INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in ^ ew riter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back of the book. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6” x 9” black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. UMI A Bell & Howell Information Company 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor MI 48106-1346 USA 313/761-4700 800/521-0600 UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA GRADUATE COLLEGE A GENEALOGY OF ECCENTRICITY A Dissertation SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy By Brian Cowlishaw Norman, Oklahoma 1998 UMI Number: 9828795 UMI Microform 9828795 Copyright 1998, by UMI Company. Ail rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 © Copyright by Brian Cowlishaw 1998 All rights reserved. A GENEALOGY OF ECCENTRICITY A Dissertation APPROVED FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH BY IV Acknowledgments I would like to thank all the members of my committee for their help, attention, and excellent ad\ice. I especially wish to thank Professor Richard Barney for his key early guidance and his painstaking critiques throughout this project. And most of all I am grateful to my committee chair, David Gross, for his invaluable personal and professional influence and example. He has given me something to aim for. Thanks, too, to Bridget, who listened enthusiastically to my ideas, and whose encouragement and support made the project much more possible. And thanks to Fred, for once again getting me through the most difficult days. No one could ask more. Table of Contents Chapter 1 Introduction: A Genealogy of Eccentricity 1 Chapter 2 The Eccentric's Quixotic Origins 22 Chapter 3 Eccentricity as Disease and Cure 82 Chapter 4 The Romantic Era: Science Marches O n- 164 Over the Eccentric Chapter 5 "A lone lorn creetur": Dickens, Darwin, 239 and the Eccentric's Demise 1 Chapter 1 Introduction: A Genealogy of Eccentricity The following pages comprise a study of the eccentric—of his invention as a relatively coherent, recognizable figure in early-eighteenth-century England; of his purported characteristics (above all, male sex, monomania, benevolence, sexual haplessness, and sentimentality, with different emphases at different times); of his changes between 1700 and 1900, by which time he had taken essentially the same form we still understand him to take; and of the social and discursive purposes he has served. This study of the eccentric is the first, to my knowledge. By this statement I mean two things. First, that to this day, very few books focus directly upon the subject of eccentricity and/or eccentrics. Only a handful of books are devoted entirely to the subject, and they are not really studies in the rigorous sense (see below). Most broach the subject only giancingly. They refer (after 1800) to particular fictional characters as "eccentric," for example, but take that concept as granted and timeless, requiring no discussion or analysis. This makes discursive sense, in that the word "eccentric" was not used as a noun signifying what we now usually assume it to signify—"A person whose conduct is irregular, odd, or whimsical"—until the nineteenth century. The Oxford English Dictionary lists the first such use as Sir Walter Scott's, in St. Ronan's Well, 1832: "Men of every country playing the eccentric." The first application of the adjective "eccentric" to human beings, meaning "irregular, odd, or whimsical," occurred about twenty years before this. This sense of the wordt did not appear earlier because the concept was still forming. Only after rules for eccentrics had been firmly codified, only 1 The English word "eccentric" actually goes back to 1398; but until the nineteenth century, it was generally used in an astronomic or geometric sense. "Eccentric" described the path of orbits or the shape of ellipses that imperfectly followed the circular form. after "the eccentric" had acquired a widely recognized shape and personality, only after a fairly coherent discourse of eccentricity had been formed, could he be signified by the nominative "eccentric." Only after the figure gained discursive recognizability could he be studied and written about; therefore, until the nineteenth century, he really wasn't. And even since then, the eccentric having been codified and the discourse which accomplished this having been naturalized,^ it has seemed pointless to analyze or discuss the figure. Not only has he appeared inherently laughable, and unworthy of serious consideration on that ground, but also naturally occurring and timeless. To study such a figure would be like "studying" the fact of the sun's coming up in the east: once the self-evident fact is observed, what's to study? And so there is no significant body of literature which directly addresses the subject. Therefore, to study the eccentric I have largely had to do so indirectly. By examining medical, legal, and scientific texts, popular novels, biographies, and periodicals published between 1700 and 1900, I have pieced together an account of the process by which the concept of eccentricity was invented, developed, and solidified. Throughout my research, the idea that a culture's boundaries are embodied in its texts has guided which texts I've chosen to study and cite. Stephen Greenblatt observes that "texts are not merely cultural by virtue of reference to the world beyond themselves; they are cultural by virtue of social values and contexts that they have themselves successfully absorbed" (227). Thus one can understand a culture, and the rules and boundaries abroad in that culture, by reading its literature (in the broadest sense of "literature"—writings of all kinds). This is especially true of writing that explicitly concerns itself with setting, enforcing, and/ or altering 2 See Chapter 4 for a discussion of this process. its cultural boundaries, "the kinds of literature that are explicitly engaged in attack and celebration: satire and panegyric" (226). For any culture draws its limits both positively and negatively, through both dos and don'ts, by both constraint and mobility. ... The ensemble of beliefe and practices that forms a given culture function as a pervasive technology of control, a set of limits within which social behavior must be contained, a repertoire of models to which individuals must conform. [A] culture's boundaries are enforced more positively as well: through the system of rewards that range again from the spectacular (grand public honors, glittering prizes) to the apparently modest (a gaze of admiration, a respectful nod, a few words of gratitude). (225-26; emphasis in original) For this reason, most of my "literary" examples (as distinct from the "scientific" examples such as Dr. Battle's treatise on madness, or legal examples such as John Brydall's explanation of madfolks' legal rights) are, at least in significant part, works of satire and panegyric: for example. The Spectator, Launcelot Greaves, Boswell's Life of Johnson, and the novels of Charles Dickens and George Cissing. At first I chose such works instinctively, since satiric and panegyric works seemed most relevant to the elusive subject of eccentricity; then later, recognizing this pattern, I did so consciously, purposely. My second point in claiming this book as the first study of eccentricity is that it is the first real study of eccentricity. That is, "studies" of the eccentric—particularly after the turn of the nineteenth century, after the eccentric had a name—tend in actuality to be literary freak shows, galleries,3 3 There is, in fact, a 1943 British book titled An Eccentric Gallery. collections of oddities. They don't study eccentrics so much as exhibit them : "Look at this nut! Now get a load of the one over here!" Their tone is uniformly one of "amused tolerance," to borrow Michel Foucault's phrase from Madness and Civilization. Eccentric galleries directly or indirectly elicit tolerance, even applause, for their subjects' personal quirks—but always with the unmistakable stronger message that these quirks are silly, comical, and misguided, and that they render their possessors ridiculous, laughable, and harmless. This has been true of eccentric galleries since the early nineteenth century, from the four wacky volumes of The Eccentric Mirror, first published in 1807 and running through several immensely