Associationism and Style in the Nineteenth-Century British Novel Deborah Aschkenes Submitted in Partial Fu
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In the Mind’s Eye: Associationism and Style in the Nineteenth-Century British Novel Deborah Aschkenes Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2015 © 2015 Deborah Aschkenes All rights reserved. ABSTRACT In the Mind’s Eye: Associationism and Style in the Nineteenth-Century British Novel Deborah Aschkenes In the Mind’s Eye: Associationism and Style in the Nineteenth-Century British Novel argues that the British novel, in its syntactic, grammatical, and rhetorical strategies, incorporated associationist premises about reading comprehension. Associationism, as a term, encapsulates a series of theories during the period that attempted to explain the ways in which external stimuli were “represented” in the mind and linked with other ideas. Inquiries into the association of ideas spanned numerous fields but shared a core belief: everything an individual touched, saw, smelled, or read, was translated into a secondary representation in the mind. Since all objects— whether a phrase, a misty moor, or a character’s face—were thought to be experienced through mental “miniatures,” the association of ideas was the mechanism of the reading experience and of phenomenal experience. Associationist theories delineated how words evoked images, and the ways in which these images became linked to form holistic ideas in the course of a sentence, a paragraph, and throughout a work of fiction. In this project, I show how four canonical nineteenth-century authors—Jane Austen, Walter Scott, Charles Dickens, and George Eliot—created prose styles intended to evoke, enhance, or even resist the spontaneous associative mechanisms considered essential to the comprehension of language. In order to trace the contours of an associative stylistics during the period, I pair each author with associationist theories contemporary with their fiction. In Chapter One, I demonstrate how Jane Austen’s techniques in Persuasion, Northanger Abbey, and Sense and Sensibility incorporated the tenets of the dominant model of associationism in Austen’s day: those of David Hartley. Austen’s mode of representation is highly metonymic, capitalizing on of principles of language comprehension proposed in Hartley’s work. The great degree of stylistic control so often attributed to Austen’s prose is inextricably rooted with the Hartleyan paradigm: a strategy of representation to depict a social world and its objects according to an associationist epistemology. In Chapter Two, I read Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley with the theories of his teacher Dugald Stewart. Walter Scott studied with Dugald Stewart at the University of Edinburgh and in Stewart’s Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, Stewart develops literary-aesthetic guidelines based on the mental models posited in his work. Stewart recommends that a writer delineate in the form of an “outline,” a “minimum” required for the reader to comprehend a represented object. Stewart’s theories about language cognition and literary technique, I argue, provide guidelines for Scott’s development of his own style of literary outline. In Chapter Three, I unfold how Charles Dickens’s style in David Copperfield draws on the associative principles in Lindley Murray’s English Grammar. In Murray’s Grammar, the sentence is a unit of cognition: a precise capsule in which our thoughts are both formed and transmitted. Grammar is an external representation of links between thoughts: the association of ideas in its most tangible form. In Chapter Four, I show that George Eliot integrates a number of discourses about the human mind into her style, with the goal of developing a technique to manage the spontaneous actions of mental associations. The work of James Mill, John Stuart Mill, and Alexander Bain influenced Eliot’s view of associationist psychology, and Eliot, in turn, develops her own associative theories of language in her essays and journals. Eliot’s associative model of reading incorporates principles of chemistry. Elaboration, a term important to both literary and scientific discourse, provided Eliot with a syntactic style closely aligned with the structure of associative links. More importantly, elaboration afforded Eliot a strategy of cognitive delay; a stylistics intended to subvert the spontaneous action of the mind. By providing “raw materials” for the reader in the form of concrete nouns, and elaborating with a series of extended prepositional phrases, Eliot demands that the reader slow down the automatic action of association and redraw the mental picture. TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments ii Dedication iv Introduction 1 1. The Style of the Sensorium: Association and Representation in the Novels of Jane Austen 13 2. The Outlines of History: Sir Walter Scott and Dugald Stewart 59 3. Copperfield’s Cognitive Grammar: Charles Dickens and Lindley Murray 99 4. The Chemistry of Associationism: George Eliot Elaborates 136 Bibliography 169 i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First, I must extend my heartfelt gratitude to my committee: Nicholas Dames, James Eli Adams, and Joanna Stalnaker, whose equal measures of intelligence and kindness helped this project come to fruition. Thank you for understanding what I was trying to do even before it was done. My adviser, Nicholas Dames, taught me that unflinching kindness was a viable pedagogical strategy, even during long hours and difficult days. Jim Adams was a model in his unremitting generosity and seemingly unending energy for close, attentive reading. Joanna Stalnaker’s immeasurably helpful suggestions rejuvenated my thinking on numerous chapters. I am indebted to the generosity of my readers Maureen McLane and Eileen Gillooly. Eileen, I must also thank you for sharing along the way your love for the field and the people in it. I can’t express how much more pleasant this process was made by the presence of my warm and wonderful cohort: especially AM, AS, EH, GB, JH, JT, TD, SM, and your partners. You were (and still are) ready to trade ideas as enthusiastically at the end of this process as you were at all of our humble beginnings. Most importantly, I must thank my family: Anna, Elayne, Jeff, Joe, and Stephen. You were a tireless source of support, my ever-joyous cheerleaders, and fonts of perseverance. I couldn't have done it without you. And lastly, I thank my students, who remind me every day why I do this work. ii DEDICATION To my parents iii INTRODUCTION In 1859, George Henry Lewes published a review of Jane Austen’s work that challenged his predecessors’ readings of the author based on his knowledge of Victorian psychology. Rather than acknowledging the “truth of description” produced by “a precision that delights the reader,” as Sir Walter Scott famously noted, Lewes claimed that when speaking of Austen’s work, “the very word ‘describing’ is altogether misplaced and misleading. She seldom describes anything.”1 “Although every reader must necessarily conjure up to himself a vivid image of people whose characters are so vividly presented,” Lewes contends, “each reader has to do this for himself.”2 Lewes’s criticism derives from his understanding of the reading process. Austen’s language, which relied on abstract terms such as “wonderfully handsome,”3 allowed the reader’s mind to “conjure” a mental picture primarily of his or her own design. This strategy, Lewes believed, was “a defect and a mistake.” In Lewes’s view, the great imaginative leeway afforded by terms like “handsome” or “elegant” led to vagueness and imprecision.4 Yet, Lewes admits that the conceptual freedom that Austen’s technique offered also resulted in the highest achievement in art: “the truest representation effected by the least 1 Sir Walter Scott, from an unsigned review of Emma. Quarterly Review, October 1815, No. 14, (issued March 1816) and George Henry Lewes, “The Novels of Jane Austen” Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, July 1859 lxxxvi, both in Jane Austen: The Critical Heritage, Ed. B.C. Southam (London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1995) 67 and 158, respectively. 2 Lewes “The Novels.” 158 3 Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, The Complete Novels of Jane Austen (New York: Modern Library, 1940) 234. These words comprise the first description of Mr. Bingley. 4 Lewes 158 1 expenditure of means.”5 Austen’s “economy of art,” as he called it, produced vivid details in the reader’s mind with very little detail on the page.6 Lewes, in fact, defines Austen’s merits and her flaws by the same measure: the amount of imaginative agency given to the reader to produce the grounds at Pemberley, the seaside at Lyme, and Elizabeth Bennet’s famously fine eyes. Lewes’s review points toward one of the essential questions in British fiction of the period: what is the relationship between detail on the page and realistic representation in the mind? The principles of associationism, which dominated theories of cognition in nineteenth- century Britain, stated that textual detail and mental detail did not exist in a one-to-one ratio. An individual word could spark denotative and connotative content based on previous ideas with which it had been associated. Like many writers of nineteenth-century Britain, Lewes considered the associative models of mental life to be a measure for aesthetic judgments. In this project, I show how four canonical nineteenth-century authors, Jane Austen, Walter Scott, Charles Dickens, and George Eliot created prose styles that capitalized upon—and sometimes subverted—the associative mechanisms thought to be essential in the comprehension of language. The effects that literary style were thought to have on the reading experience were rooted in materialist paradigms of cognition and memory at the core of nineteenth-century British psychology. Inquiries into the nature of associationism spanned numerous fields but shared a 5 Lewes argues: “if the art of the novelist be the representation of human life by means of a story; and if the truest representation, effected by the least expenditure of means, constitutes the highest claim of art, then we say that Miss Austen has carried the art to a point of excellence surpassing that reached by any of her rivals.” “The Novels” 166.