The Literary Criticism of Orestes A. Brownson

Abstract

Literature was never central to Brownson's interests; indeed at times it was something he tolerated somewhat impatiently.* He wrote about it regularly, however, and during his career filled over a thousand closely packed octavo pages on the subject. He could even use the cant of the journalist reviewer with professional facility. Of a novel called Thorneberry Abbey, for instance, he says, “It has one or two literary faults … efforts at fine writing, and wearisome descriptions of natural scenery, which … only interrupt the narrative.” With variations in the details, this kind of formal gesture is repeated almost every time he reviews a novel. Moreover, the passage on Thorneberry Abbey appears towards the very end of a long review, introduced by the following candid admission: “But we have forgotten the little book before us.” What precedes the remark is not primarily a literary discussion but rather a warning to Catholics against the dangers of unwary compromises with Protestantism. What follows the remark is literary in a perfunctory and conventional way and is quickly dropped in favor of more polemic discussion. Although this procedure is not true of every piece of criticism by Brownson, something like it happens often enough to make it characteristic. When he was accused of such irrelevance later in life, he defended himself vigorously: “The book introduced is regarded as little more than an occasion or a text for an original discussion of some questions which the author wishes to treat.… Books are worthy of no great consideration for their own sake, and literature itself is never respectable as an end, and is valuable only as a means to an end.” In spite of this method, however, Brownson raised important critical questions and left a substantial amount of literary material.