THE ROLE OF THE R EA D ER OF E IG H T E E N T H -C E N T U R Y LIT E R A T U R E AN D SW IFT 'S A TALE OF A TUB C H A R L E S P U L L E N Queen's University ^ J o t the least popular approach to literature at the present time is through categorization, through what we may call "the naming of parts," and it is because of the strong emphasis upon this method that I would suggest yet another method of categorization which is not uncommon, if it is sometimes unconsciously applied. We might tentatively suggest that all literature, what ever the genre, moves through a spectrum which includes, at its one extreme, works which are strongly thematic, "about" something, to works which "are" something. Not, of course, a particularly startling proposition, but one which is not used as often as it might be in assessing Restoration and Augustan litera ture. In the main, certain historical definitions and certain preoccupations in the criticism of this literature have made it less easy to move flexibly through the suggested spectrum. One might, for instance, talk reasonably about drama as literature which "is" what it is about. The play is intended primarily for public presentation, and if it is so produced, it will be what it "is," the imitation of an action. Drama is, quite properly, about something, and we do not forget that with some playwrights, Shaw and Brecht for instance, the "isness" may be quite seriously breached for the purpose of authorial emphasis upon the message; in the general case, however, the authors tend to allow the play to do its own work. Indeed, Beckett may so shape the play's structure that it is not improper to suggest that in Waiting for Godot the peculiar circularity of the action, the sense that the beginning is the end is the beginning, the sense that the second act, if slightly different in time, is not very different in psychological place, is a confirmation of the aimless circularity of the characters' lives. If one has an ambitious sense of the meaning of "style," the style of that play (and of others by Beckett) is part of its meaning. If so, one only touches the play tangentially by discussing its theme exclusive of its structure, since the play is, in its physical presence, a paradigm for what it is all about. Certainly this suggestion that the work of art may be what it is illustrating is best exemplified in drama, but there seems to be no reason why the line which runs from "about" to "is" cannot be applied with some value to other literary forms. The poem, for instance, would immediately come to mind as a form which may be strongly contextual, but may (and one En g lish Stud ies in Ca n ad a, i , 3 I fa ll 1 9 7 s ) 28l Swift's Tale of a Tub thinks quite properly of Hopkins) be exemplification in its form and pattern of its theme. Why such can be valuable may not be immediately apparent, and something ought to be said concerning literary examples traditionally wedded to being about something. Tom Jones could be considered as richly endowed with ideas, themes, arguments. Yet even Fielding's use of a droll authorial voice is a manifest attempt at "isness"; charming, sceptical, sometimes innocently diffident, sometimes magisterial, it is a fictional example of what it is like to be an author of such a tale, and makes for an important critical problem in discussing that particular novel. Pamela, Clarissa, and Moll Flanders are clearly farther along the scale, distinct explorations of different kinds of ''is ness.'' However one might question the physical credibility of the letters written by Pamela, they are not the same as a story about those letters; they are the very thing itself, and it is important to think about them and their function, not only as a medium for the tale, but as an integral aspect of that story. Tom Jones requires a reader to take a...