The Triumph of Augustan Poetics: English Literary Culture from Butler to Johnson by Blanford Parker The Just and the Lively: The Literary Criticism of John Dryden by Michael Werth Gelber (review)

Abstract

transcendent art' (p. I). Her later enlistment under the banners of gender studies, racial issues, and New Historicism bears furtherwitness to the power of political and intellectual fashion. The title, Critical Fortunes, reflects these vicissitudesbetter than the predictable solidity of, say, a Heritage. Todd maintains a steady focus on past and present, attributing a true, but not inflated, value to the most arcane subtletiesof criticaltheory, while retainingproper respectfor 'the sort of empirical study'thatcriticsin the I99os might have regardedas 'hopelesslynaive'in itsrefusal to 'findmultiple discourseand subversion,and see through rhetoricto "critique"' (P. 123). The book's freedom frompedantrygeneratesits chief flaw:it is too lightlyedited to be totallyself-explanatory.Three attacksby Robert Gould are quoted in the first chapter,and threeworksby Gould appearin the extensivelistof'WorksConsulted', but it would be necessaryto read them in orderto discoverwhich was which. Even more casual is the treatmentof 'the amateur and courtier'John Baber's TotheKing upon theQueen's being Deliver'd ofa Son(1688),which is quoted, but whose title appears nowhere in the book (p. 16).Ultimately, such omissionscan only be beneficial:they encourage readers to conduct their own investigations. Is it coincidental that the text, being innocent of page and line numbers,cannot be quarriedfor second-hand references? This is both an essentialguide to Behn studies,and a perceptivecontributionto a series which aims to 'illuminate the nature of literary criticism itself, to gauge the influence of social and historic currents on aesthetic judgments once thought objectiveand normative'(p. [ii]). Todd herself,however, makesno meek surrender to the pull of culturalrelativity:as in her otherworks,she providesinspirationfor a new generation of scholars, while delivering salutory strictures on the need for historicalawarenesswhich theywill ignore at theirperil. UNIVERSITY OF READING CAROLYN D. WILLIAMS The Triumph of Augustan Poetics.EnglishLiterary Culture from Butlerto Johnson. By BLANFORD PARKER. (Cambridge Studies in Eighteenth-Century English Literatureand Thought). Cambridge,New York,and Melbourne:Cambridge University Press. I998. ix + 262 pp. [37.50; $59.95. The Just and the Lively: The LiteraryCriticismof John Dryden. By MICHAELWERTH GELBER. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press. I999. x + 342 pp. [40. BlanfordParker'senormouslyambitiousbook defiesclassification.At times it seems to be a book in the historyof ideas, at othersa book on the historyof religion.At still other times, it seems likea rescue attemptfor otherwiseminor but in theirown ways possibly interestingwriters,such as Samuel ('Hudibras')ButlerorJames Thomson who have been (Parkerfeels)unjustlyneglected, by placing them in a new tradition that Parkerhimself proposes. This new tradition is the line from the time when people spent their time squabbling about where to place the communion table in church to more general satire, more everyday, and blander. This movement has something to do with the movement from Baroque thought to writing about everydaythings (theconnection is unspecified),and with the rise of the novel. ('The novel was made possible by the dissolving of the moral teleology and metaphoric encrustation of romance, and by the expansion of the art of contiguity and opposition as opposed to that of conceit' (p. 57)). Parker'sscope of reference is vast. Allusions abound. FromEdwardBenlowes to John Toland, from Bonaventura to van der Weyden, the names trip off Parker's transcendent art' (p. I). Her later enlistment under the banners of gender studies, racial issues, and New Historicism bears furtherwitness to the power of political and intellectual fashion. The title, Critical Fortunes, reflects these vicissitudesbetter than the predictable solidity of, say, a Heritage. Todd maintains a steady focus on past and present, attributing a true, but not inflated, value to the most arcane subtletiesof criticaltheory, while retainingproper respectfor 'the sort of empirical study'thatcriticsin the I99os might have regardedas 'hopelesslynaive'in itsrefusal to 'findmultiple discourseand subversion,and see through rhetoricto "critique"' (P. 123). The book's freedom frompedantrygeneratesits chief flaw:it is too lightlyedited to be totallyself-explanatory.Three attacksby Robert Gould are quoted in the first chapter,and threeworksby Gould appearin the extensivelistof'WorksConsulted', but it would be necessaryto read them in orderto discoverwhich was which. Even more casual is the treatmentof 'the amateur and courtier'John Baber's TotheKing upon theQueen's being Deliver'd ofa Son(1688),which is quoted, but whose title appears nowhere in the book (p. 16).Ultimately...