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• W2337190367 abstract "Previous articleNext article FreeBook ReviewPaul Trolander and Zeynep Tenger, Sociable Criticism in England, 1625–1725 Sociable Criticism in England, 1625–1725. Paul Trolander and Zeynep Tenger . Cranbury, NJ: University of Delaware Press, 2007. Pp. 233.Margaret J. M. EzellMargaret J. M. EzellTexas A&M University Search for more articles by this author Texas A&M UniversityPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreTrolander and Tenger's Sociable Criticism in England, 1625–1725 is an important and welcome contribution to the recent trend in literary history to reconsider the social and cultural contexts of writing and authorship in the early modern period. Specifically, it is concerned with shifting the paradigm of the history of literary criticism away from a professional and thus print-centered model or the neoclassical model to investigate what they refer to as the default mode of critical practice in seventeenth-century England, “sociable criticism.” In doing so, they are challenging not only our understanding of who “invented” English criticism (Dryden had appeared to be winning that race) but also our understanding of how relationships between authors, readers, and critics evolved under the new regime of print.Seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century criticism has been linked with the development of censorship and rise of the modern hegemonic state and thus has been understood as being a legislative act to control literary production. In contrast, Trolander and Tenger argue that in its initial phases in England, the dominant mode of critical discourse, even in print, was the persona of the friend, seeking to praise and amend and invoking a personal or small social group connection, and that critics—such as Thomas Rymer, Jeremy Collier, and John Dennis—who did not adopt this stance provoked negative responses in their audience. Furthermore, they suggest this practice of sociable criticism was an important means of mediating between manuscript and print cultures at the turn of the century.This emphasis on “sociability” is tied by them to the recent studies by Naomi Tadmor, Anna Bryson, Lawrence Klein, and Susan Whyman on codes of conduct, friendship, and courtesy and how they shaped expectations concerning public exchange and interactions. “The circulation of critical evaluation…was one of the rituals of day-to-day life,” they argue, and as such participated in these larger social discourses governing rules of conversation, obligation, appraisal, and exchange (19). The challenge for later critics such as Addison was to unite the older protocols of personal, communal emendation with the shift toward the impartial, impersonal solitary critic who could justly evaluate literary works and assist in the process of shaping public tastes.Their primary materials range from the manuscript volume of Lady Anne Southwell, prepared by her husband for print, to the exchanges of the coterie of Katherine Philips, the “singular stance” (64) of Margaret Cavendish's assumption of all the roles—author, reader, friendly critic, judge—in her printed prefatory materials, through satires that function as critical discourse and as a means of establishing a body of impartial, impersonal professional criticism in print that culminates in the critical success of The Spectator. Throughout, Trolander and Tenger attempt to locate the practice of criticism within the larger discussions of the expectations governing civil behavior and public discourse of the period. The chapter on George Villiers's The Rehersal (1672), for example, focuses on the intersections of models of polite behavior governing correction or reproof, especially public correction, and the nature of literary community. The character of the self-promoting, professional Bayes (Dryden)—his lack of civility, insistence on the individual critical stance, and his invocation of “theoretical” explanations for his poor choices—is countered by the characters Smith and Johnson (Villiers's “salon” of literary friends and clients), who represent the older sociable nature of criticism. They are friends first and foremost and only secondarily critics; their techniques of indirect critique, appeals to communal judgment, and general tone of civility when making public comments on public performances mark their criticism as being part of an ongoing conversation from a small literary group rather than any form of public regulation or attempt to legislate formally literary behavior.Another of their case studies follows the career of John Dennis through his participation in the sociable and coterie mode of critical discourse and his subsequent unsuccessful desires to “police” both readers and writers. In his early texts Impartial Critick (1693) and Letters Upon Several Occasions (1696), Dennis appears fully engaged as part of a critical exchange among a small group of like-minded friends, including Wycherley, Dryden, and Congreve, where “reciprocity and friendly exchange were taken for granted” (139). However, when he moves away from this model of small group interaction in Remarks Upon Prince Arthur (1696), “the ‘critic’ then takes on new powers to promulgate rules and laws designed to secure national interest” (151). This reaches its fullest expression in his Advancement of Poetry (1701) and The Grounds of Criticism (1704), texts that “read like proposals for a state-sponsored form of critic general” (154); these, as Trolander and Tenger note, not only failed to secure him a position in the government to regulate poetic discourse but also drew down the wrath of Pope, Swift, and Addison as well as many writers who had previously supported his earlier work. It would be Addison, they argue, who is finally able to bridge the span between sociable coterie discussion and the need for a regulatory public discourse about print.Throughout this study, Trolander and Tenger exemplify their own “sociable” relationship with other critics, especially those working in related fields of cultural and social history. Their attentions, however, are primarily on the seventeenth-century writers themselves and their attempts to negotiate the boundaries of civility while making a critical observation. Given this, one could wish that there was more attention given to explaining the nuances of the manuscript culture on which they are founding this practice of sociable criticism, in particular the discussion of the material nature of the manuscript texts and their physical transmission between readers (the sources they are citing, as they themselves note, are published collections of essays, letters, verse, and posthumous works by writers pretty well established in the canon of seventeenth-century literature). The discussion of the relationship between commonplace books and note-taking practices and their relationship between oral conversations, rough drafts, and social circulation of texts is highly suggestive but tantalizingly brief: if the notebook did indeed serve as a “means to enter one's professional and social life” (24), it would be well to consider further the ways in which notebooks, commonplace books, and “table books” had different functions and the ways in which a single manuscript volume might indeed be a multifunctional and multigenerational object in ways beyond collaborative literary efforts. It also would have been welcome if there had been further consideration of the distance traveled between the participation of women such as Constance Fowler in promoting sociable textual criticism and the creation of the authoritative quasimasculine persona of Mr. Spectator; likewise, one wished for more on the changing place of women readers in social groups as critical commentators during the period when women commercial dramatists and fiction writers became public, and sometimes socially censored, figures.One's personal critical obsessions put aside, what this study offers to do, it does extremely well. It is a valuable text to set alongside Harold Love's final study of clandestine satire and the ways in which it was circulated and consumed. It adds new and significant dimension to current critical conversations debating the rise of professional authorship and the creation of a consumer public as well as reminding us of the social texture of literary exchanges outside print media. Finally, it invites us in a cordial and collegial way to think again about how we know what we think we know about our literary predecessors. Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Modern Philology Volume 108, Number 2November 2010 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/655670 Views: 201Total views on this site © 2010 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected] Crossref reports no articles citing this article." @default.
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