Romanticism and Millenarianism by Tim Fulford William Blake and the Body by Tristanne J. Connolly (review)

Abstract

752 Reviews of the letters which she considered private to the family.Galperin eventually acknow? ledges this (p. 249 n. 35), but does not apparently deem it damaging to his argument. The choice in Chapter 2 of the gypsy episode to initiate an exploration of Austen's use of the picturesque, when it is primarily a plot mechanism to establish the confusion in Emma's mind about Harriet's love life, is puzzling in view of the fact that there is so much in the novel with a more direct bearing on the subject; a third example is the somewhat perverse attempt in Chapter 4 to give Colonel Brandon a pivotal and far from disinterested role in the development of the Marianne-Willoughby-ElinorEdward story (pp. 114-18). These things aside, there is evidence of valuable research into little-known contem? porary responses to Austen's work: extracts from the letters of Annabella Milbanke, later Lady Byron, Jane Davy (wife of Humphrey), and John William Ward, Earl of Dudley, as well as comment on lesser-known reviews. Galperin is very interesting on the equivocal attitude of contemporaries to the quotidian detail in the novels. Indeed, the last fivesections of Chapter 2 from Austen's Earliest Readers' onwards provide a relatively direct and lucid commentary which is in contrast with much of the rest of the book. The absence of a bibliographical list makes it difficultto determine exactly how 'recent' are the critical works that Galperin aims to confront. There seems to be little citation from anything published after the mid-nineties. The 'conservative' vs. 'subversive' debate has by now lost much of its original eclat; is Galperin perhaps tilting at windmills? Current critical interest seems to be centring on Austen's love affair with the theatre and the movement of her fiction towards the condition of drama, freeing the reader from narratorial authority. This was firstsuggested as long ago as 1983 by Margaret Kirkham in Jane Austen, Feminism and Fiction (Brighton: Harvester) and is now being taken up in more detail?see two books, both entitled Jane Austen and the Theatre, by Penny Gay (London: Hambledon and London), and Paula Byrne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), published in 2002, too late indeed to be included in this book. But such a shiftin critical attention, as well as in its method and theoretical preoccupation, is bound to affectthe usefulness of Galperin's study. University of Essex Mary Waldron Romanticism and Millenarianism. Ed. by Tim Fulford. New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave. 2002. xvii + 248pp. ?32.50. ISBN 0-312-24011-2. William Blake and theBody. By Tristanne J.Connolly. New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave. 2002. xvii + 249pp. ?40. ISBN 0-333-96848-4. Here are two new books on Romanticism from Palgrave, both with illustrations. The firstis difficultto categorize. Though obviously not a Festschrift, it opens with a pho? tograph and closes with a bibliography of Morton D. Paley, the author of, especially, Apocalypse and Millennium in English Romantic Poetry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), which, as the editor says, 'stands behind this book' (p. 15). The editor adds that 'our whole understanding of Romanticism and millenarianism's nature is shaped by [Paley's] work'. It is not clear whether the 'our' refers to all present-day scholars of Romanticism, or those in the book; ifthe latter,itwould be interesting to know the principle of their selection, for the book, comprising thirteen or so shortish chapters on an impressive number of different'Romantics' beginning with William Cowper, does not appear to be the record ofa conference, and the acknowledgements page gives no help; indeed, it reads very curiously as though itwas introductory to a monograph, with not a single reference being made by the editor to the book's various authors! (The book's fourteenth chapter, by Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Vis- MLR, 99.3, 2004 753 comi, advertises the Blake archive, and therefore, seems not to relate to what has gone before?though one could construct a link, through Derrida's work on the apocalypse (not referenced) and on 'archive fever'.) Taking the book as the sum of its parts, it fails to make an overall case forseeing the apocalypse...