Reading Old Books: Writing with Traditions by Peter Mack

Abstract

REVIEWS Reading Old Books: Writing with Traditions. By P M. Princeton: Princeton University Press. . xii+ pp. £. ISBN ––––. e seemingly ubiquitous notion of ‘literary tradition’ dates back a mere  years, as Peter Mack reveals at the start of this new book, to an  lecture entitled ‘Qu’est-ce que c’est la tradition littéraire?’ given by the critic Charles Sainte-Beuve at Paris’s École Normale Supérieure. Prior to this, critics preferred terms such as borrowing, imitation, or inheritance, which, as Mack notes, ‘placed more emphasis on the writer’s choice and agency, whereas “tradition” seems more monolithic and coercive’ (p. ). Mack’s monograph, however, is neither coercive nor monolithic; nuanced, detailed, and lucidly written, Reading Old Books identifies and explores ‘a sequence of moments in which individual readers and writers make use of what previous writers and thinkers give them in order to make something new’ (p. ). is, Mack suggests, is at the heart of any notion of ‘tradition’, a slippery term derived from the Latin verb tradere, ‘to hand over’, which connotes not only ‘to teach’, but also ‘to surrender’ and ‘to betray’. Having explored in his Introduction various—at times contradictory—meanings of ‘tradition’ by drawing on writers and critics as diverse as Saint Augustine, Francis Bacon, John Dryden, Elena Ferrante, and, perhaps most significantly, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Mack identifies catalytic moments of creation through the transformation of earlier literature in the work of Petrarch, Chaucer and Boccaccio, Ariosto, Tasso, and Spenser, as well as in novels by Elizabeth Gaskell and Ngũgĩ wa iong’o. While the selection of primary texts is somewhat eclectic, Mack manages to offer insights in every chapter regarding how certain writers think differently about numerous forms of tradition, though he appears to be on firmer ground in the earlier chapters that cover classical and early modern literature. Resembling in many ways a collection of essays, as opposed to a monograph, Reading Old Books nevertheless demonstrates how ‘the introduction of more surprising comparator texts may offer new and exciting ways of thinking about a text, even if we need to treat the connections and comparisons with greater dashes of skepticism’ (p. ). Mack’s first chapter considers how Petrarch artfully gathered and adapted material from earlier poets, including Ovid and Virgil, transmitting new images and ideas to his successors, whose later imitations of Petrarch ended up harming his reputation. Chapter  examines how Chaucer honed his poetic skills by refashioning multiple aspects of Boccaccio’s Il Filostrato () to create Troilus and Criseyde (), before applying and extending these lessons learnt in e Canterbury Tales (–). e third chapter brings together Ariosto’s Orlando furioso (, ), Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata (), and Spenser’s e Faerie Queene () to analyse how these poems draw successively on each other, as well as on a wide range of classical texts. Chapter  considers Gaskell’s articulation of a female perspective on urban poverty and industrialization in Mary Barton () that both reassembles fragments of past traditions and throws off traditional ex- MLR, .,   pectations of feminine behaviour. Chapter  examines the collision of European and African literary traditions in Ngũgĩ’s Wizard of the Crow () to explore ongoing consequences of colonialism and tyranny’s potential to distort reality. Mack’s book offers a reading of conceptions of tradition more nodal than teleological . While the chapters on Gaskell and Ngũgĩ contain less of the close reading and comparative analysis than Mack provides for the other writers included in this book, there is a refreshing refusal to corral primary texts into a preordained model or theory. A great deal of familiarity is presumed not only with Chaucerian and Spenserian English, but also with the content and characters of many novels, poems, and plays. Nevertheless, Mack’s book is a deeply rewarding account of how ‘knowledge of tradition makes better writing possible’ (p. ). Reading Old Books succeeds in its aim to ‘indicate the richness, the spread, and the variety of uses of literary tradition’ (p. ) and serves as a timely reminder that, as Ferrante argues in her own essay collection about writing, Frantumaglia (), cited by Mack, ‘the writer must know literary traditions and be able to alter and add...