'Deep Play': John Gay and the Invention of Modernity by Dianne Dugaw (review)

Abstract

MLRy 98.1, 2003 189 The essay by Michael Brown is an important treatment ofthe contemporary Irish Catholic moral philosopher Alasdair Maclntyre, showing that, despite his 'serious polemical uses of the moral vision of the medieval mentalite*(p. 27), he, too, is not merely an anachronistic reactionary. To dismiss Maclntyre in this way is to miss the fact that he 'uses the medieval world with a peculiarly modern polemical intent' (p. 39), namely, to function as 'that most modern of creations, the critic' (p. 38). Brown could have gone further,however, to point out the very postmodem elements of Maclntyre's role as a 'medieval critic', such as his critique ofthe Enlightenment's promotion of ahistorical, universal standards of rationality and morality, and his emphasis on historically situated traditions of moral reason and communities of virtue. The other essays in this section, treating St Augustineand Samuel Beckett, Aristotle's Poetics and Umberto Eco's The Name of theRose, and sickness as a medium of wrath in Scripture, respectively, contain insightful moments but are less noteworthy. The 'Community' section of the book contains some worthwhile if sometimes laboured essays on historical and literary subjects. Joseph Richardson's piece on Enlightenment historians offers a helpful analysis of the ways the depiction of the Middle Ages by certain eighteenth-century figures reflected their own concerns with establishing a new, negative notion of freedom against the older notion of positive freedom which relied on ancient institutions of legitimation. For literary scholars, the essays by Mel Kersey on Macpherson and Anglicization, Joanne Mary Parker on King Alfred, and Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes on the Book of Kells, Joseph Beuy, and James Joyce would prove of interest. Essays by Maria Bustillo on Vicente Carducho's paintings on the life of St Bruno, and Stephen H. Harrison on the battle of Down and the Irish nation-state, round out the collection. By examining some ofthe ways in which modernity has appropriated the medieval world, this book does its part in furthering our understanding of modern thought and culture. For this reason, despite its unevenness, it is recommended to those with a serious interest in studies in medievalism. HOPE COLLEGE, MlCHIGAN ANDREW J.DELL'OLIO cDeep Play': John Gay and the Invention of Modernity. By Dianne Dugaw. Cran? bury, NJ: University of Delaware Press; London: Associated University Presses. 2001. 322 pp. ?38. ISBN0-87413-731-4. The cover note to Dianne Dugaw's book promises a 'major rereading of John Gay', and for once, that familiar promise is largely kept. With the exception of David Nokes's critical biography, John Gay: A Profession of Friendship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), there are no recent general accounts of Gay. While Dugaw omits mention of some texts, most notably perhaps the 1724 tragedy The Captives, she does offerinterpretationsof most of his writings, as well as an argument about the work as a whole. More important than that, what she says is both engaging and fresh. There are two main and complementary strands to her argument. One is contextual. Dugaw seeks to place differentworks of Gay in various contexts of popular writing and performance. Drawing upon her interest in folklore, she traces the echoes of oral traditions in the early pastorals, the use of village mumming plays in The What-d'YeCall -It, and the musical references in the adaptations ofpopular songs in The Beggar's Opera and Polly. In one particularly interesting section, she describes and interprets the movements ofthe dancers in the country dances from Polly (pp. 199-215). That section, however, also demonstrates one of the main weaknesses of the book's argu? ment. 'Dance references', she writes, 'supply provocative tropes for the play's social and political tension' (p. 214). Later, she argues more broadly that 'a range of plebeian forms?ballads and songs, country dances, mumming plays, beliefs and sayings, 190 Reviews fables, stories, and legends?arebrought by Gay to comment on "polite" opera, drama and literature' (p. 275). Well, yes, and no. There is generic variety, even confusion, but eighteenth-century genres may have been less fixed than we sometimes imagine. If so, to mix was not such a pointed and politically self-conscious act...