The Emergence of Literary Criticism in 18th-Century Britain: Discourse between Attacks and Authority

Description

This study tries, through a systematic and historical analysis of the concept of critical authority, to write a history of literary criticism from the end of the 17th to the end of the 18th century that not only takes the discursive construction of its (self)representation into account, but also the social and economic conditions of its practice. It tries to consider the whole of the critical discourse on literature and criticism in the time period covered. Thus, it is distinctive through its methodology (there is no systematic account of the historical development of critical authority and no discussion of the institutionalization of criticism of such a scope), its material of analysis (most of the many hundred texts self-reflexively commenting on criticism that are discussed here have been so far virtually ignored) and through its results, a complex history of criticism in the 18th century that is neither reductive nor the accumulation of isolated aspects or author figures, but that probes into the very nature of the activity of criticism. The aim of this study is both to provide a thorough historical understanding of the emergence of criticism and as a consequence an understanding of the inner workings and power relations that structure criticism to this day. Contents A Note on Texts A. The Age of Criticism 1 Introduction 2 Contemporary Discussions of Criticism and the Critic 2.1 Definitions and Evaluations: The State of Criticism 2.2 Imagining Criticism B. The Authority of Criticism 1 Critical Authority 2 Aristocratic Authority 2.1 Court-Wits and Gentleman Critics 2.2 Changes in the System of Patronage 3 The Authority of Seniority: Ancient and Modern Criticism 4 The Authority of Poetic Genius 4.1 The Poet as Critic 4.2 Poets and Editors 5 Learning: Knowledge between Authority and Pedantry 5.1 The Pedant as Exemplary 5.2 Polite Learning against Erudition 5.3 Specialized Knowledge 6 Rules and the Critic 6.1 Power Structures 6.2 Rules and Reason 7 Taste and the Critic 7.1 Debating Taste 7.2 The Taste of the Audience 7.3 The Standard of Taste 8 Name-Authority: The Critic as Institution 8.1 The Anachronistic Critic: John Dennis 8.2 The Institutional Critic: Samuel Johnson 9 Authority and the Marketplace 9.1 Overproduction 9.2 “This process of chymical criticism”: The Critic as Gate-Keeper 10 Institutionalizing Authority: Academies and Reviews 10.1 Courts of Criticism I: The Academy 10.2 Courts of Criticism II: The Reviews 10.3 “The Theatre of War”: Attacks on the Reviews C. Conclusion Distance and Democracy Works Cited Index