Literary Criticism in the Later 'Noctes Ambrosianae'

Abstract

The series of seventy-one largely imaginary conversations entitled 'Noctes Ambrosianae' appeared in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine between March 1822 and February 1835. They may conveniently be divided into two groups. The earlier group, numbers I to 18 and 2o, was by various hands (chiefly those ofJ. G. Lockhart, William Maginn, and John Wilson) often working in collaboration.1 These first 'Noctes' may be seen as the culmination of the whole Blackwood's approach: playful, outrageous, irresponsible, and (at their best, and viewed in the most favourable light) a unique experiment in fluid romantic criticism.2 By the end of 1825 both Maginn and Lockhart had left Edinburgh and, though they were occasionally involved thereafter, the vast majority of the remaining 'Noctes', and thus most of the whole series, were the work of Wilson. Since Lockhart's later contributions are mainly political in content, and Maginn's minimal, the present study addresses itself to Wilson's literary criticism in the later 'Noctes'.3 It begins by considering his views on the imagination, proceeds by way of interlude to examine the intensely image-based and concrete form which his criticism takes, centring in the figure of the Shepherd, and ends by taking up the treatment of some more diverse critical issues and isolating the crucial role of Wordsworth as presiding spirit in the whole proceedings.