Romanticism, History, and the Possibilities of Genre: Re-forming Literature, 1789–1837 ed. by Tilottama Rajan and Julia M. Wright

Abstract

REVIEWS learn a great deal about the complex history of the concept of femininity. PAM PERKINS / University of Manitoba Tilottam a Rajan and Julia M. Wright, eds. Romanticism, His­ tory, and the Possibilities of Genre: Re-forming Literature, 17891837 . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. xiv, 291. $59.95 (U.S.) cloth. This collection of essays ranks high among the many excel­ lent studies of the Romantic period currently pouring from the presses. The variety of topics and texts it engages at the same time as it maintains a steady focus on “the possibilities of genre” ensures that the volume as a whole makes at least three signif­ icant contributions to current studies in Romanticism. First, using genre as a lens, it brings into sharp new focus several skilfully-written texts by non-canonical authors and thus recon­ figures (once again) our perspective on the discursive landscape of the period. Secondly, the element of “history” in the title de­ notes a cluster of strong contributions to the rapidly develop­ ing field of Romantic historicism, recently given methodological shape by James Chandler’s massive England in 1819: Literary Culture and the Case of Romantic Historicism (1998). Where previous work had focussed largely on Scott’s novels, the arti­ cles here on William Godwin’s historiographic essays and his­ torical novels and on Lady Morgan’s Irish national tales serve effectively to supplement Chandler’s landmark expansion of the field. A third contribution is to the field of women’s studies, as it contains a number of expertly nuanced feminist readings of both canonical and non-canonical texts, which in the latter case serve to expand the canon of women’s writing at the same time as they broaden the field of Romanticism. In the end, it is the very coherence of focus and evenness of writing across a wide range of topics and approaches in this volume that raise ques­ tions about its own historical specificity, both of content and of form. For the moment, however, it is enough to say that this book should be read by specialists in the field and consulted by various non-specialists as well. 365 ESC 27, 2001 Those interested in genre theory, for example, will want to begin with the editors’ introduction, which cogently artic­ ulates those features of Romantic genre theory in particular that distinguish it within the larger trajectory of literary and critical history. Rajan and Wright point out, for example, the Romantic writers’ new sense of the historicity of genre: even conservatives like Robert Southey align different genres with the various stages in the (providential) evolution of British lit­ erature and nationhood (6-7). Meanwhile, German theorists worked to extend the category of genre to include the vari­ ous cognates of “mode” (such as the sentimental) and “mood” (such as melancholy) (4), while more politically radical writers sought to “re-form” established modes of representation by le­ gitimating evolving genres from other areas of social life (such as the diary, the letter, the tall tale, and the anecdote) (5). This volume of essays, as the sub-title will readily indicate, fo­ cusses on this latter group of writers, who recognize both the historicity and the mutability of genres and their hierarchies, and who therefore deploy genre in their work as a “cultural tool” or “lever” for “Re-forming literature” rather than as a transhistorical law to reinforce the status quo (8). These are all writers who look for the “possibilities of genre” rather than its classical certainties, possibilities that include the subversion of reactionary narratives of history, the legitimation of previously discountenanced forms of (class) experience in the social sphere, or the invention of new forms of articulation for the otherwise voiceless subjectivities of the private sphere (8). W ith only two exceptions, the essays in this collection focus on non-canonical writers “because the relative lack of criticism on them and thus of preconceptions about them makes it eas­ ier to locate their distinctiveness in the ways they extended genre” (5). Two good examples of the success of this approach are Judith Thom pson’s article on John Thelwall’s The Peri­ patetic and Julia M. W right’s essay on...