Representation, Heterodoxy, and Aesthetics

Essays in Honor of Ronald Paulson

Edited by Ashley Marshall - Contributions by John Barrell; Ann Bermingham; Robert Folkenflik; Robert D. Hume; Michael McKeon; J. Hillis Miller; Mary Poovey; William L. Pressly and Claude Rawson

The chapters constituting this book are different in subject and method, striking testimony to the range of Paulson’s interests and the versatility of his critical powers. In his prolific career he has produced extensive analysis of art, poetry, fiction, and aesthetics produced in England between 1650 and 1830. Paulson’s unique contribution has to do with his understanding of “seeing” and “reading” as closely related enterprises, and “popular” forms in art and literature as intimately connected—connections illustrated by literary critics and art historians here. Every essay shares some of the concerns and methods that characterize Paulson’s wonderfully idiosyncratic thought—except for the final essay, an attempt systematically to analyze Paulson’s critical principles and methods. Recurrent themes are a concern with satire in the eighteenth century; a connection between verbal and visual reading; an insistence on the importance of individual artistic choices to the history of culture; an attention to the aims and motives of individual makers of art; and a sensitivity to the crucial links between high and low art.

This volume offers rich explorations of a range of subjects: Swift’s relationship to Congreve; Zoffany’s condemnation of Gillray and Hogarth, and broader implications for the role of art in public discourse; the presentation of mourning in the work of the Welsh artist and writer Edward Pugh; G. M. Woodward’s “Coffee-House Characters,” representing a turn from satire on morals towards satire on manners; Adam Smith’s evolving aesthetic program; Samuel Richardson’s notions of social reading. The discussions represent a variety of exemplifications of the Paulsonesque, showing a concern with satiric representation in mixed media, with different forms of heterodoxy and iconoclasm, and with the values of producers of popular and polite culture in this period.

University Press Copublishing Division / University of Delaware Press

Pages: 280 • Trim: 6¼ x 9¼

978-1-61149-534-8 • Hardback • December 2014 • $114.00 • (£88.00)

978-1-61149-535-5 • eBook • December 2014 • $108.00 • (£83.00)

Subjects: Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Art / History / General, History / Europe / Great Britain / General

Representation, Heterodoxy, and Aesthetics

Essays in Honor of Ronald Paulson

Hardback

eBook

Summary

The chapters constituting this book are different in subject and method, striking testimony to the range of Paulson’s interests and the versatility of his critical powers. In his prolific career he has produced extensive analysis of art, poetry, fiction, and aesthetics produced in England between 1650 and 1830. Paulson’s unique contribution has to do with his understanding of “seeing” and “reading” as closely related enterprises, and “popular” forms in art and literature as intimately connected—connections illustrated by literary critics and art historians here. Every essay shares some of the concerns and methods that characterize Paulson’s wonderfully idiosyncratic thought—except for the final essay, an attempt systematically to analyze Paulson’s critical principles and methods. Recurrent themes are a concern with satire in the eighteenth century; a connection between verbal and visual reading; an insistence on the importance of individual artistic choices to the history of culture; an attention to the aims and motives of individual makers of art; and a sensitivity to the crucial links between high and low art.

This volume offers rich explorations of a range of subjects: Swift’s relationship to Congreve; Zoffany’s condemnation of Gillray and Hogarth, and broader implications for the role of art in public discourse; the presentation of mourning in the work of the Welsh artist and writer Edward Pugh; G. M. Woodward’s “Coffee-House Characters,” representing a turn from satire on morals towards satire on manners; Adam Smith’s evolving aesthetic program; Samuel Richardson’s notions of social reading. The discussions represent a variety of exemplifications of the Paulsonesque, showing a concern with satiric representation in mixed media, with different forms of heterodoxy and iconoclasm, and with the values of producers of popular and polite culture in this period.

Details

University Press Copublishing Division / University of Delaware Press

Pages: 280 • Trim: 6¼ x 9¼

978-1-61149-534-8 • Hardback • December 2014 • $114.00 • (£88.00)

978-1-61149-535-5 • eBook • December 2014 • $108.00 • (£83.00)

Subjects: Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Art / History / General, History / Europe / Great Britain / General

Author

Ashley Marshall is assistant professor of English at the University of Nevada-Reno.

Table of Contents

Contents
Paulson’s Progress
Ashley Marshall
Part I: Literature
Congreve and Swift
Claude Rawson
Reading Richardson / Richardson Reading
Robert Folkenflik
Part II: Art
Limits to the Artist’s Role as Social Commentator: Zoffany’s Condemnation of Hogarth and Gillray
William L. Pressly
On Edward Pugh and Mourning
John Barrell
G. M. Woodward’s Coffee-House Characters
Ann Bermingham
Part III: Society
The Problem of Empire: Adam Smith Tries to Draw a Line
Mary Poovey
Civil and Religious Liberty in Seventeenth-Century England: A Case Study in Secularization
Michael McKeon
Part IV: Media and Method
Mixed Media Forever
J. Hillis Miller
Ronald Paulson’s Heterodox View of Eighteenth-Century Literature and Art
Robert D. Hume
Bibliography of the Works of Ronald Paulson
Bibliography
Notes on Contributors

Reviews

In Representation, Heterodoxy, and Aesthetics: Essays in Honor of Ronald Paulson, Ashley Marshall has brought together an absolutely stellar list of contributors to celebrate his work. . . .Respect, admiration, and friendship radiate from every page.
— SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500-1900