Brean S. Hammond
- Published in print:
- 1997
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198112990
- eISBN:
- 9780191670909
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198112990.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature, 18th-century Literature
This chapter argues that the tendency in recent liberal-humanist constructions of Pope, Swift, and Gay has been to bring the writers together into group solidarity despite the many temperamental and ...
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This chapter argues that the tendency in recent liberal-humanist constructions of Pope, Swift, and Gay has been to bring the writers together into group solidarity despite the many temperamental and personal differences that are allowed to exist between them; but that the breakdown of the liberal-humanist consensus in scholarship and criticism apparent in 18th-century studies in the 1980s resulted in a fierce reaction to such brother-bonding, especially from feminists. Currently, scholars are more aware of the distance separating the writers than of their proximity. A case is made for reconceiving the writing of Pope, Swift, and Gay as well as Henry Fielding as informed by a cultural politics that is its most important distinguishing feature. While giving full weight to the very different ways in which it is embodied, the chapter contends that a common cultural politics contours the writing of this group. It concludes with a brief account of Aaron Hill's career, a relatively neglected writer whose ubiquity and centrality is beyond doubt. His importance to this study is that he combines elements of the Whig-derived ideology of politeness and the aesthetic canons that derive from it with elements of the Scriblerian politics of decline.Less
This chapter argues that the tendency in recent liberal-humanist constructions of Pope, Swift, and Gay has been to bring the writers together into group solidarity despite the many temperamental and personal differences that are allowed to exist between them; but that the breakdown of the liberal-humanist consensus in scholarship and criticism apparent in 18th-century studies in the 1980s resulted in a fierce reaction to such brother-bonding, especially from feminists. Currently, scholars are more aware of the distance separating the writers than of their proximity. A case is made for reconceiving the writing of Pope, Swift, and Gay as well as Henry Fielding as informed by a cultural politics that is its most important distinguishing feature. While giving full weight to the very different ways in which it is embodied, the chapter contends that a common cultural politics contours the writing of this group. It concludes with a brief account of Aaron Hill's career, a relatively neglected writer whose ubiquity and centrality is beyond doubt. His importance to this study is that he combines elements of the Whig-derived ideology of politeness and the aesthetic canons that derive from it with elements of the Scriblerian politics of decline.
Henry Power
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780198723875
- eISBN:
- 9780191791178
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198723875.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature, Prose (inc. letters, diaries)
This book looks at Henry Fielding’s adaptation of classical epic in the context of what he called the ‘Trade of … authoring’. Fielding stressed that his novels were modelled on classical literature. ...
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This book looks at Henry Fielding’s adaptation of classical epic in the context of what he called the ‘Trade of … authoring’. Fielding stressed that his novels were modelled on classical literature. Equally, he was fascinated by—and wrote at length about—the fact that they were objects to be consumed. He recognized that he wrote in an age when an author had to consider himself ‘as one who keeps a public Ordinary, at which all persons are welcome for their Money’. In describing his work, he alludes both to Homeric epic and to contemporary cookery books. This tension between Fielding’s commitment to a classical tradition and his immersion in a print culture in which books were consumable commodities has gone unexplored. Fielding’s interest in the place of the ancients in a world of consumerism was inherited from the previous generation of satirists. The ‘Scriblerians’—among them Jonathan Swift, John Gay, and Alexander Pope—repeatedly suggest in their work that classical values are at odds with modern tastes and appetites. Fielding developed many of their satiric routines in his own writing. This book contains fresh readings of works by Swift, Gay, and Pope, and of Fielding’s major novels. It looks at Fielding’s engagement with various Scriblerian themes primarily the consumption of literature, but also the professionalization of scholarship, and the status of the author—and shows ultimately that Fielding broke with the Scriblerians in acknowledging and celebrating the influence of the marketplace on his work.Less
This book looks at Henry Fielding’s adaptation of classical epic in the context of what he called the ‘Trade of … authoring’. Fielding stressed that his novels were modelled on classical literature. Equally, he was fascinated by—and wrote at length about—the fact that they were objects to be consumed. He recognized that he wrote in an age when an author had to consider himself ‘as one who keeps a public Ordinary, at which all persons are welcome for their Money’. In describing his work, he alludes both to Homeric epic and to contemporary cookery books. This tension between Fielding’s commitment to a classical tradition and his immersion in a print culture in which books were consumable commodities has gone unexplored. Fielding’s interest in the place of the ancients in a world of consumerism was inherited from the previous generation of satirists. The ‘Scriblerians’—among them Jonathan Swift, John Gay, and Alexander Pope—repeatedly suggest in their work that classical values are at odds with modern tastes and appetites. Fielding developed many of their satiric routines in his own writing. This book contains fresh readings of works by Swift, Gay, and Pope, and of Fielding’s major novels. It looks at Fielding’s engagement with various Scriblerian themes primarily the consumption of literature, but also the professionalization of scholarship, and the status of the author—and shows ultimately that Fielding broke with the Scriblerians in acknowledging and celebrating the influence of the marketplace on his work.
