My Readings for Eighteen-Century Literature this week, Felicity Nussbaum and Laura Brown’s “Revising Critical Practices” (1987) and Deidre Lynch’s “Recent Studies in the Restoration and Eighteenth Century” (2007), provoked ambivalent reactions from me as a struggling student trying to make my way through the thick fog of theoretical understanding. On the one hand, Nussbaum and Brown’s argument that traditional eighteenth studies “relies more heavily on appreciative formalist readings that seek to describe a stable core of meaning in the text, or on a positivist historicism, unreflective about its theoretical grounds or its political implications” (4) proved true for me, especially since I had to privilege of attending an eighteenth century conference recently. I was shocked to listen in as seasoned professors read essays with no critical theory and no psychological or sociological connections between the aesthetic work and its peripheral context. However, after reading Lynch’s year-end review of recent eighteenth-century publications steeped deep in theory, I began to yearn for some gold ‘ole plain-spoken conversation.
Nussbaum and Brown suggest that “theory” too-often suffers attack for either being too formalist or not formalist enough and also for neglecting literary pleasure (2). They list several encumbrances that inhibit the advancement and acceptance of theoretical methods of study within the eighteenth-century scholarly arena. With blatant frankness, the authors accuse traditionalists of “ignorance and misinformation” as well as using “opportunistic . . . manipulation of the term in order to marshall an omnibus defense of eighteenth-century literary studies, traditionally defined” (sic) (2). One problem in particular that haunts theorists is the “contradictory definitions” that inhibit a clear understanding of “theory.” As a result, traditionalists assume that “theory” “is a place where the struggles over meaning are fought” (11). Because “theory” is “only infrequently mentioned’ in the year-end reviews,” traditionalist assume that theoretical models are “useless,” especially since they see the jargon, cant, twisted syntax, and neologisms as evidence of a “destructive despotism of theory,” where monists see only singular meanings and one truth (12). Finally, these traditionalists contend that advancing complicated theories will only distract scholars and students from the aesthetic value of literature. In other words, they see theoretical studies as enhancing only an elite culture of theorists (13). After slogging through the second half of Lynch’s article, I can understand the traditionalists’ fears.
Twenty years have passed since Nussbaum and Brown’s call for theoretical studies in the eighteenth-century arena, and Lynch’s year-end review reveals evidence that a new generation of scholars have embraced modern theories of critical analysis. While reading the review, I soon noticed how the “where” and “what” in British Literature has been redefined. For Instance, Ian Baucom’s scholarship succeeds in relocating the boundaries of British Literature to the “Black Atlantic,” and using Adam Smith’s “Theory of Moral Sentiments,” he examines how literature exposes the capitalization of slaves, redefining them as a commodity (726). Furthermore, Daniel O’Quinn’s body of work “put India on the stage,” by refiguring Britain’s empire as “Asiatic” rather than “Atlantic” (727). I noticed that recently published texts include subjects such as women’s writings, victimhood and the cultural meanings of global commerce, European against Non-European “Other,” the economic history in the Far East, sentimental abolitionism, the rhetoric of speeches and sermons, and the limits of humanity.
In addition to new ways of looking at literature, recent studies reveal new ways of defining literature. Lynch’s reviews disclose recent published works that analyze period fashion, patronage versus print capitalism, the tradition of prostitution, visual rhetoric, and periodicals. Also, I am surprised (I don’t know why—it seems obvious) to see that analyzing recent treatment of literature and history within film is an area of study for the eighteenth-century scholar. This shift in eighteen-century scholarly work is contributed to Nussbaum and Brown’s article by Corrinne Harol and Kimberly Latta, in their introduction to Eighteenth-Century Studies (2006).
Corrinne Harol and Kimberly Latta argue that this criticism “prompted the formation of the ASECS Women’s Caucus,” which nurtured feminist scholars as well as “feminist scholarship and eighteenth-century studies” (289). Nussbaum and Brown’s 1987 article had criticized ASECS for not encouraging “other timely, political, and intellectually challenging approaches” and that they had “in effect institutionalized the traditional relationship between literary and historical study” (8). Harol and Latta claim that:
Feminist scholarship of the last thirty years has arguably transformed western literary criticism, history, and philosophy more than any other single methodology, and its effects on eighteenth-century studies have been no less profound. (289)
The ASECS promoted a return to “key questions that were shared by the Enlightenment and early feminist scholarship,” whereby epistemology and aesthetics contributed to initial discourses supporting “early feminist critique of Enlightenment modes of knowing and valuing” (Harol and Latta 290).
Within the realm of humanities, scholars worked at understanding the experience of art. The authors explain that empiricism inherently limits the understanding of physical experience in materiality and unavoidably excludes any knowledge of taste, pleasure, morality, or ideology (Harol and Latta 290). Therefore, aesthetic scholarship utilized empiricist’s methods in order to establish universal standards of taste. Feminists subsequently engaged with “Enlightenment legacies in incredibly sophisticated ways: by recovering feminist philosophers . . . forming new feminist philosophies, most prominently a feminist epistemology” (Harol and Latta 290). Harol and Latta’s article proved reader friendly and helped me “bridge the gap” between Nussbam and Brown’s text and Lynch’s. As a result, I have a better understanding of the influence of the Enlightenment on feminist scholarship.
Nevertheless, due to the complicated level of diction and theoretical thought, I found Lynch’s review disheartening. The essays she summarized appeared inaccessible to me. Would I need an in-depth study of Foucault, Deidre, Marxism, psychoanalysis, and feminism in order to understand the conversations in eighteenth-century studies? Because so much of the review’s content escaped my understanding, I am lead to identify with Howard D. Weinbrot’s comment that the “concept of literature pleasure thus is in danger’ due to the modern study of “theory” in literature” (qtd. by Nussbaum and Brown 3). Ironically, Nussbaum and Brown argue that “the most important work . . . always insists on the relations between ideology, gender, race, and class, and on the functions of the oppressed and excluded in texts and culture formations” (20); in modern theoretically studies, I tend to “identify” with those “excluded in texts.”
Works Cited
Harol, Corrinne Harol, and Kimberly Latta. “Introduction.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 39.3 (2006): 289-94.
Lynch, Deidre. “Recent Studies in the Restoration and Eighteenth Century.” SEL (2007): 723-64.
Nussbaum, Felicity and Laura Brown. “Revising Critical Practices: An Introductory Essay.” The New Eighteenth Century: Theory, Politics, English Literature. New York: Routledge, 1987. 1-22.
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