The Practice of Quixotism : Postmodern Theory and Eighteenth-Century Women Writing

247 Pages·2006·1.809 MB·English

by  Scott Paul Gordon

The Practice of Quixotism
Postmodern Theory and Eighteenth-Century
Women’s Writing
by
Scott Paul Gordon
THEPRACTICEOFQUIXOTISM
© Scott Paul Gordon,2006.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2006 978-1-4039-7444-0
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ISBN 978-1-349-53506-4 ISBN 978-0-230-60153-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230601536
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gordon,Scott Paul,1965–
The practice of quixotism :Postmodern theory and
eighteenth-century women’s writing/ by Scott Paul Gordon.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1.English literature—Women authors—History and criticism.
2.English literature—18th century—History and criticism.3.Cervantes
Saavedra,Miguel de,1547–1616—Influence.4.Don Quixote (Fictitious
character).5.Reality in literature.6.Delusions in literature.I.Title.
PR113.G67 2006
820.9(cid:2)928709033—dc22 2006041564
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd.,Chennai,India.
First edition:October 2006
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To my parents
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Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction The Quixote Trope 1
Chapter 1 Historicizing Quixote and the
Scandal of Quixotism 11
Chapter 2 Charlotte Lennox’s Female Quixote
and Orthodox Quixotism 41
Chapter 3 Suspicion and Experience in Sarah
Fielding’sDavid Simple 67
Chapter 4 Mary Wortley Montagu and the Quixotic
Dream of Objectivity 93
Chapter 5 Quixotic Perception in Sophia
Lee’sThe Recess 117
Chapter 6 Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of
Udolphoand the Practice of Quixotism 141
Epilogue Beyond Quixotism?: Quixotism and
Contemporary Theory 167
Notes 187
Index 233
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Acknowledgments
This book began as a job talk on Lennox’s Female Quixote delivered
at Lehigh University, where I have taught ever since. This project
would have been impossible without the personal and institutional
support, as well as the intellectual stimulation, I have been lucky to
find at Lehigh. For this I am grateful to Pete Beidler, Bobb Carson,
Kate Crassons, Beth Dolan, Alex Doty, Betsy Fifer, Ed Gallagher,
Stephannie Gearhart, Barry Kroll, Rita Kurtz, Ed Lotto, Carol
Laub, Rosemary Mundhenk, Barbara Pavlock, Deep Singh, Barbara
Traister, Bob Watts, Stephanie Watts, and Ed Whitley. The absence
from Lehigh of Patty Ingham, witty in herself and cause of wit in oth-
ers, occasions daily disappointments. I am thankful to have had Jan
Fergus’s help during most of the writing of this book, and the book
would have been better if she were still able to extend such help.
Iregret that I cannot thank Jim Frakes for the support he gave me for
so many years.
My deepest thanks go to Dawn Keetley, who, I think, read more
versions of more pages than anybody and who always offered generous
and careful readings; to David Hawkes and Seth Moglen, who, despite
(or because of) their distrust of the postmodern and neopragmatist
writers on whom I draw, helped me think through many theoretical
issues; to Tracey Cummings, Bob Wilson, Tom O’Connor, and espe-
cially Chris Litman, who endured many conversations that forced me
to better conceive (or abandon) my arguments; and to James Dinh for
always alerting me when I am thinking too much.
The final manuscript benefited from classroom conversations during
spring 2005 with a superb group of graduate students: Wes Atkinson,
Kate Cartwright, Kurt Douglass, Kelli Gorski, Duane Graner, Karen
Manahan, Sam Norwood, Tom O’Connor, Kim Robertson, Paul
Sisko, Minh Trinh, and Heather Urbanski. It has benefited, as well, from
conversations with the scholars who participated in a lecture series, spon-
sored by Lehigh’s Lawrence Henry Gipson Institute for Eighteenth-
Century Studies, on the “(Pre)History of Objectivity”: Peter Dear,
Adrian Johns, Mary Poovey, Harriet Ritvo, Londa Schiebinger, and
Julie Solomon.
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The Lawrence Henry Gipson Institute for Eighteenth-Century
Studies provided financial assistance, as did Lehigh University in the
form of a two-year Class of 1961 Professorship. This book could not
have been written without the help of the staff of Lehigh’s libraries, in
particular the Interlibrary Loan office. I am grateful, as well, to the
editorial staff at Palgrave Macmillan, especially Farideh Koohi-Kamali,
for offering excellent and timely advice on matters of all sorts.
Portions of chapters 2 and 5 rework material that has appeared in
Studies in English Literature (38.3: 1998), in Eighteenth-Century
Women: Studies in their Lives, Works, and Culture (4: 2006), and in
Cervantes in the English-Speaking World: New Essays (ed. Darío
Fernández-Morera and Michael Hanke (Edition Reichenberger, 2005)
and I thank the editorsof each for permission to reprint.
Finally, and most importantly, I thank my family—my parents, my
brothers and their families, all the Baksts, and, of course, Gus—for
offering support of all kinds, large and small, during the many years
Iwas writing this book.
Introduction: The Quixote Trope
Nobody wants to be a quixote. We invoke quixotes—deploying what
I call the “quixote trope,” a depiction of another’s deluded percep-
tions that implies the objectivity of one’s own—precisely to dismiss
others’ beliefs. Viewing the world through a generic lens that their
reading has deposited in their heads, quixotes see what is not really
there: they mistake their imagination’s own products as real phenom-
ena available to everyone else’s senses. Let me introduce a pair of
terms, useful in discussing quixotism, that I will employ throughout
this study: quixotes think they simply find the world that, as others
can see, their quixotic imagination makesor calls into existence.1So a
recent send-up of literary theory, ridiculing “a generation of scholarly
knights riding off in quest of image patterns, paradoxes, and mythic
parallels,” accuses theoretically minded critics of “finding” in texts not
what is “actually” there but rather objects from their own deluded
imaginations; a review of a reading of Genesis charges the author with
quixotically “find[ing] there what he already believes,” the “coherence”
he “discovers (actually, puts) in Genesis” proving only his “folly” and
“zeal”; and Roger Kimball’s recent Rape of the Masters(2004) berates
recent art historians for “‘projecting’ merely subjective fantasies into
paintings” instead of just “registering what is before [their] eyes.”2
According to their critics, these “over-readers”—like quixotes—
misrecognize things they have themselves created (patterns, paradoxes,
parallels, coherences) as actually present in the reality, in this case the
texts, they encounter.3
Both ostensibly rational individuals and deluded quixotes are con-
vinced, of course, that their perceptions simply register without medi-
ation the “reality” that exists outside. As Wendy Motooka says, a
quixote “attempts to universalize his or her own peculiar way of
thinking,” which seems to the quixote as self-evident and reasonable
as ostensibly rational subjects’ perceptions seem to them.4Neither the
quixote nor the rationalist admits the traces of the other within their
own vision. Although one who observes a quixote can recognize that
the presence of a genre produces the quixote’s world, quixotes believe
S. P. Gordon, The Practice of Quixotism
© Scott Paul Gordon 2006