A Cosmography of Man (Hallesche Beiträge Zur Europäischen Aufklärung, 61)

358 Pages·2020·2.862 MB·English

by  Theresa Schön

Hallesche Beiträge
61
zur Europäischen Aufklärung
Schriftenreihe des Interdisziplinären Zentrums
für die Erforschung der Europäischen Aufklärung
Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg

Theresa Schön
A Cosmography of Man
Character Sketches in The Tatler and The Spectator
De Gruyter
Series Editors:
Thomas Bremer, Daniel Cyranka, Elisabeth De´cultot, Jörg Dierken,
Robert Fajen, Daniel Fulda, Frank Grunert, Wolfgang Hirschmann,
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Sabine Volk-Birke
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Acknowledgements
This book analyses the epistemological methods that Joseph Addison and Richard
Steele communicated and popularised in their two early eighteenth-century essay
periodicals The Tatler and The Spectator. One of the methods they propose for
gathering socio-moral knowledge is collective observation. Like Addison and
Steele’s cosmography of man and woman, the present volume has profited much
from academic collaboration. First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervi-
sor Prof. Dr. Sabine Volk-Birke, who first kindled my love of eighteenth-century
literature and who has advised me in all matters of academic life. She was a source
of inspiration from the first inception of this book, and in the course of her critical
analysis of its successive stages she never tired of expressing encouragement and
unwavering faith in me and my project. I am grateful to apl. Prof. Dr. Jürgen Mey-
er, whose advice was instrumental in shaping the epistemological dimension of my
project and whose ideas helped me find the title of this book. I also thank Prof. Dr.
Laura Stevens for her valuable advice in relation to the revision of my dissertation.
My colleagues’ benevolent criticism and moral support resolved many a crisis
on my way to the finished manuscript. Dr. Julia Nitz’ expertise in narratology
helped me raise and answer central methodological and analytical questions. Dr.
Therese-Marie Meyer’s profoundly perceptive judgement crucially contributed to
focussing my argument and to giving my manuscript its final shape. Thank you all
for helping me to grow and flourish.
This project would not have been possible without the substantial institutional,
financial and academic support at my university. My project was first financed by
a generous three-year grant awarded by the Exzellenzinitiative des Landes Sach-
sen-Anhalt in the context of the Graduate School “Enlightenment – Religion –
Knowledge” (“Aufklärung – Religion – Wissen: Transformationen des Religiösen
und des Rationalen in der Moderne”). The challenging bi-monthly discussions of
the fellows with all their supervisors, along with the workshops and conferences,
showed me how to work productively in an interdisciplinary setting and forged my
initial ideas into their decisive shape. I would like to express my particular grati-
tude to Prof. Dr. Heinz Thoma for his acute questions and his helpful advice, and
to my fellows for their constructive cooperation. My position of assistant professor
at the Institute of English and American Studies of the Martin Luther University
Halle-Wittenberg gave me the opportunity to learn more about my topic by teach-
ing (eighteenth-century) literature, to participate in international conferences, to
discuss my work in the research colloquia held by Prof. Dr. Sabine Volk-Birke and
Prof. Dr. Katrin Berndt, and to finish the manuscript of this book. The lectures,
workshops and conferences hosted and organised by the Interdisciplinary Centre
for European Enlightenment Studies (Interdisziplinäres Zentrum für die Er-
forschung der Europäischen Aufklärung, IZEA) offered me valuable insights into
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110613674-001
VI Acknowledgements
the contexts and discussions of Enlightenment studies. I would like to thank the
Board of Directors of the IZEA for allowing me to publish my book in the Centre’s
series “Hallesche Beiträge zur Europäischen Aufklärung.” Last but not least, I am
grateful to the staff of the University Library of the Martin Luther University Hal-
le-Wittenberg for their kind and competent support in acquiring bibliographical
resources and in thus facilitating my research.
My research was supported by several national and international academic in-
stitutions. Thanks to the Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel, I had the chance
to discuss my findings with international colleagues in the context of the
36thInternational Wolfenbüttel Summer Course. The German Academic Exchange
Service (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, DAAD) enabled me to partici-
pate in the 2017 Annual Conference of the American Society for Eighteenth-
Century Studies (ASECS) in Minneapolis. The funds of the International Society
of Eighteenth-Century Studies (ISECS) allowed me to present a paper to an inter-
national audience at the 2017 ISECS Seminar for Early Career Scholarsin Montre-
al.
Finally, I am profoundly grateful to my family, whose unfaltering confidence
in me and unswerving assistance inspired me with the determination to master the
challenges of academic work—thank you!
Halle (Saale), June 2018
Theresa Schön
Contents
Acknowledgements........................................................................................................V
Introduction....................................................................................................................1
Chapter One
Character and Knowledge in Early Eighteenth-Century English Periodicals................17
1 The Character Sketch as a Literary Genre............................................................19
2The Tatlerand The Spectator: Communicating Knowledge................................28
Chapter Two
Epistemic Categories.....................................................................................................45
1Producing Knowledge: Authoritative People.......................................................46
2Communicating Knowledge: Rhetorical Authority..............................................53
3 Disseminating Knowledge: Publication Forms....................................................71
4 Ordering Knowledge: Taxonomy.........................................................................81
Chapter Three
The Tatler: The ‘Individual’ Gaze.................................................................................89
1 Sir Isaac Bickerstaff: The Model Observer..........................................................89
2 Understanding Character: The Art of Deduction and Induction...........................99
Chapter Four
The Spectator: A Community of Modern Observers...................................................127
1The Observers: Authority and Credibility..........................................................128
Mr. Spectator| Mr. Spectator’s Fellow Observers
2Modern Observational Practices.........................................................................142
Attention | Note Taking | Repetition | Synthesis
3 The Spectator’s Cases........................................................................................171
Chapter Five
Ordering Characterological Knowledge inThe Tatler andThe Spectator...................191
1 Basic Ordering Gestures.....................................................................................191
Opposition and Analogy| Specification
2 Socio-Cultural Ordering Systems.......................................................................198
The Musical Ensemble |The Anatomical Dissection|The List|The Map
3 A Taxonomy of Characters................................................................................241
The Coquette |The Beau|The Pedant
Conclusion...................................................................................................................281
Appendix.....................................................................................................................287
Work Cited..................................................................................................................331
Table of Figures...........................................................................................................349

Introduction
In their periodicals The Tatler and The Spectator, Joseph Addison and Richard
Steele project a ‘cosmography of man’, adapting the genre of the character sketch
to their purpose of reforming contemporary British society. From its inception, the
character sketch has served as an instrument of dealing with the complexity of
everyday life and of negotiating ethical, social, cultural and moral norms. At its
core, a character sketch entails an act of observation and rhetorically captures its
result. The methods that characterise this observational act as well as the ensuing
textual product have changed significantly in the course of the genre’s history.1In
Addison and Steele’s periodicals, these methods are informed by contemporary
naturalists’ practices that evolved in and through the so-called Scientific Revolu-
tion. The character sketches not only present the observational result—the type of
man or woman—but, more importantly, they reproduce the observational process
itself and suggest an order of what Addison and Steele define as moral
knowledge.2
The analysis conducted in this study confirms the impact ofa scientifick3epis-
temological framework on the character sketches in Addison and Steele’s Tatler
and Spectator. Composed long before the advent of the ‘two cultures’, the texts
1 For an overview of the history of the character sketch, see John William Smeed, The
Theophrastan ‘Character’: The History of a Literary Genre(Oxford: Clarendon, 1985).
2 Ralf Klausnitzer defines knowledge broadly as justified and justifiable information acquired
and communicated within cultural systems through experience and education; in his view,
knowledge provides a reproducible stock of mental and behavioural options (“Sehr allgemein
formuliert, lässt sich Wissenals Gesamtheit von begründeten(bzw. begründbaren) Kenntnissen
begreifen, die innerhalb kultureller Systeme durch Beobachtung und Mitteilung, also durch
Erfahrungen und Lernprozesse erworben sowie weitergegeben werden und einen
reproduzierbaren Bestand von Denk-, Orientierungs- und Handlungsmöglichkeiten bereit-
stellen.”) (Ralf Klausnitzer, Literatur und Wissen: Zugänge, Modelle, Analysen (Berlin: De
Gruyter, 2008), 12). John Bender’s historicised definition of (the eighteenth-century concept
of) knowledge adds an emphasis on the meaning of experience and experiment: “Knowledge
increasingly was formed when general principles were determined through controlled analysis
of particulars as they emerged from the planned and specialized form of experience called the
experiment. Knowledge became contextual, specific, and historical” (John Bender, “Novel
Knowledge: Judgment, Experience, Experiment,” in This is Enlightenment, edited byClifford
Siskin and William Warner (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2010), 289). Accordingly, in the
context of this study, the phrase ‘moral knowledge’denotes the socio-moral types described
and the narrative/observational/rhetorical methods reflected in Addison and Steele’s character
sketches and, hence, designates a system of morality intentionally designed by Addison and
Steele to instruct their readers. The socio-moral values implicated in this system are historically
specific and mirror the decidedly male and often clearly misogynist perspective of the
periodicals’ authors.
3 Of course, the designation of early modern naturalists’ (rhetorical) practices as ‘scientific’—
without any qualifier — is highly anachronistic, as this denotation dates from the
mid-nineteenth century (see Oxford English Dictionary Online s.v. “science, n.,” part 5.b.,
accessed November 18, 2018, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/172672). A more apt
terminological alternative to the elaborate formula ‘natural historical and natural philosophical’
is the archaic orthographical form ‘scientifick’, which I shall use in this study.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110613674-002
2 Introduction
reveal to what extent contemporary ethical-moral and scientifick discourses were
intertwined. My results deepen our understanding of the ways in which the charac-
ter sketch as a genre was employed to contribute to the communication of
knowledge that encompasses not only the socio-moral types of man or woman, but
also a number of crucial observational practices aiming — as Pope has it — at a
‘proper study of man’.4While the Tatler’s sketches seem to address the individual
reader and seek to contribute to their understanding and moral reform, The Specta-
tor significantly broadens this approach: Still, of course, directed at individual
refinement, the papers imitate and encourage a communal effort at enlightening
society by observing, taking notes on and exposing the moral flaws prevalent in
early eighteenth-century London. Moreover, the community of scientifickally
inspired observers implicitly establishes an order of the knowledge they gather by
attentive and sustained observation. In this, the character sketch represents an
essentially literary, quasi-scientifick toolto contribute to the renewal of knowledge
called for by Francis Bacon, and, hence, constitutes what Claude Siskin and Wil-
liam Warner have called a “cardinal” medium.5 Broadly adapting Siskin and
Warner’s concept of the Enlightenment to my purposes, I take as an operating
assumption that Enlightenment philosophers, writers and naturalists were funda-
mentally concerned with “problem[s] of ‘mediation’” — with the medium desig-
nating “everything that intervenes, enables, supplements, or is simply in between,”
including (literary)methods.6More particularly, I consider the “forms” the charac-
ter sketch takes in the periodicals and the “practices” the texts imitate to be “en-
abling in a fundamental way,” not least, as critics have shown, paving the way for
the eighteenth-century novel.7Representing a highly efficient method of character-
isation, novelists used the character sketch especially to introduce characters; em-
4 In the second epistle of his Essay on Man(1733–1734), Alexander Pope writes: “Know then
thyself, presume not God to scan,/ The proper study of mankind is Man” (Alexander Pope, “An
Essay on Man in Four Epistles to H. St. John Lord Bolingbroke,” in The Major Works of
Alexander Pope, edited byPat Rogers (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2006), 281).
5 Clifford Siskin and William Warner, “This is Enlightenment: An Invitation in the Form of an
Argument,” in This is Enlightenment,edited byClifford Siskin and William Warner (Chicago:
Univ. of Chicago Press, 2010), 13.Cardinal mediationsserve Siskin and Warner to bridge the
“‘gap’ between Bacon [i.e. the presentation of his programme for a renewal of knowledge;
Th.S.] and the onset of Enlightenment,” and designate “mediations that were new, or newly
important, in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries” (Siskin and Warner, “This is
Enlightenment,” 12). Siskin and Warner see The Spectator as part of one such cardinal
mediationrepresenting the new genre of the periodical essay (see Siskin and Warner, “This is
Enlightenment,” 13).
6 Siskin and Warner, “This is Enlightenment,” 5.
7 Siskin and Warner, “This is Enlightenment,” 8, 13.For an account of early eighteenth-century
periodicals providing the ground of eighteenth-century bourgeois fiction, see Volker Stürzer,
Journalismus und Literatur im frühen 18. Jahrhundert: Die literarischen Beiträge in Tatler,
Spectator und den anderen Blättern der Zeit (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1984). For an
assessment of the role of character sketches inthe eighteenth-and nineteenth-century English
novel, see Smeed, The Theophrastan ‘Character’, 225–246.