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ETD_2576

http://hdl.rutgers.edu/1782.2/rucore10001600001.ETD.000053027

theses

Print and the Cultures of Criticism reconsiders Restoration and eighteenth-century literary criticism as a material practice of writing and publication. In prefaces, pamphlets, libels, and mock-epics, poets used print as an instrument of literary rivalry and in the
process gave shape to a cultural field of poetry and criticism. Through tracing their controversies, I revise the consensus view that early criticism disciplined readers with a disinterested discourse of polite taste. Rather, criticism was forged in a turbulent print
marketplace where authors’ commercial and political interests often collided with their intellectual and professional ambitions. Placing factionalism at the center of criticism’s history suggests that literary ideas proliferated through conflict and became most
powerful when subject to the most vocal objection. My project focuses on moments of literary controversy to explore how printed disputes shifted as they moved across the still-fluid genres of critical writing. From 1660 to the first decades of the eighteenth century, sporadic debates between playwrights had evolved into a widely shared practice of literary rivalry. The success of John Dryden’s heroic dramas sparked heated debates over prosody and dramatic form: opinions came out in play performances, verse prologues and epilogues, prefatory essays, pamphlets, and eventually manuscript satires. By the turn of the century, poets, critics, playwrights, scholars, booksellers, and even readers were seen to engage in a special kind of combat—
the mock-epic battles of “Parnassus”—that divided them into factions while binding them together in a common project of public dispute. I then turn to writers who, in very different ways, attempted to insulate poetry from the turmoil of literary factionalism. Anne Finch and Alexander Pope concluded that modern criticism had become irredeemably dysfunctional. Critics haunt their poems with ambient violence. Through these case studies, I argue against the prevailing notion that early criticism regulated culture while dictating to a passive readership of anonymous book-buyers. Taking a
broader view that accounts for the wide range of genres at critics’ disposal suggests that few had the clout to impose their judgments and that literary value emerged most powerfully from below.

Ph.D.

Includes abstract

Vita

Includes bibliographical references

by Michael Gavin

doi:10.7282/T30G3K77

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.

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