Pub Date : 2023-06-01DOI: 10.1353/ecs.2023.a900662
Claude Willan
The single-author study enjoys a difficult relationship with literary studies. Since Warton, or Addison, or Dennis, it has been, if not the coin of the realm, at least a gold standard against which that currency is guaranteed. By the same token, the single-author study is redolent of those attitudes toward history and canonicity (both of them ostensibly conservative models) that literary studies have worked so assiduously—and rightly—to displace. The scholar who undertakes a single-author study of a figure from the old canon is on the horns of this dilemma: to justify the study’s focus without invoking politically otiose heuristics.
{"title":"Reading Swift's Poetry by Daniel Cook, and: Alexander Pope in the Making by Joseph Hone (review)","authors":"Claude Willan","doi":"10.1353/ecs.2023.a900662","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ecs.2023.a900662","url":null,"abstract":"The single-author study enjoys a difficult relationship with literary studies. Since Warton, or Addison, or Dennis, it has been, if not the coin of the realm, at least a gold standard against which that currency is guaranteed. By the same token, the single-author study is redolent of those attitudes toward history and canonicity (both of them ostensibly conservative models) that literary studies have worked so assiduously—and rightly—to displace. The scholar who undertakes a single-author study of a figure from the old canon is on the horns of this dilemma: to justify the study’s focus without invoking politically otiose heuristics.","PeriodicalId":45802,"journal":{"name":"EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY STUDIES","volume":"56 1","pages":"619 - 623"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43755210","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-01DOI: 10.1353/ecs.2023.a900664
E. Min
{"title":"The Perils of Interpreting: The Extraordinary Lives of Two Translators between Qing China and the British Empire by Henrietta Harrison (review)","authors":"E. Min","doi":"10.1353/ecs.2023.a900664","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ecs.2023.a900664","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45802,"journal":{"name":"EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY STUDIES","volume":"56 1","pages":"629 - 631"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46639018","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-01DOI: 10.1353/ecs.2023.a900668
Keenan Burton
formally enslaved people offer insights into how high the stakes were in the debate about the role of fiction. Koenigs offers delightfully close readings apace and is as animated about lesser known texts as he is about much discussed works like Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), and he folds these more obscure works into his argument without the smug tone of having “recovered” or, worse, “discovered” a forgotten work.
{"title":"Staging Civilization: A Transnational History of French Theater in Eighteenth-Century Europe by Rahul Markovits (review)","authors":"Keenan Burton","doi":"10.1353/ecs.2023.a900668","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ecs.2023.a900668","url":null,"abstract":"formally enslaved people offer insights into how high the stakes were in the debate about the role of fiction. Koenigs offers delightfully close readings apace and is as animated about lesser known texts as he is about much discussed works like Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), and he folds these more obscure works into his argument without the smug tone of having “recovered” or, worse, “discovered” a forgotten work.","PeriodicalId":45802,"journal":{"name":"EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY STUDIES","volume":"56 1","pages":"638 - 640"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48975904","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-01DOI: 10.1353/ecs.2023.a900659
Kay Chronister
Abstract:In this paper, I argue that Horace Walpole's use of historical allusions in The Castle of Otranto undermines the Whig political ideology which this seemingly straightforward narrative of usurpation and vengeance has often been seen to support. Many of the allusions in the novel center on figures who occupied an ambivalent position in the Whig historiography of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, appearing in some contexts as Gothic crusaders for freedom and in others as tyrants or usurpers. What's more, Walpole layers these allusions in the text of the novel so that a palimpsest of competing interpretative possibilities—rather than a clear sequential narrative of triumph over tyranny—emerges from The Castle of Otranto.
{"title":"The Castle of Otranto and the Whig Fantasy of History","authors":"Kay Chronister","doi":"10.1353/ecs.2023.a900659","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ecs.2023.a900659","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In this paper, I argue that Horace Walpole's use of historical allusions in The Castle of Otranto undermines the Whig political ideology which this seemingly straightforward narrative of usurpation and vengeance has often been seen to support. Many of the allusions in the novel center on figures who occupied an ambivalent position in the Whig historiography of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, appearing in some contexts as Gothic crusaders for freedom and in others as tyrants or usurpers. What's more, Walpole layers these allusions in the text of the novel so that a palimpsest of competing interpretative possibilities—rather than a clear sequential narrative of triumph over tyranny—emerges from The Castle of Otranto.","PeriodicalId":45802,"journal":{"name":"EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY STUDIES","volume":"56 1","pages":"567 - 582"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46042168","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-01DOI: 10.1353/ecs.2023.a900676
Antonio T. Bly
{"title":"Wives Not Slaves: Patriarchy and Modernity in the Age of Revolutions by Kirsten Sword (review)","authors":"Antonio T. Bly","doi":"10.1353/ecs.2023.a900676","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ecs.2023.a900676","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45802,"journal":{"name":"EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY STUDIES","volume":"56 1","pages":"656 - 658"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42870504","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-01DOI: 10.1353/ecs.2023.a900674
Nora Nachumi
Speculative Enterprise is an exceptionally well written book that narrates complex financial events accessibly, drawing from an impressive range of sources, both in theatrical studies and in economic history. Like Katherine Binhammer’s recent book Downward Mobility: The Form of Capital and the Sentimental Novel (2020), Burkert’s shows that narrative representations of finance urged audiences not to be passively victimized by an increasingly rapacious financial culture that extracted value from attention, desire, and moral sentiment. Burkert’s exploration of eighteenth-century British financial and theatrical history is a tremendously useful contribution to economic humanities that offers a glimpse into the origins of financial manipulations of the modern entertainment industry.
{"title":"Carrying All Before Her: Celebrity Pregnancy and the London Stage, 1689–1800 by Chelsea Phillips (review)","authors":"Nora Nachumi","doi":"10.1353/ecs.2023.a900674","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ecs.2023.a900674","url":null,"abstract":"Speculative Enterprise is an exceptionally well written book that narrates complex financial events accessibly, drawing from an impressive range of sources, both in theatrical studies and in economic history. Like Katherine Binhammer’s recent book Downward Mobility: The Form of Capital and the Sentimental Novel (2020), Burkert’s shows that narrative representations of finance urged audiences not to be passively victimized by an increasingly rapacious financial culture that extracted value from attention, desire, and moral sentiment. Burkert’s exploration of eighteenth-century British financial and theatrical history is a tremendously useful contribution to economic humanities that offers a glimpse into the origins of financial manipulations of the modern entertainment industry.","PeriodicalId":45802,"journal":{"name":"EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY STUDIES","volume":"56 1","pages":"651 - 653"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43751383","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-01DOI: 10.1353/ecs.2023.a900661
H. Havens
Abstract:The correspondence between Edward Young and Samuel Richardson reveals not only their reciprocal friendship, but also their complex network of authorship. Beginning with Young's Night-Thoughts (1742–46) and Richardson's Clarissa (1747–48), Richardson took an increasingly active role in Young's compositions, culminating in Conjectures on Original Composition (1759), while Young had a diminished effect on Richardson's writings. By viewing their work as part of a larger trajectory of literary influence, we can trace Richardson's significant impact on Conjectures on Original Composition and rightly consider him as that text's co-author, though he is framed instead as the work's recipient.
{"title":"Samuel Richardson and Edward Young's Authorship Network","authors":"H. Havens","doi":"10.1353/ecs.2023.a900661","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ecs.2023.a900661","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The correspondence between Edward Young and Samuel Richardson reveals not only their reciprocal friendship, but also their complex network of authorship. Beginning with Young's Night-Thoughts (1742–46) and Richardson's Clarissa (1747–48), Richardson took an increasingly active role in Young's compositions, culminating in Conjectures on Original Composition (1759), while Young had a diminished effect on Richardson's writings. By viewing their work as part of a larger trajectory of literary influence, we can trace Richardson's significant impact on Conjectures on Original Composition and rightly consider him as that text's co-author, though he is framed instead as the work's recipient.","PeriodicalId":45802,"journal":{"name":"EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY STUDIES","volume":"56 1","pages":"601 - 618"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43262418","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The political threat represented by the quixotic reader figure by the end of the eighteenth century, according to Dale, involves “enthusiastic, materialist misreading” (this is indeed where it seems that more attention to Austen might have complicated the conclusion [120]). Dale herself is a materialist reader, and in that sense a quixotic one, as she seems implicitly to acknowledge in her conclusion, albeit in a new sense. That new sense Dale has created in this book is a novel kind of quixotic reading that is learned and rational rather than enthusiastic, and which produces incisive and helpful readings rather than dangerous misreadings. In summing up the narrative arc the book has traced, she writes: “We can find no straight, progressive A-to-B line from literal to metaphorical impressions, from Allestree’s reader to Austen’s. We have been thrown instead, down some nonlinear route, dragged up and tugged along by philosophical, religious, and geopolitical tectonics . . . that is how we now do quixotic reading” (153). To paraphrase, we do quixotic reading precisely by standing in the slop, or rather being dragged through it, willy-nilly, by scholars like Dale.
{"title":"Art, Science, and the Body in Early Romanticism by Stephanie O'Rourke (review)","authors":"R. Marks","doi":"10.1353/ecs.2023.0045","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ecs.2023.0045","url":null,"abstract":"The political threat represented by the quixotic reader figure by the end of the eighteenth century, according to Dale, involves “enthusiastic, materialist misreading” (this is indeed where it seems that more attention to Austen might have complicated the conclusion [120]). Dale herself is a materialist reader, and in that sense a quixotic one, as she seems implicitly to acknowledge in her conclusion, albeit in a new sense. That new sense Dale has created in this book is a novel kind of quixotic reading that is learned and rational rather than enthusiastic, and which produces incisive and helpful readings rather than dangerous misreadings. In summing up the narrative arc the book has traced, she writes: “We can find no straight, progressive A-to-B line from literal to metaphorical impressions, from Allestree’s reader to Austen’s. We have been thrown instead, down some nonlinear route, dragged up and tugged along by philosophical, religious, and geopolitical tectonics . . . that is how we now do quixotic reading” (153). To paraphrase, we do quixotic reading precisely by standing in the slop, or rather being dragged through it, willy-nilly, by scholars like Dale.","PeriodicalId":45802,"journal":{"name":"EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY STUDIES","volume":"56 1","pages":"505 - 508"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46264995","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Melissa Mowry’s Collective Understanding, Radicalism, and Literary History follows the traces of a non-elite communal practice of hermeneutics and a collectivist politics in seventeenthand eighteenth-century English literary history. The book has five chapters, the first of which functions as an introduction, as well as a short but provocative coda. Throughout, Mowry looks to the Levellers as the positive articulation of a collective hermeneutics that she claims has been buried by the standard narrative of the rise of liberal individualism, and she argues that the political and literary history of the period she examines should be reconceived as a consistent attempt to eradicate this collectivism in favor of a conservative individualism. This is in stark contrast to the conventional narrative of early eighteenthcentury political and literary history which argues that an individualist ideology produced a new liberal and anti-absolutist politics. For Mowry, by contrast, the theater of the Restoration and early novels by Defoe worked tirelessly to disavow the possibility of collectivist thought and politics. This refraction of the traditional narrative throws up some surprising and enlightening results. The Tory Aphra Behn and the dissenting Whig Daniel Defoe, for instance, are, in Mowry’s account, engaged in the same political project of anti-collectivism rather than existing on opposite sides of a partisan political spectrum. This new lens thus reorients our vision of this period and stands as a profound challenge to conventional ways of understanding the relation of Restoration and early eighteenth-century literature to political ideology.
{"title":"Collective Understanding, Radicalism, and Literary History, 1645–1742 by Melissa Mowry (review)","authors":"Peter Degabriele","doi":"10.1353/ecs.2023.0041","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ecs.2023.0041","url":null,"abstract":"Melissa Mowry’s Collective Understanding, Radicalism, and Literary History follows the traces of a non-elite communal practice of hermeneutics and a collectivist politics in seventeenthand eighteenth-century English literary history. The book has five chapters, the first of which functions as an introduction, as well as a short but provocative coda. Throughout, Mowry looks to the Levellers as the positive articulation of a collective hermeneutics that she claims has been buried by the standard narrative of the rise of liberal individualism, and she argues that the political and literary history of the period she examines should be reconceived as a consistent attempt to eradicate this collectivism in favor of a conservative individualism. This is in stark contrast to the conventional narrative of early eighteenthcentury political and literary history which argues that an individualist ideology produced a new liberal and anti-absolutist politics. For Mowry, by contrast, the theater of the Restoration and early novels by Defoe worked tirelessly to disavow the possibility of collectivist thought and politics. This refraction of the traditional narrative throws up some surprising and enlightening results. The Tory Aphra Behn and the dissenting Whig Daniel Defoe, for instance, are, in Mowry’s account, engaged in the same political project of anti-collectivism rather than existing on opposite sides of a partisan political spectrum. This new lens thus reorients our vision of this period and stands as a profound challenge to conventional ways of understanding the relation of Restoration and early eighteenth-century literature to political ideology.","PeriodicalId":45802,"journal":{"name":"EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY STUDIES","volume":"56 1","pages":"484 - 486"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49662457","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}