OK, I'll bite.
One of the reasons I first became interested in 18c stuff as a period was the fact that studying the prose and the poetry seemed to demand knowing the contemporaneous philosophy, art and art history, politics, etc. All the criticism I read took this kind of interdisciplinarity for granted, and I thought that it was really fun, and very different from the kind of exclusively literary reading I'd done for modernism (which is now being taught very differently, I'm sure).
Once again, Sterne was the thread that led me straight into these questions, because an early obsession for me was the Locke/Sterne connection, which seemed somehow different than the relation of other fiction writers to their contemporaneous "context." Great articles like Jonathan Lamb's stuff on Associationism opened it up further, as did his work on intertextuality. Lamb's work to me has seemed really undervalued in this respect, because he really integrated his theoretical and critical interests in compelling ways, and much more compellingly than, say, de Bolla, for instance.
I have never considered my work "philosophical," per se, but I have found that in the course of my research, the philosophy section of my bookshelves, whether 18c or contemporary, has been important at least for providing many of the concepts that I end up using, refining, extending, or reflecting upon. The history of philosophy is perhaps more important for this work than contemporary philosophy.
Then there's the question of 18c vs. 21st disciplinary divisions, which is another thread entirely . . . .
Yes, the interdisciplinarity, the absolute necessity to approach the period historically rather than just slicing off the literary. As David indicates, literary studies in general has taken this direction, but it one could argue that 18thc studies were in the forefront.
Then there is the relationship to theory. When I was in grad school, the first 18thc course I took washed over me like clean water after the frustrations and convolutions of the high theory one found elsewhere. Again, I think literary studies has moved towards a revaluing of the historicity of texts, but in my remembrance, the 18thc scholars were in the forefront. This is not to say that I am "anti-theory" (which almost implies "anti-intellectual" in some circles). Nothing can happen without theory, realised or not. It is just to say that I, for one, like my theory applied rather than free-floating, and the 18thc seemed an ideal, and a welcoming, venue for that approach.
I suppose in a way I have answered your correspondent's philosophy question, Carrie: if I had to name the most important second discipline to me, it would be history. When I approach philosophy, it is usually from that perspective.
These are great answers. I definitely agree that the great appeal of the 18th (for me) is its requirement that we attempt to understand the era through interdisciplinarity. The effect of this is that many of us find theory insufficient as "the" lens through which we look at "literature," since theory seems to hold language and literature at a special remove from the rest of history, aside from the socioeconomic, religious, and gender position of writers. My own early interest in the field was from a rhetorical perspective, since, though it takes into account the special "magic" of language, it also forces us to examine the way a text attempts to insert itself into historical conversations.
I am consistently impressed by the way that the 18th avoids, more than other fields, giving special status to certain writers as Great Authors, if only because, to understand the main figures, we must also know something of popular genres of writing (which even the "Greats" often join in), of the philosophical and religious ideas that are in play, and, simultaneously, the actual historical life experiences of people at all classes.
It's beyond question, for example, that popular genre fiction in the era requires no apology, either in the classroom or in scholarly study, even alongside the most objectively brilliant prose writers. I have been at talks in other fields when a common influence is found for a "high" and "low" writer, and seen sparks still fly around treating them with the same pen. That is changing, I think. (I hope.)
Your second paragraph, Carrie, struck me particularly. But we mustn't forget that it was not ever thus: it was not too long ago that scholars spoke of the "Age of Pope" and the "Age of Johnson," and courses on the "rise of the novel" centred on the Defoe--Richardson--Fielding triumvirate. It is wonderful to hear from a younger scholar how much perceptions have changed. (And don't I sound like Methuselah?)
I have recognized that difference from looking at the history of scholarship in the field, but I feel it's changed not just out of a desire to represent the unrepresented, but out of a move toward something like "accuracy" in literary history. The Genius model of lit hist simply doesn't work well in our field because it ignores the cross-genre influences. I think the scholarship has begun to understand the "bottom-up" influences better, and now we're also starting to look at the "top-down" influences of philosophy and religion more carefully.
It's an exciting field for a grad student because there is so much to be examined, but it's also an intimidating field for the same reason. Because it's impossible for any one scholar to truly "master" all aspects of the period, we are, as on C18-L, constantly admitting the gaps in our knowledge to appeal to others. When a tenured professor admits a gap, it is from the safety of reputation and security. For a grad student, admitting these gaps is rather scarier.
Carrie,
two points:
First, specialist expertise is a funny thing, because it degrades over time, believe me.
It is also a tricky thing to incorporate into one's teaching, especially at the lower levels of undergrad instruction. Students at those levels need to engage with the largest questions of the field, the kinds of questions the specialist necessarily shuns.
I ask my intro to Lit Studies students, What is Satire for? because they've probably never thought of the question, ever in their lives. They certainly don't know how important that mode of writing is for our period. but that's an appropriate line of discussion for those beginning the English major.
Second, there is absolutely no dishonor in admitting to gaps in one's knowledge, especially when it comes to the potentially infinite number of contexts available to "interdisciplinary' scholars: hands up, everyone, who can talk knowledgeably about 18c mathematics. How about pneumatology? Theology? Rhetorical instruction? etc. etc.
These intellectual contexts are learned in the context of particular research projects. No one simply knows such things as a result of "reading around."
Best,
DM
This is a fascinating thread, because I heartily agree--the chance to combine literary studies with other disciplines, especially history for me, was what made the period attractive to me. I have thought for a long time that it was virtually impossible to study the 18th century without having some understanding of the historical context for the works written in it. Yet it was not always so, I know, but after reading Felicity Nussbaum and Laura Brown's introductory essay to The New Eighteenth Century, I came away with the same sense echoed by others here: 18th century studies were in the forefront of historicizing literary scholarship of the period.
This leads me to a question I've had since reading that article, though: how much has the field really changed since Nussbaum and Brown published their collection (in the late 80s, I believe)? Their point is that 18th century scholars have been resistant to theory with the exception of historicist readings, and they appeal for a greater diversity of theoretical approaches to the period. Yet I see very few such approaches in the 18th century studies I read. In the main, the theoretical approaches I've seen used are restricted to feminist/gender, historicist, and some psychoanalytical readings. How much of what Nussbaum and Brown write is true of 18th century studies today?
Jen,
Glad to find you here.
Brown and Nussbaun's anthology is an interesting watershed moment, I think, because it arrived in 1987, really at the peak of the theory boom. The question it seemed to pose was, "Will 18c studies be able to assimilate ['80s style Frenchified structuralist and post-structuralist] Theory?"
I haven't looked at the intro for a while, but I know I studied it closely at the time, though without agreeing with a lot of what it said. I would probably agree with a lot more of it now. I do think, though, that it helped establish paradigms for "mainstream" institutionalized 18c study to this day, probably because of the debates it provoked.
The interesting question for me is the very different position of "theory" relative to lit studies generally, and 18c studies specifically. 1987 was a high water mark, I think, for theory as a vanguard within the profession, and cultural studies (to use the broadest possible understanding of the term) kind of scrambles the progressive/linear institutional narratives found in the anthology.
Are current 18c scholars more "sophisticated" or "self-aware" (those are the '80s terms I remember) than scholars were in the '80s? Or have we moved on to different concerns? Are we still looking for new paradigms, or are we in a phase where we try to link together existing paradigms?
So perhaps one way to address your question is to look at the opposition that B and N assume between historicist and theoretical scholarship, and see whether this opposition still holds. I suspect not.
The larger question is whether the current synthesis of theory and history found in cultural studies-influenced work addresses the problems noted by B and N. And that is a much harder question to answer.
I love Byron and much Romantic literature, so the comment doesn't apply to me. However, I decided to major in the 18th century because I like the tone so common to what I perceived most characteristic of the period. I liked its aesthetics and the style.
Ellen
David,
I took a while to think about your response to my question regarding Brown and Nussbaum before responding. I won't pretend to any real experience with literary studies as an institution, since I'm relatively young and have not worked in the field except as a PhD candidate. I have only taken a smattering of theory classes, all of which focused exclusively on what I think of (probably ignorantly) as abstract (read: not widely applicable) theory--deconstructionism, poststructuralism, etc. To my knowledge, DU has not until very recently offered any courses in cultural studies or in gender/sexuality studies, courses I probably would've found useful. But judging by the scholarship that I've encountered from my dissertation research, I'll venture that the field is no longer in search of new paradigms, as you put it, at least not for the moment. Rather, it does seem that 18th century scholars are more interested in linking current paradigms--putting older theoretical models together with cultural and historicist approaches to literary texts. This is just my guess, based on my own limited reading.
As an historian (and soon I will stop saying this, I promise!), I find that much of the really good "historical" stuff I encounter comes / came from lit crit. When I wrote my MA thesis, Kathryn Shevelow's work on periodicals really helped me to formulate my ideas and synthesize my New Left influences with a more sophisticated approach to understanding my topic. In fact, I find that for me, that "historicist" versus "theoretical" opposition doesn't even operate. I am both and can't fathom writing history without the influences of the various theoretical schools of the past half century.
Since I haven't read Brown and Nussbaum's anthology (I don't think), I can't address the last question, but I do agree that the general question about the approach cultural studies takes in finding an intersection between history and theory is incredibly important and one that perhaps we can continue to respond to here.
Jen,
Your last post was very interesting for me, because I always wonder how much continuity people see between what I'd call the High Theory moment in 18c criticism, with works like John Bender's Imagining the Penitentiary, and more recent scholarship in cultural studies (say, Dena Goodman's work on writing desks in the ancien regime). Your work draws much more on the cultural/social/historical end of things, right?
So in your own work, do you feel yourself pulled more toward cultural studies or cultural history, as opposed to literary studies? Or are these kinds of distinctions between literary and cultural studies less important for your research?
Best wishes,
DM
David,
Hm, those are good questions. I tend to think of myself as a literary historian, I suppose. I am pulled more towards the cultural/social/historical side of things, and I do tend to assume that the works I study are products of a specific cultural and historical moment, and that they are in that sense cultural artifacts--not direct representations of reality in the eighteenth century, but still reflective of real anxieties, thoughts, and feelings. So in that sense, I guess the distinctions between cultural and literary are not terribly important to me.
Can I throw this question back at you? I think you said your approach tends to be a cultural/historical one (and I think I saw an essay by you on luxury and idleness--it caught my eye since I just read Barker-Benfield's Culture of Sensibility). Do you find distinctions between literary and cultural studies useful or necessary?
Thanks, Jen, for your thoughtful response. The essay you mention is a review I did a while ago for ECS, "Luxury and Idleness Moralized." I don't know how to do links, so at the end of this post I'll just paste in the JSTOR url for anyone who's interested.
As to your question, it's hard to do these kinds of self-descriptions without sounding precious, but I would label myself a literary critic who is also interested in cultural history, if that makes sense. This is a natural consequence of the interdisciplinarity we've been talking about, and how it affects my writing, anyway.
I separate the two because I feel that I am engaging in distinctly different activities when I do them, and I've also noticed that they result in different kinds of publications at different venues. This is also a division I feel between my teaching and my research.
If you want, we can go into this in a separate thread, but for me the difficulties center around the kinds of claims we want to make about individual authors and works, and how these claims about authors and works might relate causally to the larger discursive contexts discovered by the cultural historian. In the review, I found one book more convincing than the other in dealing with these kinds of questions.
For me, the trickiest thing about the equation of literary and cultural studies involves the kinds of evidence used, how this evidence gets assessed in relation to counter-evidence, and how it might be integrated with other historical accounts.
So, to answer your question, yes, I do think of cultural and literary studies as separate though related practices, largely because I think the two fields operate with different rules regarding evidence, interpretation, and debate.
I do think there is an overlap, but it lies less in holistic analysis of individual works or authors than in the historical study of social phenomena like genres, institutions, or concepts.
Does that help at all?
Best,
DM
PS: for the review, see
http://
www.jstor.org.ezproxy.lib...ontent=citation
It does make sense, and I wanted to get your response because I know you're an established scholar with more experience in the field than I have--I was interested to see your reasoning for separating (or not) the two fields. So thanks for your response.
Jen
Back to the original question in the thread, I've done a lot of reading about the fuzzy borders of the long 18c. I appreciate the erudition of the arguments that the long 18c does or does not begin or end in 16** or 18**, but I hate to admit that the more I read about this the more I tend to go back to the simplistic Norton Anthology versions. It's frustrating to myself to be so unfashionable, but for British lit anyway, it seems to me that you just can't get around the massive shift in cultural consciousness that comes with the Restoration in precisely 1660. It's not so much the entrance of Charles II as it is the exit of the Puritans that marks the period. On the other end, it's the French Revolution, and I can't seem to argue my way around it no matter what similarities later Romanticists have to Enlightenment thought. At the time it was clear to everyone who was paying attention that a new era was taking shape, and the hindsight of history has only confirmed that.
Is Pepys' Diary still the main, assignable primary source for the feel of the Restoration, particularly of its coming? I don't mean to imply that a much more comprehensive account hasn't been built up and well-presented, I'm sure it has.
John,
Some bits of advice from my own teaching.
Pepys, as a diarist, as really irreplaceable as a source of writing about the period, but there are plenty of other places to go for other kinds of perspectives. Bunyan, for example, could give a Dissenting viewpoint, and I believe there are Royalist and Dissenting women whose writings might prove interesting sources. Those who do women's literary history for this period would be able to give more precise directions than I could: try Margaret Ezell's or Elaine Hobby's books.
Satirists like Butler or Rochester are also indispensable for giving students a feeling for what's happening during this time, though I suspect that Rochester's a lot more accessible than Hudibras nowadays. Look at Earl Miner's Restoration Mode.
The theater is another big symbol of the difference between Restoration life and the previous decades, so I'd go to writers like Behn. Miriam Jones (see below) has a course she's teaching on writers like Behn and Cavendish, so maybe she has some suggestions. But the drama is probably the most teachable writing in the period.
You should also look at the literary histories of Steve Zwicker, Nigel Smith, Earl Miner, or John Wilcher.
Hope this helps.
DM
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