Jerome J McGann, "The Textual Condition" (Book Note)

 

McGann's work is nothing short of a crusade, and his fervor for revolutionizing literary studies is both admirable and infectious. He wields a swashbuckling style, writing with a sense of urgency and personal engagement, drawing readers into his quest to transform the field. His goal is clear: to elevate bibliography from the mundane to the glamorous realm of hermeneutics, demonstrating that textual studies can be not only intellectually stimulating but also fun, witty, and entertaining.

 

In his collection of essays, lectures, debates, and teaching materials, McGann argues passionately for the radical indeterminacy of meaning based on textual instability, what he terms "the Textual Condition." He illustrates this argument with compelling examples from the works of Pound, Blake, D. G. Rossetti, Morris, and Yeats, showcasing how texts embody symbolic and signifying dimensions within their physical medium.

 

McGann's persuasive and powerful writing style is likely to attract disciples, but it is not without its critics. While his emphasis on the specificity of historical context and the materiality of texts is appealing, some readers may find his brand of historicism, like New Historicism, to be somewhat tame, focusing primarily on personal and local histories rather than broader social and economic movements. Additionally, his materialist approach to editing challenges traditional notions of authorial intention but may raise questions about the practicality of absolute textual insecurity for editors who must make choices and prioritize criteria.

 

Drawing on Derrida's critique of Romantic claims of solitary creative acts, McGann questions the role of unconscious meaning production and appears to be somewhat anti-theory in his rejection of manufactured meaning. However, his invocation of artists seeking tight control over meaning and his own privileging of his originary moment while attacking intentionalism suggest inconsistencies in his stance. His reluctance to engage with personal interpretative fantasia leaves some readers wondering if his proposed merger of bibliography and hermeneutics could potentially favor the former over the latter.

 

Despite these criticisms, McGann's work offers valuable insights, particularly in his "social theory of editing" and his examination of textual events beyond words. His discussion of Reagan's Farewell as a media spectacle highlights the importance of decoding non-verbal signs and understanding the ways in which ideology operates. McGann's emphasis on inspiring reflective and critical thought, moving beyond linear reading, is commendable, as it encourages readers to engage with texts in deeper, more nuanced ways.

 

While not without its flaws and contradictions, his writings offer valuable contributions to the ongoing conversation about the nature of meaning and interpretation in literature. As we navigate the complexities of "the Textual Condition," McGann's work serves as a catalyst for continued reflection and critical engagement.

 

 

 

 

Jerome J McGann, "The Romantic Ideology" (Book Note)

 

In his critical analysis of Romantic works, McGann emphasizes the importance of understanding them within their historical context and ideological frameworks. He argues that interpreting Romantic literature solely through its own theoretical preconceptions can obscure the distinctions between the ideologies of the past and present, as well as between individual works within the Romantic movement.

 

McGann proposes a tri-partite division of Romanticism into three phases: pre-Terror apocalyptic visions, post-Terror revisionism, and second-generation anti-Napoleonic skepticism and despair. He briefly discusses key works within each phase to illustrate his point but focuses more on delineating the historical context rather than detailed analysis.

 

McGann identifies three critical ideologies influencing contemporary interpretations of Romanticism: the French Ideology, the German Ideology, and the Critical tradition. The French Ideology, rooted in Enlightenment rationalist thought, tends to view Romanticism negatively as visionary and escapist. In contrast, the German Ideology, championed by figures like Coleridge and Hegel, portrays Romanticism as a dialectical creative process striving for higher consciousness.

 

McGann criticizes the German Ideology for blurring the distinction between past and present, leading to a broad categorization of modern works as "romantic." Instead, he advocates for a Critical tradition, inspired by Heine's Die Romantische Schule, which maintains a critical distance from Romanticism's self-representations. This approach enables critics to present analyses that consistently recognize the differences between past literary works and the present, as well as the distinctions between individual works.

 

McGann's critical project, while contributing to the body of literary theory known as "the new historicism," faces criticism for oversimplifying terms, misrepresenting opposing viewpoints, and disregarding exceptions. While his polemic raises valid points, it is essential to recognize its limitations and potential misreadings before accepting it as a definitive critique of current Romantic scholarship.

 

Central to McGann's argument is his definition of ideology as "a coherent or loosely organized set of ideas which is the expression of the special interests of some class or social group." However, this definition is critiqued for its simplicity and rigidity. Scholars like Mikhail Bakhtin have argued that ideology is not a monolithic entity but rather a dynamic dialogue between differing ideas and values. Bakhtin highlights that individuals, as members of various social groups and classes, contribute to and negotiate multiple ideologies simultaneously.

 

Bakhtin's perspective expands the notion of ideology beyond economic interests to encompass the complex interplay of social, historical, and individual factors. He emphasizes that each social group possesses its own distinct language or dialect, reflecting its unique values and shared experiences. This plurality of voices and perspectives complicates the notion of ideology as a uniform expression of class interests.

 

Moreover, Bakhtin underscores the role of translation and negotiation in the process of understanding. Because individuals belong to multiple social groups and never entirely coincide in their experiences, comprehension involves an ongoing negotiation of values and meanings. Understanding becomes an interactive phenomenon shaped by the interrelation of diverse perspectives.

McGann's critique suffers from a failure to acknowledge the dialogic nature of ideology, leading to blurred distinctions within the ideological groups he identifies. His discussion sometimes conflates various Romantic ideologies with a singular Romantic Ideology, neglecting the diversity of perspectives within the movement. While every literary work represents a unique interaction between conflicting ideas and interests, there are also shared ideological elements resulting from common historical experiences and participation in a capitalist mode of production.

 

A thorough examination of Romantic ideology would require greater attention to these dialogic distinctions and engagement with theorists of capitalist ideology, such as Skinner, Pocock, Gramsci, Althusser, and Habermas, whom McGann overlooks. Moreover, McGann's endorsement of Marx and Engels' characterization of the German Ideology as "false consciousness" implies the existence of a higher "true" consciousness, identified by McGann with the Critical tradition derived from Heine. However, McGann fails to recognize that his preferred Critical tradition is itself an ideology, shaped by academic interests with their own assumptions and limitations.

 

While McGann acknowledges that all critics operate within an Ideological State Apparatus, he does not fully examine the ideology he serves or the extent to which his own critical judgments may be influenced by it. His polemical approach tends to exaggerate the faults of opposing viewpoints and neglects the possibility of dialogue within ideology. For instance, his dismissal of recent Jane Austen criticism as "romantic" overlooks scholars like Judith Newton and Susan Morgan, who have traced the complex interplay of rationalistic and Romantic ideologies in Austen's work. They demonstrate how Austen navigates conflicting ideologies based on her historical, biographical, and economic circumstances.

 

In his critique of recent theorists of Romanticism, McGann frequently misrepresents their arguments and overlooks important distinctions among various Romantic ideologies. He tends to set up straw-critics, failing to acknowledge the nuanced perspectives of scholars who have examined the diverse varieties of Romanticism.

 

One example of this is McGann's conflation of the ideology of romantic irony with what he calls "the" Romantic ideology of Coleridge and Hegel. He attributes to English Romantic Irony the argument that poetic forms not showing "an enthusiastic response to process and change" are not Romantic, which is a misinterpretation. In reality, English Romantic Irony argues that such forms are different from romantic ironic ones. Romantic irony, as an ideology, shapes some Romantic works but not all, and it competes against other powerful idea systems of the early nineteenth century, such as apocalyptic Christianity, natural supernaturalism, romantic agony, and utilitarianism. These ideologies are grounded in capitalist modes of production and differ significantly from contemporary ideologies. By hastily condemning other critics' ideological positions, McGann introduces further confusion into the discourse.

 

McGann's classification of Heine's Die Romantische Schule as an example of the Critical tradition overlooks its alignment with romantic irony. Heine's essay exhibits the rhythms of commitment and detachment characteristic of romantic irony, as he creatively engages with and skeptically deconstructs various poetic modes. Despite McGann's emphasis on Heine's sense of loss and distance, he fails to acknowledge the ironic conclusion of Heine's chapter on Uhland, which ends not in despair but with a cheer for progress. Heine sustains his romantic irony throughout, engaging in a creative and decreative process distinct from the Sehnsucht and creative process equated with it by McGann.

Jonathan Dollimore, "Sexual Dissidence: Augustine to Wilde, Freud to Foucault" (Book Note)

Jonathan Dollimore's "Sexual Dissidence" offers a multifaceted exploration of resistance, identity, and perversion within the realm of gender and sexuality. While the titular concept of sexual dissidence occupies a central position, Dollimore's analysis extends to a broader consideration of power dynamics and ideological oppositions.

 

Sexual dissidence, according to Dollimore, disrupts the binary oppositions between dominant and subordinate identities, particularly in its challenge to notions of naturalness and unnaturalness. Dollimore draws on a diverse array of theorists and writers, including Augustine, Shakespeare, Freud, and Foucault, to elucidate the complex interplay between sexuality and social structures. At the heart of his argument lies the notion of the "paradoxical perverse" or the "perverse dynamic," which refers to the production of perversion from within the very structures that seek to suppress it. This concept underscores the inherent instabilities and contradictions within dominant social frameworks, highlighting the ways in which they simultaneously contain and exclude forms of sexual dissidence.

 

Dollimore also delves into the contrasting approaches to identity, as exemplified by figures like Oscar Wilde and Andre Gide. He identifies two modes of conceptualizing identity: anti-essentialist and essentialist. While the debate between essentialism and anti-essentialism pervades cultural and gender theory, Dollimore suggests that it is particularly relevant within the context of dissident cultures. He argues that these specific histories of dissidence challenge orthodoxies on both sides of the debate, complicating simplistic binary oppositions.

 

Throughout the book, Dollimore interrogates the complexities of identity formation and resistance, offering nuanced insights into the ways in which power operates within cultural and social contexts. While he acknowledges the importance of questioning essentialist assumptions, Dollimore's analysis tends to favor anti-essentialist perspectives, with figures like Wilde positioned as heroes in the struggle against dominant ideologies.

 

Dollimore prompts critical reflection on the utility of broad categorizations like essentialist and anti-essentialist for specific cultural analyses. While Dollimore's intent to "read culture" with awareness of historical and social complexities is commendable, his initial categorization of figures like Gide and Wilde may oversimplify the intricate interplay between rhetoric, social dynamics, and individual lives.

 

The dichotomy between Gide's essentialist stance and Wilde's anti-essentialist position, as outlined by Dollimore, raises questions about the nuanced relationship between rhetorical positions and the lived experiences of individuals. Dollimore suggests that Gide sought inclusion within dominant concepts, while Wilde embraced transgression and decentered identity. However, this binary framework overlooks the multifaceted nature of both authors' lives and writings, reducing complex social phenomena to simplistic ideological positions.

 

Moreover, Dollimore's assertion that Wilde's anti-essentialism contributed to the violence directed against him oversimplifies the intricate factors at play in Wilde's legal persecution. While Dollimore highlights Wilde's Phrases and Philosophies as evidence used against him in court, he neglects to fully explore the broader context of Wilde's trial. Wilde's legal troubles stemmed from a complex interplay of personal relationships, societal attitudes towards homosexuality, and legal proceedings. Dollimore's emphasis on anti-essentialist rhetoric as a primary cause overlooks the broader social, political, and personal dynamics that shaped Wilde's fate.

 

Indeed, Wilde's commitment to anti-essentialism, if indeed present, would have influenced his interactions with society and his understanding of himself. However, Dollimore's analysis could benefit from a more nuanced exploration of how Wilde's rhetorical positions intersected with the complex realities of his life. By delving deeper into the interplay between rhetoric and lived experience, Dollimore could provide a richer understanding of the ways in which individuals navigate social structures and negotiate their identities.

 

In his thought-provoking concluding chapter, Dollimore delves into Gide's complex relationship with Africa, highlighting the writer's role in both nurturing creativity and perpetuating exploitation. Dollimore's nuanced analysis raises questions about the dynamics of power and desire within colonial contexts, particularly in relation to Western sexual dissidents and their interactions with colonially subjugated peoples in Africa.

 

A key point of contention arises from Dollimore's earlier depiction of a meeting between Wilde and Gide in Algiers in 1895. Here, Wilde encourages Gide to transgress social norms and spend the night with a boy named Mohammed. Dollimore argues that transgression holds different meanings for Gide and Wilde, yet questions linger regarding the ethical implications of their actions. When Wilde facilitates Gide's night of pleasure (or his own), does the anti-essentialist stance of either figure mitigate the inherently exploitative nature of their interactions?

 

Both Gide and Wilde navigate complex power dynamics and personal desires, where essentialist and anti-essentialist rhetoric intersect but do not fully determine their actions. While such rhetoric may shape perceptions and beliefs, it does not offer a comprehensive explanation for the complexities of their behaviors. Dollimore acknowledges the role of rhetoric in perpetuating or challenging power structures, yet suggests that belief is not always a prerequisite for enforcing social norms.

 

Moreover, Dollimore's book grapples with the challenge of addressing the wide scope of its subject matter, from gay sexuality to perversion and dissidence. While the central chapter on Othello illuminates the rhetorical framing of female sexuality as perverse, the book skirts the nuances of how different forms of sexuality occupy this space differently. Additionally, Dollimore's treatment of central concepts often feels brief and cursory, leaving readers yearning for more in-depth analysis and discussion.

Catherine Belsey, "The Subject of Tragedy: Identity and Difference in Renaissance Drama" (Book Note)

 

The Subject of Tragedy is a sequel to Catherine Belsey's Critical Practice, which explores the  construction of subjectivity in contemporary discourses during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Belsey argues that an individual's sense of self is socially and historically constructed, not an expression of "human nature." She discredits the current prevailing view of liberal humanism by exploring its origins and flaws through an exploration of medieval and Renaissance English drama.

The post-medieval human "subject" is blinded by an illusory sense of autonomous selfhood, partly produced and reinforced by literature. Both male and female subjects are unsuspectingly subjected to an illiberal, property-based, militaristic society, and women to patriarchy as well. Tragedy, as a public genre not bound to reconciliation, readily exposes social conflicts in the construction of subjectivity.

Belsey begins by considering morality plays like The Castle of Perseverance, The World and the Child, and Wisdom. In these plays, the protagonist is not a unified, independent source of meaning but is God's subject. Later perspective staging, a move toward classic realism, confirmed autonomy in actors and audience, offering a unified spectacle to unified spectator-subjects. Between the fifteenth century and the Restoration, collisions between residual and emergent discourses disrupted certainties and released the possibility of plural understanding of drama and the self.

Humanist criticism attempts to defeat pluralism through the construction of interiority. Belsey traces the development of the unified humanist subject from the sixteenth-century Vice, whose interiority and apparent immutable essence become the isolation and assertiveness of Kyd's Lorenzo, Shakespeare's Richard III and Coriolanus, and Webster's Flamineo.

Equally alienating for the subject is the differentiation of the self from knowledge, no longer a transforming, self-dissolving knowledge of God. The seeker after empirical knowledge displaces God and becomes the incapable arbitrator of meaning. Belsey maintains that only through conformity to social norms can the isolated, uncertain subject find corroboration.

At the heart of The Subject of Tragedy is a chapter on political and individual autonomy, deconstructing the Tudor-Stuart strategic opposition between absolutism and chaos. Playwrights can voice but cannot endorse the concept of a politically autonomous subject. Protestant thought also fostered autonomy, with Anglican theory placing the monarch within the law and Puritan theory authorizing disobedience to an unjust sovereign on grounds of conscience.

In her book, Belsey discusses the revolution in the second half of the seventeenth century that gave men the illusion of autonomous selfhood and made them politically subordinate women. Some women rejected subordination, such as Alice Arden of Faversham, who commissions her husband's murder to marry her lover Moseby. This play serves as an allegory of the transition to the liberal-humanist family, where women remained an object of suspicion, subject to their husband, and excluded from participation in public life that might have empowered them.

Women in Tudor-Stuart drama lack a single, unified position from which to speak, with examples like The White Devil, A Woman Killed with Kindness, and Elizabeth Carey's The Tragedy of Mariam. These plays demonstrate that except for speeches of acquiescence to men's will, women were enjoined to silence. Transgressors like Vittoria, Mariam, and historical "witches" were permanently silenced or penitently silenced themselves.

The renewed subjugation of women through liberal humanism was not without controversy. Radical defenses of their independence can be found in Medwall's Fulgens and Lucires, Godly Queen Hester, and Shakespeare's comedies. The Duchess of Malfi defined the proposed limits of women's freedom for the seventeenth century: romance, familial affection, and the public, political domain could not encroach on the public, political domain.

Despite the invisibility of the power structure, within the eighteenth century, thanks to the few women who had written and nurtured them, women were finally installed as liberal humanist subjects with the dubious benefits pertaining thereto. One benefit is the voice given women with which to interrogate humanism and press for universal equality.

Belsey's work is considered "mildly polemical," but it remains thoughtprovoking, challenging, and illuminating for readers who believe that the most important function of literary criticism is to help make a better world.

 

Nancy Armstrong's "Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel" (Book Note)

 

Armstrong's theory of the novel is distinct from Watt's, as she places greater emphasis on the history of female subjectivity and the written word. In Desire and Domestic Fiction Armstrong argues that the novel serves as a mirror of class conflict rather than a struggle for power and the centrality of the personal, feminine, and erotic aspects. She also acknowledges the dominant contribution of women writers in eighteenth-century novels, which are predominantly written by women.

Armstrong's approach to constructing a history of the modern woman involves a synthesis of literary theory, Marxist class consciousness, Foucauldian "history of sexuality," and feminism, using each to complement the other. She criticizes Foucault for ignoring gender and the bourgeois feminism of Gilbert and Gubar for its lack of historical specificity and perpetuation of the female as victim. Armstrong prefers to use her power as a woman of the dominant class to name her power as a form of power rather than disguise it as the powerlessness of others.

Armstrong's central thesis is that domestic fiction actively sought to disentangle the language of sexual relations from the language of politics, introducing a new form of political power. In the old "political" paradigm, people were identified and valued according to their status, lineage, and wealth. After this domestic-discursive revolution, first female characters, then real women, and finally respectable persons were identified by their essential qualities of mind.

The literature devoted to producing the domestic woman appeared to ignore the political world run by men, but these strategies that distinguished private from social life and detached sexuality from political history were political, allowing the middle class to achieve hegemony while pretending to define a separate and female sphere. The personal is the political.

This thesis challenges traditional interpretations of the novel, highlighting historical and theoretical issues. While earlier didactic texts like Richard Brathwait's English Gentlewoman (1631) and Halifax's Advice to a Daughter (1688) use political language, they also establish a separate sphere of "soft" authority and assign women special power over emotionality and identity-formation. Halifax asserts that women are compensated for male domination by their influence in the nursery and their sexual power. Brathwait's perfect gentlewoman transforms her household into a "feminine government," where everyone serves with more love than fear.

The domestic novel is distinct from most fiction, as social issues and political themes are evident in various works, such as Jacobinovelists, Scott, Maria Edgeworth, Dickens, and George Eliot. The domestic novel is different from most fiction, making it difficult to consider its political history.

The book is enriched by an impressive range of extra-literary materials, including Puritan treatises on domestic relations, Elizabethan proclamations, Locke and Rousseau, the People's Charter, The Descent of Man, and conduct books that brought about the switch from status-definition to gender-definition and created the modern feminized individual. Armstrong's historiographical model is discontinuous and revolutionary, always trying to identify the "remarkable moment" or decisive new breakthrough.

Puritanism is both a precursor of the Richardsonian novel and a manifestation of the old order. Pamela proves Richardson's decisive break with both the conduct tradition and "the common sort of novels and romances" and the total fusion of novel and conduct-book. Conduct literature illustrates "Enlightenment epistemology" and the formation of female subjectivity in later eighteenth-century Britain, but it is exemplified by Jacques Du Boscq's LHonneste Femme.

It might have been more useful to distinguish the precise ideological, generic, and historical dimensions of these didactic texts rather than invoke the general concept of "writing." The notion that one can identify "the moment when writing invaded, revised, and contained the household" assumes that such entities already existed before and outside of writing.

Armstrong's book on the rise of female authority in the novel is surprisingly reluctant to discuss actual novels from the period generally considered as its Rise. A large proportion of her texts, both fictional and didactic, come from the later eighteenth and early nineteenth century, with non-fiction dominating. Armstrong offers a powerful and illuminating reading of Pamela's resistance to "paranoid conspiracy" and class aggression, emphasizing her utter dependency on words in this battle for her very existence. She makes acute observations on the return of political and economic language into a supposedly moral and domestic discourse.

Armstrong is absolutely right that forms of language, and genres of fiction, are inextricably bound up with forms of sexuality. Women authors themselves articulated this connection clearly. Jane Barker deliberately revived the genre-term "Romance," for example, in her fictional campaign against libertine sexuality. Elizabeth Boyd, in contrast, boldly accepted the term novel, correspondingly arguing for a morality that tolerated female as well as male frailties, and creating male characters whose linkage of new sexuality and new language foreshadowed the Age of Sensibility.

Armstrong's thesis would be strengthened by these cases, but in practice she neglects the resource of women's writing and muffles the complicated connections between "Notions of Life," "Tastes of Love," "Words," and "new Being." She quotes the conventional condemnation of "novel and romance" as polluting, without exploring contemporary shifts in the conceptualization of these key terms.

She promises to show the emergence of "a specifically modern form of desire," but in practice defines "desire" in a way that reduces its specificity and equates it with eligibility for marriage. As a "history of sexuality" and a "political history of the novel," then, this book remains suggestive rather than definitive.

In conclusion, Armstrong's book on the rise of female authority in the novel is a powerful and illuminating exploration of the relationship between forms of language, genres of fiction, and forms of sexuality. However, Armstrong's thesis is often criticized for neglecting the resource of women's writing and muffles the complicated connections between "Notions of Life," "Tastes of Love," "Words," and "new Being."