NOTE TO USERS The original manuscript received by UMI contains broken, slanted and or light print. All efforts were made to acquire the highest quality manuscript from the author or school. Microfilmed as received. This reproduction is the best copy available From Empiricism to Bohemia: The ldea of the Sketch fiom Sterne to Thackeray Paul G. Beidler A thesis subrnitted in confomity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of English University of Toronto O Copyright by Paul G. Beidler ( 1997) National Library Bibliothéque nationale du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographie Services services bibliographiques 395 Wellington Street 395. nie Wellington OttawaON K1AON4 Ottawa ON KIA ON4 Canada Canada The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive licence allowing the exclusive permettant à la National Library of Canada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distribute or seil reproduire, prêter, distribuer ou copies of this thesis in microform, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous paper or electronic formats. la forme de rnicrofiche/film, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique. The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts fiom it Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels may be printed or othewise de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. From Empiricism to Bohemia: The Idea of the Sketch from Steme to Thackeray Ph-D- 1997 Paul G. Beidler English Department University of Toronto Abstract The first three chapters situate the origin of the literary sketch in the age of Steme. analyze its afinities with British empirical philosophy (that of Hume in particular), and trace the further development of the fictional and uavel sketch in the nineteenth century as a fom that remains predominantly empirical (that is. nominalist. inductive. and skeptical) but is now. after Kant and romanticism, nostaigic as well. The fourth chapter is a reading of the idea of the sketch in Thackeray's The Irish Sketch Book, Vanity Fair, and The Newcomes. In particular I explicate the early subtitle of va ni^ Fair, "Pen and Pencil Sketches of English Society." which few cntics have discussed and in my reading of The Newcomes establish the sketch as the medium of literary Bohernia. Acknowledgrnents 1 am grateful ro Professor Peter Allen for his kindness. encouragement. and ngour. to Professor David Shaw for his prompt and thorough criticism of cirafts of several chapters. and to my wi fe Aphrodite for her patience. I also gratefully acknowledge the support of four successive University of Toronto Open Feilowships. Table of Contents Introduction. The Aesthetics of Logic: Patterns of Inference and the Literary Sketch 1. opposing attitudes toward the idea of the sketch 2. induction and deduction, sketching and painting 3. encyclopedic and synthetic modes 4. rpisternological paradigrns and fiction 5. sketches and paintings in Thackeray's novels Chapter 1. Origin of an Idea: The Painting/Sketch Binary I . eighteenth-century literary sketches 2. Tristram Shandv and the overdetermined 3. the non-tïnito and the incoherence of painting Table 1. Table 1 : Eighteenth-Century Literary Sketch Books Chapter 2. The Method and Form of the Literary Sketch 1. nominalism 2. induction 3. skepticism and the sketch Chapter 3. Cyclops Sketchers: The Sentimental Travel Sketch 1. the nineteenth-century empincai literary sketch 2. Sterne and the nineteenth-century sketch 3. aesthetics and the sketch: the sublime 4. the overdetermined picturesque 5. formal overdetemiination in the nineteenth century literary sketch 6. inductive nostalgia Chapter 4. Thackeray's -'familiar strokes and faint designations" 1. Thackeray and Sterne. 2. Thackeray's Irish Sketch Book ( 1843) 3. skepticisrn in Vanitv Fair 4. Vanitv Fair as literary sketch book 5 reading va ni^ Fair 6. The Nswcomes: from empiricism to bohemia 7. irony and the ethics of aesthetics Conclusion Ct'orks Cited and Consulted Introduction. The Aesthetics of Logic: Patterns of Inference and the Literary Sketch If you will not look at what you see, if you try to put on brighter or duller colours than are there, if you try to put them on with a dash or a blot, or to cover your paper with -'vigorous" lines, or to produce anything, in fact. but the plain, unafTected, and finished tranquillity of the thing before you. you need not hope to get on. Nature will show you nothing if you set yourself up as her master. But forget vourself, and try to obcy her. and you will find obedience easier and happier than you think. (Ruskin. Elements of Drawinq 47) 1 began the research for this dissertation to answer a few basic questions about Thackeray's novrls. What is the significance of the early subtitle of Thackeray's Vanih- Fair 1 1 547-48 ) as it appeared in serial parts. "Pen and Pencil Sketches of English Society"? What is the significance of the fàct that Clive Newcome's -'drawing \vas bzner than hs painting . : his designs and sketches were far supenor to his finished compositions" (939). and how are these facts related? What is it about the sketch that the Victorians could have seen as valuable or heroic? -7 Critics have devalued Thackeray's subtitle, just as they have denigrated and even suppressed his illustrations (Harvey; Williamson). Kathleen Tillotson writes that the subtitle --well describes the main mass of his earlier writing, but is ludicrously inadequate to the novel" (214). Robert A. Colby sees it as a Wace of the -writer for the magazines"' (628) and says that "Thackeray's publishers Bradbury and Evans wanted to align the new novel with the travel books. suggesting that he was now applying his well-known gifis as an observer of foreign lands to his own land (633). Catherine Peters writes that the subtitle "suggests Thackeray's earlier style. and the kind of satirical approach that was channeled into The Snobs of England" ( 1434). That the subritle would have reminded Victorian readers of Thackeray's earlier travel books. and of a certain class of travel writing in general. is crnainly truc. But the implication of ail these suggestions is that the sketch mrtaphor has Iittlé to do with Thackeray's novel as a work of literary art: as the following chapters will demonstrate. this is not the case. We have neglected the sketch. tending to agree with Fred Lewis Pattee that "a sketch book is a random receptacle for first impressions. materials collected for a work and not the 3 work itselî" (6). One reason for this is that the aesthetic paradigrnt exemplified by many of the great works of the period, the deductive paradigm. was necessarily hostile ro the inductive aesthetic of the sketch. in this introduction 1 outline an aesthetic and epistemological theory of the literary sketch and argue that our unwillingness to corne to terms with the idea of the sketch is a consequence of the victory of one paradigm over another. The question of whether and how we generate and justi@ new knowledge. as old as Plato's Meno paradox.' parallels that of whether and how we perceive and represent reality in visual and verbal artistic works. Since neither question has ever been answered in a way that satisfies al1 thosr concrmed with it. the two have tended to influence each other. As 1 demonstrate in Chapter 1 Thomas Kuhn dstlnes "paradigms" as "coherent traditions of scientific research" ( IO). Paradigms. Kuhn writes. -may be pnor to. more binding. and more complete than any set of rulss for research that could be unequivocally abstracted from them" (46). ' The Meno paradox is as follows: bl: How will you look for it, Socrates, when you do not know at al1 what it is? How will you aim to search for something you do not know at all? If pushould meet with it. how wiIl you know that this is the thing that you did not know? (Plat0 69. 80d) On induction and the Meno paradox. see BIachowicz 44 1 -44. 2. the literary sketch is one of the many by-products of this influence. Arriving at an understanding of the two rival paradigms will allow us to understand a mode of writing, literary sketching, with pater precision than has yet been a~~ained.~The purpose of this dissertation is to provide a history of the sketch metaphor from about 1750 to 1850 and to theorize it so as to explain its importance to the fiction of the period. particularly that of Sterne and Thackeray. 1. opposing attitudes toward the idea of the sketch Pnde and Preiudice ( 18 13) represents an arsrhetic paradigm unfriendly to the idea of the sketch. In the following exchange Darcy and Bingley are discussing the latter's style of letter witing. which Darcy condemns for exactly the qualities for which the sketch is often celebratrd: rapidity. carelessness, and humility : --Nothhgis more deceithl." said Darcy. "than the appearance of humilie. It is ohen only carelessness of opinion. and sometimes an indirect boast." ---- - - -- -- ' See Gerson and Mezei. Post-Lauria 50-5 1. Pauly. Wegner. and especially Sha. Sha discusses the sketch's "resistance to genenc essence" ( 122). ".4nd which of the two do you cal1 a linle recent piece of modesty?" "The indirect boast;--for you are really proud of your defects in wnting, because you consider them as proceeding from a rapidity of thought and carelessness of execution. which if not estimable, you think at least highly interesting. The power of doing anything with quickness is always much prized by the possessor.