The Historicity of Romantic Discourse

248 Pages·1988·14.318 MB·English

by  Clifford Siskin

This book dramatizes how completely
and subtly the psychologized “reality” of
Romanticism has determined our un-
derstanding of ourselves and our writ-
ing. So pervasive has its power been that
The Historicity of Romantic Discourse is the
first inquiry into Romantic literature
to question the informing truism of
our standard literary histories: the link
among quality, intensity, and brevity that
has made periods (1798-1832 Roman-
ticism), texts (Romantic fragments), and
careers (Wordsworth’s Great Decade)
into lyricized developments—sweet be-
cause short.
Siskin’s provocative critique of Ro-
manticism’s ongoing power will pro-
foundly affect how readers perceive not
only the writers of the Romantic period
but also their 20th-century critics. His
history polemically locates both decon-
structive and organic literary criticism,
from de Man and Hartman to McGann
and McFarland, within the very dis-
course their writing is supposed to ad-
dress. He shows how Romanticism past
and present constructs distinctions, be-
tween the creative and the critical, and
truths, including “development” and
“imagination,” that redefine the self
as a mind that grows. Writing then
becomes an expressive index to that
growth—the product, as we still under-
stand it, of a developing literary imagi-
nation. As he traces the transformation
of these historical concepts of self and
behavior into “natural truths,” Siskin
performs the political task of relating
the production and reproduction of
Romantic knowledge to the workings
of social, professional, and economic
power.
Intergeneric comparisons—between
poetry and the novel—and interdisci-
plinary ventures—into the economic
debate over high wages for laborers and
the medical rewriting of opium as an
addictive drug—make The Historicity of
Romantic Discourse a book that will ap-
peal to a broad range of scholars,
including Romanticists, 18th-century
specialists, literary historians and theo-
rists, as well as to all readers interested
in the origins of our culture’s current
obsessions with addiction, sexual differ-
ence, and the accumulation of prop- —
erty. Above all, this rewriting of the
relationship of the past to the present
will have a lasting effect on students of
Romanticism, who will never read the
Romantics in quite the same way again.
About the Author
Clifford H. Siskin is Associate Professor
of English at Wayne State University.

The Historicity of
Romantic
Discourse

The Historicity of
Romantic
PIISCOUISE
Clifford Siskin
New York Oxford
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
eer
“
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Copyright © 1988 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.,
200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Siskin, Clifford.
The historicity of romantic discourse.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. English literature—19th century—History and
criticism. 2. Romanticism—England. 3. Literature and
history—Great Britain. 4. English literature—18th Century—
History and criticism I. Title.
PR468.HS7S57 1988 820’.9°145 87-18421
ISBN 0-19-504470-3
Part of chapter 3 appeared in earlier form as “A Preface to Creative Criti-
cism,” published in The Kenyon Review—New Series, Spring 1983, Vol. 5,
No. 2. Copyright © by Kenyon College. Reprinted with permission of the
author and The Kenyon Review. Part of chapter 4 appeared in earlier form as
“Personification and Community: Literary Change in the Mid and Late Eigh-
teenth Century,” published in Eighteenth-Century Studies, 15, No. 4 (Sum-
mer 1982), 371-401. Parts of chapter 5 appeared in earlier forms as “Revision
Romanticized: A Study in Literary Change,” published in Romanticism Past
and Present, 7, No. 2 (Summer 1983), 1-16, and as “Romantic Genre: Lyric
Form and Revisionary Behavior in Wordsworth,” published in Genre, XVI
(Summer 1983), 137-55. The former is reprinted by permission of Northeast-
ern University. The latter is copyright © 1983 by The University of Okla-
homa, all rights of reproduction in any form reserved. Part of chapter 6
appeared in earlier form as “A Formal Development: Austen, the Novel, and
Romanticism,” published in The Centennial Review, XXVIII, No. 4 (Fall
1984)—XXIX, No. 1 (Winter 1985), 1-28. I wish to thank the editors of these
journals for permission to use and revise this material.
135798642
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
To Roy and Dorothy Siskin
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