adam fieled @ temple university: 2006-2011

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ADAM FIELED @

TEMPLEUNIVERSITY 2006-

2011



Preface

There is a slight advantage to doing serious critical and scholarly tasks if you

happen to be younger than forty. Graduate students have varied, often specific interests —

but their brains are still limber with the mutable fluidity of youth, and youth’s restlessenergy. I arrived at Temple University, having been awarded a University Fellowship, inAugust 2006 — I was thirty, a reasonable age to do so. My intellectual interests were, in

fact, varied — I was a publishing avant-garde poet (coterminous with my arrival at

Temple were my first published poems in Jacket Magazine) with a vested interest inEnglish Romanticism, which I had studied with Dr. Stuart Curran and others at the

University of Pennsylvania. The lure of Modernism was not unknown to me, even as

post-modernity appeared rather hollow and impoverished in comparison. Because I had

done my MFA at New England College “low residency,” I found myself with two andhalf years of course work to plough through at Temple (for which I was rewarded with

my second master’s degree). Writing seminar papers did not come especially easily to

me — like most graduate students, I preferred to assay the topics and genres I felt mostdrawn to. Nevertheless, with some re-drafting from 2013, my better seminar papers go

beyond the status of mere exercises. They are a hinge to a cohesive discourse.

Several strong thesis arguments emerge from these pieces as a gestalt — that

Romanticism and the nineteenth century were a significant advance in intellectual andaffective depth over the sensibility and satire of the eighteenth where English-language

textuality was concerned; that, in the twenty-first century, Romanticism and

Deconstructionist theory must find a ways and means of cohabitation; and that terse brevity and clarity in critical and scholarly writing are preferable to discourses only

extended to fill book-length publishing quotas, in the age of the Internet and the pdf. The

long-term wrangle of textual interests between English (and German) Romanticism and

Deconstruction would seem to be the most pressing and challenging crisis — the Internetis the beginning of a “site” for this crisis to become a chiasmus, but the theoretical

ramparts blocking direct interaction between the two factions are formidable, and have

remained obdurately entrenched for the first half-century of Deconstruction’s imperiousand, to some, forbidding presence. As post-modernity recedes (with its adjuncts, multi-

culturalism and New Historicism), Deconstruction is what the twentieth century has

bequeathed to us — inhering in it, an implicit rejection of America’s blarneying socio- political rhetoric. Romanticism and Deconstructionism both reject, from different

positions and with separate ethos, the post-modern facility of the representatively

American. Some of Deconstruction’s despair is this ineluctable American presence.

It would be unfortunate for the two factions to begin to barter over a sharednegation — but any complicity in 2013 would be a good start. Nor is it secure that a new

textual America will not arise — these pieces, though not representatively American,

were both conceived and delivered in the United States. North Philadelphia is not a

particularly idyllic locale — but textual histories are often predicated on inversions. Thisinversion foregrounds a concrete jungle rather than, say the river Cam; at the onset of a

monstrous economic recession, by a poet/critic in a subaltern hierarchical position who

nonetheless worked from a disciplined nexus of ideas, which the re-drafting process hasclarified. I hope this textual subject is able to locate his own complicity in readership.



Elucidating Derrida and “Differance”: Lecture Given at Temple

University by Adam Fieled, 10-16-2006

“We provisionally give the name “difference” to this sameness which is not

identical.”

Derrida’s concept “differance” has its basis in contradiction. What Derrida is

essentially “doing,” though he might balk at the notion that formulating “differance”could be “doing” anything, is moving Saussure’s theories of language into an expanded

realm, that might be said to include the ontological, or the metaphysical, or both (or

neither.) As we remember, Saussure, in founding Structuralism with his Course in

General Linguistics, posited that “in languages there are only differences,” i.e. all phonemes and other elements of language take their identity from all other phonemes and

language elements, and are defined relationally rather than individually. Derrida is telling

us that in naming “differance” through a displacement of “e” to “a”, he is, among other

things, broadening the parameters of Saussure’s insight beyond language and linguisticsigns. The play of differences, Derrida tells us, is operational in every human sphere, and

in all situations in which entities/substances/essences are perceived or intuited. All thingsare perceived and identified through the principle of “difference,” i.e. all things take their

meaning (in the broadest sense) from other things from which they differ. By taking

Saussure’s theory out of linguistics and casting it in a more expansive light, Derrida

posits a “relative universe” in which individual identity, as “owned” by a constitutive andconstituting subject, becomes problematic as it is seen that identity is structured out of

“difference,” plays of difference.

Derrida’s use of the word “provisionally” is important. It signifies a temporarycondition, an impermanent usage. This sets Derrida apart from earlier philosophers, like

Nietzsche and Heidegger, who were much more definite and authoritative in their pronouncements. The conditions by which post-Structural thought was created entailed a

radical rethinking of writing, the author, authority, and “privilege,” so that once theindividual, with his/her constitutive ego, was reduced by “differance” to a sort of “liminal

limbo,” the act of writing, creating signs, and setting forth a specific “play of differences”

became fraught with all sorts of complications and limitations that made every claim“provisional.” If not just language but people exist in a “play of differences”, and if this

state is marked out by a permanent condition of “difference,” then how can any given

“person” (and person does, in this context, need quotation marks) claim to use linguisticsigns with authority? “Differance” is operative on people, and on language too, so that

when a person attempts to use language instrumentally, a “double bind” inevitably and

invariably arises. Even naming this bind is a double bind, or maybe a triple bind; theconstitutive subject, the linguistic sign, and the anti-concept/anti-word “differance” allchafe against an attempted “stranglehold by definition” in linguistic signage. Thus, the

language of qualification becomes imperative. Derrida cannot strangle “differance” into

submission; it is too evanescent, too ungraspable; he must talk “around” it, and

everything he says must be qualified and guarded against facile usage that guaranteesmisunderstanding. In fact, any claim to completely grasp “differance” would, to Derrida,

seem fraudulent, because there is nothing to grasp, or a mere phantom. “Differance”



exists, or has its being, or its “charged non-existence,” in a crepuscular wilderness of

shadows. If Derrida is to use language instrumentally, his strategy (and Derrida

emphasizes in this article the importance of strategy and risk when dealing with“differance”) must be equivocation. It is not that “differance” is ineffable, but that once it

is signified, it ceases to be visible. To use a quote from Wittgenstein, it cannot be “said,”

it may only, possibly, be “shown.” Although, to be fair, it cannot really be shown either,as it may lie beyond our capacity for understanding. Thus, equivocation becomes the onlymeans by which Derrida can avoid falling into the traps of authoritatively secure

language, which is seen, ultimately, to be anything but secure. Equivocation is also the

best way to deal with a “sameness which is not identical,” i.e. a process and a quality thatare omnipresent where being, beings, and forms of communication persist, but which

takes its expression through both the individual properties of any given entity and

properties (or concepts or signs) shared between entities.

“Differance is neither a word nor a concept.”

This gets to the heart of the matter, and, revealingly, the heart of the matter turnsout to be a negative proposition. A fundamental duality within “differance” reveals itself,

in that Derrida has created a word which he claims is not a word. Either this is a

rhetorical sleight-of-hand, or Derrida is once again equivocating against authorial

authority, his own constitutive subject-ness, and the signifying confines of language perpetually caught in a synchronic (and, for many readers, hermeneutic) circle. If nothing

else, Derrida can be said to be consciously moving a piece on Saussure’s chess -board. It

might even be more accurate to say that he is stealing a piece, and in fact Derrida does atone point in this article use the analogy of a king about to be killed. “Differance” is seen

to be not a word because Derrida posits “differance” as what happens between words.

That is, “differance” is the play of differences by which words and phonemes define

themselves, but because it is impossible to define this “play” without tautologicallyreferring back to it, “difference,” in the negative space where it finds its definition,

cannot be signified. Yet, for Derrida to lay this particular card on the table, it must be

signified. We see that Derrida is playing the “sign-game” with the not-fortuitous andirrevocable knowledge that no victory is possible. If “differance” had to be defined and

given “entity-status,” we would call it a “negative entity.” Just as words, things, and

people cannot exist or subsist without other words, things, and people, “differance” hasno positive existence (or Derrida might say, no existence at all) outside the context of a

world inhabited by contingencies and contingent beings. Were Derrida to authoritatively

call “differance” a word, he would be claiming for it the kind of pawn-on-the-chessboard

existence that Saussure posits for words within his schema of the word-as-sign.Saussure, we remember, claims that words consist of the signifier, a sound image,

and the signified, a concept. Once “differance” leaves the negative space where it belongs

and becomes a sound-image, among thousands of other sound-images, it is no longer

“difference.” “Differance” itself, as a sound-image, becomes something on which“differance” acts, from a place outside of “difference.” As nothing can act on itself from

outside of itself, this is a logical absurdity. Derrida feels doubly absurd about this, as he is

the one forcing “differance” to act on “differance” from outside itself, by naming it. So,



Derrida only feels comfortable in the authoritative role when he puts forth something he

knows is contradictory, and, possibly, absurd.

Were Derrida a strict Saussurian and nothing else, he might feel settled about positing “concept status” for “difference.” After all, an unnamed concept that is “talked

around” still might avoid the play of differences that Saussure enumerates in language.

However, because Derrida is not merely following Saussure’s precepts but radically extending them, and because this extension takes Saussure’s claims for language andapplies them to many other things, we see that differance-as-concept is no more or less

absurd than differance-as-sign. Derrida sees that concepts, like linguistic signs, are acted

upon by differance, defined by what they have or lack in relation to other concepts. If differance were a concept, we would again see the logical absurdity of differance acting

on differance from outside itself. Thus, on a theoretical level (differance-as-concept), as

well as on a material one (differance-as-sign), Derrida is forced by the difficulty of his

construct to hedge bets. Differance must be both a sound-image and a concept, and a non-sound-image and a non-concept. In both states of being, positive and negative, differance

has no identity other than that of a differentiating phantom.

“Differance indicates the closure of presence…effected in the functioning of traces.”

Things present themselves to us, generally and initially, as discreet totalities. If

we read a poem by Baudelaire, we (hopefully) focus our attention on it, to the exclusionof all other things. The poem grips us as we gradually apprehend its totality. We might

read it once, twice, or three times. It is present to us, becomes our present moment within

a surfeit of our attention. During this time-period, we do not think relationally about the poem. It is simply there, in front of us, a series of linguistic signs conspiring to present an

impression of discreet totality-within-presence. However, the discreet totality of a poem

by Baudelaire, or any work of art, or anything that rivets our attention, is eventually and

inevitably mediated by differance. “Differance” indicates the “closure of presence” because when it begins to infiltrate our perceptions, we notice “traces,” parts of whatever

we happen to be perceiving, which remind us that the perceived totality of our object is in

fact an illusion, and that what we perceive exists, as all things do, only relationally. If wehappen to be reading a poem, we think of other poems, other poets, other times we have

seen words used in the poem in other places, etc. Once this process begins, our object

ceases to be “present” to us, and the energy that constitutes “present encounters”dissipates and diffuses. “Traces” are important for Derrida because they are a constant

reminder of “difference,” and that “presence” as such is easily closed in a relational,

differentially-aware consciousness. “Traces” are perceived differently by different

people, but the process by which traces “close presence” (i.e. the way we notice traces of things in other things, traces of words in other words, etc.) is consistent.

Simply put, we do not perceive things individually. Everything that is perceived

by us leads us to perceptions that mediate initial impressions, which continue to be

mediated for as long as we perceive a given object. The process of mediation is internal,and means that when it begins (and it begins almost immediately), the object perceived is

no longer wholly present to us. “Differance” thus distorts (though a less pejorative term

like “mediates” might do just as well) our contact with things, diffuses our ability tofocus. When we are not “present” for the objects we perceive, when “traces” lead us to



think relationally about objects, we have entered the “ghost-world” wherein “differance”

exerts sovereign influence and where subjectivity is lost in shadows. It leads us out of the

present, and we see that when Derrida brings in a spatio-temporal dimension to thediscussion of “difference,” this is partly where he is leading us. For Derrida, “differance”

places things in time, because where we are in time has to do with our “relational state,”

how we are placed in relation to other things, how we and the world around us are“sequenced.”

“Signification: differance of temporalizing”

In this way, Derrida demonstrates that signification is a way of creating a sense of

time passing. When we talk, we talk “in time,” as a way of “marking time,” i.e.

summarizing “states of affairs” as they exist in a moment, or, depending on the context,

many moments. We are able to demarcate, with linguistic signs, what “now” is andconsists of, what “then” was and consisted of, etc. It is primarily through language, and

other forms of signification, Derrida argues, that we are able to do this. Things that we

place with linguistic signs are always placed “in time,” so to speak, and so the play of differences as they exist between moments are expressed in language. Again, a “meta”

dimension creeps into Derrida’s thinking; the constitutive subject, the dialect, and the

moment being expressed are subject to “differance” simultaneously and on both similar

and different levels; thus, our attempts to place states of affairs in time are mediated bythe play of differences in language and in the constitutive subject as well. Every human

utterance is “timed”; it takes a certain amount of forethought to plan and a certain amount

of time to say or write. What is expressed in speaking or writing is the creation of amoment among moments, a statement among statements, possibly a summation among

summations. There is no way to escape the relativity and contingency of a world bound

every which way by differance. Now that Saussure has been moved out of the confines of

language and into the broader realities of space and time, we see that “in language thereare only differences” might become “in the world of perceptible reality there are only

differences.” If this is acknowledged and acce pted as fact, it is easy to see why post-

Structuralism and Deconstructionism would argue against the belief in the reality of adiscreet, closed, unmediated subjectivity.

On the other hand, the very act of “accepting” a philosophical precept as fact

becomes in and of itself problematic. Facts are closed entities, or are held as such by theconstitutive subject. “Differance”, ghost though it may be, seems to open things up so

that the very act of accepting it as a fact, or even calling it “it,” would belie Derrida’s

intention. Because Derrida must equivocate, because “differance” is seen to be neither a

word nor a concept, Derrida might’ve known that “intention”, as such, did not apply tohis concept. “Intention” implies the kind of constitutive, authoritative self-hood that

Derrida is negating. It is an irony that “differance” seems to have been no less

confounding to its creator than it remains to us today. This probably accounts for

Derrida’s admission in this piece that differance is a “difficult, confusing” concept. If inthe perceptible world there are only differences, and if this applies to language as part of

the perceptible world, and also to any constitutive subject, we are forced to recognize the

nothingness, or near-nothingness, of human perception and hence human will.“Differance” may be seen as a ghost or a kind of haunting, a binding which no one and



nothing can undo. On the other hand, a more positive reading of “differance” might say

that it is a mode of spiritual development, of getting beyond the confines of ego and

subjectivity and into a more realistic realm, albeit one mediated by a ghost. It would benice to conclude with a definitive statement, but that would seem inappropriate to this

text. All that remains is to place this moment in time through language, and so, with

apologies for any authoritative utterance, I end here.

Adam Fieled, 2006



Wordsworth and De Man: Similitudein Dissimilitude



On the surface, there seems to be little common thread binding William

Wordsworth’s preface to Lyrical Ballads and Paul de Man’s Criticism and Crisis. The

contextual circumstances that gave rise to each were radically divergent. Wordsworthwas consciously, boldly inaugurating a new movement in British poetics, away from

abstraction and impersonality and into the personal, candid, emotional realm that we are

now familiar with as that of British Romanticism. His strategy was earnest and direct, hisuse of language purposeful and linear. Conversely, Paul de Man’s Criticism and Crisis emerged right in the midst of a Deconstructionist and post-structuralist revolution. The

terms of Deconstructionism, as applied to individual writers, necessitated that the “I,” the

constitutive subject, be subsumed. Rather than start his own counter-revolution, asWordsworth might have done, de Man took on Deconstructionism on its own terms.

There is no “I” in his piece, and the rules of the then au currant critical style were

closely, carefully followed.

Nevertheless, a close reading of Criticism and Crisis reveals that de Man was,in fact, making a purpose-statement, in the manner of Wordsworth. Because convention

precluded him from expressing himself in the first person, de Man resorted to a

dizzyingly sophisticated use of irony and “mirroring” to make his points. That is, he usedsimilar instances and “subjects” from the history of art and aesthetics to help make

his aim clear. His central theme was the idea of the “crisis” as applied to literary

criticism. De Man wanted to show that “all true criticism occurs in the mode of crisis”(8);

in other words, that any new aesthetic reality forces a confrontation between a critic or audience and the innovative, “challenging” work. De Man’s piece, as it was a reaction

against the new aesthetic theories being touted by trend-hungry Continental critics, is

itself also a crisis-statement. It is de Man’s ironically rendered representation of a trend-created crisis. Likewise, Wordsworth’s purpose-statement can also be seen as a crisis-

statement. Wordsworth is not merely inaugurating British Romanticism; he is reacting

against the “gaudiness and inane phraseologies”(77) of his contemporaries and immediate

predecessors. The aesthetic conventions of his era forced this crisis, as the criticalconventions of de Man’s era forced his.

Purpose-statements are personal; they give an artist or critic a chance to set forth a

personal agenda. Crisis-statements are social; they involve the activities of many others,as perceived by the constitutive subject, and of the Zeitgeist. Wordsworth and de Man

stand united in the impulse to achieve a dual aim; to set forth a personal, purposive

agenda, and to frame it in the larger context of a crisis existent around them. For de Man,this dual aim is doubled by a need not only to refute trends, but to question the entire

endeavor of literary criticism; Wordsworth, conversely, states his fundamental faith in

poetry-as-literary endeavor.

Wordsworth, not constrained by a need to subsume his subjectivity, is able to present his personal agenda mostly unimpeded. He makes a novel claim for his poems

and the language found therein; he is using the “real language of men”(76) to describe a

universal interiority, how the mind “associates ideas in a state of excitement.”(78)

Wordsworth never completely defines what “real” language might be, except to associateit with “low and rustic life”(78), which for him signifies purity, lack of social vanity, and

freedom from the distractions of urban life. Wordsworth’s vision, though it makes claims

on universality, is self-created; Wordsworth recognizes this, and his own limitations. Hisapproach to the public display of his vision is cautious and calculated; he states his aim,



which is quite ambitious, humbly; he will gauge the receptivity of the public to the

real language of men, and in due course gauge how much pleasure “real language” can

impart on receptive minds.Implicit in Wordsworth’s claims for “real language” is a critique of the then-

current modes of poetic production. Wordsworth feels himself surrounded by “deluges

of idle and extravagant stories in verse.”(80) His stance is one of resistance againstfashion, rebellion against prevailing trends, and isolation from the mainstream. Inother words, once his purpose is stated, and with it his personal agenda, it becomes

clear that he is also in the midst of a crisis. His social position is uncertain, and his

feeling about his contemporaries ambivalent at best. This ambivalence plays itself out in a shifting discomfort that appears when Wordsworth is forced to address them;

he is sometimes willing to lash out, then retreats behind a more even-handed “I do

not interfere with their claim, I only wish to prefer a different claim of my own.”(81)

Always, the figure of an unseen, assumed reader looms large, and adds at least amodicum of self-consciousness to Wordsworth’s expressed subjectivity. The purely

subjective, placed into a social mode of expression, is part and parcel of Wordsworth’s

crisis. The purpose, easily stated and developed in solitude, becomes embattled and“crisis-like” when placed into the social context of a published preface.

De Man, unlike Wordsworth, chooses to begin with an explicit acknowledgement

of crisis. The piece is titled Criticism and Crisis, which gives an indication that it will

address salient contemporary issues in criticism. He quickly tells us that “well-establishedrules and conventions that governed the discipline of criticism…have been so badly

tampered with that the entire edifice threatens to collapse.”(3) We are placed squarely

within a social context; we do not yet know who is doing the tampering, but it is clearly(we assume) not the work of de Man himself. He presents himself to us, initially, in a

reactive mode and stance. Yet it is not a stance, as with Wordsworth, of raw subjectivity;

there is no “I” here. We know that a social nexus of critics is being addressed; we know

that the situation is designated as “crisis-like”; but we do not get an immediate sense of how de Man posits himself in this scenario. Since use of “I”, in the context of an

attempted Deconstructionist or post-structuralist statement, would seem blasphemous, De

Man opts to use a “sideways” or “ironic” method to pursue his agenda.De Man begins with a quote from Mallarme, which he then echoes. Just as

Mallarme claimed that his French contemporaries had tampered with the rules of verse,

so de Man claims that his Continental contemporaries have tampered with the rules of criticism. As the piece progresses, de Man seems to use Mallarme as a sort of mirror or

“double,”a predecessor in an analogous situation. As such, everything that de Man says

about Mallarme could equally be applied to de Man. The substantive, purposive element

of this comparison occurs when de Man informs us that Mallarme is not really perturbed by what his contemporaries are doing. He “is using them as a screen, a pretext to talk

about something that concerns him much more; namely, his own experiments with

poetic language.”(7) Likewise, it would seem that de Man’s purpose in Criticism and

Crisis is not to jump on any bandwagons or even to take sides in a public battle. His purpose is to talk about his own experiments with criticism. He wants to get to the heart

of the matter, to address what criticism really consists of and whether it “is a liability or

an asset to literary studies as a whole.”(8) What his contemporaries may or may not be doing is a detour, albeit a necessary and unavoidable one. Their battling and bickering



serves to demonstrate what may happen when self-scrutiny becomes lost, and this

becomes useful to de Man as a means of representing his purpose.

For both Wordsworth and de Man, historical awareness is paramount. Both take along view of their respective disciplines, believing that historical awareness adds depth

and gravitas to vision. To situate their endeavors in time is part of their purpose, and a

lack of historical awareness among their contemporaries is part of the perceived crises.However, each must adopt a different strategy in order to effectively present a historicalcase for themselves. The pre-Romantic milieu in which Wordsworth was working put an

emphasis on the objective, the impersonal. For Wordsworth to break through this wall,

he had to adopt what was then an unconventional strategy. He dared to be personal,thus inaugurating a new era. Conversely, de Man conformed to the anti-subjectivist

standards that surrounded post-structuralist discourse. Only then was he able to make

his points in such a way that they would be listened to, possibly heeded. De Man’s

submission to the trends of his day, however, were merely apparent. Through the use of irony, and through the indirect use of himself as constitutive subject, he was able to

historicize himself, his purpose of self-scrutiny and the crises both within his own

consciousness and without.Within his piece, De Man, unlike Wordsworth, is willing to stoop to self-

contradiction. First he tells us that the entire critical edifice may be collapsing, owing to

conflicts on the Continent. Then he remarks that “we have some difficulty taking

seriously the polemical violence with which methodological issues are being debated inParis.”(5) So, almost immediately there is a sense, within this contradiction, that de Man

is being subversive, and that his seeming dismay at his contemporaries’ flightiness is

intended ironically. He is indulging in self-contradiction in order to achieve his purpose, part of which may be to put the Continental critics in their place. Indeed, he tells us that

the authority of the best historians can be invoked to show that “what was considered a

crisis in the past often turns out to be a mere ripple.”(6) De Man’s view of history, as

seen in this piece, is cyclical. It is not that changes do not transpire; it is that theytranspire slowly and almost invisibly. Thus, part of the crisis he is rebelling against is an

attitude of shallow, ill-considered fickleness. It turns out that De Man’s crisis-statement is

two-pronged; he castigates literary poseurs for their lack of historical awareness, even ashe notes that the utility of literary criticism has not been proven conclusively. The first

crisis applies to him, as an outsider looking in; the second is generally operative, and it

applies to him directly. Just as Wordsworth makes universal claims for the utility of poetry, de Man makes universal claims against the utility of criticism, or shows that its

utility must be proven and scrutinized.

On this level, it is interesting to note that the analogues de Man chooses to act as

his shadows or doubles are not critics; Mallarme is a poet, Husserl a philosopher, Levi-Strauss, a structural anthropologist. Further, it is remarkable to note that not once in

Criticism and Crisis does de Man mention one of the Continental critics whom he is

taking to task. He mentions Sartre, Poulet, Starabinski, stars of an earlier era; but those

who have created the seeming crisis that de Man is addressing remain unnamed (just asde Man, himself, does.) This returns to the fact that de Man is naming a crisis that exists

to him only ostensibly. The more profound crisis is whether criticism, once scrutinized,

retains any meaning. Historicity becomes a method whereby de Man, rather than makingclaims for criticism, sees the cycle of crises and purposes that defines any kind of literary



creation. The final question as to the ultimate validity or non-validity of criticism is never

addressed directly, but merely suggested. This suggestion constitutes a substantial part of

de Man’s purpose, just as his contemporaries neglect of the question forms part of thecrisis.

Wordsworth’s approach to historicity, like most angles of his approach, is more

direct, less convoluted than de Man’s. Wordsworth is a poet, concerned with poetry;when he looks for analogues, in the context of a discussion of metrical language, hethinks of “the age of Catullus, Terence, and Lucretius, and that of Statius or Claudian;

and in our own country, in the age of Shakespeare and Beaumont and Fletcher, and that

of Donne and Cowley, or Dryden, or Pope.”(77) What we have here is a variety of implicit assumptions, none of which can be found in de Man. Wordsworth seemingly

believes that poetry is an art-form valid both through history and in his present; that there

is a stable canon of great work that can be relied upon unquestioningly; that knowledge

of this canon is essential; and that Wordsworth, himself, is going to attempt to join theranks of canonized, historically important poets. Wordsworth’s tremendous advantage

over de Man, in making a purpose-statement, is that he does not have to resort to

subversion, irony, and self-contradiction. On the other hand, his straightforwardsubjectivity leaves him open to accusations of pomposity and complacency.

There is, in fact, a note of complacency running through Wordsworth’s preface.

He idealizes the poet as a being “endued with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm

and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a morecomprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind.”(81) This attitude

aids and abets Wordsworth in delivering the purposive element of his preface; he

believes in the “poet”, as an idealized figure, in the same manner that he believes in“poetry”. Thus, he seems to suffer comparatively little cognitive dissonance regarding his

agenda, and his ability to express himself and his purpose. His faith in the “inherent and

indestructible qualities of the human mind”(80) gives his address assurance, and his tone

rarely wavers from this measured, assured calm. When “crisis” issues arise, i.e. whenWordsworth mentions his contemporaries and immediate predecessors, he does not

slip into another register, but maintains a dignified, even keel. We are able to infer

from this that if a “battle” of sorts should take place for domination of British poetics, Wordsworth is confident of victory. Wordsworth sees a crisis all around him, and is able

to name the crisis, and talk of how it must be overcome, but it does not seem to concern

him overmuch. His tone is that of an already privately established eminence waiting to becrowned with justly-earned laurel. He sees his isolation as a temporary condition and

waits without haste for the world to come to him.

Circumstances, of course, proved Wordsworth to be correct. His eminence grew

to be widely recognized, he was eventually made laureate, his avowed purpose wasembraced by many poets, and the poetic crisis of “false refinement” and “arbitrary

innovation”(79) resolved itself in the birth of British Romanticism. Consequently, a

certain amount of complacency might have been justified. However, it could be argued

that a lack of rigor makes many of Wordsworth’s claims untenable. Coleridge, for example, was disturbed by Wordsworth’s claim to the “real language of men”, “real

language” not being definable or discussable by any objective measure. Such claims

formed an essential part of Wordsworth’s purpose— to stake a claim for poetry asuniversal truth, “carried alive into the heart by passion.”(82) The sort of rigorous and



unstinting self-scrutiny advocated by de Man is not part of Wordsworth’s agenda. It

may be that, as this preface was not his idea, but that of his friends who “advised me to

prefix a systematic defense”(76), he did not feel the need to question himself, as he mighthave were it a poem.

De Man, unburdened (at least on the surface) with complacency or egotism,

makes no claims for criticism, universal or personal. His purpose, discernible beneath thetwists, turns, ironies and meta-ironies, is to stake a claim for self-scrutiny, on all levels.Following in the footsteps of Mallarme, who is seen to be “ironical”(16), de Man

suggests that the act of writing must question itself at every turn; “all true criticism

occurs in the mode of crisis.”(8) Yet, de Man takes another detour, to an unlikelydestination. He uses a lecture by Husserl to demonstrate that “the rhetoric of crisis states

its own truth in the mode of error.”(16) Though never explicitly stated, we can use these

two statements to make an inductive leap; if all true criticism occurs in the mode of crisis,

and if the rhetoric of crisis states its own truth in the mode of error, then all true (andrhetorically based) criticism must be erroneous! It must be noted that this inductive leap

is never made by de Man himself. It is left in wait for the attentive reader. The irony is

that this passionate plea for self-scrutiny in criticism should suggest (albeit indirectly)that criticism, once scrutinized, may lose all meaning.

Had Wordsworth wanted to make this point, he would have spelled it out

explicitly. However, the context that de Man is working in precludes him from doing this.

For the Deconstructionists, Romanticism, of which Wordsworth is so salient arepresentative, was the enemy. Any hint of egotism or complacency would be pounced

upon and used to discredit the subject. Yet, it was clearly de Man’s intention to make this

point, by whatever means available. He notes that “in the language of polemics the crooked path often travels faster than the straight one.”(14) This must, of necessity,

be the path he takes. Because it is not stated overtly, de Man must hope that his

audience is subtle enough to catch the purpose behind his twists and turns. Likewise,

de Man must hope that his enemies, those who have created the crisis we encounter at the beginning of the piece, and who are never openly named, will appreciate the

self-scrutiny that has led de Man to his rigorous conclusion; that nothing in literature

can be taken for granted, and that literature itself might be a kind of nothingness.Here, we have two apparently simple designations: Wordsworth, the Romantic

egotist, spelling out a personal purpose and reacting to crisis in a personal way; de Man,

the objective Deconstructionist, subsuming subjectivity both in stating a purpose andreacting to a crisis. However, beneath the surface, things may not be so simple.

Wordsworth, reacting as he is against objective modes of creation that (he feels) have

grown stale, is using bare subjectivity to spell out a new vision. Subjectivity becomes the

most attractive expedient, the shortest distance between what was and what may be. It is being purposefully used, and with self-consciousness. Complacency creeps in specifically

because Wordsworth knows himself to be doing something original. Had Wordsworth’s

“I” been subsumed, his entire construct would collapse, and he would not be making an

original statement. His crisis would remain untouched, his purpose unstated. In thecontextual framework of early nineteenth century Britain, nothing could have been more

revolutionary or revelatory than a lone, rebellious “I” taking a bold stand against trends

that had prevailed for decades.Likewise, De Man’s lack of subjectivity, his apparent objectivity, is a carefully



crafted illusion. De Man speaks of using the language of polemics, because Criticism and

Crisis is polemical. It is a personal statement based on a subjective experience, both of

criticism as a personal, purposive endeavor, and of criticism as it exists in de Man’ssocial milieu. This milieu is being dogged by crisis, and a crisis (of false refinement and

arbitrary innovation) that closely resembles the one that Wordsworth is enumerating in

his preface. Because de Man is not self-consciously inaugurating a new era but reactingagainst one, his strategy seems to be to outdo the Continental critics at their own game.His “I” is so cleverly concealed that, far from seeming like a “privileged

consciousness”(9), it seems evanescent. Yet multiple re-readings of Criticism and Crisis

reveal an “I” that is fluid, mercurial, and capable both of enumerating a two-prongedcrisis (the fickleness of Continental critics and the uncertainty of criticism as a discipline)

and stating a two-pronged purpose (to show that fickleness in criticism is fruitless and to

show equally the need for continued self-scrutiny).

In a way, de Man’s circuitous technique could be seen as even more egotisticalthan Wordsworth’s. There is an element of “dazzle” to de Man’s performance that is

lacking in Wordsworth. De Man demonstrates that he can use irony, “mirroring,”and

deliberate self-contradiction to craft a statement that is as essentially personal asWordsworth’s preface. He is beating the Continental critics at their own “unprivileged”

game, demystifying them in such a way that at no point does he reveal himself as the

dreaded, Romantic subject. Yet every point he makes moves forward the argument that it

is not the Romantic subject to be guarded against, but a contradictory awareness of literature as a “something that is really nothing”. De Man might choose to designate

literature as a “nothing that may or may not be something”.

There does remain one fundamental discrepancy between Wordsworth and deMan: their attitude towards language itself. This discrepancy was largely determined by

the eras in which they lived; Wordsworth, right at the dawn of Romanticism, had no

notion of words as arbitrary signs, nor that the connection between thing and word,

signified and signifier, might be flawed or, worse, non-existent. When Wordsworthaddresses language itself, he does so in such a way to reinforce the impression that he

believes words are capable of “pure” signification. Wordsworth mentions “in what

manner language and the human mind act and react on each other”(76-77), in the contextof a complaint as to the general taste of the British public. We do not see Wordsworth

questioning the inherent value of linguistic signification; we see him questioning the uses

to which linguistic signification can be put. If language is seen to be stable, reliable, and just to the expressive intent of the human subject, then an attitude of confident self-

righteousness would seem to be, if not admirable, at least understandable. Wordsworth

does not doubt that he can make clear his purposive agenda, nor that he can spell out

the crisis in British taste as he sees it. His trust in language, and in his own expressivecapacities, seems secure. For Wordsworth, language may be purified and simplified by

a retreat into rural simplicity; the language of rural people “is adopted…because such

men hourly communicate with the best objects from which the best part of language is

originally derived.”(78) Rather than admit of fundamental duplicities or confusions,Wordsworth advocates reducing language to its barest essentials. Here, there is likely

to be less static between sign and meaning, less needless ornamentation. This

simplification of language forms part of Wordsworth’s purpose, just as the ornate, “gaudy” language of his predecessors forms part of the perceived crisis he is



counteracting. Once simplified, language need not be scrutinized. This bedrock belief

in the power and reliability of signification is part of what allows Wordsworth to be

so straightforward. Purpose and crisis can be equally addressed, an even keel may bemaintained, and faith in the ultimate triumph of truth and nature (both, in this context,

assumed universals) are demonstrated. Wordsworth enacts the discourse of the privileged

subject, making a singular claim for his finite notions of truth, in precisely the manner that de Man eschews.For de Man, things must be more complicated. In the post-Saussurian era, faith in

language, even simplified language, had been drastically reduced. The arbitrary quality of

the linguistic sign had become a guiding precept for both Structuralism andDecontsructionism. De Man works with the knowledge that every discourse falls prey

to “the duplicity, the confusion, and the untruth that we take for granted in the everyday

use of language.”(9) The kind of self -scrutiny that de Man is advocating would seem

to preclude the confident vigor of Wordsworth’s tone and literary demeanor. De Man’s complete awareness, both of his own situation as a contemporary critic and of the

situation of his Continental colleagues, allows him room to maneuver, to use the trends

and tenor of his times to make a personal claim on, if not universal truth, at leastenduring value. Whether there is a direct correlation between universal truth (the

legitimacy of which took a beating, alongside linguistic signage, as the Structuralist

movement developed) and enduring value is not, for de Man, the point. What de Man

is demonstrating, with just as much confidence and vigor as Wordsworth (though sansthe “I”, and the directness that it lends), is that certain situations and circumstances

tend to repeat themselves, that trends pass, and that the self-scrutiny which “scrutinize(s)

itself to the point of reflecting on its own origin”(7) has a value. De Man does not posit this value as universal; he does not need to. The very fact of Mallarme’s speech to

an English audience at Oxford in 1894, the nature of Mallarme’s ironies, his twists, turns,

and ability to turn trends and fickleness to his own ends in a sort of charade, show de

Man (and, by implication, his readers) that Nietzsche’s “eternal return” might apply toaesthetics as to all other things. The end of Mallarme’s charade is adopted by de Man;

to sneak “enduring value” (for want of a better, less authoritative sounding term) in

through the back door, via irony. Through adopting Mallarme’s stance, de Man gets tohave his cake and eat it too; he makes a personal purpose-statement without ever using

the first person, while revealing a seeming crisis to be a trifle (and one with many

antecedents in the history of literature.) Mallarme becomes a Virgil figure (albeit a highlyironical one), leading de Man through the dark wood of conflict, into the open air of

disciplined thought.

As this “air of disciplined thought” entails a fundamental ambivalence or

uncertainty towards de Man’s chosen discipline, this metaphor might be misleading.Better, perhaps, to say that de Man’s “Mallarmean mask” allows him to tell the truth

(or, at least, his version of the truth). Wordsworth does not feel compelled to wear a

mask. His only artifice involves the use of rhetoric to make his perceived crisis clear

and his purpose known. His famous “all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings”(79) seems more rhetorical than reality based. “All”, in this context,

universalizes a sentiment that, in its time, might have seemed shocking. It would be

difficult to imagine Paradise Lost as a “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings”,or The Rape of the Lock . Wordsworth exaggerates the aspects of his argument that make



him seem singular, atomized, and extraordinary. The exaggerations are subtle, but they

color the entire enterprise of the preface.

Perhaps this is the essential similarity between Wordsworth and de Man, asreflected in these two pieces: both feel the need to make calculated overstatements. De

Man’s “all true criticism occurs in the mode of crisis” is mirrored by Wordsworth’s

“all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” These two pieces are joined, not only by the need to assert a purpose and a crisis, but by the ambition to be bold, to “think big.” These are pieces written to be read. They demonstrate a keen

awareness of an assumed audience, and both display a sense of intellectual showmanship,

a certain “bravura” quality. These two figures, writing to such different ends andaudiences in such radically dissimilar eras, are showing us (one through earnestness, one

through irony) how a literary gauntlet might be laid down. Judging by the intense

reaction these pieces received, De Man and Wordsworth both succeeded at meeting

their divergent, contradictory, but not entirely dissimilar goals.



WORKS CITED

De Man, Paul. Blindness and Insight . Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press,

1983.

Wordsworth, William. The Essential Wordsworth. Hopewell, NJ: The Ecco Press, 1988.



On Swift’s A Description of a City Shower

The Georgic, as a poetic genre, could aptly be described as “blended.” It does not

evince the consistency of the sonnet or (most) pastorals; rather, it moves between various

modes of expression. Virgil’s seminal Georgics were posited by Christine Gerrard as “moving between passages of natural description, patriotic emotion, practical rural

advice, solitary meditation” (Gerrard, 40). A blended poetic genre would seem to lend

itself to an inclusive approach; the poem could be used to portray, analyze, or compare

complex realities. Anything deemed relevant, owing to a subjective sensibility, could beincluded. The Georgic was generically developed in such a way that heterogeneity

became the rule. Resistant to a single interpretation in a way that the pastoral and the

sonnet often were not, the Georgic became a site where many textual and aesthetic roadscould meet. This heterogeneity encouraged a continuation of the Georgic through history.

The “loose” quality of the Georgic made it susceptible to change and transformation. The

Georgic, as genre, could be made and remade to fit particular circumstances.The circumstances surrounding the composition of Jonathan Swift’s Georgic, A

Description of a City Shower , were very particular to Swift’s time, an era in which

“most poets were shaped, even defined, by political allegiance”(Gerrard, 37). The main

split was between Whigs and Tories, and Swift was a dedicated Tory. He had switchedfrom Whig to Tory, influenced by a “Financial Revolution” of which he did not approve. This particular Georgic was written before the Whigs had gained a decisive victory. The

Georgic, as a genre, allowed Swift to be partisan in verse without being reductive or

simple — formerly an agent of literary patriotism, it now became a site for affirmation of a specific, political allegiance that eschewed nationalistic or jingoistic rhetoric. Swift

was also able to let it retain its informal character and blended essence. A Description of

a City Shower is exemplar of a genre flexible enough to withstand change, without losingthe characteristics which express its unique quality.

One four-line passage seems to underscore the manner in which the Georgic has



both been transformed by Swift and retained its blended heterogeneity: “Here various

Kinds, by various Fortunes led,/ Commence Acquaintance underneath a Shed,/

Triumphant Tories, and desponding Whigs,/ Forget their Feuds, and join to save their Wigs” (Swift, 76). Parsing this line by line is rewarding. In “Here…led,” we see a

heterogeneous mass of people, mirroring the Georgic form. The difference that Swift has

introduced is that this heterogeneity is the result of an urban environment, where once theGeorgic had been “rustic.” The eighteenth-century city has become a new kind of landscape, from which the poet may draw inspiration and impressions, anticipating the

flaneur and the dandy. The poet’s manner of seeing within the Georgic may not

have changed; he represents himself “taking everything in,” recording his impressions ina manner not unlike a classic Georgic; the “what” of his impressions has changed (from

the rural to the urban), the “how” has not— personages, rather than dissolving into nature

(as in a classic Georgic), highlight the diversity of the urban landscape. Swift’s political

intentions are not quite camouflaged, even in this line; “various Fortunes” underlines the dark undercurrents of urban life: poverty and disease accompany joy and prosperity.

Poverty would be something that Swift could attribute to Whigs, and the Financial

Revolution that was, to him, their doing. The Georgic demands that Swift not make thisthe singular focus of the poem; yet, owing to its inclusiveness, Swift can make the

political points he wants to make, with his wonted satiric bow-thrusts.

The second line (“Commence…shed”) shows the evolving relationship of man to

nature in a novel, urban landscape. Rather than allowing men to live in harmony witheach other, nature (in the form of a rain storm) forces encounters which are neither

desired nor valued. The city, as a landscape to reflected upon, seems to present a kind of

contradiction: the poet observes a great, heterogeneous mass of people, who nonethelesswant nothing to do with each other. The “acquaintance” that Swift describes happens by

chance and necessity, rather than out of mutual desire. The place of nature in the Georgic

has also changed, as is evidenced by this line; nature, rather than being a blessing or a

tyrant, it is presented as a mere inconvenience. It seems inconvenient because daily business (financial and otherwise) must cease. Communion with nature is not seen to be

relevant in this landscape. The “Shed” is not insignificant; in a rural setting, a shed might

be a place where nature’s products are collected or processed; here, it is a gathering place for people to avoid a natural disruption. Politics is overt in this line, but indirectly; just

as rain forces people to huddle together, political business forces Whigs and Tories to

deal with each other. “Acquaintance is commenced” because political strife is unceasing.Indirect statement is followed by direct assault: “Triumphant Tories, and

desponding Whigs.” Swift points out that politics, rather than being part of the Georgic’s

broad landscape, are a facet of everyday life. The Tory/Whig divide is so preponderant

that even a chance rain storm becomes an occasion to see it manifest. Yet politics isdiscreet; it consists of two parties, one continual brawl. This brawl blends into the

Georgic as part of the landscape, but threatens to overwhelm the whole poem. The poet,

from being a muted Other (or prototypical flaneur) recording impressions and musings,

becomes passionately engaged: he puts himself “into the picture” assertively. The Tories,whose side Swift takes, are not just victorious but “triumphant.” The predicted, eventual

triumph of the Whigs demonstrates that Swift might be a somewhat unreliable narrator;

however, what seems more important within this Georgic is the outward display of passion, attached to contingent political realities. This passion shows Swift again



stretching the Georgic form. It now can include direct, political, partisan iterations. Yet,

the flow of impressions continues: the moment has passed, and Swift demonstrates, as the

poem continues, that he lets even his own political predilections camouflage. TheGeorgic is mutating, in its recurrence; it never reifies in the same place.

The final line of this four-line passage brings Swift back to a more objective

reality. In “Forget…Wigs,” political realities become humanized in a quotidian vignette.At the same time, “wigs,” as in hair -pieces, take the urban landscape and emphasize itsartificial quality, in a satirical Swiftian crescendo. Urbanites are involved in artifice and

appearances; they are out, not to harmonize with nature, but to make a favorable (and

self-serving) impression on each other. In this context, the politicians hiding in a shed arevictims of nature, but only in a trivial fashion. Nature, as a “player” in this landscape, has

diminished stature and importance. On the other hand, we see it capable of leveling

things — erasing political divides, and evoking commonality, albeit briefly. Everyone is

inconvenienced on a minor level; no one seems fundamentally engaged with it in a major way, as Wordsworth would later be, as the nineteenth century rejected Swift’s facility.

What seems most natural in Swift’s Georgic is political engagement. It is the

byproduct of urban life, the seeming substitute for an engagement with nature. Politicalengagement evokes the most passionate moment in the poem; it is the backdrop for

nature, rather than nature dictating politics. Yet artificiality and “appearance

orientation” (often, as here, visible in politics and politicians) only serve to humanize

those that are caught up within their vicissitudes; Swift never loses an overarching (and,the stereotype subsists, satirical) sense of humanity as a whole. It is this dual sense (party

allegiance within contingent politics, knowledge of unchanging human concerns) which

animates Swift’s Georgic. It shows the manner in which a genre may bend toaccommodate an individual author’s sensibility. The Georgic leant itself to continued use

through this ability to bend and to accommodate — even if Romanticism found its very

mutability, which could be taken as evanescence against depth, unsettling.

Adam Fieled 2007-2013



End Notes

Gerrard, Christine. “Political Passions.” The Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth-

Century Poetry, Ed. John Sitter. Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Swift, Jonathan. “A Description of a City Shower.” Eighteenth-Century Poetry, Ed.David Fairer, Christine Gerrard. Blackwell Publishing, 2004.



Passion and Fury in Sense and Sensibi l i ty

In the context of an essay on the novel, Northrop Frye employs Jane Austen as an

example of an author bound to a “comedy of manners” aesthetic. Austen’s novels, for Frye, are “typical,” because “plot and dialogue are closely linked to the conventions of

the comedy of manners.” (Frye, 6) In a comedy of manners, we observe characters as

they are perceived in society, in relation to the mores of their time. Unlike the romance,

to which Frye ascribes the attributes of interiority and subjectivity, the novel (asextension of the comedy of manners) is objective and focused on exteriors. As such, the

heightened emotion and magnified individuality of the romantic hero and heroine are

diminished. For Frye, “the tragic emotions of passion and fury…would shatter the balance of tone in Jane Austen.”(Frye, 6) However, it is possible to find numerous

incidences of both passion and fury in Sense and Sensibility. The interiority of characters

is explored in depth, and we see characters both in society and in vacuo, as Frye posits

the romantic hero/heroine. In one sense, it could be asserted that the balance of Austen’stone acts as a foil for the passions and furies of her characters, rather than precluding

passions and furies from the text altogether. This makes the work seem less “typical,” and

more hybridized, generically, than Frye would seem to suggest. Romance overflows intothe comedy of manners, and a psycho-affective chiasmus is created for the reader.

Marianne Dashwood would seem to be the pivot point for this overflow. A

passionate, impetuous figure, we see her fall through many floors of interior anguish.

Austen’s representation of Marianne is prosaic; but Marianne herself lives with anintensity that is mitigated by self-understanding only in the book’s denouement. One

description of Marianne runs thus: “Marianne abhorred all concealment where no real

disgrace could attend un-reserve, and to aim at the restraint of sentiments which were notin themselves illaudable, appeared to her not merely an unnecessary effort, but a

disgraceful subjection of reason to commonplace and mistaken notions.” (Austen, 88)

Parsing this leaves no doubt as to the passionate vehemence of Marianne’s character; she doesn’t merely dislike, she abhors. Her interiority is such that it cannot be contained; she



does not value propriety or “mannered” behavior, where it would impinge on her

expressiveness. Her abhorrence of “concealment” demarcates her as a problematic figure

in a comedy of manners, in which artful concealments and evasions abound. Austen’sinclusion of Marianne as a central figure in this work serves to add liveliness and interest;

without Marianne’s romantic sensi bility, Sense and Sensibility’s landscape might seem

arid. It also seems significant that Marianne finds conventional manners “disgraceful,”rather than merely tedious or distasteful. Her sensibility (as sensibility was understood inand pre-Regency England, a kind of expressed and refined cognitive-affective sensitivity

and receptivity) is extreme, and Austen sketches it with wry detachment. The disjuncture

between these two contingencies, Marianne’s romantic, extreme sensibility, and Austen’swry narrative detachment, gives the text a sustained tension that is lacking in other novels

from this era. It makes Frye’s claim that passion would shatter the balance of Austen’s

tone seem somewhat unfeasible; Austen does write from inside her characters, and her

rhetorical flourishes in support of the characters she favors are heated.To be fair, Austen often adopts a somewhat chastising tone when Marianne is

dealt with. We see Marianne at the conclusion of her affair with Willoughby, “giving

pain every moment to her mother and sister, and forbidding all attempt at consolationfrom either.”(Austen, 115) Austen cleverly portrays Marianne as selfish and needy, her

romantic sensibility exercised to the detriment of herself and those around her. Thus,

Austen gets to have her cake and eat it too; her inclusion of Marianne gives the text the

vivacity and drama of a romance, while her narrative balance and slightly patronizingtone keeps the romance in check so that the also-included comedy of manners can

unfold. Austen’s self -bifurcation in a third-person narrative construct is precisely

executed; her objectivity and vistas into streams-of-consciousness are evened out.The scope of passion and fury in this text does grow to include other characters.

Marianne’s passionate sensibility is a mirror of the sensibility of her mother, the elder

Miss Dashwood. Elinor Dashwood stands opposed to them, grounded in practicality and

reason. Elinor looks at her mother and her sister, and knows that “what Marianne and her mother conjectured one moment, they believed the next — that with them, to wish was to

hope, and to hope was to expect.”(Austen, 58) Thus, balance and conventional “manners”

live side-by-side with passion, abandon, and romanticism. For the romantic sensibility,the relation between facts and reality is hazy, and boundaries are a problem; Marianne

and her mother dwell in an “unbounded” realm. Wishes are always prepared to take on

flesh. For Elinor, and the balanced, reasonable approach she represents, things are notquite so simple; things may go amiss, details are important and cannot be neglected,

bargains and pacts must be sealed. The dynamic tension between these two approaches is

largely what animates Sense and Sensibility. It is this dynamic tension that Frye’s claim

does not account for. The tragedy of the romantic approach, with all its allures and passions, proves to be all too real for both Marianne and her mother. It is important to

note also that neither Marianne nor her mother are presented as caricatures to be laughed

at, as might be expected in a typical novel. Austen’s patronizing tone aside, they are

presented as authentic women, whose suffering we may feel and whose passions becomeour own. There is nothing to prevent us from identifying with Marianne, nor with what

she undergoes. The straightforward narrative form employed allows us “easy access.”

Marianne’s passion also comes to be reflected by her erstwhile suitor Willoughby.In what is perhaps the most “charged” scene in the book, Willoughby appears with a goal



passionately expressed — to justify himself and his behavior. In the throes of self-hatred

and self-abasement, Willoughby recalls to Elinor “Her sorrow, her disappointment, her

deep regret, when I told her that I was obliged to leave Devonshire so immediately — Inever shall forget it — united too with such reliance, such confidence in me! — Oh, God! —

what a hard-hearted rascal I was!”(Austen, 331) Willoughby is first introduced as

charming, graceful, and good-mannered; here, he is reduced almost to incoherence by passion and fury. There seems to be no escape for him, nor does Austen seek to makelight of Willoughby’s weakness. He seems genuinely, authentically, passionately

unhappy. Tragedy is added by the fact that his acts are irrevocable; Marianne’s heart

has been broken, and there is nothing he can do about it. A scene of such pathos cutsmuch deeper than might seem possible for Frye’s posited “typical novel.” It certainly

would not seem at home in a comedy of manners. Tragedy and passion are

conflated in stark terms, with Elinor’s steadfast control and reason grounding them.

It may seem that Elinor, more than any other character, allows Austen to retain“balance of tone” when other, more passionate characters must be dealt with. Elinor may

be said to represent “sense,” practicality, while Marianne’s romanticism is given the

moniker “sensibility.” The book swings between these two poles, and it would be easy to read in an allegory — Marianne, laid low by too much passion, is forced to become

more moderate, while Elinor, steadfastly moderate, is rewarded with the man of her

dreams. Any reading that addresses the range of thought and feeling in this book must

deal somehow with the passion which vivifies Marianne, her mother, and Willoughby. Itwould seem strange to call a work filled with passionate people a “typical novel,” if by

that we mean a novel which excludes passion and fury. Sense and Sensibility seems to

create a realm in which romance and “manners” are simultaneously embodied, andthrown in together. To what extent “romance” or “manners” predominate is an open

question, but Frye’s initial claim belies the craftsmanship, dexterity, and divergent

sensibility with which Austen has sculpted this book, and its binary tension between

passion and reason, which has more Realism in it than is generally believed.




ENDNOTES

Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. Orchard Park, NY: Broadview Press, 2001.

McKeon, Michael, ed. Theory of the Novel . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 2000.



Ideality and Sidney’s Golden Mean

In writing An Apology for Poetry, Philip Sidney set himself a daunting task: to reconcile contradictory principles derived from antithetical philosophies, in the context of

manifesto-like celebration of a neglected and ridiculed art. Sidney clearly wanted his

piece to appeal to the widest possible audience (though this piece was not publisheduntil after Sidney’s untimely death in battle), and his rhetorical gestures strike a

conciliatory note. Nevertheless, it was Sidney’s aim to make a brazen assertion for poetry

and poets: that poetic works could effectively act as a Golden Mean between two

different and difficult forms of ideality; Plato’s abstract transcendental ideality, which posited effective truth in intangible forms, and Aristotle’s concrete ideality of artistic

mimesis, and the knowledge of man which might be gained through such imitation.

There is a clue in the title of the piece that the Golden Mean might be tiltedslightly to one side. Unlike Shelley, who “defended” poetry, Sidney is “apologizing”

for it. A literal-minded approach to this piece is perhaps not best, as Sidney’s title

reveals a preoccupation with Plato’s assertion (indirectly seconded by the neglect and

scorn of the general public) that mimetic works of art are inherently inferior, “ruinous to.. understanding”(29). Aristotelian ideality is what Sidney is drawn to, what naturally

pleases him; Platonic ideality is what he must answer for, why he must apologize.

Sidney’s “apologetic” stance betrays a fundamental awe of Plato’s logic which outweighs his contentment with Aristotle’s more worldly aesthetics. Yet, because he is himself an

artist, Sidney is as ineluctably bound to Aristotle as he is to Plato. This piece finds Sidney

groping for a solution to a Sphinx-like riddle: how can Plato (whose logic and wisdom

are superior) be made to mesh comfortably with Aristotle (the archetypal aesthete) insuch a way that both approaches (which exist simultaneously in Sidney’s psyche and

have been internalized by him) are fruitfully and ineluctably at work?

Sidney seemed to sense the labyrinthine complexity and difficulty of his task. Hisapproach is a winding rather than a straightforward one, grasping at an essential,

formidable divergence between two approaches to ideality (abstract transcendental and

concrete), then poking, prodding, looking for openings. Sidney opines that poetic worksare “milk,” enabling people “to feed afterwards on tougher knowledges”(186). The use of



“milk” as a metaphor reveals both Sidney’s devotion to Aristotelian ideality (mimesis-in-

art) and a certain transcendental spirit that would align Sidney with Plato. Milk gives

nourishment in a simple, straightforward way to our bodies; it requires no cognitive or psycho-affective effort to confer its nourishment. It is homely, in the same way that acts

of aesthetic imitation can be homely (in the sense that they may reveal “home truths”

about ourselves and our world, or deal with family and the most “private” issues of our lives). Thus, Sidney demonstrates faith in the power of Aristotelian ideality at the sametime he limits it with a basic, earthy metaphor. The rest of the statement bears out the

impression that “milk,”though nutritive, ultimately fails as telos for active

intelligence. Milk is not even seen to be nutritive in and of itself; it derives its value fromthe manner in which it conditions the mind for later encounters with “tougher

knowledges”. Sidney is in the bizarre, uncomfortable posture of being bound to an

ideology (Aristotelian ideality) that he finds ultimately inferior. The dual sense of the title

remains; Sidney is addressing poetry (ostensibly because it is good, because it needs anddeserves attention) while at the same time apologizing for it (because it is merely “milk,”

earthy, basic, not bound to the superior transcendental ideality which Plato represents).

It is not surprising, given the “pretzel logic” that Sidney is forced to resort to byconflicting passions and aims, that a move is made to backtrack, to demonstrate that

superior knowledge (as represented by Plato) is, in some sense, beholden to the homely,

earthy “milk” of which Aristotelian mimesis consists. When Sidney addresses Plato’s

work, he notes that “the skin as it were and beauty depended most on poetry”(187). In theconvoluted schematics of this statement, Sidney uses another earthy, basic metaphor

(“skin”) to address the surface level of Plato’s work, which consists, quite often, of

metaphors and similes (i.e. “the poet is like a painter who…”or “like faces whichwere never really beautiful”(32)). That Plato was as dependent on metaphor and simile as

any poet is not in doubt; nevertheless, the ideality-as-ideology which Plato espouses does

not take issue with metaphor or simile as such, but with mimesis. Whether or not Plato

can be considered to have “depended on poetry” is debatable, and depends largely on how poetry is defined. If poetry is defined loosely (as Sidney seems to wish), then use

of metaphor and simile betrays a poetic sensibility. If poetry is defined in the more strict

sense that Plato himself defines it (as an act of artistic mimesis), then use of metaphor and simile alone would not qualify a dialogue as poetry. Sidney reveals the strained

nature of his position twice in his short statement: first, in talking of the “skin” of Plato’s

work, which a canny reader would realize was (to Plato and his intended audience) probably the least important part; secondly, in addressing the “beauty” of Plato’s work,

which Plato (and his latter and current disciples) would probably deign a superfluous

aspect of his discourse. Plato’s work is predicated on the belief that truth, not beauty, is

the supreme virtue; when Sidney wrote this, John Keats had not yet proclaimed truth to be beauty and beauty truth, but it is unlikely that a dedicated Platonist would find much

succor in his assertion. Sidney is unable to “give up the ghost,” admit the fundamental

incompatibility of Aristotelian and Platonic ideality. His prose has the quality of a dance

on tip-toe, an attempt to impress with lightness (in the form of dedication to Aristotelianmimesis and the power of art) and heaviness (in the form of fundamental awe before

Platonic ideality) simultaneously: a demonstration of courtly sprezzatura.

Once Sidney has established this dual allegiance, which involved a great amountof intellectual daring and derring-do (and Sidney’s verbal facility certainly rises to the



occasion, though his deftness does not hide cracks, fissures, and flaws in the structure of

his argument), he becomes free to make the claim that is the crux of his “apology,”and

which attempts most boldly to forge a link-through-poetry between the austere rigor of Platonic ideality (and its dependence on transcendental forms) and the more sensual

accessibility of Aristotelian mimesis (with its emphasis on physically and emotionally

“enacted” representations of human truth). The poet, he claims, “doth grow in effect another nature, in making things either better than nature bringeth forth, or, quite anew,forms such as never were in nature”(188). Sidney’s claim here is, in many ways, quite

radical. By granting the poet the ability to grow “another nature,”Sidney grants a

“natural” character to the poet’s (inevitably artificial, and, to a Platonist, fraudulent)creations. If, as Aristotle claimed, it is natural for men (and women) to imitate, why

shouldn’t the effects (and affects) of imitation also have a natural quality? As with

Sidney’s treatment of “poetry” (which bended to include under its aegis use of metaphor

and simile, mimesis, Plato’s main concern, notwithstanding), “nature” here is treated to a new method and manner of definition. It is unlikely that a Platonist would grant any

act of artistic mimesis the “natural” moniker, and “nature” (in the sense of what is

naturally true) would not include any act of representation, an imitation of an imitation,which Plato could only deconstruct into dissolution.

On one level, however, this rhetorical gesture of Sidney’s can be construed as a

movement towards the kind of abstract transcendental ideality that is associated with

Plato. Plato, of course, emphasized the importance of abstract Forms, which overrideconcrete forms such as we are familiar with in the physical universe. Platonic “truth”

involves the presupposition that the Forms exist in a timeless realm and that each material

entity derives its identity from its association with these Forms, which represent “material things perfected.” Simply put, the Forms are ideas, “made by God”(30). The Platonic

Form is the idea that we represent is our modes and manners of being. We “imitate” the

Platonic Forms on multiple levels, whether concretely (as in making a bed based on our

idea of the “ideal bed”) or abstractly (as in loving another based on our idea of the “ideal lover”). Therefore, Sidney’s idea of poets growing a “another nature” through artistic

mimesis is another way of saying that poets can reach for and attain Platonic ideal Forms,

and then express them concretely and instrumentally (just as a bed-maker, if he is skilled,can actualize the Platonic ideal of “bed-ness” in his craft). This is Sidney’s essential

claim, and the prophesied Golden Mean between two antithetical forms of ideality; that

the poet may use the Aristotelian “tool” of mimesis (just as a bed-maker might usehammers, nails, and the like) to reach the Platonic telos of ideal Forms, “other (better)

natures,” even in their liminal subsistence as representations.

That the Forms the poet grows might be “quite anew” adds another layer of depth

and solidity to his argument. It also adds an irreducible complication, which once againsets Sidney apart from Plato and in alignment with Aristotle; that, for Plato, nothing can

ever be “quite anew,” i.e. everything already exists perfectly (“ideally”) in the mind of

God, thus nothing can ever be brought into existence that does not already exist

timelessly in an ideal realm. Sidney’s brash language in claiming a sovereign creative power for the poet is eminently un-Platonic, and to a Platonist might be considered

misguided and naïve. Sidney’s Golden Mean requires a “suspension of disbelief” for the

dedicated Platonist, who must accept that the poet can create “new” things. Aristotelianideality posits just such a role for the poet, and again a critical reading of Sidney must



place him largely in the Aristotelian phylum, fencing a phantom and Ideal Platonist.

It would seem likely that Sidney knew this, and that the frustrated force of his

words derives from the knowledge that a perfect fusion of Plato and Aristotle was (andremains) fundamentally impossible and would always be just a little bit beyond his ken.

Sidney plays the role of intellectual Quixote, charging at the windmill of Platonic ideality

and getting dashed down into the mud. Whosoever could believe that a poet might createan other, better, newly-born nature would almost certainly be a confirmed Aristotelian. APlatonist would almost certainly lose interest once it became clear that ideal Form was

being achieved through mimesis, and Sidney’s text “beseeches” us as it would a lover.

Sidney’s quagmire deepens when the truth of his position bursts forth in an even bolder rhetorical gesture of Aristotelian grandiosity; “nature,” Sidney says, “never set

forth the earth in so rich tapestry as divers(e) poets have done”(188). To a Platonist, this

would seem like cheating; Plato does posit a “better nature” than the nature that is

“given” to us in the physical realm; but it is an austere world of bare, perfected Forms,and Sidney’s use of “rich tapestry” as a metaphor for Aristotelian mimesis would

certainly strike a false note to someone reading with a Platonic viewpoint. Sidney is

aiming to prove that Aristotelian ideality, like Platonic ideality, can be abstract andtranscendental; the key distinction is that while the world created by the Aristotelian

artist is transcendental, it is still sensually rich and not at all abstract (composed as it may

be of the “Heroes, Demigods, Cyclopes, Chimeras, Furies”(188) of the poet’s

imagination, which still must involve itself in the imitation of physical life). “Richtapestry” slots in next to “milk” and “skin” as sensual metaphor, except that the

sensuality is magnified, made central to the metaphor rather than merely serving as the

metaphor’s platform. A tapestry is made to be appreciated through sensory stimulation; colors, patterns, texture, all woven together to delight eyes and hands. As such, the

“tapestry” of accomplished poetics surpasses nature in its raw sensual appeal. All this,

being as it is an intensification of worldly enjoyment, would be anathema, in and of itself,

to a Platonist. However, Sidney is still building his construct (albeit with what a Platonistmight see as misplaced metaphors), which will lead him to equate Aristotelian poetics

with Platonic dialogues in a mediated discourse of Forms as pure intuitions.

Sidney must prove to us that sensory enjoyment serves an educational purpose aswell, which validates it “transcendentally.” It may be strained for “milk” and “tapestries”

to serve a Platonic purpose; if they merely delight, then Sidney has no argument at all.

There must be Ideals at work, and the Ideality which can conceive of them. TheAristotelian impulse-to-form must be balanced by the Platonic will-to-transcend-form.

This turns out to be Sidney’s ideal poet; a Formalist Idealist, or those poets who “most

properly imitate to teach and delight, and to imitate borrow nothing of what is, hath been,

or shall be; but range…into the divine consideration of what may be, and should be.”(189) Here, the balance tips, and Sidney finally gains the ground he has been looking

for; the ground where Aristotelian and Platonic ideality can cohabitate comfortably, or at

least feasibly, in a kind of harmonious didacticism.

Still, Sidney’s struggle is not over. To “teach” according to an Aristotelian agendawould be to show what persists in the heart of man, what our nature, as it exists in this

world, is. To teach according to a Platonic agenda would be to show that this world is full

of snares, blinding us to the reality of the eternal forms. It is clear from the context of Sidney’s statement that the knowledge to be gained from poetic, m imetic teaching is not



knowledge of transcendental reality but of human reality, and that the “better nature” he

espouses lies in worldly virtue rather than abstract understanding. “Divine consideration”

can be seen as a sop to Platonic ideality, but Sidney gives no evidence that “what should be” is anything other than his (Aristotelian) vision of Dasein, being-in-the-world. The

vision of transcendental poetics, as it is seen here, shows us a better version of what we

are already living, rather than a world (Plato’s world of ideal forms) that we can strive to understand but never concretely know. The “tapestry” shows us an enhanced version of “nature,” but Sidney never imitates that nature, as it exists to him, does so in the

Platonic manner (a timeless realm of ideal forms) rather than the Aristotelian manner

(an earthly realm of virtue improved by artistic mimesis). Sidney’s poetics are tiedinescapably to the world, and the idea of worldliness, though the divine is brought in

to add gravitas to his argument, is key to understanding what Aristotelian mimesis can

impart on a sensitive, responsive audience. “Divine consideration” is never developed by

Sidney into a coherent transcendental system; the most cohesive parts of his argument arefastened to a sense that Aristotelian ideality can lead us to a better world, rather than a

better after-world or world-beyond-sense. Plato might have stung Sidney into a

confrontation with the limitations of the mimetic process, but Sidney’s admiration for Plato and Plato’s perceived superior wisdom did not lead Sidney to posit his own version

of ideal, inaccessible, indirectly realized form. Plato is placed to play “king of his court.”

Once this point is seen, we are able to come back, full circle, to Sidney’s asser tion

that poetics, while existent as “milk,”can lead men (and women) forward to “tougher knowledges”. It turns out that Sydney, far from being oblivious to the course of his own

discourse, has set up his “winding route” beforehand so that we appreciate many of his

early points only once later points have been made. Platonic ideality is seen to be the“tough(er) knowledge” that Sidney initially and briefly mentioned, and his strategy of

Quixote-like exclamation becomes quite canny once we know that the limitations of

mimesis are appreciated. If Sydney is positing poetry not as a direct rival to Platonic

ideality but as a vehicle to reach “Platonic beginnings,” then Sydney no longer needs towrestle with the implications of artistic mimesis pitted directly against Plato’s system. All

his self-scuffles and grandiose pronouncements have been leading us, not to see poetics

as a counterpart to Platonic thought, but to see it as a sort of miniaturized simulacrum of Platonic thought; better “worldly nature” becoming a stand-in for the world of eternal

forms, consideration of which is deferred until the “milk” has been digested. The

impulse-to-improve is conflated with the impulse-to-transcend, Aristotelian mimesis becomes a “positive snare” that can move men to “join in,” and poetry “move(s) men

to take that goodness in hand, which without delight the would fly as from a stranger.”

(189) Sidney’s rhetorical flourishes maintain a stately air of the legal.

Sidney is concerned with “movement”, in more than one sense; men must bemoved to involve themselves in a participation in, or appreciation of, artistic mimesis,

which may (in the manner of Sidney’s own unique ideality) move them further along

the path to Plato’s more strict, demanding rationales. Aristotelian mimesis, in serving an

ancillary role to Platonic ideality, becomes as “useful” as “milk,” “skin,” or a beautifultapestry. This is the measure of Sidney’s admiration for Plato; the only way Aristotelian

ideality can co-join Platonic ideality is to serve it, while Plato and Platonists are under no

obligation to serve Aristotelians (though they might, perchance, be grateful for “converts” and/or new recruits). Loyalty of the king’s minions to the king is essential.



The central irony of this piece is that, while downplaying the importance of

Aristotelian mimesis in-and-of itself, Sydney makes clear that he himself is a dedicated

Aristotelian (albeit a beleaguered one). Sydney never considers renouncing Aristotelianmimesis altogether; it never becomes an issue that either side be “given up,” though it is

equally clear that this (in other circumstances and contexts) might be the most natural

course. Sydney fulfills a stubborn, single-minded ambition to fuse (or, at least, relate)two antithetical philosophies. He does so by showing in what manner the “easier” philosophy might serve the more difficult. Aristotelian ideality can lead men on to the

“tough,” the Platonic. Platonic ideality can expand upon and broaden the horizons of

the Aristotelian, make it “transcendental.” So, it can be said that both sides are “fulfilled,” in as much as both sides are affirmed and validated. The philosophies remain antithetical,

but Sidney, through pure effort of literary will, has forged a convincing connection

between them, as befits a courtier skilled in political and other forms of rhetoric.




Works Cited

Adams, Hazard. Critical Theory Since Plato. Boston: Thomson/Wadsworth, 2005.



AN UNLIKELY CONJUNCTION: ORTEGA Y

GASSET AND THACKERAY

Jose Ortega y Gasset reports, in his Notes on the Novel , that “the imperative of the novel is autopsy”(296).Ortega y Gasset’s notes themselves perform a kind of autopsy on

the novel, which is seen to be in decline, potentially moribund. Ortega y Gasset’s notesare prescriptive — he demonstrates an angle of approach that he feels can take the novelwhere it needs to go. The angle that Ortega y Gasset argues for is a movement away from

action, adventure, and plot-dependency, and into detailed analyses and contemplative

evocations of characters, who he calls “personages.” The movement away from plot

orientation and towards character orientation entails a diminished awareness of outwardcircumstance; Ortega Y Gasset says, “what…pleases is not so much the fortunes of the

personages, as their self- presence”(296). Ortega y Gasset uses the analogy of



Impressionist painting, how it conveys “existence in the present tense”(297), as well as

the detail-rich technique of Proust and Dostoyevsky, to convey his points. In the ideal

novel that Ortega y Gasset imagines, “action…ought to be reduced to a minimum”(305)so that “we are liable to remember….only the personages themselves”(308). Ortega y

Gasset ornaments these essential ideas with the thought that “density” and “sluggishness”

should both be desirable textual characteristics, in order that a proper amount of character-data can be conveyed. This information can lead us to a contemplativeappreciation of personages, rather than a mere surface-consonant engagement with action

and adventure, such is we find in pop culture narratives.

Vanity Fair might seem like an unlikely candidate to exemplify Ortega y Gasset’s prescription. It is, after all, a comedy of manners, with an interesting and intricate plot-

line that moves us briskly from one scene to another. Whatever “density” we might see in

this work might come only from its extreme length. However, perhaps alone among the

personages we meet in Vanity Fair , Becky Sharp exudes a magnetism, an intense “self - presence,” that can linger long after the book is read, and serve as a synecdoche for the

book as a whole. Her status as a personage in the book might be said to overshadow the

status of other characters, and her character is painstakingly revealed and displayedthroughout the length of the book. She gives us food for contemplation, of the sort that

Ortega y Gasset discusses, and the memorable nature of her appearances in the book

would tend to bear out Ortega y Gasset’s claim that “we are liable to remember…only

the personages themselves”(308). The birth of the character from the death of the author? Why does Ortega y Gasset make this claim? The novel, to him, is a place, a

“hermetically sealed universe”(308), where (ideally) we contemplate ethics, human

passions, and motives. W.M. Thackeray certainly gives us an abundance of ethical,motivational, and passion-related material in his rendering of Becky Sharp. What is

essential about this rendering, and how it dovetails neatly with Ortega y Gasset’s theory,

is that Becky’s character is not always manifest in grand flourishes; often, it is the

miniscule things she does, in polite company or in the domestic milieu (as an anti-Victorian non-angel in the house), that give her character its memorable piquancy. Early

in the novel, upon leaving Miss Pinkerton’s academy, Becky is offered a finger to shake

(in that day a condescending gesture); instead of acquiescing to her superior’s wishes, “Miss Sharp only folded her own hands with a very frigid smile and bow, and quite

declined to accept the proffered honor”(7).

Ortega y Gasset wants “long looks at…personages…in all the wealth of their lives”(298). He wants a kind of “lingering” effect. This vignettes which Thackeray offer

cannot help but linger in our minds, for a number of reasons. We have tacit rules

being thwarted, in a comedy of manners — Becky refuses to follow the convention of

humoring a superior. Thus, Becky Sharp immediately stands out as a character bothwilling and able to thwart convention. An incident like this signifies Becky’s “outlaw”

status, her quality as a unique personage in VF . Yet it only takes one well-constructed,

detailed sentence to convey this data. Thackeray’s use of language is very skillful,

“dense” in the sense that Ortega y Gasset wants a novelist’s language to be; for example,“quite” gives a much more distinct flavor, an impression of agency and volition to

Becky’s action that would not be there wer e it omitted. Ortega y Gasset does make a

point that “dramatic interest is a psychological necessity”(305). So, this initial revelationof Becky’s character does not happen in solitude, while Becky herself is in a



contemplative posture, but in a scene that is both modest (no grand flourishes) and subtly

dramatic (as most scenes are wherein social mores are transgressed).

It is true that Thackeray’s treatment of Becky Sharp in VF is somewhat unique.She is “revealed” more often and with greater panache than other characters. We get

more than the “good long look” that Ortega y Gasset prescribes, and, where Becky

Sharp and the “things” that make up her life are concerned, Thackeray certainly “turns from the conventional signs to the things themselves”(297). Thackeray loves to “linger” on Becky, and everything she does is invested with meaning. When we see how

“Rebecca sprang about the apartment…with the greatest liveliness, and had peeped into

the huge wardrobes, and the closets, and the cupboards, and tried the drawers that werelocked…”(71), we are seeing an action which can interest us on both a superficial level,

and as grist for contemplation. Becky Sharp can be imagined as an archetypal

representation of ambition, or curiosity, vanity, or bravery, rapacity. Her complexity

makes all her actions, even seemingly modest ones like snooping through someone else’s drawers, significant. We are seeing what Ortega y Gasset calls a “construct(ed) human

soul”(315). As Ortega y Gasset asks of the novel form itself, we may feel “surrounded

by (her) on all sides”(311). What gives Becky her sharpness, in the context of VF , is thatshe does things instinctively that others would or could not do. To use a Freudian

cliché, she is a walking Id. Her amorality becomes the “wealth of her life” that Ortega

y Gasset mentions, even, paradoxically, when it reduces her to poverty. It is a wealth

that may or may not be appreciated by her; the real wealth, the contemplative wealth,is for us, the audience; and the contemplative duration of this wealth is extended.

Ortega y Gasset emphasizes personages over plots, contemplation over action,

density and atmosphere over adventure. As a densely-detailed personage worthy of contemplation, Becky Sharp would seem to be what Ortega y Gasset might prize most

about VF . There is one final detail worth mentioning. Ortega y Gasset equates the inner

density of a novel with “high pressure”(303). This brings to light another aspect of Becky

Sharp worth exploring and contemplating — the manner in which her intense energystrains people and situations to the breaking point. Though married, we see Becky with “a

score of generals now round Becky’s chair, and she might take her choice of a dozen

bouquets when she went to the play”(350). Becky’s intensity is matched by the intensityof the reactions she elicits. She is both magnetic and repellent. This is one reason why

her social interactions often have an unusual tinge. In a comedy of manners, Becky’s

overt charisma and anti-charisma make her seem almost like a visitor from another story.Becky’s “self - presence” pleases us because she is so manifestly unlike everyone else in

VF . We may not grieve when she falls from grace, because she herself does not grieve.

We may get pleasure from everything she does. She gives us everything that Ortega y

Gasset could want from a single character, and is in a sense “pimped” to us by the author. Ortega y Gasset’s prescriptive suggestion for novels and novelists— an emphasis

on character and contemplation — may have been fulfilled by Thackeray’s rendering of

Becky Sharp in VF ; this novel is, however, from a bygone era, while Ortega y Gasset is

speaking to a more recent audience. If someone wanted to create a Becky Sharp for our day and age, challenges would present themselves — how to create a figure both in and

out of our society, an “outlaw” who knows the rules by heart; how to convey the

piquancy of mores transgressed, of ambition fit to burst; how to represent magnetic andrepellant power. Ortega y Gasset’s Notes suggest that it is just such questions that



novelists should be asking themselves. Though the pairing of Thackeray and Ortega y

Gasset may seem unlikely, the pairing of Ortega y Gasset and Becky Sharp might be a

match made in heaven. The inner “wealth” of her character has demonstrated superior staying power — her lingering uniqueness is left with us today. She is an unrepeatable

original, and, as the future of the novel in the Internet Age is beleaguered, the kind of

textual feat that must recur if the novel-as-form is to prosper or even survive.




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Exhausted Sense: Sensibility and Synecdoche in Gray and Burns

A complete and completely realized discussion of the poetic trope synecdoche, as

applied to the poems of Thomas Gray and Robert Burns, and contextualized by an

awareness of “sensibility” as an eighteenth century cultural phenomenon, could probably

fill a half-dozen books. The task of this paper will be to open up a discussion, “start

things off,” heighten awareness of how the many levels and layers of these texts interact,

coalesce, disrupt themselves, and achieve wholeness (to whatever extent “wholeness”

may be achieved in a poem, as interpretations and standards of wholeness may vary from

poet to poet, and from critic to critic.) What is at stake is the possibility of a new

theoretical approach to these texts, using sensibility and synecdoche (and the textual

interaction between the two) to break them open, and show them in a new light. When

seen in the light of my arguments, I hope to convey a sense that these texts may be

reevaluated, that interpretive possibilities have not been exhausted, and that there is a

subtle connection between the trope synecdoche, and the cultural phenomenon

sensibility, as it finds its way into Gray and Burns’s texts. This will become clearer once

my thesis argument is clearly stated.

In engaging Burns and Gray, specifically Gray’s “Ode on a Distant Prospect of

Eton College” and Burns’s “To a Mouse,” I noticed a sense of weariness creeping into

the texts. It is a personal weariness, a kind of feeling that Gray and Burns, though still



Fieled 2

engaged in many of the projects of sensibility (which will be defined shortly), have

reached the ends of their respective ropes, hit a psycho-spiritual brick wall. That is,

they seem unwilling or unable to extend themselves to the objects of their respective

enquiries. They seem exhausted. My central argument is that one textually palpable

manifestation of this exhaustion, as expressed in “Eton” and “Mouse,” is the use Gray

and Burns make of the trope synecdoche (also to be more fully defined shortly.) In using

this trope, Gray and Burns cut their objects down to size, to make them manageable. This

cuts against the grain of sensibility, which, by most definitions, involves fellow-feeling,

an engagement with “wholes” rather than “halves.” I am arguing that, in the context of

these poems, synecdoche acts as a kind of resort, a refuge away from the demands of

sensibility. The implications of my argument are complex. What I will go into in this

paper is the implication that sensibility, as a theoretical entity, may not have been a

sustainable reality for Gray and Burns. This could (I hope) force a reevaluation of these

poets’ achievements, focusing on the limits of sensibility, how sensibility led eighteenth-

century poets to exhaust themselves, and how tropes like synecdoche became a textual

manifestation of this.

Careful investigation of my thesis has led me to two sub-theses. Each of these

deserves its own paper (or book.) Though I do not have the space to do that here, I feel

that I cannot, in good conscience, leave these arguments out, even if they must be

subordinated. Upon looking deeper into the respective oeuvres of Gray and Burns, I

noticed another mode of synecdoche. We will see how, in “Eton” and “Mouse,” Gray and

Burns contract their objects. However, in poems like Gray’s famous “Elegy Written in a



Fieled 3

Country Church Yard” and Burns’s “Red Red Rose,” something else is happening.

Rather than a subtraction taking place, a kind of multiplication transpires, wherein not

only are wholes recognized, they are expanded, blown up beyond life size. In these

poems, sensibility seems to be working in expansive, rather than contractive mode. Gray

and Burns are using poetic devices (Gray reuses synecdoche, Burns uses simile) to take

wholes, and through application of these devices, make them bigger. Ordinarily, this

would seem to refute my basic argument. However, my sub-argument here is that

blowing things up shows a will to distort that again shows sensibility strained. Too big

and too small both chafe against the tenets of fellow-feeling. I will explore these texts

as adjuncts to the main ones.

The final sub-thesis acts as a kind of synthesis. It gives a place for the reader, and

the manner in which Gray and Burns hope to activate sensibility in the reader. My

argument, as it dovetails with my thesis and first sub-argument, is that what is operating

in these texts is a k ind of “Double Circuit.” Gray and Burns seem to be aware that they

are connecting with a reader (or readers), who will then make a connection both to them,

standing at the center of their own texts, and to their objects. We look at Gray and Burns

looking at their objects, and quite often it seems that Gray and Burns might be looking

back at us, as well. If we posit this Double Circuit as an entity in these poems, my thesis

argument stands, but is slightly modified, for this reason: though the tenor of the poems

may seem to be (and actually be) exhausted, the Double Circuit allows us to feel Gray

and Burns’s exhaustion. Thus, we can exercise our own sensibility with the two poets,

have fellow-feeling with them. The Double Circuit ensures that some sensibility remains



Fieled 4

operative, even if the note of exhaustion remains dominant. This is, I am well aware,

cumbersome for one seminar paper, but so it goes.

Now, for some brass tacks definitions: synecdoche, a poetic trope, has been

defined as “a figure of speech in which the part stands for the whole, and thus something

else is understood within the thing mentioned” (Cuddon, A Dictionary of Literary

Terms). A second definition of synecdoche I came upon is this: “A common figure of

speech by which something is referred to indirectly, either by naming only some part or

constituent of it or — less often — by naming some more comprehensive entity of which it

is part” (Baldrick, Oxford Concise Dictionary of Literary Terms.) A final, perhaps more

interesting, take on synecdoche, comes from Edmund Burke, who writes, “The “noblest

synecdoche,” the perfect paradigm or prototype for all lesser usages, is found in

metaphysical doctrines proclaiming the identity of “microcosm” and “macrocosm””

(Burke, 508). Burke’s definition is somewhat relevant to my argument. We will see that

when, in “Eton” and “Mouse,” Gray and Burns use synecdoche, the “macro” element is,

if not metaphysical, certainly somewhat indeterminate, and must be read in.

As synecdoche is being paired with sensibility, it will be necessary, first to have a

working definition of sensibility, then to explore the risks and hazards that Gray and

Burns faced in mixing these two elements. Jerome McGann has described sensibility as

“an equivocal condition even for those who gave their hearts to it” (McGann, 3), for

which “tears are the proper emblem” (McGann, 7), and that assumed “that no human

action is possible…that is not led and driven by feeling, affect, emotion” (McGann, 6).

It is important that this was a specifically cultural phenomenon, not merely one that



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applied to the psycho-spiritual realms. As Julie Ellison wrote, “The eighteenth century

witnessed the decisive popular fusion of sensibility and taste, so that emotional

susceptibility was allied to popular expression” (Ellison, 6). Yet the match of emotion-

driven, affective sensibility and culture was not always a happy one. Jerome McGann

also notes that for many, sensibility was seen to be “an embarrassment to high culture”

(McGann, 1). Between McGann and Ellison, we see that there was a push-pull between

culture and sensibility; sensibility was “popular,” but not “high.” A poet wanting to

balance these things would have to walk a fine line to appeal to a “sensible” public.

Nor was sensibility unproblematic for the theorists who initiated it. Adam Smith

would probably be the foremost sensibility theorist. This is how David Marshall sums up

Smith’s dilemma:

Adam Smith bases his theory…on the presumption of a universal need for

sympathy…he describes a society in which sympathy seems unlikely and

even impossible — not so much because people are disinclined to enter

into situations that are painful or distressing, but rather because…people know the characters and sentiments of others only through representations

they form in their imaginations of what they think others feel.

(Marshall, 180)

For Smith, though we may become “interested in the fortunes of others” and “conceive of

what we ourselves should feel” (Smith, 9) in others’ shoes, the limits of sensibility were

the limits of the imagination. Yet, as Julie Ellison pointed out, sensibility, using the

imagination to establish fellow-feeling (a correspondence of feeling on a similar level),

became a cultural phenomenon in England. It was commonplace for poets to

demonstrate emotional susceptibility, to put themselves on the line in their poems. In

attempting to demonstrate sensibility, Gray and Burns were placing themselves in the



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mainstream, and keeping their audience in the company of flesh and blood.

It is important to note that, while Adam Smith clearly understood the limitations

of sensibility (and its dependence on imaginative power), others went out of their way to

glorify sensibility and the sensible. Oliver Goldsmith, as quoted in Paul Goring’s The

Rhetoric of Sensibility in Eighteenth-Century Culture, wrote, “He that is sensibly

touched, sees things with a very different eye from the rest of mankind. All nature to him

becomes an object of comparison and metaphor, without attending to it” (Goldsmith, 78).

Here, the one with sensibility is set apart, and valorized. Interesting that Goldsmith

specifically mentions metaphor. Metaphor involves one thing standing for another, an

implied comparison; synecdoche involves a part standing for a whole. Metaphor does

not necessarily involve a diminution in size; synecdoche often does; both are imaginative.

Between Goldsmith and Smith, it easy to see that definitions and interpretations

of sensibility varied widely. It was read by some as limited and limiting, by others as

nearly boundless. For our purposes, it is useful to keep both in mind. Perhaps the most

essential thing necessary to my argument (once we have a working definition of

sensibility, which I hope these quotes have provided), is that, for both Gray and Burns,

sensibility, the presence of it and the cultural demand for it, were unavoidable. It was

what was in the air, especially for Gray. Burns came in at the tail end, but it was still very

present for him as well. I would say that Gray and Burns’s engagement with sensibility,

then, was not entirely volitional. They were compelled by circumstance to write

“sensible” poetry. What is demonstrated, in “Eton” and “Mouse,” is that these poets were

more in line with Smith’s appreciation of sensibility’s limits than with Goldsmith’s



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valorization of it. Imaginative power is seen to be very much bounded by individual

concern; instrumental use of parts to stand for wholes expresses this.

To gird this discussion for the introduction of the two primary texts, I

thought it might be useful to go into some detail as to what my qualms are, where the

conjunction of sensibility and synecdoche are concerned. Some of these qualms have

been mentioned in the intro, but bear repeating. For me, there is an incompatibility that

is readily visible, where these two entities, the trope and the cultural phenomenon, are

concerned. It is not unequivocal, but as a “possible,” worth discussing. Sensibility, as we

have seen, involves the individual’s imaginative power. This power is engaged in a

perceived ability to see what another is seeing, and feel what another is feeling. It may or

may not be a pretense to think that this is possible, but it is sensibility’s ground zero. It

would be hard, however, to deny that if we see/feel along with another person, we are

(at one and the same time) recognizing and affirming their wholeness. We “become

them,” to whatever extent it is possible to do so. Simply put, sensibility encourages

recognition of wholes. An ideally sensible person would, in his or her imaginative power,

accept humanity with all its flaws and eccentricities, feeling the affects behind them. This

would lead to a willingness to exercise compassion. For a poet, this is a process that

would enact itself in text, which would posit a mirroring of this “well-roundedness.”

Synecdoche, as we have seen, is a trope that involves instrumental use of parts;

things are not accepted as wholes, but made to serve ends through textual usage. As this

enacts itself, imagination limits itself, puts constraints on its objects. When Gray and

Burns and their texts enter the picture, this confrontation between sensibility, exercised



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through imaginative power, and synecdoche, exercised through narrowing and focusing

imaginative power, comes to seem, in “Eton” and “Mouse,” like a head-on collision. The

next obvious question that presents itself is, why would Gray and Burns choose to use the

trope synecdoche, if its appearance might constitute a kind of breach, a rupture of the

implicit bond between the poet and the tenets of sensibility, other than exhaustion?

There are a number of different potential answers to this question. In the context

of this paper, I am arguing that Gray and Burns are using synecdoche as a kind of resort.

It is a mode and a method of retreat from the demands sensibility makes on an

individual’s imaginative power. This retreat is necessitated, as I stated in my

introduction, by an exhaustion of sensibility. Sensibility may become exhausted because,

among other reasons, the absorption of “wholes” (whether they be people or nature as a

thing-in-itself or categorical dimensions of life) becomes unmanageable, too draining,

demanding, and disruptive of healthy ego-functioning and human agency. Exactly what

constitutes “healthy ego-functioning” is debatable; here, I define it as an ability to

maintain a strong sense of self-hood, with functioning boundaries, so that an individual

has a certain amount of agency regarding what gets in (and assimilates into

consciousness) and what does not. Dealing with “parts,” via synecdoche, becomes more

manageable than dealing with wholes. Objectivity is simpler with parts, too.

This process, where the exhaustion of sensibility leads into a kind of codification

(in this case via synecdoche), plays into something Paul Goring said about the

transference of sensible attitudes into art: “In order for it (sensibility) to be truly

affecting, it must be managed and refined within an aesthetic code” (Goring, 138). I am



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arguing that “managing” and “refining” sensibility, as Gray and Burns have done, is in

some respects a form of limitation, a constraint on sensibility. This may point us back to

Jerome McGann’s assertion that sensibility is “equivocal.” It seems equivocal because,

often, it seems to posit an ideal person in an ideal relation to an Other that may be

imperfect but does not preclude the exercise of compassion. So the texts of Gray and

Burns, which engage in the kind of codification that Goring mentions, may, for the

purposes of my argument, bear the title of equivocal texts. This can be argued because to

be “sensible” and yet use a part to represent a whole (thus perhaps nullifying, or, as

Goring would say, “managing” or “refining” a complete acknowledgement) would create

an inherently equivocal scenario. Synecdoche, when it crosses paths with sensibility, is

suspect, even as it facilitates credible imaginative objectivity.

I would like to defer the gratification of getting to the primary texts just a little

while longer. I feel the need to “fill in the blanks” of my sub-theses, as I (hopefully) have

with my central argument. Briefly: though my primary texts deal with sensibility in

“exhausted” mode, other texts, specifically other texts by Gray and Burns, show

sensibility in a different mode. This mode may broadly be called the “energetic” or

“expansive” mode. Here, wholes are not contracted but expanded. Objects, rather than

being “halved,” through synecdoche, are blown up bigger than life-size (through

synecdoche, as in Gray’s “Elegy,” or other tropes, in this case, Burns’s “Red, Red Rose,”

simile.) Rather than refuting my central argument outright, this tends to augment it,

because sensibility in this mode still constitutes a distortion of the Other.

My other sub-thesis is where these two roads (modes) meet. The Double Circuit is



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the way in which Gray and Burns are committed to activating sensibility in their readers.

In this model, the wholeness of the reader is leaned on. We see what Paul Goring notes is

the “tendency to encourage emotional responses in readers and to prescribe the manner in

which such responses should be manifest” (Goring, 143). The Double Circuit functions in

many ways: Gray and Burns become Objects, as well as Subjects, and their Objects also

remain Objects; Gray and Burns stand between the audience and their Objects, activating

the reader’s sympathy as they exercise their own; synecdoche multiplies itself as Gray

and Burns also become synecdoches (and exhaustion, because it activated sympathy,

could become an advantage.) The notion of Gray and Burns standing between their

Objects and their readers brings to mind Stanley Fish’s “rhetorical man,” who

“manipulates or fabricates himself, simultaneously conceiving of and occupying the roles

that become first possible and then mandatory given the social structure his rhetoric has

put in place” (Fish, 208). In other circumstances, Fish’s formulation could have

pejorative connotations; here, the way Gray and Burns occupy their roles (which, in both

primary texts, involves a kind of enervation) allows the Double Circuit to operate, and to

activate sympathy in their readers (which does not necessarily change the equivocal

functioning of sensibility in the poems.) Their text is a synecdoche for themselves.

Now, finally, to the first primary text: Thomas Gray’s “Ode on a Distant Prospect

of Eton College” was released in 1753. Historically, this was the “prime time” of

sensibility. Though my argument hinges on the theoretical assumptions of sensibility,

rather than its historical development, it must be noted as significant in comparison to

Burns’s poem, which was released when sensibility, though still very visible, had begun



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to fade. Here are lines that exemplify the malady I see in Gray:

Alas, regardless of their doom,

The little victims play! No sense have they of ills to come, Nor care beyond to-day:

These shall the fury Passions tear,The vulturs of the mind,

Disdainful Anger, pallid Fear,

And Shame that sculks behind;

(Gray, 51-54, 61-64)

It is immediately apparent that Gray is not talking about the children in a specific way (as

someone like Dickens might have, in Oliver Twist or David Copperfield , though the

analogy of poetry to prose might be strained); the children stand for something. They are

a part standing for a whole. I would argue that Gray is using them as a synecdoche for all

in nature that is innocent, untainted, and (perhaps most saliently) ripe for decay and

corruption. It is important to note that we wind up learning far more about Gray in these

lines than we do about the children; “Passion, Anger, Shame, Fear” are all dealt with in

complete, world-weary “knowingness.” Gray has felt them, is aware of himself

(implicitly) as a feeling, suffering, being. Because he can speak with authority on the

travails of human life, he is “sensible.” His text has an objective wholeness for us.

Yet, how much of Gray’s imaginative power is being used to feel what the

children are feeling, to feel along with them? It would seem, very little. Rather than

feeling along with the children, accessing the parts of himself that remain insouciant,

carefree, and joyous, Gray’s internalization of the children leads him into his own

suffering which, bitter predictions aside, has nothing to do with them. Whatever

imaginative power Gray might have is in remission here. I would argue that this



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is transpiring owing to an exhaustion of sensibility, and the sensible. Gray has exhausted

himself by letting too much in; there is no longer room for anything else. According to

Janet Todd, Gray is the poet who “feels too much,” whose feelings are “too exquisite for

the acquisitiveness, vulgarity, and selfishness of the world” (Todd, 4). For the poet that

feels too much, a breaking point may be reached, after which nothing new can get in, or

after which what does get in is distorted by bitterness and a retroactive narcissism. Both

bitterness and retroactive narcissism (which may be defined as an inability to live in the

present, owing to attachment to feelings about a negative past) can be taken as evidence

of exhaustion. It is a claustrophobic ambience which encases this, and “sensibility.”

This is complicated by the fact that, though Gray is unable to feel along with the

children, he is, through his own past, attempting to feel what they will feel in the future.

Yet this projection of the children he is watching into an abrasive future is not based on

any concrete data; Gray makes the assumption that, like him, these children are “too

exquisite for the world,” in Todd’s terms, and will suffer from the same implosion of

sensibility that he has. His narcissism cannot allow that the children might be more

fortunate than he is, that the “little victims” might not be victims at all. Simply put,

rather than using imaginative power in the way which Adam Smith hoped, Gray assumes

that all the children are like him. It is the reverse of sensibility’s aim; yet it is born out

of a sensible temperament. Exhaustion has turned imagination of the Other into

projection of the Self; there is little fluidity in Gray’s representation; it grasps for r eason.

Other critics, without actually bringing in “exhaustion” as a keyword, have noted

how this process works in Gray’s text. Gray is often seen as “melancholic,” and uses his



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In the context of this poem, we see that the working class people do function a kind of

synecdoche. They stand as part of the whole of people that are ignored or disregarded in

the world. However, when we compare this to “Eton,” it is easy to see a kind of antithesis

to the first poem; it is in the valorization of these working class people. Rather than

halving a whole, Gray takes a whole, lifts it up, and makes it bigger than it actually was:

the commoners are not merely commoners (as the children were merely children), they

are Miltons, Cromwells, and Hampdens. Though space constraints will not allow me to

draw this out much further, it is important to note that, in within Gray’s body of work,

there are myriad uses of synecdoche, and exhaustion is by no means a dominant note.

However, in a subtle way, the manner in which Gray sensationalizes does reinforce my

central argument; it shows that mere imaginative power, when put into a textual matrix,

tends to get distorted. Straightforward sensibility often seems not to be good enough for

a poet like Gray to achieve his ends. Whether distorted by exhaustion or desire to

valorize (both realized in the trope synecdoche), sensibility remains problematic.

Returning specifically to “Eton,” what place is there for the reader in all of this?

Are we to hate Gray for his narcissism, or are we meant to sympathize with him, or the

children, or both, or neither? I would argue that, in this poem, Gray is encouraging his

readers to exercise more sympathy towards him, the poet, than towards his Objects, the

children. We feel more strongly Gray’s bitter isolation than we do the children’s

joyousness. We see demonstrated, not Gray’s imaginative ability to f eel what the children

are feeling, but Gray’s worldly wisdom, and what it has cost him to obtain it. This

construct, more often than not, points back to him. We, through our imaginative power,



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can join Gray more readily than we (or Gray) can join the children. If we want to see

what I have called the Double Circuit here, the children would seem to be the weakest,

most incidental link; the closest bond possible is between us and Gray. We can imagine

his exhaustion, and feel it along with him. In marked contrast, Gray’s “Elegy,” sensibility

in its expansive mode encourages us to join Gray in constructing a larger whole out of

small parts. This happens through the manner in which Gray simultaneously halves the

villagers (by making them a synecdoche for neglected humanity) and breathes solid,

expansive life into them, by comparing them to Milton, Cromwell, and Hampden. There

seems to be more equality (and equality here could signify Gray’s acknowledgement of a

reading audience) for the reader in “Elegy”; “Eton” seems relatively self -involved. This

self-involvement can be taken as an expression of sensibility in its exhausted mode.

Before I delve into Burns, I want to make a brief point. It is important to

remember, where my central argument is concerned, that I am not staking a claim that

exhaustion is the dominant mode of sensibility, or that all expressions of sensibility entail

expression of exhaustion on some level. The point I am trying to make is that expressions

of exhaustion reveal themselves with enough frequency, in the literature of sensibility, for

a viable case to be made that, on a theoretical level, sensibility may often be seen to

exhaust itself, in its textual enactments. My very need for sub-theses (the expansive mode

of sensibility, and the Double Circuit) makes clear that the issue is a many-sided one. My

task here is merely to open a conversation; nothing will (or, perhaps, can be) be proved.

To Burns, and the primary text being addressed: “To a Mouse.” This poem was

released in 1785. This was, technically speaking, past the prime of sensibility. Thus,



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seeing exhaustion expressed here would align Burns more closely with historical forces

than Gray could be aligned. However, I will be working under the assumption that many

of the theoretical notions that shaped Gray’s texts also helped to animate Burns’s. This is,

of course, a famous poem, dotted with familiar lines:

I’m truly sorry Man’s dominion

Has broken Nature’s social union,

An’ justifies that ill opinionWhich makes thee startle,

At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,

An’ fellow-mortal !(Burns, 7-12)

Carol McGuirk, in Robert Burns and the Sentimental Era, writes that in sensible poetry

we see “the hero’s egotism in pursuing the humble; for the lower the object he encounters

and reclaims, the more status he achieves in perceiving its significance” (McGuirk, 5).

She elaborates on this, calling it a “downward view of a pathetic object” (McGuirk, 5);

Burns “transposes human social relations onto the animal world in order to narrate and

comment on human behavior” (Palmieri, 83). I see a conflict here, which relates to my

central argument; if Burns wants to increase his status by vouching for a mouse’s

significance, that is legitimate; yet he is also transposing human realities onto a mouse’s

oblivious consciousness (this brings in the manner in which the mouse is a synecdoche.)

How can Burns make the mouse significant if the mouse cannot merely be a mouse, is a

part of a larger whole? Perceiving something and transposing onto something would

seem to be very different operations. Burns is straining his imaginative power in two

directions at once: towards “mouse-recognition,” and towards something larger.

It is noteworthy that Burns seems to sense this split; he is “truly sorry” that Man



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and Nature are “squared off.” Part of this squaring off process is expressed in Burns’s

need, both to justify himself (and Man in general) and to humanize the mouse. It is a

need born of an incommensurable disunity between “Man’s dominion” and “Nature’s

social union.” Not only does the mouse become a synecdoche; Burns’s relationship to

the mouse, his projection, and the fact that the mouse is incapable (we shall assume) of

responding in kind, formulate another synecdoche, which has as its basis exhausted

effort. Burns stands for “Man’s dominion,” the mouse for “Nature’s social union.” The

more this poem is glossed, the more its “leveling” seems remarkable and complex

(especially because it may seem simple or “domestic” on the surface.)

The final lines of the poem reinforce this complexity:

Still, thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me!

The present only toucheth thee:But Och! I backward cast my e’e,

On prospects drear!

An’ forward , tho’ I canna see,

I guess an fear !(Burns, 43-48)

It would seem odd that a sensible poem should end with an assertion of ego: “I canna

see,/ I guess an fear !” It is a statement of beleaguered ego, but ego nonetheless. The

poem is called “To a Mouse,” but ends with Burns alone; between these two facts, we

see that, as in “Eton,” something is happening here that has more to do with the poet than

with his objects. As with Gray’s children, the mouse is used . Rather than Gray’s children,

who seemed to be a representation of something pure, Burns’s mouse seems to be a

representation of something vulnerable, or of vulnerability itself. The whole that the

mouse is a part of could be “everything in nature (and its’ social union) that is



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vulnerable.” The poem ends with an admission of personal vulnerability on the part of the

poet, and, more importantly, the poet’s consciousness of his own vulnerability (which the

mouse does not have.) The mirroring that Burns wants to see in the mouse, of this self-

consciousness, is illusory; the mouse-as-synecdoche precludes any acknowledgement of

what the mouse actually is. This preclusion, which adds a sense of falsity to the poem

which, if we are going to factor in intentionality, was probably not Burns’s intention, may

be seen as the breakdown of sensibility, of imaginative power exercised in good faith,

and a dissipation of imaginative force into half-truth, necessitated by incomplete thought.

Other thinkers have delved into roughly the same waters that I am delving here.

Adela Pinch noted that “Passions…have a close relation to personifications” (Pinch, 18).

Pinch’s relation could, if interpreted literally, get Burns off the hook to a certain extent;

Burns needs an outlet for his passion, and the mouse happens to be the closest thing at

hand. Rather than holding him culpable, we can see him as a victim, not of falsity and

exhaustion but of passion. I would argue that both sides of this binary (passion v.

exhaustion) have equal weight, but it is the exhaustion that I am interested in here.

Exhaustion, as I have said, has as a possible byproduct instrumental usage of objects:

in “To a Mouse,” what we see is what Paul Goring, in The Rhetoric of Sensibility in

Eighteenth-Century Culture, calls “a version of physical weakness which is codified

for the purposes of eloquent effect” (Goring, 160). This cuts right to the bone of my

argument; if the entire purpose of a sensible production is to produce an eloquent

effect, how can Adam Smith’s sensible imaginative power, his fellow-feeling, operate?

If the effect produced is the point, the theoretical basis would seem to have to “ride shot-



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gun.” Producers of text like Gray and Burns were ultimately more interested in eloquence

than in sensibility. Yet, they were, of necessity, involved in the theoretical assumptions of

sensibility that were fashionable in the eighteenth-century. They were thus forced to walk

a fine line, the strain of which often led to a sense of textual disunity, anti-objectivity.

Yet Gray and Burns were both resourceful poets. They were both able to find a

way to be “rhetorical men” (to paraphrase Stanley Fish), whilst walking the

aforementioned tight-rope. We have seen how, in Gray’s “Elegy,” synecdoche was used

alongside a kind of expansiveness; Gray made the villagers stand for something, while

also using his imaginative power to blow them up life-size, or even bigger than they

actually were, rather than merely halving them (and there are, to be sure, problems with

expansive sensibility too, but I do not have room to include them here.) Robert Burns, in

his famous “Red, Red Rose,” rather than using synecdoche-plus, uses simile to

demonstrate imaginative power, expansively realized:

My love is like a red, red rose

That’s newly sprung in June:

My love is like the melodyThat’s sweetly played in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonnie lassSo deep in love am I:

And I will love thee still, my dear

Till’ a the seas gang dry

(Burns, 1-8)

Both “Mouse” and “Rose” ask us to feel along with Burns; the difference is that “Mouse”

features Burns talking down to another creature, while “Rose” shows him looking up,

expansively. Neither poem evinces the solipsism we see in Gray; what we do see in

“Mouse” is instrumental, convenient usage, which makes it harder to feel along with



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Burns than when he is straightforwardly admiring his sweetheart. The similes he uses

allow us to partake of her beauty, even is she herself remains invisible to us. “Rose”

shows Burns getting out of the way, rather than taking center-stage, as he does in

“Mouse”; he is showing us something, rather than (indirectly) telling us something.

Where the Double Circuit is concerned, “Rose” is direct; we see Burns looking at his

love, and we may join him. In “Mouse,” the Double Circuit may be seen to function in

a more convoluted fashion; we see Burns talking to mouse, but really talking to himself,

and the mouse seems incidental. We can use our own imaginative power to feel Burns’s

doubts and fears, even if his own attempts at imaginative power seem half-hearted.

In the conclusion, I would like to address what is at the root of my central

argument — if we grant that the textual enactment of sensibility often led to exhaustion,

a kind of strain, then what are the implications? Historically, this question may be more

or less answered; sensibility declined, the Romantic era was initiated, things moved on.

However, if the texts that sensibility produced are still worth studying, and I would argue

that they are, then a reinvestigation of the theoretical assumptions that helped to shape

sensible texts might be useful. I would say that the implications of my central argument

are myriad. The use of the trope synecdoche may have been a kind of falling back, for a

specific reason: sensibility, the use of imaginative power to conceive what others were

feeling, was not always practical, where the creation of texts was concerned. Schiller

called an attempt at complete acknowledgement “pure affectation” (Schiller, 265), and

sensibility may be seen as an affected, if culturally necessary stance, against cognition.

Part of this affectation would have to do with the idea of agency: in this case, the



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agency of the poet writing the text. I would argue that, in writing a poem, a poet needs

to, to whatever extent possible, sustain agency. The poet’s imaginative power must be

focused, via willpower and determination; simply feeling what another is feeling is not

enough. The feeling must be concretized in words. Inevitably, poets like Gray and Burns

did feel a need to sustain agency within their texts. This is true, even if the theoretical

assumptions of sensibility are carried through and one is writing about another. The

poet’s sense of agency needed an outlet somewhere in the text; sympathy, compassion,

and imaginative power were slanted by individual and individualized sensibility.

Yet, I believe that Gray and Burns wanted to be sensible. The engagement with

imaginative power is there. Conflict arises because textual enactment requires more than

merely imaginative power. The implication is that, as far as literature was concerned,

sensibility may have been more useful as an aspiration than as a sustainable reality. This

is true, even regarding my sub-theses; expansive sensibility has as much non-truth in it as

contracted sensibility (expressed in synecdoche); only here, the poet enlarges things,

rather than cutting them in half. Gray imagines a villager to be Miltonic; yet his object is

dead, and imaginative power is wasted on a ghost. What would ideal sensibility in text

be? It would be objects imagined as they are, from the inside out. Since we are all limited

by subjectivity, that would seem to be a tall order; the Romantics has better luck at it.

The Double Circuit may come to seem like a silver lining. The most solid link in

the Double Circuit is, ultimately, not Gray or Burns or their objects, but the reader. The

reader can fill in the blanks that Gray and Burns miss; the reader can see past the

distortions and the slanting; the reader can use his/her imaginative power to co-create



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the text along with Gray and Burns. In this context, the poet may be seen, balanced in the

center of his or her own constructs. For all the distortions, all the disunities, and all the

postures that sensibility might have necessitated, the presence of the poet, him or herself,

points the reader back to his or her own imaginative power. The Double Circuit is created

by the poet; its enactment, via imaginative power, is squarely in the hands (and heart) of

the reader. We, ourselves, become the most important link; the ultimate test of a sensible

text may be to what extent we are engaged to extend our own imaginations. It is the birth

of the reader at the expense of the exhaustion of the author.



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adam fieled @ temple university: 2006-2011

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