic Fiction opens with a few epigraphs about in its coverage of the relevant philosophical and actions of observing pictures that also imply acts theoretical fields. Bari offers astute readings of of knowledge or reflections on knowledge. In Keats’s poems (Chapters 3, 4, and 5 are one of them, a character from Mary Shelley’s especially good) and presents particularly fresh The Last Man tells another: ‘You hardly need an accounts of Endymion, Hyperion, and some of introduction; we have a picture, highly valued the lesser-known ‘ecological’ lyrics such as by my father, which declares at once your name’ ‘After Dark Vapours’, ‘Blue – ‘Tis the Life of (1). The structuring concern of the book lies in heaven’, and ‘To Ailsa Rock’. Though not these words. Elliott examines the power of always written in firm, clear, and elegant prose – pictures, images and (actual or metaphorical) at times repetitions of concepts and vision in Gothic fiction, though with occasional typographical errors, as well as some unwieldy references to drama, such as Matthew Lewis’s and convoluted syntax undermine the force of Castle Spectre, as well as other kinds of fiction. the argument – Bari’s study is a useful addition She specifically explores ‘how first-wave British to Keatsian scholarship, demonstrating how Gothic fiction and contemporaneous discourses phenomenologically modern Keats’s poetry is in mythologized the rise of mass picture a world where ‘vapours become miasma, air identification between 1764 and 1835’ (1). In becomes carbon monoxide, blue becomes doing so, the author addresses questions that are ultraviolet, and light becomes radiation’ (85). already familiar to scholars of Gothic. The Presenting us with a poet-philosopher whose visual in its various manifestations – such as the ‘ruined gods, feeling subjects and errant heroes gendering of the gaze or the picturesque come alive in the light of the present day’ (152), viewpoint – is a recurrent theme in Gothic Bari helps the reader to consider the significance criticism. Similarly, eighteenth-century and of Keats’s poetry and its legacies in twentieth- Romantic studies feature a sizeable number of century thought. Having identified some publications exploring ways of seeing in the shortcomings, there is much to admire in this long eighteenth century. Yet, Elliott’s volume provocative study, which ultimately develops a considers a more specific and long overlooked sound understanding of its intellectual field and phenomenon which she terms ‘picture makes a valid and worthwhile contribution to identification’ and defines as ‘a cultural use of knowledge in the subject area. The only thing portraiture: an intersemiotic practice that most I’m left wondering at this point is: why is there commonly matches an embodied, presented face no mention of Merleau-Ponty? to a named, represented face to verify social Carmen Casaliggi identity’ (2). Cardiff Metropolitan University
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In order to investigate the pervasiveness and stimulating are her readings of slightly less well- impact of this practice, Elliott draws on an known works (to non-specialists, at least), as in astonishingly vast archive of fictional sources her pages on Charlotte Smith’s Old Manor compiled by way of a variety of electronic House which she reads in terms of ‘an libraries. On the one hand, this fact reveals how intergenerational battle of iconolatry and Gothic studies benefit from the new wealth of iconoclasm, pitting live progeny against riches made available by ECCO, Google Books ancestral portraits to assert the vitality of the or archive.org. On the other, and more directly, rising, eighteenth-century middle classes above this abundance of sources enables Elliott to the traditions of aristocrats’ (147). Elliott’s demonstrate the proliferation of ‘picture argument occasionally suffers from a penchant identification’ from 1764 to 1834, the year of for sweeping statements (‘Gothic fiction William Harrison Ainsworth’s Rookwood, presents a more radical revolution in iconology which she describes as ‘the last canonical first- than Lavater’s or those of other bourgeois male wave Gothic novel’ (8). Based on these writers’, 173), but these do not really undermine extensive foundations, her chapters variously the value of her book as an important tour de analyze the theory and politics of picture force inviting us to re-envisage culture-bound, identification, its matriarchal and patriarchal time-specific and ideologically inflected ways of manifestations, iconolatry and iconoclasm, the identifying (with) pictures in first-wave Gothic. contrasts and connections between ‘identifying Angela Wright’s Britain, France and the pictures’ and ‘pictures identifying’, iconism Gothic also aims to transform our ways of (that is ‘the capacities of words to raise mental seeing and reading Gothic by viewing it images’, 203) as a central feature of Gothic ‘through the lens of evolving relations between fiction, and the desire for and fear of picture Britain and France’ (18). Repositioning Gothic identification. Although its central point is fiction within a network of trans-Channel clearly and succinctly made in the introduction, cultural exchanges, Wright takes up the ‘deep the book is inevitably a long and complex one. challenge of reciprocity’ inscribed in it (149). As Its array of themes and concerns is formidable. she authoritatively remarks, ‘while Gothic Picture identification, Elliott says at the outset, novelists in Britain were acutely aware of their is a way ‘to verify social identity’ (2) and bears country’s troubled relationship with its French on ‘social, political, historical, cultural, neighbour, they all nonetheless dared to look ideological, ethical, aesthetic, semiotic, across the Channel for inspiration, be it through epistemological, narrative, cognitive, and the realms of translation, adaptation or psychological issues’ (3). At the same time, the unacknowledged plagiarism’ (10). In particular focus of her discussion is often on class, since Wright singles out the Seven Years’ War as the ‘narratives of picture identification’ serve to context for the ‘complex, ambivalent origins of support ‘the ascendancy of the ordinary middle the Gothic romance in 1764’ (3), and classes in competition with the aristocratic, accordingly urges us to reconsider Gothic as honorific, and wealthy middle classes who had bound up with precise forms of international been represented by named portraits for conflict and exchange. centuries’ (3). In her fine introduction, the author Among the highlights in Elliott’s volume are reconstructs the variegated and contradictory her examinations of some of the best-known panorama of Anglo-French literary and cultural objects or scenes of vision in the Gothic canon: relations in the second half of the eighteenth Alfonso’s portrait from Walpole’s Otranto; century. She emphasizes undercurrents of Ambrosio’s roving, lustful eyes in Lewis’s mutual attraction and competition and, Monk; Schedoni’s and Ellena’s acts of looking especially, Shakespeare’s function as a gauge of and seeing in Radcliffe’s Italian; and the portrait the complex traffic of ‘self-criticism, discussion, in Maturin’s Melmoth. In each of these cases, admiration and emulation’ between the two Elliott’s approach offers fresh insights into a countries (10). In her first chapter she examines familiar scopic feature or situation. Equally Walpole’s Otranto in light of his familiarity
40 with French epistolary travel writing and his (118). Casting new light on an author who is all comments on French language and literature in too often associated with conservative the novel’s Prefaces. The second chapter looks Anglocentrism, the chapter on the ‘great at the politics of Sophia Lee’s, Clara Reeve’s enchantress’ exemplifies this critic’s deft and Charlotte Smith’s translations from the unravelling of coded intercultural connections. French and how this practice bore on their As she emerges from Wright’s inspirational Gothic output. Keeping her focus on translation, treatment, Radcliffe is an intercultural author in chapter 3 Wright considers the literary and caught in the act of conversing with a wider and political hysteria of the 1790s and how Gothic more problematic range of interlocutors than we became synonymous with ‘literature of terror’ as are generally accustomed to. the label was ‘purged of its patriotic associations Consistently and convincingly argued and abjected onto Britain’s enemy, France’ (13). throughout, Britain, France and the Gothic Chapter 4 is an examination of Radcliffe’s avoids the pitfalls of unspecified ‘influences’ engagements with, and retreats from, French and general similarities. Instead, it maps culture and philosophy; and chapter 5 deals with channels of contact, borrowing, adaptation, ‘French convents and British liberty’ through a rewriting and translation in order to demonstrate fascinating examination of Lewis’s uses of the how Gothic fully participated in the many topos of claustration. networks of Franco-British cultural exchange Wright’s elegantly written volume offers between the Seven Years’ War and the post- original perspectives and insights at every turn. Napoleonic era. A crucial contribution to studies In her discussion of Lewis’s avowal of his of Gothic and the cross-cultural dimensions of plagiarisms in the ‘Advertisement’ to The Monk, British Romanticism, Wright’s book is set to she skillfullly directs us to recognize and change how we study and discuss these literary evaluate the presence of the ‘sources’ Lewis did manifestations beyond purely national not acknowledge, all of them French (124). boundaries. Similarly, she encourages us to read Radcliffe in Diego Saglia light of her ‘enduring fascination’ with France Università di Parma, Italy and its culture (14). Investigating the novelist’s engagement with French educational philosophy (Rousseau, of course, but also the influential Madame de Genlis), Wright charts its progressive submergence within Radcliffe’s works because of increasing Anglo-French ‘military and literary hostilities’ in the 1790s (105). The critic expands on and corrects existing scholarship to demonstrate that Radcliffe’s novels are ‘equally as embedded within philosophical educational arguments emerging from France as they are in the English literary heritage that she flagged up with so much care through her choice of epigraphs’ (104). Moreover, in view of this ambivalence, France does not disappear from the novelist’s output even after the traumatic turning point of the Revolutionary decade. In her analysis of Gaston de Blondeville Wright aptly suggests that the French cultural context may account for the novelist’s only unexplained ghost, which thus becomes visible as ‘a troubling reminder of the crisis of imagination in England’s governance’
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Christina Morin, Charles Robert Irish national fiction – is ‘haunted’ by Ireland’s Maturin and the haunting of Irish turbulent past and by ‘past literary forms’ (4). Romantic fiction. Manchester and New Examining the fiction chronologically, Morin explores how the Gothic interacts with the York: Manchester University Press, national tale and the historical novel, drawing 2011. Pp. 210. £72. ISBN attention to the way in which such interaction 9780719085321. breaks down and complicates boundaries between genres, between reality and fiction, and Christina Morin’s monograph on Charles between present and past. Maturin frames itself as ‘a project of ghost- That central awareness of the porosity of hunting and ghost-conjuring’ (4). Maturin is an generic borders and of the potential generated by acknowledged presence in the Irish and Gothic generic hybridity makes for some insightful canon, but that presence is curiously spectral; analysis. Morin argues, for example, that the Morin highlights the relative lack of critical and disruptiveness of the Gothic problematises the cultural attention that the author has received. project of unity and reconciliation that The ultimate aim of her ghost-conjuring is, of ostensibly underpins the national tale. Similarly, course, revival – and it seems that this may be ‘merging […] the Gothic and historical modes’ Maturin’s time. Together with Jim Kelly’s (157) means that the historical novel’s sense of recent Charles Maturin: Authorship, factuality can be combined with the Gothic’s Authenticity and the Nation (Dublin: Four insistence on the inevitable repetition of trauma Courts Press, 2011), Morin’s book opens up to offer a bleak perspective on contemporary welcome new avenues of research into an politics. ‘Gothic negativity’ (15), in other words, important writer. inflects the conventions of the other genres to The sense that Maturin has occupied a signal Maturin’s political pessimism. Morin’s somewhat marginal cultural space, despite his focus is resolutely on the fiction’s Irish contexts; influence, reflects the elusiveness and challenge she makes productive use of paratexts, for of his work. Even the famous Melmoth the instance, to bolster her sense that Maturin insists Wanderer (1820) offers a disorienting reading on the connections between Irish history and the experience; its complex structure makes it akin events of his Gothic-marked fiction. to a ‘maze of mirrors’ (143). In fact, Maturin However, Morin’s argument about the never had an easy relationship with his artificiality of generic boundaries could have readership; Morin’s exploration of the gone further. She usefully complicates a complexity of his attitudes to ‘a reading public chronology of genre in which the Gothic novel he both despised and relied upon’ is a gives way to the national tale which in turn fascinating thread running throughout this shades into the historical novel, by making a volume (145). Maturin emerges as a peculiarly persuasive case about how these forms overlap anxious figure: the novels are underpinned by in Maturin’s work. However, she fails to point disquiet about politics and religion, but there is out that in fact the Gothic and historical novel also a recurrent unease about Maturin’s own were always inextricably intertwined, paying status, his relationship with his literary models, little attention to the pre-1790s origins of the and his audience’s tastes, for example. Gothic. Morin’s account makes no reference to Such concerns are particularly in evidence Thomas Leland, Clara Reeve, Sophia Lee, or when it comes to the Gothic, as Maturin Anne Fuller, for example – British and Irish repeatedly seeks both to evoke the popular writers whose hybrid works are early examples Gothic mode and to distance himself from it. of both the Gothic and historical novels. There And, as her title suggests, the genre is central to is a similar reliance on a slightly suspect Morin’s reading. Charles Robert Maturin and chronological convention in Morin’s claim that the haunting of Irish Romantic fiction builds on the Gothic novel was ‘seemingly dead’ when Derrida’s ideas about ghosts in Spectres of Marx Maturin was writing Melmoth (131); this offers to argue that Maturin’s work – and by extension a rhetorically effective conceit whereby the
42 novel is haunted by the Gothic, but seems science fiction. Furthermore, as announced by somewhat in tension with Maturin’s own the subtitle of his study, Page’s book goes far attempts to distance himself from the ongoing beyond an analysis of Romanticism and science influence of the ‘Radcliffe-Romance’ (134). fiction through its focus on issues of ‘Science, Nonetheless, the monograph’s strengths far Evolution, and Ecology,’ and these wide-ranging outweigh such issues. Morin is, for example, interests and impulses of the book contribute consistently interesting on gender issues, both to its successes as well as to some of its whether she is discussing Maturin’s desire to major problems and limitations. masculinise the novel form, the way references While a range of provocative arguments are to incest connect to the contemporary imaging set into motion in the book, Page’s central claim of Anglo-Irish Union, or the relationship is that the genre of science fiction has its roots in between gender dynamics and national Romantic-era literature and especially in the commentary in The Milesian Chief (1812). This work of Erasmus Darwin, who according to latter chapter is, indeed, one of the highlights of Page, ‘began a discourse between science and the monograph. literature that was to occupy imaginative writers Overall, Morin’s work offers an impassioned for the next 200 plus years’ (6). However, in sense of the importance of Maturin’s haunting order to evidence this claim and to give structure presence in our literary history. Her conclusion to his five-chapter book, Page relies upon a offers a survey of Maturin’s influence on writers somewhat tautological argument: he suggests, from Baudelaire to John Banville, and a call for on the one hand, that the Romantic text often the source of that influence to be better ‘anticipates’ (a verb that he re-uses repeatedly understood. This volume is an important (27, 37, 66, 89, etc.) throughout the book) contribution to that project. developments in science or science fiction while Deborah Russell simultaneously proposing, on the other hand, Queen’s University Belfast that late-nineteenth and twentieth-century science fiction authors are influenced by and indebted to Romantic writers including Erasmus Michael R. Page, The Literary Darwin (Chapter 1), William Wordsworth and Percy Bysshe Shelley (Chapter 2), and Mary Imagination from Erasmus Darwin to Wollstonecraft Shelley (Chapter 3). Despite H.G. Wells: Science, Evolution, and these argumentative flaws, however, the book’s Ecology. Surrey: Ashgate, 2012. Pp. proposal that the science fiction genre’s roots 232. £64. ISBN: 9781409438694. should be traced (in some manner) to the Romantic period in England remains generally As suggested even by the title of his recent book, effective and convincing, and it does so largely Michael R. Page’s The Literary Imagination because of Page’s nuanced and invigorating from Erasmus Darwin to H.G. Wells: Science, readings of Victorian texts (Chapter 4) that fuse Evolution, and Ecology is an ambitious project imaginative literature and matters concerning that works to link together Romantic era evolutionary science and ecology (the book’s imaginative literature with the history of the other two major concerns) as well as the science fiction genre. Indeed, while a special scientific romances (Chapter 5) of H.G. Wells, issue of Romanticism on the Net (2001) was whose work, as Page notes, ‘spawned modern devoted to the topic of ‘Romanticism and science fiction’ (9). Science Fictions’ over a decade ago—with The Literary Imagination from Erasmus articles by Robert Mitchell, Timothy Morton, Darwin to H.G. Wells is organized and a number of other scholars—Page’s book is methodologically through two distinct critical among the first monograph-length studies to perspectives: ecological criticism and science investigate the connections among Romantic fiction writing and criticism. Page employs eco- literature, science, and culture in the context of critical thought (or what he sometimes loosely the formal and conceptual developments of equates with ‘Green Romanticism’) because in
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Romantic eco-critical theory and philosophy science. Perhaps most importantly, Page’s book from roughly the 1990s to the present, he locates reveals the need for further critical and historical the vestiges of the preoccupation with analysis of the relationship between science representation and treatment of both evolution fiction and Romanticism. and ecology found in the work of science fiction Andrew Burkett writers and critics of the 1960s and 1970s. This Union College methodological approach allows Page to position ‘evolution’ and ‘ecology’ as the organizing tropes of his study—topics and Lana Asfour. Laurence Sterne in concepts that establish an historical trajectory France. London and New York: linking Erasmus Darwin, Wordsworth, the Continuum, 2008. Pp. XIV+182. £70. Shelleys, and Charles Darwin with the evolutionary and ecological ideas of Charles ISBN 978-0-8264-9542-6. Kingsley, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Samuel Butler, Richard Jefferies, and W.H. Hudson and Andrew Cusack and Barry Murnane, ultimately with Wells. In doing so, the book editors. Popular Revenants: The investigates texts ranging from E. Darwin’s The German Gothic and Its International Loves of the Plants, The Economy of Vegetation, Reception, 1800-2000. Rochester, New and The Temple of Nature (Chapter 1); Wordsworth’s 1802 Preface to Lyrical Ballads York: Camden House, 2012. Pp. and P.B. Shelley’s Queen Mab (Chapter 2), VIII+310. £50. ISBN-13: 978-1-57113- Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and The Last Man 519-3, ISBN-10: 1-57113-519-7. (Chapter 3); Kingsley’s The Water Babies, Bulwer Lytton’s The Coming Race, Butler’s A successful journalist, with constant Erewhon, Jefferies’s After London, and contributions to such prestigious publications as Hudson’s A Crystal Age (Chapter 4), as well as The Times, The Observer and The New Wells’s The Time Machine, The Food of the Statesman, Lana Asfour is also an accomplished Gods, and other stories (Chapter 5). literary scholar, as her magisterial work on the In articulating this sprawling historical and reception of Sterne in France amply literary lineage from the Romantic period to the demonstrates. Laurence Sterne in France early-twentieth century, the book relies quite displays all the usual Oxonian rigours (the book heavily on the ideas of the ‘literary imagination’ is based on the author’s doctorate): lucid and as well as the ‘scientific imagination’—terms persuasive argumentation, critical brevity and a that are certainly not self-evident but that are, clear and accessible style. nonetheless, only elliptically defined in the book. If one takes into account the fact that the latest For Page, almost all of the authors under addition to the field of French reception of investigation in his study follow Erasmus Sterne had been published in 1911 (Francis Darwin’s declaration ‘to enlist the imagination Brown Barton’s influential but dated Étude sur under the banner of science,’ as announced in l’influence de Sterne en France au dix-huitième the first paragraph of the ‘Advertisement’ to The siècle), one rapidly grasps the importance of Botanic Garden. While this phrase is cited often Asfour’s book. Reception studies, as a highly throughout the book (6, 84, 195, etc.), it is never reputed critical field, are in constant need of fully unpacked or historically contextualized and, innovation and revaluation, so every fresh of course, even if it does apply to writers such as addition sheds new light on ever-relevant topics, Wordsworth, the Shelleys, or Wells, it certainly such as the metamorphosis of fiction. does so in often radically different ways and Not entirely devoid of bons mots, in the varying contexts. Despite these possible respectable eighteenth-century tradition (one shortcomings, The Literary Imagination from such anecdote is found in the very opening lines Erasmus Darwin to H.G. Wells enables a range of the introduction, referring to a metro plaque of intriguing readings of Romantic literature and in Paris), Asfour’s volume delimitates its scope
44 of interest from the very beginning. Thus, the The first volume explicitly focuses on the author is quick to point out that her aims are, German gothic and devoted specifically to its firstly, to describe ‘French literary culture international reception, Popular Revenants is between 1760 and 1800 through its responses to based upon the proceedings of a 2009- and interaction with Sterne and his fiction’ (7), conference hosted by Trinity College, Dublin. thereby trying to objectify the native readers’ The book pleasantly surprises its reader by a ‘horizon of expectations’ and, secondly, to read careful balance between cold fact and sparkling ‘Sterne in light of early French interpretations’ interpretation, and offers a welter of information (7). Of course, the syntagm ‘horizon of to the student of gothic in general. expectations’ is to be understood in its strict, The problematic of Schauerroman (shudder Jaussian sense: that of a complex standard which novel), a particular expression of German gothic, the reader has internalized once he or she has has only been satisfyingly covered by Michael read a sufficient number of similar works. Hadley’s The Undiscovered Genre: A Search for Divided into three sections of comparably the German Gothic Novel, but this book equal lengths (a fact which adds to the feeling of appeared 35 years ago, in 1978. Understandably, equilibrium pervading the text), the study the editors of the present collection think that the focuses on criticism, translations and fiction, time has come for a fresh approach. Thus, the respectively. Thus, the first part is devoted to the scope of Popular Revenants is, as Cusack’s presentation of both the early reviews (1760- convincing Introduction wastes no time in 1777) and the later reviews (1776-1786) of emphasizing, threefold: firstly, the volume seeks Tristram Shandy. Similarly, the second part is ‘to discover what specifically German (italics in centred upon the three translations of Sterne’s the text) literary and intellectual contexts were eccentric novel, i.e. signed by Joseph-Pierre influential in the formative phase of German Frénais, Marquis de Bonnay and Griffet de La gothic’ (3), secondly, it examines ‘the Baume, not before furnishing Asfour’s synthetic international reception of German gothic account of eighteenth-century French theories of following the appearance in the 1790s of the translation, some quite idealistic, others more Schauerroman in Germany’ (3) and, thirdly, it down-to-earth, as found in the works of several attempts to ‘trace revenants of the gothic in time, philosophes, such as D’Alembert or Marmontel. rather than geographical space’ (4). All these The third part deals with Sterne’s French critical lineaments are faithfully observed hypotexts and imitations, mainly of A throughout the essays, and the result is a Sentimental Journey: François Vernes, Pierre convincing case for the Schauerrroman. Blanchard, Julie de Lespinasse, Jean-Claude Concretely, Barry Murnane’s ‘Haunting Gorjy and :Louis Damin. The latter part of the (Literary) History: An Introduction to German chapter draws a fertile critical parallel between Gothic’ constitutes a brilliant vade mecum to the Tristram Shandy and Diderot’s Jacques le general theme. Jürgen Barkhoff’s ‘"The echo of fataliste et son maître, a novel written between the question, as if it had merely resounded in a 1766 and 1780, at the height of ‘Sternemania’ tomb": The Dark Anthropology of the and published in 1796. Asfour rightfully Schauerroman in Schiller’s Der Geisterseher’ emphasizes that Diderot’s work ‘cannot be read offers a subtle analysis of one of the prototypes as a mere imitation’, but, rather, as ‘a playful of the shudder novel. Silke Arnold-de Simine’s exploration of originality, imitation and ‘Blaming the Other: English Translations of plagiarism’ (111). A welcome appendix Benedikte Naubert’s Hermann von Unna enumerates the main articles on Sterne published (1788/1794)’ concludes that it was the novel’s in various French journals and reviews between English translations which ensured the survival 1760 and 1800. of this early thriller. Victor Sage’s ‘Scott, Edited by two established scholars of German Hoffmann, and the Persistence of the Gothic’ literature, Andrew Cusack and Barry Murnane, scrutinizes Walter Scott’s lasting literary Popular Revenants is a splendid collection of influence on E.T.A. Hoffmann. critical essays in the field of reception theory.
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Andrew Cusack’s ‘Cultural Transfer in the Lorna Fitzsimmons, ed., International Dublin University Magazine: James Clarence Faust Studies: Adaptation, Reception, Mangan and the German Gothic’ points out that Translation. London: Continuum, 2008. the afore-mentioned Irish journal was the main channel through which German literature was Pp. 299. £75. ISBN 9781847060044. pumped into Victorian culture. Mario Grizelj’s ‘In the Maelstrom of Interpretation: Reshaping Terror and Horror between 1798 and 1838 – Goethe’s Faust, its two parts published almost a Gleich, Hoffmann, Poe’ takes into consideration quarter of a century apart, is comparable only to the evolution of horror fiction within the span of Shakespeare’s dramas in its capacity to speak 40 years. Jörg Kreienbrock’s ‘Popular Ghosts: anew to every age and culture. This is confirmed Heinrich Heine on German Geistesgeschichte as by the book under review, whose fifteen Gothic Novel’ delves into Heine’s conception of chapters, each by a different hand, cover a very horror narratives. Monika Schmitz-Emans’s wide area – geographically, culturally, ‘The Spirit World of Art and Robert linguistically, temporally, and in terms of Schumann’s Gothic Novel project: The Impact performance practice. The list of contributors is of Gothic Literature on Schumann’s Writings’ impressive: all can claim expertise, and many tackles the famous composer’s juvenilia and the distinction in their field. Yet, given the relationship which may be established between continuing tradition of excellence in British these and the forerunners of horror. Goethe studies, one may regret that only one – a Andrew Webber’s ‘About Face: E.T.A. specialist in English, not German – hails from Hoffmann, Weimar Film, and the Technological the UK. Afterlife of Gothic Physiognomy’ is, despite its After an introduction noting that the volume deceptively Lavaterian title, a superb piece of focuses on the adaptation, reception, and film criticism. Peter Arnds’s ‘Of Rats, Wolves, translation of Faustian discourse in global and Men: The Pied Piper as Gothic Revenant cultural traditions including those of China, and Provenant in Wilhelm Raabe’s Die Africa, India, Japan, Brazil, and Canada, as well Hämelschen Kinder’ addresses a powerful myth, as Europe, the book is divided into five parts: I, whose spell has not vanished altogether. ‘Anteriorities’ (texts preceding Goethe’s); II, Matthias Bickenbach’s ‘The Lady in White or ‘Faust in Context’ (aspects of Goethe’s text); III, the Laws of the Ghost in Theodor Fontane’s Vor ‘Romantic Intertexts’ (Byron and Coleridge); IV, der Sturm’ adds terrifying touches to the portrait ‘Asia’ (the Middle East as well as countries of a staunch realist writer. Barry Murnane’s ‘On mentioned above); and V, ‘The Americas, Golems and Ghosts: Prague as a Site of Gothic Europe, Africa and Britain’, the latter presented Modernism’ analyzes the transformations as an island entire of itself. In general, this is a undergone by this great Central European city in viable structure, although Parts I and II might the literary imaginary of the early twentieth usefully have been reversed. century. Last but not least, Catherine Smale’s This is chiefly because the first two chapters, ‘"Ein Gespenst geht um": Christa Wolf, Irina which together constitute Part I, are (leaving Liebmann and the Post-Wall Gothic’ aside the specific difficulty posed by Coleridge) demonstrates how the silhouette of a totalitarian the weakest of the volume. The latter’s intention symbol of a divided Germany may be converted to ‘engage previously neglected Faustian into a catalyst for creativity. materials’ (1) means that, rather than established All in all, an impressive assembly of critical antecedents, more questionable forerunners have voices, whose first-rate scholarly contribution is been sought. The conceptual flaws in these meant to last. chapters are inevitably reflected in the argument. Catalin Ghita In the first, by Arnd Bohm, supposed references University of Craiova to Alexander the Great in Marlowe’s and Goethe’s dramas are illustrated (or rather, not illustrated) by quotations from other texts of
46 dubious relevance. In the second, by Jane change the world. That broadly Brechtian Curran, later puppet texts, plainly influenced by principles inform some of the productions Goethe’s drama, are made to appear as its underlines this point. antecedents. Despite some interesting material, Despite some unevenness, this is a worthwhile these chapters do not carry conviction. addition to Faust literature, albeit one rather Part II, by contrast, includes Ehrhard Bahr’s heavily weighted towards Anglophone reception. ‘Faust and Satan’: Conflicting Concepts of the Although the introduction cites the ‘traditional, Devil in Faust I’, essential for understanding European focus of Faust studies’ (4) to justify how variants on these figures discussed in later neglecting this area, there is in fact more to say chapters accord with or diverge from Goethe’s about it, as shown, for instance, by Lea conception of them. Had this been the opening Marquart’s recent study of the French reception chapter, the volume would have rested on a of Faust, Goethes ‘Faust’ in Frankreich (2009), reliable basis. Particular attention should be paid which is accessible only to German speakers. to Bahr’s comments on Faust’s salvation (98- Had the weaker chapters of the present volume 101), as later chapters (210, 247) give a one- been omitted, there might have been room for sided view of this. The other two chapters in new material in this area. There is certainly Part II, by Alan Corkhill and Claudia Brodsky, scope for a companion volume, in English, on show that the interpretative potential of Goethe’s Faust’s fortunes in Europe. original text is far from exhausted. Judith Purver In Part III, the essay by Fred Parker, the only University of Manchester UK contributor, on Faust and Byron is lucid, focused, and elegantly written. The understanding of Goethe’s text shown by this Judy King and Graham Tulloch, eds., Anglist is faultless. The same may be said of Frederick Burwick, but not of his overstated James Hogg, The Three Perils of Man; claim in Chapter 7 – identical with the or, War, Women, and Witchcraft, A introduction to his edition of an English Faust Border Romance. Edinburgh translation – to have found ‘Goethe’s Faust University Press, 2012. Pp. 558. £80. Translated by Coleridge’. The resultant ISBN 9780748638116. controversy makes it imperative to state here that those who have questioned this claim are Thomas C. Richardson, ed., James Germanists of the highest integrity with no axe to grind, but rather with a genuine concern for Hogg, Contributions to Blackwood’s standards of evidence in scholarly publication. Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 2 1829- The remaining two parts of the volume 1835. Edinburgh University Press, concern the reception and adaptation of Faust in 2012. Pp. 509. £80. ISBN the twentieth century, particularly in non- 9780748624898. Christian and/ or non-European contexts. It is fascinating to see how the richness and openness ‘A GREAT number of people now-a-days are of Goethe’s text facilitates its productive beginning broadly to insinuate that there are no adaptation for Hindu, Muslim, Chinese, and such things as ghosts, or spiritual beings visible postcolonial African and Brazilian audiences, to mortal sight. Even Sir Walter Scott is turned utilising a variety of artistic forms and media renegade, and, with his stories made up of half- including opera, rock musicals, Japanese-style and-half, like Nathaniel Gow’s toddy, is trying puppetry, traditional dance, music, speech to throw cold water on the most certain, though rhythms, and film, and to discover how Part II of most impalpable, phenomena of human nature. Faust, difficult to stage or even to understand in The bodies are daft. Heaven mend their wits!’ ‘normal’ Western dramatic terms, generates new With this assertion opens Hogg’s short story meaning in innovative, intermedial productions ‘The Mysterious Bride’, laying out the terms of which also demonstrate how drama can help to a contest that surfaces again and again in his
47 writing. In the two latest volumes to appear in convincing context. Hogg paints a shared the Stirling/South Carolina Research Edition of Anglo-Scottish culture of excess, in which not his works, such questions remain consistently to only the aristocracy but the populous at large has the fore, reflecting Hogg’s long-term interest in been infected by a chivalric ‘mania’. Most the supernatural tradition and what place, if any, readers, however, are likely to find the inset it could claim in the developing literary culture Aikenwood narrative the most rewarding, of early nineteenth-century Scotland. Blending allowing the exuberant, erratic tone of Hogg’s contemporary intellectual debate with writing to luxuriate amongst the folk traditionary material, these publications reaffirm supernatural of his strongest subject material. Hogg’s distinctive approach to the At the heart of this sequence is a storytelling epistemological challenges presented at the competition around which the novel pivots. outset of modernity – with his brand of Teased and tormented by demonic powers, the irreverent humour both welcome and ever- detachment to Aikenwood find themselves present. The on-going re-evaluation of Hogg’s trapped and decide on competitive storytelling to work continues to influence the shifting choose a victim of looming cannibalism. This paradigm of Romanticism. In many ways a provides Hogg with a means to employ his figure that challenges orthodoxy, the working- considerable powers as a writer of short fiction, class, non-metropolitan sensibilities of his varied ranging between an impressive variety of writings are part of what continues to win him registers. From the faux-biblical styling of the the audience he lacked for much of the Friar’s tale to the visceral gluttony of Tam Craik, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The excellent the Chaucerian device works well as a narrative work behind these scholarly editions has been platform. When the devil makes a series of pivotal in driving this reappraisal, with the two bewildering entrances, in a portrait positioned latest releases continuing the high editorial somewhere between Milton’s discontent and the standards those familiar with the series have trickster of folk tradition, Hogg’s probing at the come to expect. nature and relevance of the supernatural once If Hogg’s work can often be characterised by again takes centre-stage. its stylistic diversity, then The Three Perils of Worth a brief mention are the interesting Man sits squarely at the heart of his oeuvre. editorial questions raised by King and Tulloch’s This ambitious three-volume novel presents a useful introduction, in particular the perhaps tale of medieval Borders warfare and the culture controversial decision to replace the name ‘Sir of chivalry, within which an extended, inset Walter Scott’ as one of the key characters of the tangent launches into Hogg’s favoured territory text, who had appeared in the original of the uncanny. The initial narrative deals with publication as ‘Sir Ringan Redhough’. Intending the struggle between English and Scottish nobles to restore Hogg’s personal intentions, this bold over Roxburgh Castle, in attempts to win move certainly leaves the obvious resonances of marriage with their respective paramours (who the name to percolate through the narrative. furnish a singularly unattractive portrayal of Also included is an essay from Gillian Hughes women). This plot is ultimately dominated, on the newly recovered source manuscript, and however, by a digression that follows a small extensive and well-informed notes, all indicative band of eccentrics on a journey to Aikenwood of a commendable desire to open the existing Castle, where they are hosted by both the textual materials to a broader audience. warlock Michael Scott, and the devil himself in The second volume of Hogg’s Contributions person. to Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine deals with The editors King and Tulloch note some ‘signs the latter end of his publishing career, reflecting that Hogg was not fully in control of the the mature Hogg’s on-going presence among the material’ in the chivalrous plot-line, though their Blackwood’s literati. This was a tense suggestion that these sequences are designed as relationship, as James Hogg attempted to a conscious rebuttal to Walter Scott’s popular establish a literary persona in the shadow of the aggrandisement of chivalry provides a ‘Ettrick Shepherd’, as satirically projected in
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John Wilson’s Noctes Ambrosianae. The any interest in being a Tory’. Such moments of difficulties of this position are neatly elucidated revelation are peppered throughout the volume, in Richardson’s introduction to the volume, which despite its playfulness can also feel highly exploring the way in which Hogg’s role as both personal. clown and muse of the Blackwood’s imagination However, as ‘The Mysterious Bride’ indicates, could be simultaneously restrictive and lucrative. issues of the supernatural remain the key The variety of the contributions provides an recurring theme. Examples of sceptical entertaining read, highlighting a core element of dismissal sit alongside more stubborn assertions. Hogg’s practice, with the training imposed by Whether uncanny events are merely a feature of writing for the periodical press reflected perception (phenomena of ‘human nature’, as throughout his oeuvre. The editorial decisions the opening quote to this review allows for) or taken here again reveal a desire to open up the objective truths is never entirely settled. Yet sources, signalled by the inclusion for some Hogg never tires of the question. This forms pieces of both published and manuscript part of a broader conflict in both volumes, versions, alongside the familiar exhaustive notes. between residual cultural forms and the rapidly It is difficult to select one or two particular modernising landscape of Hogg’s contemporary highlights from such a collection, with Hogg’s Scotland. versatility as a writer of both poetry and prose In ‘Robin Roole’, an intellectual discussion well represented. From discussions of pre- upon the existence of the soul leads into the Darwinian evolutionary theory to playful self- potent conflict between ‘improvement’ and mockery about balding, the limited role often tradition in Hogg’s world, with the issue assigned to him by his contemporaries at characteristically explored by way of narrative Blackwood’s is thoroughly rubbished here. anecdote. The faceoff between an improving In ‘A Tale of the Martyrs’, Hogg recounts a laird and a pious, traditionally minded tenant story of the violent persecution of the ranges across ‘every thing; religion, law, politics, Covenanters in Lowland Scotland reminiscent of agriculture, and sheep farming’. The conflict is his excellent short novel, The Brownie of finally brought to a head when the two men Bodsbeck. Exploiting the celebrated, miraculously swap bodies. When the laird’s miscellaneous form of Blackwood’s, this flows ‘extravagant speculations in improvement were seamlessly into a touching ballad lament. laid aside at once’, ‘every virtuous person on the Elsewhere, readers may well find ‘Strange estate was cherished and rendered happy’. Hogg Letter of a Lunatic’ particularly striking, comes down on the side of tradition. Yet he reflecting as it does some of the same does so through a trailblazing literary practice, preoccupations as Hogg’s best-known work, The one that has much more to say for Romanticism Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified both in Scotland and further afield. Sinner. Eerie character doubling is channelled Gerard McKeever through a discussion of schizophrenia here, University of Glasgow nicely inflecting Hogg’s penchant for unsettling psychological exploration. The author’s personal politics are also an interesting presence in the volume, with a number of pieces displaying the aggressive Tory ideology habitually propagated in the pages of Maga. In ‘A Screed on Politics’, however, a knowingly disingenuous claim to be unbiased leads into a fascinating moment of introspection. ‘I’m a Tory’, Hogg announces, though ‘why or wherefore I should have been one is really more than I can tell you. People’s principles seem to be born with them, for, God knows, I never had
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Ffion Mair Jones, ‘The Bard is a Very 1812, and such reuse often makes the exact Singular Character’: Iolo Morganwg, dating of his work difficult. Mair Jones argues Marginalia and Print Culture. Cardiff: that complicating the chronology of Morganwg’s work is important for thinking Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru / University of about his career as a linguist and poet and she Wales Press, 2010. Pp.352 £48. ISBN provides detailed readings of the 0708321959. ‘correspondence marginalia’ in this chapter. However, this detailed work with the Ffion Mair Jones, ed., Welsh Ballads of manuscripts is to be equally admired for what it the French Revolution 1793-1815. reveals about the material conditions that in part dictated Morganwg’s need to work in fragments. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, Employed as a poorly paid stonemason he 2012. Pp.486. £24.99. ISBN 0708324615. lacked both time and paper. Indeed, this chapter is arguably at its most interesting when it Mair Jones’s ‘The Bard is a Very Singular abandons the notion of Morganwg as writer in Character’ is the sixth contribution to the the traditional ‘Bardic’ sense, and thinks of him University of Wales Press series dedicated to instead as either at the heart of a network for publishing the results of a research project, ‘Iolo disseminating information, or as a reader Morganwg and the Romantic Tradition in Wales, amending his own correspondence. More could 1740-1918’, that has helped to restore the have been said in this context of the manuscript reputation of the Glamorgan stonemason (also commonplace books and ‘home-made booklets’ known as Edward Williams) who was perhaps in which he recorded his thoughts (154). best known in the twentieth century for his There is, however, a separate chapter on literary forgeries. Where other volumes in this ‘Morganwg as Reader’ which concentrates on series have concentrated on transcribing the writing left in the margins of books that he Morganwg’s correspondence (for a triple-decker owned or borrowed. When studying marginalia edition), dealing with his forgeries in a in general it is often difficult to disentangle Romantic context, and examining his reception ‘private’ reactions to the words on the page from and legacy, Mair Jones’s monograph does much annotations designed to be read as ‘public’ more than just tidy up the remaining margins. engagements with the text that has been written Indeed, by examining what is at the edge of (or upon, but by consulting the fifty-five volumes written on the back of) many of Morganwg’s annotated by Morganwg which survive in the letters, this monograph provides an alternative collections of the National Library of Wales and vision of the revived bard to that which has been at Cardiff University, Mair Jones has been able provided by the rest of the research project. to ‘map out the different tenors of annotation’ The final chapter of this admirable volume, found within his books (80). This chapter is thus entitled ‘Morganwg the Writer’, suggests that divided into four different types of marginalia: such was the frequency and the extent of annotations that helped in the ‘harvesting of Morganwg’s reuse and reordering of his letters ideas from secondary sources’ (81); marginal that the organised chronology of the official comments that were shared public statements volumes of Correspondence (published in 2007) and in which Morganwg’s annotations are in often hides much that was most interesting about dialogue with those of other commentators; how these papers were actually put to use in his annotations which comment upon, or attack, the working life. Often short of paper, Morganwg work of his friends and contemporaries; and used any spare ‘marginal’ space in his lastly, those annotations which were read (and correspondence to create new texts, and as Mair commented on) by his son Taliesin. Mair Jones makes clear, often returned ‘to the same Jones’s intimate knowledge of Morganwg’s scrap on several occasions- sometimes separated world makes her a particularly good reader of by many years’ (160). One sheet was used on at this otherwise difficult to interpret body of work. least four separate occasions between 1782 and She notes, for example, that the difference in
50 tone between the playful additions to William (‘baledwyr’) often relied on the work of a small Owen’s A Dictionary of the Welsh Language number of ‘renowned ballad writers (or (1803) and the scathing comments added to the ‘prydyddion’)’, such as Ellis Roberts, for their same author’s translation of Milton, Coll success and her introduction makes it Gwyfna (1819), are due as much to a developing particularly clear that these were modern, hybrid animosity between the two men as to any actual productions that combined the traditional Welsh dissatisfaction with the work itself. This chapter, cynghanedd form with tunes ‘often imported which draws lightly on Heather Jackson’s from England’ (5). That these texts were examination of marginalia in Romantic Readers designed to be sung is a fact not forgotten and an (2005), is in itself an important contribution to appendix of ‘Ballad Tunes’ containing ‘settings the history of Romantic reading practices. to music of the words of the first stanza […] of Somewhat limited in scope by its relationship nine of the ballads’ (433) is particularly with the other texts in this series, more could admirable. have been made in this volume of the Making these texts more widely available similarities and differences between would be enough to make this volume a major Morganwg’s annotation strategies and those of achievement in itself, but Mair Jones’s his contemporaries and an enlarged context may introduction also suggests a number of thematic also have opened up a dialogue with recent frameworks for understanding these texts that discussions of other labouring-class poets, such helps to place them in context. Where the as John Clare, who sometimes found themselves chronological approach of the anthology itself on the margins of print culture. allows the reader the freedom to interpret a Welsh Ballads of the French Revolution is one variety of responses as they developed over of a number of publications that are being twenty years, the introduction suggests four generated by the ‘Wales and the French major recurrent themes: initial ‘responses’ to the Revolution’ research project run by the French revolution (and there is curiously nothing University of Wales Centre for Advanced and until 1793), ‘the Fishguard invasion (1797)’, Welsh and Celtic Studies, which has been ‘ballads of the militia, the volunteers and the running since 2009. It is a fully-annotated army (1793-1815) and ‘war-reporting (1794- anthology of thirty-eight Welsh-language 1815)’. This detailed thematic introduction ballads composed between 1793 and 1815. The locates the texts both in their historical and print texts are presented in chronological order with culture contexts. For example, Mair Jones points the original Welsh-language text accompanied out that several of the ‘Fishguard invasion’ texts by a parallel translation into English. The were printed at Camarthen, just thirty miles from original of each ballad is followed by details of the scene of the landing, and that it is therefore its publication and, where multiple copies exist, not surprising to find that they depict this event lists of textual variants. While some of these as though it were a very real threat ‘from which texts are already available in the original via the they were graciously “delivered” by God’ (23). excellent ‘Welsh Ballads Online’ database, These are ‘local’ texts in Jones’s reading but her which covers material located in the National introduction also goes on to place them within Library of Wales and Cardiff City Library, most the much broader British context of loyalist of those taken from the Bangor University songs about invasion threats, such as those Library have not been available before and all of gathered by Terry Moylan in The Age of the translations are new. An excellent short Revolution: 1776-1815 in the Irish Song section of the ‘introduction’ deals with the Tradition (2000), which includes ballads on the various ways in which the ballads were Bantry Bay invasion of 1796. As this produced and consumed. The surviving imprints introduction concludes ‘this anthology is mostly suggest that more ballads were produced in concerned with a conservative and loyalist north than south Wales, with Trefriw (near response’ to the Revolution and the years of war Llanwrst) a particular centre of production. Mair that came in its aftermath because radical Jones notes that the success of the ballad sellers responses were less likely to make it into print,
51 especially during the years of Government liberal, even a revolutionary. He is an avatar of censorship and repression (57). Further work by joyous sociability and of agonized solitude. He the same research group may hopefully recover embodies the most devoted orthodoxy and the more of the traces of the oral radical culture that most tortured skepticism. He is remembered as Mair Jones detects via oblique references in the Milton’s fiercest critic, yet he called Paradise surviving loyalist tradition. However, the major Lost ‘a poem which, considered with respect to achievement of this project is to have produced design, may claim the first place, and with an anthology that allows us to investigate the respect to performance the second, among the nature of ‘popular loyalism’ in all of its many productions of the human mind.’ His quip about forms. a dog on its hind legs is among the most famous Taken together, these two volumes make a misogynist zingers in the language, yet there significant contribution to our understanding of was no greater champion of women writers in Welsh print culture during the Romantic period. eighteenth-century Britain. For Fussell, Stephen Colclough Johnson’s thought was marked by ‘the all but Bangor University simultaneous embrace of antithetical or distant properties.’ How to make sense of these paradoxes? Critics have figured these contradictions in various Freya Johnson and Lynda ways. For a few, especially among his Mugglestone, eds., Samuel Johnson: contemporaries, Johnson was simply The Arc of the Pendulum. Oxford: inconsistent, and therefore not to be taken seriously. Most, though, have found him Oxford University Press, 2012. Pp. 226. difficult to dismiss. For some, Johnson was £35. ISBN 9780199654345. locked in a struggle with himself – a struggle that might be either celebrated or pathologised. For others, the metaphor of ‘struggle’ gave way ‘Anyone who deals with Johnson and his to one of ‘balance’ – in W. B. C. Watkins’s writings’, writes Paul Fussell, ‘gets accustomed formulation, a ‘perilous balance’. For a handful early to making contrary motions.’ These of critics Johnson was a profound practitioner of ‘contrary motions’ have been part of the critical dialectic, perhaps a precursor of Hegel, even of commentary on Samuel Johnson since his postmodernism. lifetime, because few literary figures are quite so William Hazlitt, writing in 1819, likened complicated, even contradictory. This is Johnson’s prose style to ‘the oscillation of a particularly remarkable considering that Johnson pendulum’. He did not intend it as a compliment. often spoke directly – unlike, say, Shakespeare, This pendulum provided nothing more than a whose opinions have to be teased out from those mechanical tick-tock, producing what he called of his characters. With Johnson, we have ‘monotony of style’. The contributors to this hundreds of thousands of words delivered more volume, however, have coopted Hazlitt’s or less in his own voice, along with tens of dismissive metaphor and redeployed it, treating thousands more from his conversation. We have Johnson’s ‘contrary motions’ not as a struggle, moral essays, poems, biographies, criticism, not as a balance, but as a pendulum’s arc. The reviews, histories, sermons. We have letters and editors’ introduction introduces the image, and prayers and even a short autobiographical all the contributors – including some of the most memoir. We have the testimony of friends who important Johnsonians working today – manage knew him for decades. There are very few to invoke it in exploring Johnson’s multifarious writers whose opinions have been recorded in mind. greater detail. The essays vary widely in character, touching And yet he remains notoriously difficult to pin on a great many topics in Johnson’s writing and down. Johnson has been seen by some as a his life. Some are fairly narrowly focused, as conservative, even a reactionary; by others as a with James McLaverty’s reading of the textual
52 variation in Johnson’s poems, John Mullan’s Rowan Boyson, Wordsworth and the account of ‘Fault Finding in Johnson’s Lives of Enlightenment Idea of Pleasure. the Poets’, or Charlotte Brewer’s even-handed Cambridge: Cambridge University exploration of women writers in the Dictionary. Others are much broader, trying to make sense Press. 2012. £55. ISBN 9781107023307. of the whole of Johnson’s life and works: Jane Steen with ‘The Creation of Character’, Philip For Matthew Arnold, Wordsworth’s poetry was Smallwood with ‘Johnson and Time’, even ‘great’ because it universalized a joy modern Isobel Grundy with ‘What Is It About Johnson?’ criticism has struggled to embrace. Writing in Some of the chapters challenge conventional the ‘Preface’ to his 1879 edition of wisdom, as when Howard Weinbrot puts paid to Wordsworth’s poetry, Arnold cites Home at the fashionable conception of Johnson as a Grasmere’s ‘Of joy in widest commonality mental wreck. Others fill in gaps in our spread’ because of its ‘extraordinary power’ to knowledge, as when David Fairer documents offer the reader joy and present ‘it so as to make Johnson’s complicated relationship with Joseph us share it’. The history of Wordsworth studies and Thomas Warton. Many chapters, though, since Arnold, however, has been more ask questions that have simply never been asked suspicious of this proclamation. From the Yale before, or consider subjects so broad that they School to New Historicism, critics have have never been explored satisfactorily, as when expressed anxiety towards and disapproval of Robert DeMaria, Jr meditates on ‘Johnson and Wordsworth’s poetic moments of pleasure, Change’, or Lawrence Lipking on ‘Johnson and happiness, bliss and joy. As Rowan Boyson Genius’. points out in her study, Wordsworth’s ‘version Despite the considerable variety, the chapters of pleasure’ has been condemned for ‘being are without exception grounded in incisive close “bad”: transcendentalizing, distracting, reading, which gives a diverse collection a kind disembodied, individualizing, or not of unity. They also make genuine contributions individualizing enough and rather falsely to Johnsonian studies, demonstrating extensive universal’ (14). While the affective turn of the knowledge of both the primary texts and the last decade or so has done much to redress the relevant scholarship. They will not make demonizing of feeling and experience in literary Johnson seem any more consistent or even studies, a resistance to subjects like ‘pleasure’ coherent – they do not try to stop the pendulum remains in part because of our inheritance of it from swinging. They will, however, reward any from an Enlightenment we assume stripped it of reader of late eighteenth-century British ethical or political importance. This study literature. brilliantly examines the modern misreading of Jack Lynch Enlightenment pleasure, reframing it as Rutgers–Newark communal, collective and joyous (rather than private, solipsistic and disinterested). Boyson excels at engaging the reader with an argument that is at once historical, political and philosophical, but that skillfully holds on to the literary and aesthetic. From the book’s first half on Shaftesbury, Kant and the sensus communis and Rousseau and Wollstonecraft’s utopian elevation of pleasure, to its second half on Wordsworth, Boyson’s study remains in control of a vast amount of material and carefully shepherds it in a lucid and persuasive political defence of Enlightenment pleasure. Her defence begins in Part I’s insightful discussion of eighteenth-century sociability,
53 communality and sensibility under the banner of experiential . . . akin to the sensus communis [or ‘Pleasure philosophy’. The first chapter’s a] kind of feeling of attunement and universality analysis of Shaftesbury, Kant and the sensus that must be in place before we can think at all?’ communis explores the idea that ‘pleasure is (151). Boyson turns to Sebastian Timparano’s inherently sociable’ (25), a feeling that is idea of pessimistic hedonism to offer one experienced both for and with others and possible answer, and extends this out to a dictated by nature, not the state. Human reading of happiness in The Excursion as a ‘enjoyment of the arts’, including poetry, is too materially felt narrative structured by a double shaped by an innate pleasure in order for agenda: a humanist desire to define an Shaftesbury, one that Boyson links to Kant’s anthropological happiness coupled with a Tory- summation of ‘aesthetic and logical judgement’ liberal and ultimately imperial will for order. as directed towards the ‘feeling of pleasure’ (31, Boyson’s flair as a critic is again underlined here: 45). This post-Hobbesian reading of pleasure unlike many critics of this much overlooked also looks forward to Rousseau and poem, she declines to bulldoze The Excursion’s Wollstonecraft’s sense of it as a ‘natural power’ content, recognizing it as constitutive of a poem that ‘makes possible out relations with other that exists both in historical and philosophical people, creating the generosity and hope which time. Such an approach engages the spiritual must underline any kind of community’ (68). aspects of the poem too, the poem’s theology Boyson is at her best when she draws on the addressed finely here alongside its engagement depths of her research to make such statements, with education, the poor and nationality, all materially connecting affective experience to a ways that might help a reader envision the lived understanding of human relationships and ‘happy life’. in doing so weakening the prominence of There is no doubt that Wordsworth and the modern definitions of egoism and selfishness in Enlightenment Idea of Pleasure offers a our reading of ‘self-interest’ and ‘self-love’ in significant argument that I hope will both this period. Wollstonecraft, Boyson shows by influence Wordsworth studies and open up the way of example, differentiates ‘good and bad positive experiences his poetry offers for further forms of self-love’ to survey what kinds of critical attention. The study might even be enjoyment, sensation and experience might considered as part of the ‘eudaimonic turn’ that generate social pleasures (such as sympathy) currently seeks to rescue joy, ecstasy, wonder that offer women real power, a Deleuzian and happiness from those critics who dismiss it becoming into utopian potential. Boyson draws as ideology or neurosis in their weary roles as on Deleuze, as well as Adorno, Barthes and the defenders of literary criticism’s negativity Arendt, as readily as she does recent criticism in bias. By contrast, Boyson serves as an the fields of Romanticism, affect studies and exceptional example of a historically informed, eighteenth-century history, habituating the philosophically sharp, but always imaginative reader to complex theories of pleasure even as and warm reader of pleasure. One might argue she breaks new ground in reading it. that it is little wonder that a critic who has The ingenuity of her argument is illuminated clearly spent so long attending to a poet who again in Part II, ‘Wordsworth’s common devoted much time to the question of how to pleasure’, comprising three chapters (on Lyrical articulate pleasure is herself able to write so Ballads; Home at Grasmere and The Prelude; thoughtfully and happily. I would. and The Excursion) that rethinks Wordsworthian Emma Mason pleasure as non-teleological and circular, and so University of Warwick radical. Images of ‘blood, breath, motion, life, spirit and gift’ in the opening of The Prelude, for example, evince a ‘thoughtless bliss’ for Boyson, a non-egoic pleasure that invites the reader to reflect on its content: ‘is it something pre- reflective, pre-sexual, pre-relational, almost pre-
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Brian R. Bates, Wordsworth’s Poetic renovation of the 1798 Lyrical Ballads into the Collections, Supplementary Writing and two-volume collection of 1800. Chapter 2 then Parodic Reception. London: Pickering takes up the 1800 volumes and describes the methods by which Wordsworth maps the & Chatto, 2012. Pp. 236. £60. ISBN reader’s progress through the poems, and, 9781848931961. concurrently, through their geographic referents, to present a kind of poetic walking tour of the Even in private, Wordsworth was a jealous and English Lakes, and, by extension, the nation overbearing reader of his own work. When itself. Bates’s paratextual study continues in Charles Lamb complained about the dictatorial Chapter 4 as he examines Wordsworth’s “Gothic turn of poems like ‘The Old Cumberland church” model for the projected Recluse (as Beggar’ – ‘the instructions conveyed in it are too outlined in the introduction to The Excursion) direct and like a lecture […] An intelligent and the self-anthologising and organising on reader finds an insult in being told, I will teach show in Poems in Two Volumes (1815). Chapter you how to think upon this subject’ – the poet 5 follows the image of the Gothic church into responded with another lecture, ‘a long letter’, Chapter 13 of Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria, Lamb noted wryly, ‘of four sweating pages’ surely the ultimate supplementary text of literary telling Lamb where he’d gone wrong. It is history. Finally, Chapter 7 presents perhaps unsurprising, then, that Wordsworth Wordsworth’s bravado reading of his own life was, as Brian R. Bates reveals in this fascinating and poetic trajectory in The River Duddon and detailed study of Wordsworthian paratext volume where, as Bates explains, Wordsworth and parody, a compulsive writer of prose ‘offers a composed prospect and a historical introductions, glosses, footnotes, and subtitles. continuum on which to centre Britain’s past, More surprising is how little critical attention, present and future identity’ (158). Wordsworth’s relatively speaking, this aspect of Wordsworth’s poetry becomes, in a sense, paratext to Britain’s work has received – it is this deficiency Bates’s history and nationhood. study sets out to address, revealing Chapters 3 and 6 discuss the second story – ‘how Wordsworth’s critics and parodists a poet intent on developing the prefatory, responded to and were connected with the concluding and marginal spaces in his designs of those collections’ (1). Beginning with books to foster paths of connective Richard Mant’s laboured but venomous reading through his volumes, relate burlesquing of Wordsworthian simplicity, The individual poems to the whole of his Simpliciad, and finishing with J.H. Reynolds’s poetic project and life, publicize and incisive and gleeful ‘Peter Bell’, Bates shows defend his poetry and establish an how parodists, even as they set themselves enduring place in an emerging against Wordsworth’s systematising of contemporary canon of British poets. (12) ‘simplicity’, revealed and often empowered such systems as embodied in the architecture and Using the curiously novel method of reading referentiality of Wordsworth’s poems and poetic everything on the page, Bates reveals the collections. Even grossly exaggerated or twisted hidden-in-plain-sight networks of footnotes, out of context, Bates shows, Wordsworth’s subtitles, and repetitions used by Wordsworth to ‘system’ offers some protection, and, curiously, tie his collections together. still encourages readers to engage closely with As Bates explains, ‘[t]wo intertwined stories the challenge his work presents. govern the chapters that follow. The first While the comparison between parody and describes how Wordsworth used supplementary original is fruitful and usually well explained by writings to shape and engage readers in his Bates, it is here I found myself unsatisfied with poetic collections’ (1). Chapter 1 looks closely his conclusions. Bates’ underlying thesis seems at the various editorial and textual decisions that to be that Wordsworth’s paratexts, ‘designs’, led to Wordsworth’s reorganisation and and repetitions allow the reader to read more
55 richly and imaginatively, opening up dialogues Austen, comparing them only in the first and between poems, and encouraging backwards and final chapters. Whereas it is necessary to read forwards movements in his increasingly varied both within the religious framework that was poetic collections: contemporaneous to their time, her arguments in justification of reading them together are not While Wordsworth constructs a complex, persuasive. Dabundo presents Scripture as a organizing apparatus for these poems creative source and force, but does not and alerts readers to the necessity of adequately persuade why she has chosen to paying heed to this apparatus, he also ‘metaphorically marry [Austen and Wordsworth] leaves readers at liberty to discover the in order to discuss them as partners in the relationship between the poems that he unfolding expression of their Christian faith’ (4). has classified. (91) She raises prickly issues: is Austen a Romantic writer? Does she uphold a community of faith in This seems a fairly questionable liberty, and is the manner that Wordsworth does? However, one example of a number of sympathetic she does not address whether or why their conclusions Bates comes to on Wordsworth’s shared religious views are enough to merit a didactic impulses, some of which strike me as full-length study. overly utopian in their characterisation of Showing that Anglican Christianity runs willing reader and guiding poet. The point, as through both Wordsworth and Austen is not a Wordsworth’s parodists often exclaim, is that new discovery, as the territory has previously Wordsworth only seems to enter into been explored by Irene Collins, Peter Leithart conversation with himself, or, at most, on his and others in the case of Austen, and Nancy own terms – a point driven home forcefully by Easterlinn and William Ulmer amongst others William Hazlitt in his review of The Excursion, on Wordsworth. Her insights regarding registered by Charles Lamb in the Christianity, duty and nationhood are correspondence quoted above, and experienced illuminating to both authors, but binding personally by John Keats when, in conversation Wordsworth to Austen in a metaphorical with his older contemporary, he was shushed by matrimony due to their shared faith is as much a Mary Wordsworth and told: ‘Mr. Wordsworth is marriage of ‘Affection’ as her own was. never interrupted.’ In her chapters on Wordsworth, Dabundo Elias Greig seeks to explain the ‘practical application of University of Sydney Christianity in the world of Wordsworth rather than a theological position’ (64). However, she Laura Dabundo, The Marriage of Faith: fails to recognise the Enlightenment legacy that Christianity in Jane Austen and William religion has no essential connection to ethics— good actions do not imply a good Christian. Wordsworth. Mercer University Press, That Wordsworth was a grounded poet, rooting 2012. Pp 152s. $35. ISBN himself and his works ‘in the very world, which 9780881462821. is the world | Of all of us’ suits Dabundo’s argument, and she is correct in continuously ‘And I John saw the holy city, new pointing her readers back to this aspect of his Jerusalem, coming down from God out poetry. However, she casts Wordsworth in both of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned an apostolic and rabbinic role, turning him into for her husband’ (Revelations 21:2) an Anglican evangelist, which could yield fruit, but instead only conflates analogies from Old Laura Dabundo's The Marriage of Faith begins and New Testaments. with and rests its focal metaphor on this passage, Dabundo’s ideas concerning Austen’s use of 'marrying' Wordsworth and Austen in their Christianity in her works are novel, particularly Christian faiths. She subdivides her work into regarding biblical influence by means of five ‘meditations’ on Wordsworth and three on character and plot. However, the Fall and
56 redemption pattern which Dabundo highlights is permeate all aspects of human life, and can thus not enough to assume the guiding hand of the be ‘read into’ any literary text. Just as Church of England, as it is a common literary psychoanalysis or deconstruction can be, trope. Similarly, it is perhaps a stretch to draw correctly or incorrectly, used to provide a parallels between the meeting of Lady Catherine specific reading, so can religion provide a and Elizabeth Bennet in the ‘wilderness’ and stretched lens. Overall, though often wanting Jesus’ temptation on the recurrence of that term. and underdeveloped, Dabundo’s study opens up The following chapters on Austen’s private questions that merit further consideration and prayers and sisterly love present interesting discussion. discussions that would have worked better as Judyta Frodyma discrete arguments. The prayers, she states, St Catherine’s College, Oxford place Austen in a community of the living faithful in their appropriation of the communal first person plural. Like Wordsworth, Austen June Sturrock, Jane Austen’s Families. attempts to gain self-knowledge through ‘the London and New York: Anthem Press, importance of every day, and every hour as it 2013. Pp.148. £60. $99. ISBN-13: passes’ (106). This worldliness is an example of how Austen’s characters make quotidian ethical 9780857282965. decisions guided by a Christian light. The difference between Austen’s prayers and This short, engaging study of Jane Austen’s Wordsworth’s poems is that hers arise from a fictional families initiates a potentially communal faith to affect the individual, they are enormous project, Austen’s ‘ethics of ordinary ‘not utterances from a hermitage’ (102). life,’ exemplified in her complex representations Wordsworth, on the other hand, with his affinity of married happiness as always achieved and for hermits and other outcasts, writes from the ongoing within the context of larger family and solitude of the individual soul outwards towards communal relations. Paramount to her the community. This Dabundo has failed to protagonists’ characters as moral agents is their identify. capacity for ‘attention,’ understood as ‘a just and As a whole, The Marriage of Faith reads very loving gaze directed upon an individual reality’ much like a series of articles that have been (Iris Murdoch) or as Aristotle’s ‘practical woven together with the frail thread of wisdom,’ ‘the ability to discern, acutely and ‘community.’ At times, she employs weak responsively, the salient features of one’s methodologies, uses non-academic sources and particular situation’ (Martha Nussbaum). Moral has omitted fundamental academic ones, such as conduct for Austen is not something we switch Abrams’ Natural Supernaturalism when off in between occasional moral choices but the discussing Wordsworth’s religious views. Her strenuous, ongoing exercise of such attention to omissions also include the vital communities all the complexities of daily existence with and marriage in ‘Home at Grasmere’ and which family life is always engaged. ‘Nutting’, and Austen’s lesser known works. Mothers and sisters, substitute mothers, fathers Furthermore, the text contains several typos, the and daughters, spoilt children, ‘dysfunctional’ most notable being a quotation from families: Sturrock turns her own ‘just and loving Wordsworth’s The Exclusion [sic] and a gaze’ on the Morlands, Thorpes and Tilneys; the consistent misspelling of Deeanne Westbrook’s Dashwoods and the Bennets; the Prices and the name. Bertrams; the Woodhouses and the Elliots. Dabundo’s book is exemplary of the problems Noting Austen’s scepticism about the family and surrounding studies in literature and theology— only rare emphasis on parent-child love, she namely, a conflation of a profession of faith discusses the extent to which such family which is actively sought out in the work, with dynamics are essential both to the plots of the the genuine study of the text as text. The nature novels and to their protagonists’ moral education of religion is such that it can—and does— towards greater knowledge of others and
57 themselves. Parental over-severity and Mansfield Park, to conversation and speech in interference on the one hand and over- Emma, and to personal appearance in indulgence and neglect on the other are common Persuasion. Here the discussions more clearly failings throughout the novels, with interestingly attempt to demonstrate how Austen uses family different effects upon the children: Sturrock’s relations to serve larger ethical concerns unusual comparison of Darcy and Emma as distinctive to each novel. But does “attitude to ‘spoilt children’ who consequently develop a money” really characterize the central ethical pride and fastidiousness bordering on arrogance concerns of Mansfield Park ? Isn’t that just part and contempt for all who fall ‘outside’ the of the novel’s larger argument about the proper family makes us realize how markedly this use vs. abuse of moneyed leisure, the necessity differs from the effects of parental indulgence of affluence, luxury, and leisure for developing on the Bertram daughters and Tom. Mrs. Fanny’s (anyone’s) morally improving habit of Dashwood’s indulgence of the excesses of reflection? The idea of family is also far more sensibility in both Marianne and herself explicitly and intensely Austen’s focus in this (‘parental narcissism’) is just one of the failings novel than in the other five, deserving much we see in ‘single-parent’ families (Mrs. Thorpe, fuller treatment. Similarly, Sturrock could do General Tilney, Mr. Woodhouse, Sir Walter more to connect the different attitudes towards Elliot), and the absence or death of the mother is personal appearance, change, and death in Anne acutely felt, most notably of course in and Sir Walter Elliot to the novel’s larger Persuasion. Implicit within Austen’s portraits of concern with the virtue of ‘constancy’— deficient family relations is an unrealized ideal understood as Anne’s flexibility yet stability, of marriage that the protagonists by contrast will persuadability yet firmness in the newly post- succeed in actualizing: thus do their happy revolutionary world—a constancy exemplified marriages stand out in relief against this in her fidelity to an ‘ideal’ object ‘when all hope necessary family backdrop. is gone’: the memory of her dead mother. The strength of the book lies in the acuteness This loss of a larger sense of the whole of Sturrock’s wonderfully attentive and within local details raises a final question: when discerning local observations about character it comes to communal virtues for Jane Austen, and conduct (especially Emma’s) in her all-too- doesn’t ‘friendship’ in the end trump ‘family’? brief readings of the novels. But the book’s Acknowledging only Pride and Prejudice as organization is unsettling: the first three chapters rising above mere domesticity, Sturrock risks attempt comparative readings of several novels diminishing the virtues to purely domestic ones at once under thematic headings, with the result (e.g. ‘usefulness and exertion’), and just, clear- that each novel gets very short shrift. eyed discernment to familial affections. Distinctions are flattened because we lose a Lorraine Clark sense of the distinct whole that guides Austen’s Trent University, Canada treatment of the family within each novel. Austen uses distinctively “family” forms of pride and prejudice (among others) for example to illuminate their many manifestations: Mrs. Bennet accuses Mr. Bennet of being “partial” towards Elizabeth, i.e., prejudiced; and the question of whether family affection blinds or sharpens one’s discernment of other family members is continually raised. The idea of family is not an end in itself for Austen but serves quite different ends in different novels. The second half of the book by contrast does devote its three chapters to single novels: ‘father-daughter’ attitudes to money in
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Elsie B. Michie, The Vulgar Question of the boxes, from Bourdieu to Lacan, Freud to Money: Heiresses, Materialism, and the Deleuze, and Derrida to Levi-Strauss, and does Novel of Manners from Jane Austen to so lightly. But I wanted more — much more — on Victorian anthropology (for example) as a Henry James. Baltimore: Johns contemporary correlative, and on the rich Hopkins University Press, 2011. Pp. woman as exogamete. Here are, or were, two 303. $70. ISBN 9781421401867. rival accounts of society, one fictional the other discursive, one modern the other primitive: yet on the matter of marriage and inheritance were Elsie Michie’s book is an interesting and well- not the social scientists trying to historicise what written one that will certainly need to be the novelists dramatised? That avenue of consulted by students of women in the argument seems to me far more seductive than nineteenth-century novel. It rotates very firmly yet another conspectus on the phases of — indeed exclusively — around five novelists capitalism — the details of which are probably (Austen; the Trollopes, mère et fils; Margaret best left to economic historians anyway. Michie Oliphant; and Henry James), and generally is absolutely on to something when she says that discusses three texts in each case: Pride and the rich woman is anomalous in nineteenth- Prejudice, Mansfield Park, and Emma; The century culture in a way no rich man could be, Widow Barnaby, The Ward of Thorpe-Combe, by virtue of having nothing to do with her and The Life and Adventures of a Clever Woman; money. How fascinating it might have been to and The Spoils of Poynton, The Wings of the compare such an ideological fact with Victorian Dove, and The Golden Bowl. (Where Anthony anthropology’s travails over mother-right and Trollope is concerned, Michie follows three father-right, monogamy and polygamy, family characters — Miss Dunstable, Lady Glencora and inheritance. Palliser, and Madame Max Goesler — through Michie’s chapter on Jane Austen will perhaps the various fictions in which they are involved; be of most direct relevance to BARS readers, and where Oliphant is concerned she centres her and Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Mary Crawford, attention on Miss Majoribanks and Phoebe and Emma Woodhouse make a fascinating set of Junior, but also examines some of her short variations: the first so insulated by wealth as to fiction.) Michie is nothing if not the possessor of become preposterously otiose; the last so oddly a tidy mind, and each chapter has its similar to Lady Catherine in her ‘imaginist’ introductory section relating the literary stupidity; the middle one so powerfully discussion to the saga of nineteenth-century ambivalent in terms of ‘blunted delicacy’ and capitalism, and most possess a ‘coda’ (where charm as to make Henry James’ novels at the Austen is concerned, an epilogue) that ties the other end of the study look laboured and foregoing discussion together. As if this was not wearisome. (Mary Crawford’s attractiveness, enough, each chapter is presided over by a guru surely, is by no means restricted to her wealth, from the realms of ‘thought’ generally speaking, as Michie seems to think (45).) Michie’s neat and political economy in particular: Adam Smith, and tidy method of progress, in which the novels Thomas Malthus, Walter Bagehot, John Stuart are separated out into their discursive sections Mill, and Georg Simmel. The whole affair is into discussions that teeter sometimes on the introduced — as one might expect — by a verge of plot summary, makes it difficult for her discussion of rich women and poor ones, bad energetically to gather up the women her authors women and good ones, and the choices describe, and their attitudes to them. Her nineteenth-century fiction expects its menfolk to wealthy heroines are like a row of Siamese make between them. fighting fish in a pet shop, each in its little tank: All this is perfectly fine. But it is true one it would be exciting to have a more ranging and sometimes yearns for something a little more less passive discussion that used the fiction driven on what should be a delectably concerned to argue for what its authors wanted fascinating topic. Michie’s introduction ticks all to say. In seeking to commit itself to both
59 political economy (loosely conceived) on the aesthetic and instrumental languages in their one hand, and to detailed discussion of fiction work’ (14). That Bevis cites Geoffrey Hill’s on the other, the book manages somehow to collection Speech! Speech! as a gloss on the insulate the one from the other. governing questions of the study, indicates from That having been said, everybody knows that the opening pages that this is a monograph women, with or without money, are the driving rooted in an appreciation for and close forces in nineteenth-century English novels examination of the textual: ‘Why and how | in (even those written by an American like Henry these orations do I twist my text?’ (14). When James). The ‘golden dolly’ of the eighteenth asking such questions of their own work, the century had translated herself in the following four writers under examination are demonstrated hundred years into something strangely rich: a to hold themselves accountable to an source of anxiety as well as cupidity. Michie’s increasingly politicized public: ‘Byron, Dickens, study is not as bold with this powerful theme as Tennyson, and Joyce were aware that a it might have been, but everyone interested in disinterested independence might shade into that theme will need to read it. irresponsible indifference’ (5). Bevis makes Richard Lansdown explicit, however, that the bringing together of James Cook University the realms of oratory and poetry is not simply the result of historical happenstance. Rather, he convincingly argues for the extensive heritage of Matthew Bevis, The Art of Eloquence: their coincidence in the classical art of rhetoric. Byron, Dickens, Tennyson, Joyce. In the opening two chapters of the study, Bevis Oxford: OUP, 2007. Pp. 302. £78. ISBN uses classical rhetorical terms as pivots around which close discussion of text manoeuvres: actio 0199593221. (Bevis’s shorthand, ‘the eloquence of action’, provides an articulate gloss of the term) in Now six years old, awarded the Philip Byron, and kairos (the opportune moment) in Leverhulme prize in the year of its publication, Dickens. This is not to suggest reductive or and with a paperback edition published in 2010, heavy-handed scholarship on Bevis’s part. The Matthew Bevis’s Art of Eloquence will already final two chapters of the book strike a more be familiar to many readers of this review. The suggestive relationship to the strictures of study is organised around four chapters, which rhetoric; his chapter on Tennyson contemplates focus in turn on the work of Byron, Dickens, the rhetorical dimensions of the poet’s use of Tennyson, and Joyce. Each writer is chosen for repetition and rhyme, before exploring Joyce’s their political engagement: the poet-Lords Byron ‘calculated resistance to the classical emphasis and Tennyson, the parliamentary reporter on the three duties of the orator—docere, Dickens (who was invited to stand for movere, delectare’ (213: to inform, to move, and Parliament in 1841—an invitation which he to delight). flatly declined), and the politically invested For Romanticists, the chapter on Byron Joyce, raised by a father who hero-worshipped provides a fascinating evaluation of the poet’s Parnell and harboured parliamentary ambitions oeuvre as offering ‘the most sustained poetic of his own. Bevis focuses his analyses on novels engagement with oratorical culture in the period’ and poems, the necessary limitations of the (32). Bevis covers an impressive range of poetic study being to reformulate accepted binaries of examples, from alliteration and the difficulties speech and writing in genres that are of vocal pronouncement in Childe Harold, to the traditionally read privately, rather than possible (and plausible) legacy of Burkean performed publicly. political performativity in The Corsair, The study’s central aim is ‘to calibrate the concluding with navigations of the double- ways in which writers resisted a ‘divorce’ tongued rhetoric of Don Juan. Bevis stresses the between literature and politics even as they oratorical craftsmanship behind Byron’s epic: attempted to formulate distinctions between ‘Don Juan is not all talk; it is talk transcribed,
60 transfigured, and finessed’ (62), and we are Lisa Plummer Crafton, Transgressive reminded at once of Coleridge’s definition of Theatricality, Romanticism, and Mary poetry as ‘the best words in their best order’ and Wollstonecraft. Farnham: Ashgate, Tristram Shandy’s verdict on ‘writing being but a different word for conversation’. Given Don 2011. Pp. 152. £50. ISBN 987-0-7546- Juan’s ‘conversational facility’ (XV.155), the 6788-9. poet’s ambivalence to parliamentary chit-chat, such as his critique of Lord Castlereagh’s parliamentary gassings, is all the more Lisa Plummer Crafton’s monograph remarkable: Transgressive Theatricality, Romanticism, and Mary Wollstonecraft has a vast scope that will Bid Ireland’s Londonderry’s Marquess most appeal to those interested in exploring the show literary trope of theatricality, or the His parts – of Speech; and, in the political/legalistic culture of the 1790s. strange displays Chapter 1 offers an excellent introduction to Of that odd string of words all in a row, the debates surrounding anti-theatricality in the Which none divine, and every one Romantic period and provides an overview of obeys, current scholarship. Crafton presents the Perhaps you may pick out some queer tendency that Romanticism Studies has to no-meaning – reinforce ‘the traditional idea of a Romantic, Of that weak wordy harvest the sole constructed (Wordsworthian) self that is sincere gleaning. – and spontaneous, and thus, overtly anti- (DJ IX.385-392) theatrical’ (7). However, her references to Judith Butler, Lacan and Irigaray are used to make the point( that grounds the book: ‘In a broad sense, it Yet Byron’s satirical sword is always sharpest is vital to see the interconnectedness of when dissecting things closest to home. As theatricality, politics, and social practices and to Bevis indicates, the poet saw poetry and oratory keep clearly in mind that metaphors of theater as sister arts: ‘“both ancients and moderns, have would be very polyvalent in a Revolutionary declared, that the 2 pursuits are so nearly culture’ (9). similar . . . he who excels in the one, would on The following longer chapter begins this application succeed in the other”’ (31). Byron’s approach by offering a complex reading of declaration sits easily in a study, which at Maria, or The Wrongs of Woman. According to various points indicates that both poetry and Crafton, this novel at once suggests that ‘the oratory are, in essence, arts of making thought cloak of decency’ can be used to endorse eloquent. Bevis’s emphasis on the oratorical national and state power (19), but it also dimensions of the poetical holds particular demonstrates that ‘playing a part does not resonance in the Romantic period—an era which always make one complicit in such hypocritical is conventionally read as staging the transition concealment, but can offer, through a kind of between the aural traditions of poetry, to an functional mimicry, a potent path for exclusively private, silent, visual experience. For independent self-staging’ (19). Crafton is Romanticists, The Art of Eloquence particularly interested to demonstrate the demonstrates that it is time that we began to influence of Rowe’s The Fair Penitent on listen more carefully to what was being read. Wollstonecraft’s feminist message, and she Anna Camilleri gives detailed analyses of both texts. Christ Church, Oxford The concise chapter 3, ‘Becoming a “sign- post”: Ethics and Theater’, situates Wollstonecraft within eighteenth-century debates about the moral utility of theatre; in particular, the chapter highlights society’s
61 exposure and reaction to public executions and Godwin. The second half of the chapter is more the French Revolution. Like the previous focused on how Siddons responded to the chapters, Crafton presents both ‘sides’ of theatricality of her own life and gives relevant Wollstonecraft’s thought, so ‘While anecdotes of the woman’s theatrical experiences. Wollstonecraft critiques hollow forms of The actress is presented as one fully aware of “theater” throughout the text, her chapter “On theatre’s oppressive force, but also recognising Theater” offers an argument for the potential the ‘potentially subversive moments of acting, ethical function of theater and alerts us to read or mimicry, both offstage and on’ (123). It is the text as a whole more carefully’ (48). precisely this dual nature of the theatre that The next chapter offers new insights into sustains Crafton’s interest, especially because of Wollstonecraft’s Maria in light of her ‘firsthand’ its ability to be a powerful literary trope and tool knowledge of the popular divorce and adultery to comment on society. trial transcripts that were generating so much In a book that often pauses to situate itself in public interest. Chapter 5 takes a broader relation to other scholars’ work or modern perspective and focuses on Wollstonecraft’s use theory, the extensive range of views can be of the trope of the theatre/spectacle to make distracting. However, the rich detail will prove political comment; Crafton moves quickly to be very useful for those researching the through a variety of themes including theatrical climate of the 1790s. Wollstonecraft Wollstonecraft’s rebuttal of Burke’s Reflections, emerges as a theatrical writer herself who is her An Historical and Moral View of the French constantly reacting to the culture of spectacle Revolution, her treatment of Marie Antoinette she inhabited; in this way, her multiple and and the French Court, and her theatrical varying ideas are related by Crafton to society’s presentation of the October Days. own complex and conflicting attitudes towards The final chapter is by far the most engaging. theatricality. ‘Reality Self-Invention: Siddons, Wollstonecraft, Sophie Rudland and Theatricality’ explores the friendship University of Warwick between Siddons and Wollstonecraft. The former is described ‘an essential subject’ to any study of Wollstonecraft ‘as a person – a friend, a Ben P. Robertson, Elizabeth Inchbald’s colleague, an ex-friend – and as a cultural Reputation: A Publishing and Reception phenomenon and aesthetic artefact’ (110). History. London: Pickering & Chatto. Crafton notices the ‘unintended satiric reality’ in Pp. 265. £60. ISBN 9781851961597. 1796, when Wollstonecraft was known as Mary Imlay despite acknowledging she was not Elizabeth Inchbald is one of the most important officially married, and then watching Sarah playwrights and novelists in English literature, Siddons performing the role of the penitent but mention her in a conversation with scholars Calista. Significant to Crafton’s argument about working outside of our period and you are often theatricality, is that Wollstonecraft was drafting met with blank stares. Perhaps that is why I her own novel at the same time, which included found so much satisfaction in seeing Ben P. the repressed heroine similarly going to the Robertson demonstrate just how widely known theatre to watch Siddons perform. Such and popular Inchbald was in her own day. ‘Mrs. thoughtful analysis is characteristic of this Inchbald’ was a household name in Britain, and chapter’s more personal account of her reputation soon spread to America and Wollstonecraft’s situation, and Crafton draws Europe, and then to Asia, Africa, and Oceania, out the various similarities and resonances ‘so that she became, even in her own lifetime, a between the two women’s lives and experiences. truly transnational figure’ (7). Elizabeth The sadness Wollstonecraft felt about Siddons’ Inchbald’s Reputation amasses an impressive later rejection is dwelt upon as a means to number of reviews, newspaper articles, library explore the hypocritical nature of a culture that records, and other materials (supplemented by refused Wollstonecraft only when she married evidence from Inchbald’s own diaries, where
62 available) to develop an account of how that enhanced Inchbald’s reputation because it reputation grew and spread, publication by showed the audience how responsive she was to publication. their desires’ (77). Robertson brings this reception history down Chapter three turns to Inchbald’s novels, A to the present day, although he gives more Simple Story and Nature and Art. Robertson attention to earlier reviews and editions than to shows that Inchbald remained a benchmark for more recent ones. Space limitations also compel novelistic talent well into the nineteenth century. him to confine his study to popular rather than Her novels had international renown; they were academic evaluations of Inchbald’s work. The published throughout the English-speaking book is divided into four chapters, each covering world, and appeared in translations in Europe. a different aspect of her professional identity Readers interested in Inchbald’s relationship (actress, playwright, novelist, and critic). The with Catholicism will be intrigued to learn that latter three chapters contain accounts of the the Vatican City library holds an 1835 edition of development, reception, and publication history A Simple Story. of all of Inchbald’s works. Each work is treated The final chapter examines the period of separately, which allows for ease of reference, Inchbald’s career that has received the least but which also means that information attention from modern scholars, yet which may pertaining to multiple works often gets repeated have been the most important for her lasting (such as the publication details of novel series reputation: her work as a literary critic. The containing both of Inchbald’s novels). labour Inchbald put into The British Theatre The first chapter will appeal to scholars series (which came to 125 plays) was interested in eighteenth-century celebrity culture. extraordinary, and the series’ longevity (it was It charts Inchbald’s success in building a career in print as late as 1948) kept Inchbald’s name as a beautiful yet (critics seemed to have agreed alive in theatre history long after her plays had on this point) mediocre actress. Inchbald’s fame ceased to be acted. As Robertson asserts, ‘[n]o came with a price; several of Inchbald’s diary other project of Inchbald’s brought quite the entries mention men following her while she is same level of prestige as did the criticism she out walking, apparent cases of celebrity-stalking. wrote for The British Theatre’ (174). The This chapter also details Robertson’s search for chapter also discusses Inchbald’s involvement Inchbald’s grave and presents his theories about with the supplements to The British Theatre and the meaning of code-like notations that appear in with The Artist periodical. her diaries. While it is a bit of stretch for these Elizabeth Inchbald’s Reputation is primarily materials to be included in a study of authorial an evidentiary account of that reputation. While reputation, Inchbald scholars will appreciate it brings to light much material that will be new Robertson’s detective work. to scholars, it does not advance any major new The second chapter, on Inchbald’s career as a arguments about Inchbald. Nor does it provide playwright, is by far the longest. Discussion of much information about her life outside of her each play is paired with a list of all of its professional roles. Even aspects of her life that performances in London prior to 1800, and a list strongly shape her reputation today, such as her of its identified performances in the United association with the Godwin circle, are States through much of the nineteenth century. mentioned only in passing. For such Robertson paints Inchbald as a writer highly biographical information, readers should turn to attentive to her audience’s tastes, who closely Annibel Jenkins’ biography of Inchbald, I’ll Tell followed published criticism of her work and You What. But Robertson’s book stands as a frequently attended performances of her own valuable supplement to Jenkins’s biography, plays. This engagement is exemplified by extending and, occasionally, correcting that Inchbald’s decision to immediately withdraw earlier work’s portrayal of an extraordinary two of her plays when they performed dismally literary career. on their opening night. Accepting the audience’s Geremy Carnes judgment against these plays ‘seems to have Lindenwood University
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Kathryn R. King, A Political Biography is here researched in impressive depth with King of Eliza Haywood. London: Pickering offering new suggestions for the identities & Chatto, 2012. Pp. 288. £60.00, ISBN behind Haywood’s fictional courtiers – suggestions that, it should be noted, change the 9781851969173. widely accepted explanation behind Pope’s apparent attack on Haywood in The Dunciad as one motivated by a chivalric defence of Martha The publication of Kathryn King’s Political Blount. Biography of Eliza Haywood is a welcome King’s study brings Haywood out of the addition to eighteenth-century scholarship. As shadows – indeed, out of the streets – by King’s preface makes clear, a traditional showing how a writer often bewailed as one biography of Haywood would be a near whose immense talent never brought her enough impossible feat, and one best-avoided if success to lift her out of relative poverty was, for Haywood is to be liberated from the pitfalls of a time, an inhabitant of the fashionable Great biographical supposition that have plagued and Piazza of Covent Garden. King proves this coloured the reception of her writing over the through a newspaper advertisement of 1744 in centuries. Written through a political lens, which ‘the genuine Houshold Goods of Mrs. King’s study simultaneously sifts questions of ELIZA HAYWOOD, Publisher’ were advertised Haywood’s party political agenda alongside the for sale, revealing that Haywood was, for a time gender politics that frequently temper our at least, a woman of considerable property. understanding of her work. Readers of the Indeed, King’s excellent study brings a biography will be surprised by the figure of startlingly new image of Haywood into focus. Haywood that emerges from its pages – one of She ably examines Haywood’s repeated an anti-establishment, feminist patriot writer promotion of Bolingbrokean principles in her who sought to benefit from political writing throughout the greater part of her career, opportunism and who, repeatedly drawn to the and a support for Frederick, Prince of Wales, as figure of the outsider, would by the 1740s the embodiment of a ‘Patriot King capable of emerge as a voice aligned with ‘extreme strands dissolving all distinctions of Party and uniting of popular radical thought’ (123). the people around a monarch-father who would King stresses that the biography offers a rule the country as if it were a patriarchal starting point for a wealth of future study on family’ (9). Simultaneously, King argues, Haywood’s relationship to contemporary politics Haywood’s writings increasingly explore the and the literary marketplace, and in doing so potential role of women within public service. throws down the gauntlet for a new generation The second half of the biography offers an of scholars – a generation, King suggests, who analysis of the politics of Haywood’s may well be more interested in how Haywood’s journalistic endeavours in the 1740s and early writings repeatedly engage with ‘an 50s which she views as Haywood’s most Enlightenment preoccupation with the meaning politically-engaged works. But King is wary of of knowledge’ (198) than in the themes of sex reading into them the Jacobite agenda that other and gender. Positioning herself on the cusp of a critics have made claims for, instead suggesting shift in Haywood studies, King avoids any that we need to consider them within the wider totalising claims or conclusions that would serve context of Haywood’s political agenda: the ‘long as an apparent final word on an understanding of view’ of Haywood’s ‘core values – chief among any aspect of Haywood’s career. This goes a them, constancy, social justice and reason or the long way in explaining the apparent gaps in sceptical intelligence’ (9). King’s analysis – she herself admits the glaring King’s Political Biography is far more than a absence of an analysis of Haywood’s Secret biography of a single woman or, indeed, a History of the […] Court of Caramania (1727), unique writer. It takes to task the politics of a work that surely demands political analysis writing biographies of female writers of the alongside Memoirs of […] Utopia (1725), which period, and as such provides a useful frame for
64 thinking about figures like Aphra Behn and Delarivier Manley who share similarly undocumented lives and have attracted the same vein of speculative, condescending and largely damaging biography. To this end, much of King’s work lies in reassessment and in reading against the grain of the scholarship of previous decades in order to provide insightful new interpretations of texts that are here more firmly considered within their specific historical and political contexts than has often been the case. Gone is the biographical insistence on making a claim for Haywood’s romantic entanglements with Richard Savage and William Hatchett, and the desire to mould Haywood into the mistreated romantic heroine of one of her own amatory novellas. This refreshing, well-researched study brings important new sources to light, questions the veracity of many ideas about Haywood and her career currently in wide-circulation, and seeks to understand Haywood’s writing within a wide-ranging political framework. King’s Political Biography is surely a field-changer, and generously gives to its readers a revitalised interest in the future direction of Haywood studies. Claudine van Hensbergen Northumbria University
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