Recording and reordering: essays on the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century diary and journal PDF
Preview Recording and reordering: essays on the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century diary and journal
Recording and Reordering .................11479$ $$FM 01-10-0608:30:21 PS PAGE1 TheBucknellStudiesinEighteenth-Century LiteratureandCulture GeneralEditor: GregClingham,BucknellUniversity AdvisoryBoard: PaulK.Alkon,UniversityofSouthernCalifornia ChloeChard,IndependentScholar ClementHawes,ThePennsylvaniaStateUniversity RobertMarkley,UniversityofIllinoisatUrbana-Champaign JessicaMunns,UniversityofDenver CedricD.ReverandII,UniversityofWyoming JanetTodd,UniversityofGlasgow TheBucknellStudiesinEighteenth-CenturyLiteratureandCultureaimstopublishchalleng- ing,neweighteenth-centuryscholarship.Ofparticularinterestiscritical,historical,and interdisciplinaryworkthatisinterestinglyandintelligentlytheorized,andthatbroad- ensandrefinestheconceptionofthefield.Atthesametime,theseriesremainsopento all theoretical perspectives and different kinds of scholarship. While the focus of the series is the literature, history, arts, and culture (including art, architecture, music, travel,andhistoryofscience,medicine,andlaw)ofthelongeighteenthcenturyinBrit- ainandEurope,theseriesisalsointerestedinscholarshipthatestablishesrelationships withothergeographies,literature,andculturesfortheperiod1660–1830. TitlesinThisSeries EllenBrinks,GothicMasculinity:EffeminacyandtheSupernaturalin EnglishandGermanRomanticism TanyaCaldwell,TimetoBeginAnew:Dryden’sGeorgicsandAeneis JulietteCherbuliez,ThePlaceofExile:LeisureLiteratureandtheLimitsofAbsolutism MitaChoudhury,InterculturalismandResistanceintheLondonTheatre, 1660–1800:Identity,Performance,Empire JamesCruise,GoverningConsumption:NeedsandWants,Suspended Characters,andthe‘‘Origins’’ofEighteenth-CenturyNovels DanDollandJessicaMunns,eds.,RecordingandReordering:EssaysontheSeventeenth-and Eighteenth-CenturyDiaryandJournal ZiadElmarsafy,Freedom,Slavery,andAbsolutism:Corneille,Pascale,Racine ReginaHewittandPatRogers,eds.,OrthodoxyandHeresyinEighteenth-CenturySociety EdwardJacobs,AccidentalMigrations:AnArchaeologyofGothicDiscourse CatherineJones,LiteraryMemory:Scott’sWaverleyNovelsandthePsychologyofNarrative SarahJordan,TheAnxietiesofIdleness:IdlenessinEighteenth-Century BritishLiteratureandCulture DeborahKennedy,HelenMariaWilliamsandtheAgeofRevolution ChrisMounsey,ChristopherSmart:ClownofGod ChrisMounsey,ed.,PresentingGender:ChangingSexinEarlyModernCulture Fre´de´ricOge´e,ed.,‘‘BetterinFrance?’’:TheCirculationofIdeasacrosstheChannelinthe EighteenthCentury RolandRacevskis,TimeandWaysofKnowingUnderLouisXIV:Molie`re,Se´vigne´,Lafayette LauraRosenthalandMitaChoudhury,eds.,MonstrousDreamsofReason KatherineWestScheil,TheTasteoftheTown:ShakespearianComedy andtheEarlyEighteenth-CenturyTheater PhilipSmallwood,ed.,JohnsonRe-Visioned:LookingBeforeandAfter PeterWalmsley,Locke’sEssayandtheRhetoricofScience LisaWood,ModesofDiscipline:Women,Conservatism,and theNovelaftertheFrenchRevolution http://www.bucknell.edu/universitypress/ .................11479$ $$FM 01-10-0608:30:22 PS PAGE2 Recording and Reordering Essays on the Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Diary and Journal Edited by Dan Doll and Jessica Munns Lewisburg BucknellUniversityPress .................11479$ $$FM 01-10-0608:30:24 PS PAGE3 (cid:2)2006byRosemontPublishing&PrintingCorp. All rights reserved. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use, or theinternalorpersonaluseofspecificclients,isgrantedbythecopyrightowner,pro- videdthatabasefeeof$10.00,pluseightcentsperpage,percopyispaiddirectlyto theCopyrightClearanceCenter,222RosewoodDrive,Danvers,Massachusetts01923. [0-8387-5630-1/06$10.00(cid:3)8¢pp,pc.] AssociatedUniversityPresses 2010EastparkBoulevard Cranbury,NJ08512 ThepaperusedinthispublicationmeetstherequirementsoftheAmerican NationalStandardforPermanenceofPaperforPrintedLibraryMaterials. Z39.48-1984. LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData Recordingandreordering:essaysontheseventeenth-andeighteenth-centurydiary andjournal/editedbyDanDollandJessicaMunns. p. cm.—(TheBucknellstudiesineighteenth-centuryliteratureandculture) Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex. ISBN0-8387-5630-1(alk.paper) 1. Englishproseliterature—Earlymodern,1500–1700—Historyandcriticism. 2. Englishproseliterature—18thcentury—Historyandcriticism. 3. Diaries— Authorship—History—17thcentury. 4. Diaries—Authorship—History—18th century. I. Doll,Dan,1954– II. Munns,Jessica,1949– III. Title. V. Series. PR908.R43 2006 828(cid:2).40309—dc22 2005018059 PRINTEDINTHEUNITEDSTATESOFAMERICA .................11479$ $$FM 01-10-0608:30:24 PS PAGE4 Contents Introduction 9 DANDOLLANDJESSICAMUNNS SacredandSecularPlaces:AnAtlanticDivide 22 GLYNISRIDLEY EarlyModernWomen’sDiariesandClosets:‘‘Chambersof choiceMerciesandbelovedretirement,’’ 43 EFFIEBOTONAKI Women’sDiariesofLateStuart England:AnOverview 65 AVRAKOUFFMAN AccountingforProvidence:ContemporaryDescriptionsofthe RestorationofCharlesII 102 JESSICAMUNNS ArthurYoung’sTravelsinFrance: HistoricityandtheUseof LiteraryForms 122 TERRYREILLY TradingRoutesandEighteenth-CenturyMigrations: ReframingJanetSchaw 137 EVETAVORBANNET BorderingonFactinEarlyEighteenth-CenturySeaJournals 158 JAMESKELLY ‘‘NothingbutDust&the mostminuteParticles’’:Historians andtheEvidenceofJournalsand Diaries 185 PHILIPWOODFINE ‘‘Liketryingtofita spongeintoamatchbox’’:Twentieth CenturyEditingofEighteenthCenturyJournals 211 DANDOLL Afterword 229 MAXIMILLIANE.NOVAK NotesonContributors 235 Index 237 5 .................11479$ CNTS 01-10-0608:30:25 PS PAGE5 .................11479$ CNTS 01-10-0608:30:25 PS PAGE6 Recording and Reordering .................11479$ HFTL 01-10-0608:30:28 PS PAGE7 .................11479$ HFTL 01-10-0608:30:28 PS PAGE8 Introduction Dan Doll and Jessica Munns T HAT DIARIES AND JOURNALS HAVE NOT RECEIVED THE LITERARY analysis granted canonical and even many noncanonical forms (as, for example, the eighteent-century familiar letter, which has been the sub- ject of literary analysis throughout the eighteenth-twentieth centuries) is certain. What Philippe Lejeune says can serve as a typical lament of thosewhowishtoreadthediaryorjournalasotherthanmerelyawrit- er’snotebookorahistorian’shuntingground:‘‘Thediaryisasocialout- cast, of no fixed theoretical address. It rarely receives the charity of carefulstudy.Itisnevertobeseenonschoolsyllabi....Itnevercomes up as the subject for the didactic or academic exercise of the explication de texte.’’1 Even though there has been more scholarly attention of late to the diary, it is still mostly ‘‘appreciations’’: as Stuart Sherman ob- serves of the relatively frequent recent anthologies of diary selections, ‘‘Such surveys depend more on a capacious, intelligent display of and guidance through the materials than a rigorously developed thesis about them. Initial exposure of the texts rather than close study is still largelythepoint.’’2Butwhatislesscertainisthereasonforthisneglect: indeed, the causes are likely to be many, including particularly the no- tion that the practices of the production of diaries and journals make them raw material rather than art, and the related claim that they are notspecificallyliterary,aswellasthefrequentlynotedclaimthatdiaries andjournalsaremarginalizedbecausetheyareperceivedasa‘‘woman’s form.’’ Rachael Langford and Russell West argue that the diary’s ‘‘ge- nericintractability’’hascauseditscriticalneglect:‘‘Thediaryisamisfit formofwriting,inhabitingthefrontiersbetweenmanyneighbouringor opposed domains, often belonging simultaneously to several genres or species and thus being condemned to exclusion from both at once.’’3 In addition to these theoretical and formal obstacles to serious literary analysis of diaries and journals, perhaps market forces play a role: the practice of publishing diaries and journals, excluding travel journals, comesmuchlaterthantheregularpublicationofcorrespondenceinthe 9 .................11479$ $CH1 01-10-0608:30:43 PS PAGE9 10 DAN DOLL AND JESSICA MUNNS eighteenth century and has always lagged far behind other canonical and noncanonical texts, except for a brief vogue in the early twentieth century. Where the texts are not available, criticism is unlikely to follow. Until recently, that criticism has not followed: outside of a few late twentieth-centurybook-length studies,most discussionmust be sought in introductions to and reviews of published diaries, and the over- whelming subjects in such works are biographical or historical. Sher- man offers a characteristic example from Walter James’s nineteenth- century review of Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides: ‘‘Who . . . ever talked about the style of a JOURNAL? The nature of the work admitsofnosuchthingasfinestyle.Youmightaswelltalkofthestyle ofanIndex.’’4Thisviewofthediaryasanartlesstranscriptionofreality continues to the present: in a special edition of World Literature Today devotedtodiaries,ThomasHollweckassertsthat‘‘diaries,theproducts of occasional impulses, odd moments of personal confession or reflec- tion, uncoordinated observations, often contain the stuff of literature but, like the seed of literary invention in an author’s mind, need to be tended and organized before they can acquire esthetic form,’’5 a job he reservesforthe‘‘carefulhandofaneditor.’’ But of coursethe diarywriter alwaysserves asan editoras wellas a composer: a diary can never offer absolutely unmediated experience. There is always a principle of selection that filters and limits what can be recorded on the page. Tristram Shandy spends two volumes and a year trying to capture one single day, only to realize he has fallen 364 more days behind in recording his life and opinions. Boswell resolves ‘‘I should live no more than I can record,’’6 a resolution neither he nor even the most sedentary diarist can fulfill because of the disparity be- tweenlifeaslivedandthewrittenpage.Whatgrounddoesthediaryor journalinhabit between the highselectivity ofdetail thatcharacterizes, especially realistic, literature and the absence of selection that charac- terizes unmediated experience? To suggest some of the polarities sche- matically: Unmediated Journal Literature Experience Diary esp.Fiction Noselection Alldetail ofdetail tendingto singlepurpose Noarrangement Higharrangement (Plot) (Plot) .................11479$ $CH1 01-10-0608:30:43 PS PAGE10
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