The Critic in the Modern World : Public Criticism from Samuel Johnson to James Wood

T. S. Eliot declared that criticism is as inevitable as breathing. Like so many of his unequivocal pronouncements, the line is instantly memorable. Its rhetorical force derives partly from the confidence with which it is asserted, but also from its appearance of almost bland self-evidence. One instantly knows what he means. The claim of inevitability would seem to rest on the unremarkable assumption that we all respond, on some level, to the cultural artefacts we encounter over the course of our lives. These responses naturally involve us in a process of evaluation and interpretation, even if we do not bother to formulate them beyond the recognition of an instinctive sense of like or dislike, even if we never feel compelled to share our impressions with another person. Find something meaningful or moving, engaging or irrelevant, beautiful or ugly, and one is beginning to act as a critic. Understood in this way, criticism does indeed seem to be a universal, even definitive, human activity. Yet the inclusiveness of such a definition renders it problematic in a way that limits its usefulness. If criticism is inevitable, if it is simply the normal process of analysis and judgement by which we arrive at our personal opinions, the critic is not in a position to claim any distinct cultural function or identity. The many attempts that have been made throughout the modern era to define the function of literary criticism, to align its practice with some higher purpose or to justify its existence as an independent intellectual discipline can be understood, at least in part, as responses to this uneasy sense that the critic seems to have no stable, clearly defined purpose -that the cultural position of the critic is self-created and must therefore be constantly scrutinized and re-conceived. One of the most evident of the various cultural anxieties that have shadowed the practice of literary criticism throughout its modern history is a nagging sense of doubt about its necessity. What purpose does the critic serve? Do we really need an intermediary between reader and text? Are we not perfectly capable of making sense of the work for ourselves? 'One of the historical vulnerabilities of literature, as a subject for study' , Martin Amis has observed, is that it has never seemed difficult enough. This may come as news to the buckled figure of the book-reviewer, and to the literary critic, but it's true. Hence the various attempts to elevate it, complicate it, systematise it. Interacting with literature is easy. Anyone can join in, because words (unlike palettes and pianos) lead a double life: we all have a competence. 1 reality, but because it brings realities to mind. The moment of recognition, in which the representation divests itself of particularity, becomes the kernel of understanding that connects us with our common humanity. Johnson is mindful of Rasselas' worldly interjection. His writings express a profound awareness of humankind's essential fallibility. The 52 biographical essays in Lives of the Poets are, in part, a deliberate sullying of Imlac's lofty idealism. Johnson's poets do not divest themselves of their prejudices. They conspicuously fail to disregard present opinion. They are not superior to time and place. Lives of the Poets contains its full human measure of vanity, jealousy, spite and petty ambition. The aspirations of the lesser poets, many of whom Johnson dismisses with a few brusque pages, are laid low by the humiliating fact of their inconsequence. The better-known figures are notable for their moral failings. Milton is consumed with satanic pride, his republicanism depicted as a symptom of personal arrogance and Puritan resentment towards legitimate authority. Swift is obdurate in his singularity and disposed to petulance and sarcasm. Dryden, who 'appears never to have impoverished his mint of flattery by his expenses, however lavish' , is thinskinned and quarrelsome. 9 The dissolute Earl of Rochester has 'an avowed contempt of all decency and order, a total disregard to every moral, and a resolute denial of every religious obligation' . 10 The distinctive note of Johnsonian irony, which often sounds in his breezy unconcern with precision of detail, is deadpan and bathetic, but comes with a tincture of acid. Milton's second wife, he records, 'died, within a year, of childbirth, or some distemper that followed it; and her husband honoured her memory with a poor sonnet ' . 11 On the subject of Dryden's Catholicism, he remarks that 'there is no reason for supposing that he disbelieved the religion which he disobeyed' . 12 Swift's belief that he once contracted a distemper as a result of eating too much fruit prompts the dry observation that every other boy seems able to eat fruit without ill effect. Occasionally, his archness gives way to scorn. 'It is not possible to read, without some contempt and indignation, ' he writes of Edmund Waller, 'poems of the same author, ascribing the highest degree of power and piety to Charles the First, then transferring the same power and piety to Oliver Cromwell; now inviting Oliver to take the throne, and then congratulating Charles the Second on his recovered right' . 13 Johnson considered biography to be a particularly useful genre. Throughout his critical writings, he judges all kinds of literary works in relation to the two justifications proposed by Horace in Ars Poetica and reiterated in Philip Sidney's Defence of Poetry -pleasure and instruction -and he believed biography was well placed to provide both. He had a predilection for the form. 'The biographical part of literature' , he said, 'is what I love most' . 14 Romantics as a way of distancing themselves from Johnson's legacy. Hazlitt observed in 1819 that it had become commonplace for critics to profess their respect for Johnson's eminence while contradicting his critical assumptions. He goes on to contrast the likeable man depicted in Boswell's biography with the affected 'pomp and uniformity' of Johnson's writing, likening his orotund prose style to 'the rumbling of mimic thunder at one of our theatres' . 24 Hazlitt intends this as criticism, of course, but Johnson might have accepted the metaphor. For Johnson, writing is always a counterfeiting, a figuring forth. It is inevitably a formal exercise. The vagaries of the creative temperament cut no ice with him. A man can write at any time, he claimed, if only he puts his mind to it. Annette Wheeler Cafarelli has pointed out that there is an affinity between Johnson and later Romantic essayists. 'Boswell, like Rousseau, encouraged intimacy and iconoclastic detail' , she observes. 'But lives composed on the Johnsonian model -interpretive, subjective, fragmentary, allusive, iconographic -constitute the Romantic mainstream in prose. The brief sequenced lives of collective biography epitomize Romantic discourse in their emphasis on subjectivity rather than objectivity, heuristic inference rather than proof, paratactic innuendo rather than univocal interpretation, and truth rather than accuracy. ' 25 But this influence does not extend to Johnson's decisively un-Romantic intentions and assumptions. Lives of the Poets was a commissioned work whose limitations were largely set by the publishers. Its essays are marked by the circumstances of their composition. Indeed, Johnson sometimes makes explicit reference to the limitations and imperfections of his sources. Yet his concise style of biographical essay makes shrewd use of these contingencies, incorporating them into an overarching moral purpose. The 'Life of Savage' , which Johnson wrote many years before Lives of the Poets was commissioned, was included in the final sequence and became a template for the later essays. Its opening pages set the tone for the account of Savage's misfortunes and hardships, rejecting the notion that intellectual achievement brings happiness or elevates a man above the common run of humanity. Johnson refers to 'the miseries of the learned' , their 'unhappy lives and untimely deaths' . 26 This becomes a keynote for the collection. The function of the biographical essay, as Johnson conceives it, is cautionary; its basic technique is levelling. It is in this negative sense that Lives of the Poets is written, as Johnson claimed, 'in such a manner as may tend to the promotion of piety' and motivated 'by the honest desire to give useful pleasure' . 27 Eighteenth century London was a place of great intellectual and cultural vitality. Its many coffee houses and salons buzzed with conversation and 'emerged questions that were to vex authors, critics and the public for the next 200 years. Who were the public? How could one affect their taste? How could you discipline and control them in the world of a free press? And how were you to re-establish firm boundaries in a culture which seemed to be in flux?' 31 Into this robust environment rolled the young Samuel Johnson. He arrived in London in March 1737, in the company of his former student David Garrick, with 'two-pence half-penny' in his pocket. 32 He was 27 years old and his attempts at establishing a career had to that point been unsuccessful. Hailing from provincial Lichfield, the big-boned and ungainly Johnson cut an awkward figure. Boswell describes his walk as resembling 'the struggling gait of one in fetters'; his manner of dress was 'slovenly' . 33 He was, to put it bluntly, an ugly man. Not just peculiar looking, but physically somewhat disconcerting. Childhood bouts of scrofula and smallpox had left him deaf in one ear and nearly blind in one eye; he had facial scars and a pronounced squint. In person he presented a mess of tics and odd mannerisms. When the artist William Hogarth first saw him at the home of Samuel Richardson, 'shaking his head and rolling himself about in a strange ridiculous manner' , he initially assumed Johnson was an 'ideot' entrusted to Richardson's care. 34 A contemporary satirical poem, recorded by Boswell, describes him as 'unblest with outward grace' , his appearance enough to make 'babes cling frightened to the nurse's breast' , while another poem by Charles Churchill, published in 1762, which lampoons Johnson in the figure of 'Pomposo' , refers to Features so horrid, were it light, Would put the Devil himself to flight. 35 Nor did William Blake, two decades later, hesitate to mock the afflicted in his poem ' An Island in the Moon': Lo the Bat with Leathern wing Winking & blinking, Winking & blinking, Winking & blinking, Like Doctor Johnson. 36 That Johnson's lumbering and damaged frame housed an uncommonly powerful mind was evident from an early age. As a boy he had excelled at the local grammar school, and he eventually gained admission to Oxford, only to be forced to leave a year later without a degree -not due to a lack 'the most perfect prose-style'; his contrasting example of a ponderous, convoluted and impractical prose writer is, of course, Coleridge. Complete Works, 12.10-11, 15. Complete Works, 16.117 (emphasis in original). The Critic In The Modern World Explores The Work Of Six Influential Literary Critics--samuel Johnson, William Hazlitt, Matthew Arnold, T.s. Eliot, Lionel Trilling And James Wood--each Of Whom Occupies A Distinct Historical Moment. It Considers How These Representative Critics Have Constructed Their Public Personae, The Kinds Of Arguments They Have Used, And Their Core Principles And Philosophies. Spanning Three Hundred Years Of Cultural History, The Critic In The Modern World Considers The Various Ways In Which Literary Critics Have Positioned Themselves In Relation To The Modern Tradition Of Descriptive Criticism. In Providing A Lucid Account Of Each Critic's Core Principles And Philosophies, It Considers The Role Of The Literary Critic As A Public Figure, Interpreting Him As Someone Who Is Compelled To Address The Wider Issues Of Individualism And The Social Implications Of The Democratising, Secularising, Liberalising Forces Of Modernity-- Explores The Work Of Six Influential Literary Critics, Across Three Centuries, In Order To Consider The Role Of The Literary Critic As A Public Figure-- Machine Generated Contents Note: -- Introduction1. A Degree Of Insanity: Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)2. Fire From The Flint: William Hazlitt (1778-1830)3. A Thyestea;n Banquet Of Clap-trap: Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)4. The Principles Of Modern Heresy: T.s. Eliot (1888-1965)5. 'i Do Like The West And Wish It Would Stop Declining': Lionel Trilling (1905-1975)6. The Secular Wood: James Wood (1965- )postscriptbibliographyindex. James Ley. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. "The Critic in the Modern World explores the work of six influential literary critics--Samuel Johnson, William Hazlitt, Matthew Arnold, T.S. Eliot, Lionel Trilling and James Wood--each of whom occupies a distinct historical moment. It considers how these representative critics have constructed their public personae, the kinds of arguments they have used, and their core principles and philosophies. Spanning three hundred years of cultural history, The Critic in the Modern World considers the various ways in which literary critics have positioned themselves in relation to the modern tradition of descriptive criticism. In providing a lucid account of each critic's core principles and philosophies, it considers the role of the literary critic as a public figure, interpreting him as someone who is compelled to address the wider issues of individualism and the social implications of the democratising, secularising, liberalising forces of modernity. Explores the work of six influential literary critics, across three centuries, in order to consider the role of the literary critic as a public figure"--Résumé de l'éditeur "The Critic in the Modern World explores the work of six influential literary critics--Samuel Johnson, William Hazlitt, Matthew Arnold, T.S. Eliot, Lionel Trilling and James Wood--each of whom occupies a distinct historical moment. It considers how these representative critics have constructed their public personae, the kinds of arguments they have used, and their core principles and philosophies. Spanning three hundred years of cultural history, The Critic in the Modern World considers the various ways in which literary critics have positioned themselves in relation to the modern tradition of descriptive criticism. In providing a lucid account of each critic's core principles and philosophies, it considers the role of the literary critic as a public figure, interpreting him as someone who is compelled to address the wider issues of individualism and the social implications of the democratising, secularising, liberalising forces of modernity"-- Provided by publisher "The Critic in the Modern World explores the work of six influential literary critics ... Samuel Johnson, William Hazlitt, Matthew Arnold, T.S. Eliot, Lionel Trilling and James Wood ... each of whom occupies a distinct historical moment. It considers how these representative critics have constructed their public personae, the kinds of arguments they have used, and their core principles and philosophies. Spanning three hundred years of cultural history, The Critic in the Modern World considers the various ways in which literary critics have positioned themselves in relation to the modern tradition of descriptive criticism. In providing a lucid account of each critic's core principles and philosophies, it considers the role of the literary critic as a public figure, interpreting him as someone who is compelled to address the wider issues of individualism and the social implications of the democratising, secularising, liberalising forces of modernity." The Critic in the Modern World explores the work of six influential literary critics-Samuel Johnson, William Hazlitt, Matthew Arnold, T.S. Eliot, Lionel Trilling and James Wood-each of whom occupies a distinct historical moment. It considers how these representative critics have constructed their public personae, the kinds of arguments they have used, and their core principles and philosophies. Spanning three hundred years of cultural history, The Critic in the Modern World considers the various ways in which literary critics have positioned themselves in relation to the modern tradition of descriptive criticism. In providing a lucid account of each critic's central principles and philosophies, it considers the role of the literary critic as a public figure, interpreting him as someone who is compelled to address the wider issues of individualism and the social implications of the democratising, secularising, liberalising forces of modernity. Cover Contents Acknowledgements Introduction 1 A Degree of Insanity: Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) 2 Fire from the Flint: William Hazlitt (1778–1830) 3 A Thyesteän Banquet of Clap-Trap: Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) 4 The Principles of Modern Heresy: T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) 5 ‘I do like the West and wish it would stop declining’: Lionel Trilling (1905–1975) 6 The Secular Wood: James Wood (1965–) Postscript Bibliography Index