<?page no="1"?> The Challenge of Change Edited by Margaret Tudeau-Clayton and Martin Hilpert <?page no="2"?> SPELL Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature Edited by The Swiss Association of University Teachers of English (SAUTE) General Editor: Lukas Erne Volume 36 Editorial Board (2016-19): Rachel Falconer (University of Lausanne) Indira Ghose (University of Fribourg) Martin Hilpert (University of Neuchâtel) John E. Joseph (University of Edinburgh) Annette Kern-Stähler (University of Bern) Martin Leer (University of Geneva) Jennifer Richards (University of Newcastle) Philip Schweighauser (University of Basel) Olga Timofeeva (University of Zurich) <?page no="3"?> The Challenge of Change Edited by Margaret Tudeau-Clayton and Martin Hilpert <?page no="4"?> Umschlagabbildung und Einbandgestaltung: Martin Heusser, Zürich Cover image: ‘Scheherazade talking with her sister Dinarzade, while the Sultan listens’ by Henry Ford, title page, The Arabian Nights Entertainments, ed. Andrew Lang (London, New York, Bombay: Longmans, Green and Co. 1898). Illustration: Mary Evans Picture Library Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http: / / dnb.dnb.de abrufbar. Publiziert mit Unterstützung der Schweizerischen Akademie der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften. Illustration publiziert mit Unterstützung der Commission des publications de la Faculté des lettres et sciences humaines de l’Université de Neuchâtel. © 2018 · Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG Dischingerweg 5 · D-72070 Tübingen Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. Internet: www.narr.de E-Mail: info@narr.de Printed in Germany ISSN 0940-0478 ISBN 978-3-8233-8241-6 <?page no="5"?> Table of Contents Introduction 11 The challenge of change in literature and culture Ewan Fernie (Shakespeare Institute, Birmingham) Shakespeare and Incomplete Modernity 19 Martin Leer (Geneva) “All Changed, Changed Utterly: A Terrible Beauty is Born.” What Did Easter 1916 Change? 43 Scott Loren (Zurich, St Gallen) Words as Witness: Remembering the Present in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein 67 Anne-Claire Michoux and Katrin Rupp (Neuchâtel) “If wommen hadde writen stories”: Gender and Social Change in Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Wife of Bath’s Tale” and Jane Austen’s Persuasion 101 Enit K. Steiner (Lausanne) Expanded, Changed, But Not Weakened: Posthuman Prometheanism and Race in Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis 123 Simon Swift (Geneva) “even now,/ Ev’n now”: Coleridge’s Interval 143 Margaret Tudeau-Clayton (Neuchâtel) The Figure of Scheherazade and Jane Austen’s Changing Senses of an Ending 161 <?page no="6"?> Boris Vejdovsky (Lausanne) Capitalism and Dirty Talk: Donald Trump’s Crowdfunded Discourse and the Demise of Political Community 179 The challenge of change in linguistics Anita Auer (Lausanne) Jane Austen’s Sensitivity to the Subjunctive as a Social Shibboleth 201 Tino Oudesluijs (Lausanne) Scribes as Agents of Change: Copying Practices in Administrative Texts from Fifteenth-Century Coventry 223 Afterword Felipe Fernández-Armesto (University of Notre Dame) “I Am Conservative and I Like Change” 249 Notes on Contributors 255 Index of Names 261 <?page no="7"?> Acknowledgements The essays in this volume have their origin in the conference of the Swiss Association of University Teachers of English ( SAUTE ) which was held at the University of Neuchâtel on 28-29 April 2017. We would like to thank those who contributed to make the organisation of this conference a success, especially Jennifer Rains, Pauline Bachofner, and Gregory Lucena Scarpella. We are grateful to the following institutions for financial support of the conference: The Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences ( SAGW ), the Conférence Universitaire de Suisse Occidentale ( CUSO ), and the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences at the University of Neuchâtel ( FLSH ). The many anonymous readers are to be thanked for the time and attention they put into the essays and the authors for the care with which they responded. Our thanks to Lukas Erne for his rapid and lucid responses to our questions and to Martin Heusser for his patience and skill in the production of the cover design. We thank Jennifer Rains for her careful preparation of the manuscripts and the index. Thanks are above all due to Keith Hewlett who saw through the production of the volume from start to finish with exemplary courtesy and efficiency. The topic of change has an unexpected local pertinence for SAUTE as this is the last SPELL volume that Keith will oversee. We would like to echo the general editor’s expression of gratitude for the outstanding work that Keith has done over the years. <?page no="9"?> General Editor’s Preface SPELL (Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature) is a publication of SAUTE , the Swiss Association of University Teachers of English. Established in 1984, it first appeared every second year, was published annually from 1994 to 2008, and now appears three times every two years. Every second year, SPELL publishes a selection of papers given at the biennial symposia organized by SAUTE . Non-symposium volumes usually have as their starting point papers given at other conferences organized by members of SAUTE , in particular conferences of SANAS , the Swiss Association for North American Studies and SAMEMES , the Swiss Association of Medieval and Early Modern English Studies. However, other proposals are also welcome. Decisions concerning topics and editors are made by the Annual General Meeting of SAUTE two years before the year of publication. Volumes of SPELL contain carefully selected and edited papers devoted to a topic of literary, linguistic and - broadly - cultural interest. All contributions are original and are subjected to external evaluation by means of a full peer review process. Contributions are usually by participants at the conferences mentioned, but volume editors are free to solicit further contributions. Papers published in SPELL are documented in the MLA International Bibliography. SPELL is published with the financial support of the Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences. Information on all aspects of SPELL , including volumes planned for the future, is available from the General Editor, Professor Lukas Erne, Département de langue et littérature anglaises, Faculté des Lettres, Université de Genève, CH -1211 Genève 4, Switzerland, e-mail: lukas.erne@unige.ch. Information about past volumes of SPELL and about SAUTE , in particular about how to become a member of the association, can be obtained from the SAUTE website at http: / / www. saute.ch. Finally, after twelve years and seventeen volumes, the current general editor is stepping down in spring 2019. The copy-editor of SPELL is retiring after many more years of service: Keith Hewlett took over in 1992 for volume 6 and has been invaluable for the preparation of SPELL ever since. We owe him a great and lasting debt of gratitude. Lukas Erne <?page no="11"?> Introduction The essays collected here cover a wider range of topics and authors than such collections usually offer: from changes to the use of language made by a late medieval copyist to those made by the 45th president of the United States, from changes challenged or promoted in fiction, especially by women, to the challenge of change addressed in poetry and fiction at critical moments in the past, which offer ways of thinking about the challenge of changes in our own (similarly critical) moment. Diverse as they are then the essays all speak to the topic of the SAUTE conference held at the University of Neuchâtel in April 2017: the challenge of change. Many of the essays are based on papers given at the conference, while others have since been written especially for the volume. All testify to change as (paradoxically) a constant - that which “encompasses everything,” “as it were, the default system of the universe,” as one of the keynote speakers, Felipe Fernandez-Armesto puts it in his afterword to this volume. They also overlap and intersect in interesting and thought-provoking ways. We point out some of these connections here, confident that readers will find many more. One figure that features prominently in the (very different) work of two female authors from different, if similarly turbulent, historical moments, Mary Shelley and Octavia Butler, discussed respectively by Scott Loren and Enit Steiner, is the classical figure of Prometheus. Representing as he does the change brought by human developments in technology and science obtained, as Loren puts its, by “breaking the frame of possibility,” whether for good or evil, definitively altering conditions on planet earth, Prometheus is an obviously pertinent figure. For both female authors Prometheus is a damaging model of heroic masculinity, but while Shelley, whose novel of course carries the subtitle “or the modern Prometheus,” mobilises the figure to expose “the radically disruptive” character of contemporary developments in science and technology (Franklin’s experiments with electricity), as Loren points out, Oc- The Challenge of Change. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 36. Ed. Margaret Tudeau-Clayton and Martin Hilpert. Tübingen: Narr, 2018. 11-17. <?page no="12"?> Introduction 12 tavia Butler the late twentieth century African American author discussed by Enit Steiner, seeks rather to remodel the figure in her science fiction trilogy, Xenogenesis. This she does crucially “by attaching a persuasive strategy” to her Promethean figure of Akin, the offspring of black American humans and a non human alien race the Onkali, who works for the right to choose, specifically though arguing for the removal of non changed humans to Mars, a strategy which Steiner argues is “informed by Martin Luther King’s non violent politics of change.” “Hoping that a new life on Mars . . . can also produce positive socio-genetic change” the trilogy’s “endorsement of the human,” is “as Terry Eagleton puts it, ‘hope without optimism’; sober and aware of unpredictable changes . . . both fearful and beneficiary,” “about which Butler refuses to give calming certainties.” Thus, Steiner concludes: “in order to be . . . life-affirming, the Promethean endeavour must reinvent itself in ways that resist what Réne Girard calls ‘the mimetic attraction of violence’.” The stakes of reinventing (Butler) or interrogating (Shelley) received narratives are especially high for women since, as the feminist thinker Carol Gilligan, quoted by Steiner, points out: “structural transformation involves myth changing.” The aspiration to bring change for women by challenging received narratives finds echo in the writing of a female author who is Mary Shelley’s contemporary, though not usually thought of as such - Jane Austen. The relation of Austen’s writing to change is indeed discussed in no less than three essays by female scholars in this volume. While the essay by linguist Anita Auer focuses on linguistic changes registered in Austen’s writing that relate to issues of language ideology, the essay by Anne-Claire Michoux and Katrin Rupp and the essay by Margaret Tudeau-Clayton draw attention to how Austen calls for changes to possibilities for women especially as authors. In a bold historical leap, Michoux and Rupp argue that this aspiration to cultural recognition is shared by Geoffrey Chaucer, a non-elite male writer from a much earlier period, who, through the figure of the Wife of Bath in The Canterbury Tales, speaks as a vernacular author who seeks a cultural place for himself as well as for women. Indeed, Chaucer’s figure of female anger and frustration may, they argue, be remembered by Austen, who similarly denounces cultural prejudices against female authors even as she bestows authority on her female protagonist, Anne Elliot, in the last of her completed novels Persuasion. In a crucial scene, added in revisions made during the summer of 1816 Austen, through Anne, not only denounces the prejudices propagated through cultural production from which women are excluded, since “the pen has been in [men’s] hands,” as Anne observes (echoing the Wife of Bath), but also effects a reversal <?page no="13"?> Introduction 13 through the image of the dropping of his pen by the hero Captain Wentworth. This scene is discussed too by Margaret Tudeau-Clayton, who connects it to a reference, added by Austen at the opening of this chapter, to Scheherazade, figure of a female story teller who succeeds in bringing about change in the Sultan, a figure of male tyranny and prejudice, who, thanks to her story telling, renounces even as he recognises the injustice of his view of women as fickle and his violence towards them. Wentworth is as captured by Anne’s voice as the Sultan is by Scheherazade’s, and his dropping of the pen signals not only a power reversal, but also a change of mind and a renunciation of prejudiced views both of women in general and of Anne in particular. For Tudeau-Clayton the reference to Scheherazade bears too on Austen’s personal struggle with the changing signs of what would turn out to be a fatal illness, as this is recorded in letters written during the last year of her life. For the deferral of the end of the novel through these added scenes is explicitly associated with the deferral of death that Scheherazade achieves by telling more stories. Tudeau-Clayton discusses this in relation, on the one hand, to the end of the unfinished novel (later called Sanditon), which she suggests invites readers to take up the project of Scheherazade to defer death though continuing to tell (her) stories, and, on the other, to the ending of the novel that would be posthumously published with Persuasion as Northanger Abbey and that she was revising at the same time. As self consciously accelerated as the ending of Persuasion is deferred, this ending serves a critical purpose in its undercutting of the marriage plot. For, as Tudeau-Clayton argues, Austen thus implicitly calls for other possible narrative/ life trajectories for women who, if they do not conform to the imperative of the marriage plot, are left “on the shelf,” publicly invisible, as Austen suggests in one of her letters, like an unpublished book. As many of the essays illustrate, the perception of change is a function of a species-specific sense of temporality - the sense of beginnings as well as of endings. Touched on in several essays, this is central to Simon Swift’s very fine essay, which is at once wide ranging and sharply focused on what he calls a “kind of phenomenology of time” as this finds exemplary expression in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem of 1798 Fears in Solitude. Specifically, Swift looks at how “the peculiar relation between lag and catastrophe” finds expression in a poem that registers the “shock” of the “anticipation of war” and that also “shapes our experience of the present including the temporal phenomenon of climate change.” Strikingly, this is done through temporal markers, notably the phrase “even now” and the use of grammatical tense. The poem mobi- <?page no="14"?> Introduction 14 lises too the resources of poetic form, as Swift shows, pointing out, for instance, the effect of surprise when a new verse line gives us “a repetition of the same” “where we’d expect progress, turn or development,” a surprise that “nothing has changed,” though Coleridge “wants to say” too “that everything has changed.” The resources of poetic form are highlighted too in Martin Leer’s reflections on another poem concerned with temporality and change “Easter 1916” by W. B. Yeats whose ambivalence towards the idea of revolutionary change and “vacillations” with respect to nationalist politics find expression in “the hesitations of the rhythm, the surprising line-breaks.” For Leer indeed “the real subject of Yeats’ poem is change itself, which may manifest itself in dreams of revolution before it reshapes the fabric of social thinking, and while the change is happening it is hard to identify what it is affecting.” This is picked up, as he shows, by late twentieth century revisionist writing - both history and fiction - which revisits at once the insurrection and Yeats’ poem to uncover a “psycho-underground of gender,” a “change in the role of women,” and the “outing of homosexuality as a ‘life choice’.” What emerges from this cogent analysis is an idea of literature/ art as “a space of possibilities,” a space, that is, for imagining not revolutionary political or social programmes, but new collective and personal ways of being, what Vaclav Havel called “anti-political politics.” Spaces of the possible, though also of the impossible, are explored by Mary Shelley through the form(s) of the novel, as Scott Loren shows in his tour de force on Frankenstein as a work of technography. Reflecting on how it reworks genres as well as exploring language and writing, Loren proposes that Shelley’s novel performs disjuncture as “an aesthetic principle” in response to the context of radical techno-social changes, brought about by the dual political and industrial revolutions of the moment. The highly self conscious scenes, examined by Loren, of language acquisition (itself treated as a Promethean technology), and of reading and writing bear comparison with the equally self conscious scene of writing discussed earlier, which was added by Austen to the end of Persuasion during the very summer (of 1816) that Shelley was writing her novel. Though they do not appear to have known of each other’s work, 1 Austen and Shelley, at this critical moment of radical change, both reflect on writing as a technology, the pen as a tool, hitherto wielded by men (“replaced,” it is worth adding, by the “shuttle” in the alternative technology of female authorship proposed, as Rupp and 1 We are grateful to David Spurr for this point. <?page no="15"?> Introduction 15 Michoux argue, through Chaucer’s figure of the Wife of Bath). The respective reflections are, however, very different. Austen, the spinster, opens a prospect of possibilities for women, especially as authors, “spinning out . . . stories” (as Diana Parker in Sanditon puts it), which may bring “ameliorative change” (Steiner), as Scheherazade’s story telling does, thwarting the injustice and violence done by men to women. Shelley, by contrast, is unremittingly bleak, especially, moreover, about possibilities for women, who, in her novel’s world of radically disruptive change brought by (male) technologies, precisely suffer injustice and the violence of premature death, like the wives of the Sultan. On the other hand, the emancipatory possibilities offered to women as well as men in the space of literature are energetically and unambivalently affirmed in Ewan Fernie’s essay - undoubtedly the most upbeat in the collection - which looks at “how Shakespeare has functioned, and continues to function, as a vital agent for cultural and political change.” Beginning with examples of male and female characters that illustrate the “breakthrough” “into a freer, specifically modern individuality,” which Hegel saw as “characteristic of Shakespeare and modernity,” Fernie goes on to argue that the change called for has, “for some at least,” led “into activism in favour of political change.” With absorbing detail he plots the lives of activists inspired by “Shakespearean characterisation” to work for “a pluralist politics” during the eighteenth and, especially, nineteenth centuries, urging that they in turn may serve as inspiration for us to take up the (incomplete) project of modernity. It is, of course, precisely this project that is put into question by Octavia Butler as well as Mary Shelley whose critique, it is worth adding, specifically takes the form of an intertextual engagement, as Loren shows, with the Hegelian model of selfhood. As Steiner comments, Butler, in her critical engagement with “Enlightenment metaphysics,” “cautions against the equation of change with progress.” Implicit to several essays, this is most strikingly illustrated in Boris Vejdovsky’s masterful essay on the 45th president of the United States. For Vejdovsky it is less the arrival of Donald Trump that is the significant change, but his damaging use of language - the habitual lies which “from day one as president” have been his “linguistic signature,” and which undermine “the very base of community” as well as “the representational power of language that forms the core of modern representative democracies.” Destroying the “horizon of truth” and dissolving community into a mere crowd, Trump, he argues, has a “performative aura” that feeds the fantasies of listeners with a simplified version of the world, like the confidence man he resembles. Aligned <?page no="16"?> Introduction 16 with an “aggressive capitalist ethos” his (ab)use of language is, moreover, “indicative” ‘of the transformation of Corporate strategies into U.S. national policies” and “of the personalising and privatising of politics.” It remains to be seen - and here there is hope - how long “the bad smell of his lies” and the damage done will last. Change in language use is an object of study which is shared by literary and cultural scholars with linguists. Loren, for instance, opens his essay with a list made by the historian Eric Hobsbawm of words that emerged during the period of radical changes to which they bear witness, while Swift dwells on the nuances of grammatical tense as well as of lexical repetition in his analysis of the phenomenology of time in a poem from the same historical moment. Each with a different focus both are concerned with the particular - local effects of meaning in their relation to ideas and structures of thoughts, feelings, or ideologies at a moment of radical change. Ideology is approached from a different angle by linguists who seek to understand the motivations of speakers and writers in their choices of lexical or grammatical expressions. The question what a given linguistic expression stands for, what social groups, ideologies, and world views it is associated with, influences these choices and may, in the long run, lead to the adoption and conventionalisation of a new form, or the obsolescence of an old one. In this context, Tino Oudesluijs points out that it is often far from clear whose language we see when we examine historical manuscripts. His discussion of administrative texts from Coventry, written by scribes in the 15th and 16th centuries, focuses on phenomena of linguistic variation at the lexical, orthographical and morphological levels of the text, where most changes are registered. The aim of the analysis is to determine whether diachronic changes reflect personal preferences of an individual scribe, changing scribal conventions, or more general processes of language change. Oudesluijs notes the importance of scribes’ personal training, which reflects the choice of expressions in their texts more faithfully than superimposed standards or their immediate working environment. The essay thus brings to our attention not only that language itself changes, but also that the reasons that bring speakers and writers to adopt linguistic innovations are subject to evolution and change. In an essay that complements Oudesluijs’ linguistic observations, Anita Auer explores Jane Austen’s use of an expression that has been in the focus of prescriptive, normative attitudes towards language, namely the English subjunctive. Existing work on Austen’s language use has put forward the claim that Austen was aware of these normative attitudes and even aspired to make them her own. Auer’s analysis takes a close <?page no="17"?> Introduction 17 look at Austen’s personal letters, her novels, and, more importantly, corrections that were made to the texts of the novels during the editorial process. The examination of the data contextualises Austen’s use of the subjunctive in the standardisation of the English language more generally, and in the history of education, which of course also includes her own personal education. Diverse as they are then the essays prove how well the topic served the members of SAUTE , “an exceptionally adventurous band of scholars,” our guest speaker Felipe Fernandez-Armesto observes in his afterword, suggesting that this may be “because it is liberating to study a foreign language and literature in a land as inwardly diverse linguistically as Switzerland.” His observation might give us pause - and a reason to cultivate rather than suppress the specificity of SAUTE as a community. However this may be, the conference could hardly have been more pertinent to its moment. This is signalled by the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year for 2017: youthquake, “a significant cultural, political, or social change arising from the actions or influence of young people.” Like those who lived and wrote during the period of revolutionary change two hundred years ago, we live in times of sudden, unforeseen changes, inhabited by imaginings of still more momentous changes to come - whether the sense of definitive ending in (ecological or geo-political) catastrophe or the sense of the apparently infinite possibilities of human technology to transform the conditions of our individual and collective lives. And yet, with change as the only constant, we remain unaware of the full scope of possible scenarios that may unfold. As Austen observed to her sister: “whatever I may write or you may imagine, we know it will be something different.” Margaret Tudeau-Clayton and Martin Hilpert <?page no="19"?> Shakespeare and Incomplete Modernity 1 Ewan Fernie This essay explores the association between Shakespeare and political liberalism, opening up some of the ways in which appeals to Shakespeare have fomented real-world change. The vivid, ever-changing pluralism of Shakespeare’s characterisation, across his dramatic canon, has helped to inspire a politics of freedom. And yet, that project remains crucially incomplete. We are now living in a climate where freedom is tainted by its association not just with an ethically cynical (and unfortunately named) “neoliberalism,” but also by regressive nationalism. But perhaps the struggle for freedom in Shakespeare can help us to recognise and reclaim that more progressive passion for freedom which has been a major driver of western modernity and might make us modern yet. Key words: Shakespeare, freedom, Birmingham, Louis Kossuth, George Dawson. The Shakespeare Centre Library and Archive holds a note in the Hungarian revolutionary hero Lajos Kossuth’s hand. It reads, in a flourishing script, “received from Revd. George Dawson as the proceeds of my lectures at Birmingham, London May 14, 1856.” It is archived together with a small photographic portrait of himself which Dawson had evidently presented to the Hungarian, in which he looks at once gravely 1 This essay draws together a highly compressed version of my argument in Shakespeare for Freedom: Why the Plays Matter with new material on Kossuth, Dawson, Shakespeare and Birmingham, in order to make a more consolidated and specific case for Shakespeare’s part in the making of liberal modernity. The Challenge of Change. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 36. Ed. Margaret Tudeau-Clayton and Martin Hilpert. Tübingen: Narr, 2018. 19-41. <?page no="20"?> Ewan Fernie 20 committed and rather like a white lion. 2 The librarians at the Shakespeare Centre have no idea what it is it doing in a Shakespeare collection. This essay proposes to shed light on the mystery. Indeed, the Kossuth note will allow me to reflect on the topic of change, particularly on how Shakespeare has functioned - and continues to function - as a vital agent for cultural and political change. *** The most promising and inspiring thing ever said about Shakespeare and change is the nineteenth-century German philosopher Georg Friedrich Hegel’s thrilling dictum that Shakespeare’s characters are “free artists of their own selves” (Hegel 70). According to Harold Bloom, this is simply the best thing on “Shakespearean representation yet written” (Bloom 70; my emphasis). It is “the insight into Shakespearean representation of character that still needs to be developed by us.” Bloom elaborates as follows: Iago and Edmund and Hamlet contemplate themselves objectively in images wrought by their own intelligences and are enabled to see themselves as dramatic characters, aesthetic artifices. They thus become free artists of themselves, which means they are free to . . . will changes in the self. (Bloom 70) Shakespearean character discloses to us nothing less than a speciesdistinguishing power of self-renovation. This is what Bloom means when he attributes to Shakespeare nothing less than “the invention of the human.” Hegel did not quite claim that for the Bard, but he did see him - along with his more German and religious counterpart, Martin Luther - as the great architect of that free-spiritedness which, for Hegel, defines the breakthrough into modern life. Shakespearean character is the great testimony of the arts to the new “right of personality,” the new “principle of subjectivity” (Hegel 59, 68, 73-74). Shakespearean character exemplifies modern freedom in its double aspect. On the one hand, it is the freedom to be oneself. As the famed creator of some of the world’s most vital and substantial characters, Shakespeare affords excellent examples of this. Take Falstaff, for instance. The very fatness of the fat knight 2 DR1136/ 3/ 2/ 89: Kossuth note: Garside collection; other letters, 14 May 1856, Shakespeare Centre Library and Archive. <?page no="21"?> Shakespeare and Incomplete Modernity 21 expresses his condition of superabundant liberty. But freedom can also take an almost opposite form, that of the freedom to be different. This is the freedom not of being (what you are) but becoming (what you might be), the freedom to change - casting off all that you have been till now in a sudden, insurgent desire to be otherwise. Falstaff exemplifies this too, in that he becomes something totally different from a fat old man in all the luxuriantly creative quickness of his own imagination. But a character who more clearly exemplifies such self-subverting freedom to change is Rosalind. At the beginning of As You Like It, she is clearly an obedient daughter; but this limits her freedom, which is why, when she’s forced to leave home, she goes with such “swashing,” emancipated glee “to liberty, and not to banishment” (1.3.114, 132). 3 By assuming a male alter ego, she lays claim to a whole new self, one which sets her free not just from familial and social duty but even from her identity as a woman. For her, freedom is not so much a charter to be and enjoy your self as the liberty to destroy your established identity, stepping into a whole new existence. And of course this is exactly what any actor must do each time he (or she) throws himself (or herself) into a new part; such freedom to be otherwise is hard-wired into the very technology of the form that Shakespeare works in. Ganymede, the sexually ambiguous name of the alter ego which Rosalind assumes - it is also the name of Zeus’s cup-bearer and male lover in antiquity - is Shakespeare’s name for the other life of freedom to which we all potentially are called. The self-subverting freedom I have been describing reflects the challenge of change, since it can be disturbing to contemplate and hard to attain. It is, after all, the forsaking of everything we are and own in favour of sheer uncreated difference - easy, perhaps, in postmodern theory, but not so much in real-life practice, though that does not stop people doing it; think of the well-attested phenomenon of the “mid-life crisis.” But the challenge of this kind of modern freedom remains such that it is often stalled, only half achieved, and Shakespeare understood this. Hegel argued that Shakespearean drama accomplished its fundamental historical breakthrough by moving beyond the essentially allegorical mode of classical theatre - where characters like Antigone stand for a particular ethical value or “pathos” - into a freer, specifically modern individuality. I propose that in Antony and Cleopatra, in progressing from his once imperturbable Roman heroism into the more fungible state he recognises in the changing clouds, Antony undertakes exactly 3 Shakespeare references are to The Norton Shakespeare, ed. Stephen Greenblatt. <?page no="22"?> Ewan Fernie 22 that journey beyond allegory for himself, as we see in the following beautiful passage of dialogue. ANTONY Eros, thou yet behold’st me? EROS Ay, noble lord. ANTONY Sometime we see a cloud that’s dragonish, A vapour sometime like a bear or lion, A towered citadel, a pendent rock, A forked mountain, or blue promontory With trees upon’t that nod unto the world And mock our eyes with air. Thou hast seen these signs; They are black vesper’s pageants. EROS Ay, my lord. ANTONY That which is now a horse even with a thought The rack distains, and makes it indistinct As water is in water. EROS It does, my lord. ANTONY My good knave Eros, now thy captain is Even such a body. Here I am Antony, Yet cannot hold this visible shape, my knave. (Antony and Cleopatra 4.15.1-14) Antony assumes he is describing a revelation in the heavens of his own peculiar tragic state, but in fact he is unveiling something much more important - he is expressing a fundamental truth of being in Shakespeare in general. But if it is a truth of being, it is one where being is shifting into becoming, with the freedom to be yourself transitioning into the freedom to become something different. In this great speech, Antony reads the shiftingness written in the changing sky back into his own selfhood. And he reads this cloudy mutability in terms of melancholy self-loss, even death: “black vesper’s pageants.” Though his persistently lovely imagery and phrasing intimates that his painful loss of secure identity potentially inaugurates a new kind of freedom, he is here unable to recognise and make this new freedom the foundation for a new self and life. Antony has gone beyond any sustainable antique conception of personality, but he has done so without quite attaining to the new, more “liquid” Shakespearean concept of modern selfhood that Hegel describes as characteristic of Shakespeare and modernity. In subjective terms, at least at this point in the play, Antony gives us the image of a woefully incomplete modernity. <?page no="23"?> Shakespeare and Incomplete Modernity 23 *** I have thus far been sharing only examples of individual freedom. And given that they evoke character as a splendidly interpersonal achievement, Shakespeare’s plays cannot but project, and be haunted by, at least the idea of a free society of mutually fulfilled individuals. Certainly, that has been the view of the many significant people who have upheld in our culture an important but now rather neglected tradition of associating Shakespeare with freedom and positive political change. I begin at the beginning, with the first ever Shakespeare celebration: David Garrick’s Shakespeare Jubilee, which took place in Stratfordupon-Avon in 1769. On that occasion, the Corporation of Stratford invited the leading Shakespeare actor of the day, David Garrick, to celebrate Shakespeare and open the new Town Hall. They made him the first ever “Freeman” of Stratford. And it was an honour Garrick truly deserved given the captivating freedom of his revolutionary new, more naturalistic style of acting. As Steward to the Jubilee, Garrick took Shakespeare out of the scholar’s study, and even the theatre, and quite literally to the streets. His coat was trimmed in the colours of the rainbow and Garrick encouraged all festival-goers to wear a rainbow ribbon. This ribbon was, explicitly, “The Shakespeare Ribband,” which expressed the great variety of Shakespeare’s genius in explicitly political terms of his openness and availability to all (Deelman 184). Garrick served up turtle at the festive banquet: a hell of a turtle in fact, it weighed when living no less than 327 pounds. Why turtle? As his correspondent the celebrated philosopher of the sublime, Edmund Burke explained, because it was neither fish nor flesh, and thus was, like the plays, a suitably inclusive repast for all (England 58). In this context of liberation, it’s not surprising that the songs which were sung for Shakespeare at Stratford were subsequently refitted for later jubilees in favour of the great political cause of the day: “Wilkes and liberty” and the extension of the franchise. John Wilkes was the great contemporary figurehead for liberty in eighteenth-century England. He had repeatedly been returned as MP for Middlesex, but each time he was removed by the government. The people’s protest against this injustice was serious and sustained, with seven protestors dying as they chanted, “No liberty, no King” at the St George’s Field Massacre in 1768: the year before Garrick’s Jubilee. Wilkes was thrown in prison for the anti-royalist tenor of number 45 of his radical paper, The North Briton. Though, as the published text has it, “Mr. Garrick may brag / <?page no="24"?> Ewan Fernie 24 Of his Warwickshire wag,” it was Wilkes’s 45th birthday that was celebrated in King’s Bench Prison, with a jubilee featuring songs specifically adapted from the Jubilee song book, and another three-hundred-pound turtle. The hit song of the Jubilee was “The lad of all lads was a Warwickshire lad.” In honour of Wilkes, this mutated into: “Middlesex friend, freedom defend / For the friend of all friends is a Middlesex friend” (The Patriot’s Jubilee iii). A striking and intriguing fact of the original Shakespeare celebrations is that they did not actually include any Shakespeare plays or poems. There were new songs, a new oratorio (called Judith but probably not in homage to Shakespeare’s daughter), a planned procession of Shakespearean characters, a dance and a horse race (the Shakespeare Cup). Garrick offered his own brand-new Ode to Shakespeare in the presence not just of an audience but also of a Shakespeare statue as the artistic centrepiece of the Jubilee. He presented Shakespeare not as literary heritage to be preserved but as the direct inspiration for change, for new life and art. I suggest Garrick performed on the banks of the Avon not so much an exclusive cult of personality as what we might call a culture of personality derived from Shakespeare’s genius for characterisation, one which encourages others to find themselves in Shakespeare as he simultaneously and definitively demonstrated he himself had done. If the Shakespeare discovered at the Jubilee was, on the one hand, the transcendent genius with whom we are now perhaps excessively familiar, at the same time Garrick’s Shakespeare was a figure unprecedentedly thrown open to identification, participation, and creative reinvention. Garrick offered Shakespeare to the people as the prospect of their own transcendence. And this, we shall now see, unleashed a great political force. 4 *** It is in Chartism - the mass, nineteenth-century English movement to give the working-class the vote - that we really see how an appreciation of Shakespeare’s genius for characterization could combine with the development of a more democratic politics (albeit one that stopped short of women’s suffrage) to produce a lively idea of fulfilment for all. And where Garrick derived his politics of freedom from the expressive 4 For more on Garrick and the Jubilee, see Fernie (113-26). <?page no="25"?> Shakespeare and Incomplete Modernity 25 individualism he found in Shakespeare, Chartism brought together the politics of freedom with the remarkably Shakespearean vision and charisma of Thomas Cooper. Born in Leicester in 1805, he was the illegitimate son of a dyer, who had died when Thomas was just a child (Murphy 144). Cooper found in Shakespeare a man who had been “humbly born . . . (yet who had) climb(ed) up into the realms of truest grandeur” (quoted from Reasoner II, 277, in Roberts 31). And from this he drew a general lesson: clearly “that region is open to all humanity” (quoted from Reasoner II, 277, in Roberts 31). But Shakespeare is not only an example of a boy made good for Cooper. In his autobiography, he writes: The wondrous knowledge of the heart unfolded by Shakespeare, made me shrink into insignificance; while the sweetness, the marvellous power of expression and grandeur of his poetry seemed to transport me, at times, out of the vulgar world of circumstances in which I lived bodily. (Cooper Life 64) In what Cooper says, Shakespeare’s politics opens up like a flower, becoming something much more intimate and revealed. Cooper’s testimony to Shakespeare’s power combines a cognitive insight into human being (“wondrous knowledge of the heart”) with a creative prospect of sheer and heightened possibility (“out of the vulgar world of circumstances”). It recalls the inventive as well as expressive power of Garrick’s acting, which in turn is reflective of that double truth whereby Shakespearean character both is splendidly itself and at the same time the inventive power to become something other than oneself: somebody else. “Wondrous knowledge” calls for worshipful humility; but Shakespeare’s knowledge, according to Cooper, is not knowledge of what will be out of reach for all but the rarest and most brilliant spirits, it is instead knowledge of what is most deeply held in common: knowledge of the heart. Reading Shakespeare is not in the end just an abasing experience. It ravishes Cooper, at least on occasion, into a new reality of sweetness, power of expression, grandeur; and Cooper is a Chartist, so he experiences this Shakespearean vision as more than just a sublime enhancement of his own ego - it opens into his vision of social freedom as such. Shakespeare puts flesh on the bones of the Chartists’ crucial demands for a fairer politics: the vote for all men, a secret ballot, no property qualification for MPs, and so on. By invoking Shakespeare, Cooper was able to look beyond this shopping list of conditions into the more realised, fulfilled, and developed common life they were intended to <?page no="26"?> Ewan Fernie 26 facilitate. What this will mean in terms of actual political life is imagined in Cooper’s fellow Leicester Chartist, William Whitmore’s lines which Cooper published in Cooper’s Journal (1850): The young spring morn breaks brightly on a scene Of festival outstretching far and wide: Toil is respited, mute the town’s huge din, And throngs of freemen, consciously allied To England’s Shakspere, hail with soul-felt pride This glorious natal day! (quoted in Bate 215) 5 Thus did Chartism make of Garrick’s original Shakespeare celebration a much more explicitly radical thing. “Throngs of freemen consciously allied to England’s Shakspere”: this presents a vision of freedom in Shakespeare made actual. The heart of Shakespeare’s work does not finally belong to just one person. “The great recommendation of this knowledge,” Cooper felt sure was, “its immense utility” (Reasoner V 308 in Roberts 32). In learning Hamlet “entirely and perfectly by heart,” by committing to memory “thousands of lines” of other poetry, he did not consider himself to be turning away from politics (Cooper Life 66, 68; my emphasis); on the contrary, he felt he was going deeper into it. Making Shakespeare’s language his own in this way seemed to him perfectly consistent with storming around Nottingham with Chartist comrades, singing, “The Lion of freedom is come from his den” (Cooper Life 160). 6 Whitmore’s poem about the united throng of Shakespearean freemen was called “Shakspere’s Birthday - in the Future.” There was a job to be done, a new world to be wrestled into being. It was fundamentally because Cooper construed Shakespeare to be part of this revolution that, in 1841, the year following the appearance of the “Chartism from Shakespeare” series in the Northern Star, he broke away from the main Leicester Chartist association, setting up a rival branch which he styled “The Shaksperean Association of Leicester Chartists” (Cooper, Life 163). They held their meetings in the 5 See also Cooper’s Journal (1.21, 25 May 1850: 328). 6 This was a familiar vein for Cooper. His own “Chartist Chaunt” includes these lines: TRUTH is growing - hearts are glowing With the flame of Liberty: Light is breaking - thrones are quaking - Hark! - the trumpet of the Free! (Cooper, Poetical Works 283). <?page no="27"?> Shakespeare and Incomplete Modernity 27 “Shaksperean Room” (Roberts 32). 7 They also compiled and sang from their “Shaksperean Chartist Hymn Book” (Cooper, Life 166). Here is a representative inclusion: Britannia’s sons, though slaves ye be, God, your Creator, made you free; He life and thought and being gave, But never, never made a slave! . . . All men are equal in His sight, The bond, the free, the black, the white: He made them all, them freedom gave; God made the man - Man made the slave! (Cooper, Life 166) Now it has to be said that, like Whitmore’s “Shakespeare’s Birthday,” this does not attempt to imitate the quality and sophistication of Shakespeare’s verse. There is more of the Chapel than the Bard to such texts; and never mind Shakespeare, they are vastly inferior to, say, the hymns of Charles Wesley. And yet, I would contend that they are still significant. The association with Shakespeare pushes the conventional spirituality of the hymnal into a more secular, political sphere, mobilising it and as its background all the individuated complexity of Shakespearean drama, to which, as we have seen, Cooper’s commitment was not at all casual. “Britannia’s sons,” Cooper tells us, was composed by one John Bramwich: a stocking weaver. “He was a grave, serious man,” we’re additionally informed, “the very heart of truth and sincerity.” And then Cooper plainly states that “He died of sheer exhaustion, from hard labour and want, in the year 1846” (Cooper, Life 165). This cruelly premature death is a reminder that the stakes were high in Chartism. It is a reminder that Cooper and Bramwich were right to fight as they did. Not enough has been made of the fact that they did so expressly in Shakespeare’s name, in obedience to what Cooper regarded as his “wondrous knowledge of the heart,” in the hope of bringing into being a sweeter, grander, more expressive world of freemen consciously allied to England’s Shakespeare. In such a world Bramwich would flourish and not die. But the campaign for now needed something other than sophisticated poetry; it needed marching songs, militant anthems, cruder and more serviceable than Shakespeare but testifying to the politically 7 This splinter group of Leicester Chartists called themselves Shakespeareans not only because the room in which they met in Humberstone Gate was so called, but also because Cooper “liked the name of Shakespeare” (see the letter written by Cooper to R. G. Gammage, dated 26 February 1855, and printed in Gammage [405]). <?page no="28"?> Ewan Fernie 28 relevant transcendent truth that Cooper and his Shakespearean Association of Leicester Chartists nevertheless found in the Bard. Cooper called himself the “Shaksperean General” (Murphy 147). 8 It is a suggestive moniker firstly because it associates Shakespeare with an expressly militant politics. Beyond that, “general” suggests the Chartiststand Cooper was making for Shakespearean character as exemplifying the sort of splendid self-realisation he wanted for all. Cooper demonstrated his commitment to a specifically Shakespeare-inflected freedom in the fresh campaign for the extension of the franchise which he launched in 1849. Instead of another mass Chartist petition, Cooper argued in favour of individual petitions, to be sent to Parliament in batches of a hundred. The day he fixed upon for dispatching these of course was Shakespeare’s birthday. “You could not, unenfranchised, honour the birthday of our greatest Englishman more worthily,” he declared, “than by joining to claim your rights as freemen that day” (quoted in Taylor 366). 9 In 1849, Cooper wanted to make what Whitmore foresaw of “Shakspere’s birthday in the future” come true today. He argued that Shakespeare’s anniversary should be declared a national holiday, like Burns night, and that “[o]ur order ought to see to this; for the unequalled woolstapler’s son belongs to us” (Cooper’s Journal 15.1, 28 April 1849: 118). Two years later still, in 1851, Cooper fulfilled one of the great desires of his life, making a pilgrimage to Stratford and kneeling on Shakespeare’s grave. *** Cooper demonstrates more explicitly and forcefully than Garrick does that Shakespearean singularity - the sheer, irreducible life of his characters - can facilitate a politics of freedom. But I have spoken thus far only about English traditions, and I now want to open this up to equally important European traditions of associating Shakespeare with emancipation and political change. The international potential of freedom in Shakespeare was in fact already evident at the 1769 Jubilee. “It was not confined to the English only,” reported The Public Advertiser, “for the Scotch and the Irish were as eager in paying their devotion” (3). And the part played there by the Scot, James Boswell, sufficiently demonstrates 8 See also Thomas Cooper’s letter, dated 29 August 1842 to the Northern Star (3 September 1842: 6). 9 See also Cooper’s Journal (1.21, 9 June 1849: 170). It should be admitted Cooper is fired up by Milton as much as Shakespeare in this passage. <?page no="29"?> Shakespeare and Incomplete Modernity 29 that the first Shakespeare jubilee really was not just English for the English. Boswell came to Stratford resplendent in the costume of a Corsican chief. Boswell’s commitment to Corsica was not at all casual. He visited Corsica, went native with the rebels there, and launched himself when he returned into an elaborate newspaper campaign intended ultimately to persuade the British government to intervene and support them. He personally raised money to send arms to Corsica, and he edited a volume of essays “in favour of the brave Corsicans.” But his “little monument to liberty” was his own book: An Account of Corsica; The Journal of a Tour to That Island, and Memoirs of Pascal Paoli (the Corsican rebel leader) (Boswell xvii). It was a great success in Britain and in Europe, and it had a real impact on European politics. The French government commissioned a translation, and the British sent secret supplies to the rebels. But, in spite of Boswell’s efforts, Britain was not about to declare war on France on behalf of a small island of apparently little strategic interest, and the rebellion had been decisively routed by the time of the Stratford Jubilee. But that did not stop Boswell from hitching his oneman international liberation movement to Garrick’s Shakespeare festival. His diary entry for 2 September 1769 tells how, in preparation for Stratford, he sought out “an embroiderer in Bow Street, Covent Garden; gave him, cut out in paper as well as I could, the form of a Corsican cap, and ordered Viva la Libertà to be embroidered on the front of it in letters of gold” (Boswell 288). Two days later he was tramping all over London searching for other Corsican necessaries, then happily observing that he could get it all in his “travelling-bag, except my musket and staff.” The staff he describes as “a very handsome vine with the root uppermost, and upon it a bird, very well carved.” “I paid six shillings for it,” he records. “I told the master of the shop, ‘Why, Sir, this vine is worth any money. It is a Jubilee staff. That bird is the bird of Avon’” (Boswell 291-92). Only a deep and natural association of Shakespeare and freedom will make of Boswell’s Corsican kit and a staff that might have been carved in Arden such a miraculously coherent ensemble. It is, I think, a wonderful icon of the internationally significant association of Shakespeare and freedom as it was forged in the definitively English celebration of Shakespeare in 1769. Cooper, too, looked abroad as much as he looked to Shakespeare. He welcomed the “wonders” and “political earthquake” of 1848, which he called “the most remarkable year of the nineteenth century” (Cooper, Life 301, 310). And his career confirms Boswell’s dramatic statement that an enthusiasm for Shakespeare really is not incompatible with a <?page no="30"?> Ewan Fernie 30 passion for international freedom. In the pages of Cooper’s Journal, the same William Whitmore who had conjured visions of “Shakespere’s Birthday - in the Future” also offered encouraging verses to the Hungarian revolutionary Kossuth: “Kossuth, droop not, the Magyar’s strength matures: / The phoenix, Freedom, aye will spring replete / With fresh life-vigour from the ashes of defeat! ” (Whitmore 56). And, for his part, John Alfred Langford, wrote from Birmingham for Cooper’s Journal, these lines “To Kossuth”: “The annals of the world contain no name, / At which we freely with more reverence bow, / Than thine, immortal Kossuth! ” (Langford 198). *** I began with reference to Kossuth’s note to George Dawson, found in the Shakespeare Centre Library in Archive. Who was this “immortal” man? Alas, outside Hungary, his memory has proved all-too-mortal, and he tends therefore to need some introduction today. An ardent liberal nationalist, Kossuth sought freedom for Hungary from Austria. He was imprisoned for a year in 1837, and immediately sentenced to a further four years; though he was liberated in 1840, the strict confinement had damaged his health. He demanded a parliament for Hungary and constitutional government for the rest of Austria in 1848, briefly becoming President-Regent of the Hungarian Republic in 1849, before the Russians interfered and Kossuth was forced to leave his beloved country. He travelled widely, before settling in Italy, becoming something of a cause célèbre throughout Europe and in the United States, which found his political stand congenial to its own founding ethos. A bust of him in the US Capitol is decorated with the inscription, “Father of Hungarian Democracy, Hungarian Statesman, Freedom Fighter.” Abraham Lincoln, no less, called Kossuth the “most worthy and distinguished representative of the cause of civil and religious liberty on the continent of Europe” (Lincoln 376). And, like Cooper, who read Shakespeare behind bars when imprisoned for rioting in the Potteries, Kossuth, too, read Shakespeare in prison. He repeatedly identified freedom with Shakespeare, and in the London Tavern in 1853 he claimed to have derived his own politics of freedom from the English dramatist. What was presented to him there was “a neatly-constructed model of Shakespeare’s house at Stratfordupon-Avon, in which was placed a splendidly-bound copy of ‘Knight’s Shakespeare,’ ornamented with the arms of the Kossuth family, and <?page no="31"?> Shakespeare and Incomplete Modernity 31 elaborately decorated in crimson, silk and gold.” On the front of this was a silver plate, which was inscribed as follows: “Purchased with 9215 pence, subscribed by Englishmen and women, as a tribute to Louis Kossuth, who achieved his noble mastery of the English language, to be exercised in the noblest cause, from the page of Shakespeare.” 10 In his acceptance speech, Kossuth explained that Shakespeare had taught him not only to speak (English) but also “something besides”: politics. Kossuth knows that to claim to have learned his politics of freedom from a dramatic poet might be a surprising thing. What, politics from Shakespeare? But he is undeterred. Yes, gentlemen. He further said that “the best thanks he could give for this testimonial, and similar honours, was the assurance that he and his country would endure anything, and wait any time, but would never give up the resolve of retrieving independence.” And with that a large crowd of ordinary English men and women mixed with radical big-hitters of the day - including Richard Cobden, Douglas Jerrold and Sir Joshua Walmsley - went berserk in a rapture in which the love of English Shakespeare was perfectly continuous with selfless enthusiasm for a Hungarian freedom fighter. Let us return for a moment to contemplate the rich gift that the meeting had given to Kossuth. He kept the model on his desk while in exile in Turin, and I tracked it down to the Hungarian National Library. The edition of Shakespeare’s complete works which Kossuth received was “superbly bound in mulberry-coloured morroco.” The case containing the books was “a model of Shakespeare’s house, very delicately rendered by Messrs. Howitt of High Holborn.” The account in the Illustrated London News gives further detail: The interior and exterior are of white holly, to represent lime-wash; the outside transverse timbers of black oak. The roof is made of birch, to represent 10 Quotations are from “Presentation of the Shakespeare Testimonial to Kossuth.” The source appears to be the Illustrated London News (15 May 1853: page number unknown). See Lemuel Matthews Griffiths (88) at the Library of Birmingham; see also Andrew Murphy (149). <?page no="32"?> Ewan Fernie 32 thatch. The doors are of brown oak, with black oak graininess. On a silver plate above the centre window is the inscription. I suggest that lovingly encasing the books in this way eloquently expresses the conviction that a life can be made out of Shakespeare. And I suggest that dedicating not only Shakespeare’s books, but also Shakespeare’s house, to a Hungarian freedom fighter makes the surprising assertion that Shakespeare and Stratford model the new moral and political world for which Kossuth was fighting. I am attempting to recover - and, indeed, to recreate - a lost tradition of Shakespearean freedom that extends from Garrick, through Cooper, to Kossuth. As I hope is clear by now, the Shakespearean careers of these charismatic men are very evidently related, and we can point to, as it were, genetic links between them. The line between Garrick and Cooper’s Shakespearean efforts to extend the franchise can be traced via the association between Garrick and Wilkes, as well as in the evident indebtedness of Whitmore and Cooper’s ambitions for Shakespeare’s birthday to the original Garrick Jubilee. And there are subsequent connections between Cooper and Kossuth as well. Douglas Jerrold - who chaired the Shakespeare tribute to Kossuth in the London Tavern - was also instrumental in publishing Thomas Cooper. And while Kossuth was fighting the Emperor in his Hungarian homeland, Ernest Jones, a Chartist leader somewhat to the left of Cooper, was unwittingly following Kossuth in asking to read Shakespeare in prison - though, unlike Kossuth’s, Jones’s request was refused. Jones was another radical in whom literary and theatrical pretensions and emancipatory politics came together. A friend of the actors Charles Kean (son of Edmund) and Charles Kemble, he had written several plays and dreamed of becoming a playwright, before turning to poetry (Taylor 361). 11 And in case we are still inclined to think the beautiful Shakespeare tribute to Kossuth a winsome one-off, I should add that Jones’s comrade on the left of Chartism, George Julian Harney, a friend of Marx and Engels - who was imprisoned around the same time as Cooper for his part in the Lancashire Plug Plot riots in 1843 - was also presented with a complete Shakespeare in “an artistically carved oaken box.” “Old Chartists,” the National Reformer’s correspondent avers, can remember the Red Republican, and new strugglers for freedom ought to recognise that the political liberty we use was by the persistent efforts of 11 See also the memoir of Ernest Jones’s life in the Manchester City News (18 January 1919: 4). <?page no="33"?> Shakespeare and Incomplete Modernity 33 those who, like George Julian Harney, had to answer in the felon’s dock for the cause. (“George Julian Harney” 278) Garrick did not answer for the cause in the felon’s dock, but Cooper, Jones, Harney and Kossuth did, and all of them were associated with Shakespeare: ample confirmation that, for some at least, the expressive freedom of Shakespeare’s characters opens naturally into activism in favour of political change. All of these men tap into Shakespeare’s characterisation as both a lively inspiration and an existential mandate for a pluralist politics even as they exemplify the promise of such a politics in their own vividly Shakespearean self-realization. The flamboyance of Shakespearean personality is not, in this lost tradition, opposed to politics, as it so often was in the culture wars of the 1990s, where it was aligned with a sort of privileged aesthetic attitude. No, in this important alternative tradition the flamboyance of Shakespearean personality is the source of a joyous, affirmative politics of its own, one which finds in Shakespeare’s central achievement of creating characters who are more spirited and alive than any we have seen before or since a political as well as a personal promesse de bonheur. That tradition has faded, if it has not been utterly eclipsed; but it was hardly a flash in the pan. *** Evidently, then, there was at least a Shakespearean tincture to Kossuth’s fight for freedom. But that alone will not, I think, explain what his handwritten note to George Dawson is doing in the Shakespeare Centre; I do not, for instance, believe that Kossuth actually lectured on Shakespeare in Birmingham. But Kossuth’s Shakespearean associations were bolstered by Dawson’s. And I want to suggest that Dawson was disposed to see Kossuth’s advent as a Shakespearean phenomenon, whether the Hungarian hero expressly linked his fortunes to Shakespeare or not. Dawson very much fits into the progressive political story I have been telling here. In March 1859 he presided at a lecture given by Cooper at the Oddfellows’ Hall, Birmingham, and he was well-known to and shared radical platforms with Jerrold (Wilson 122). It was Dawson who called the first meeting on English soil in favour of Kossuth’s Hungarian insurrection against Austria (Wilson 110). And though all but forgotten today, Dawson was the most creative and influential figure in the history of England’s second city in the period of its greatest and most <?page no="34"?> Ewan Fernie 34 significant flourishing. His statue stood in what is now Chamberlain Square alongside the much more abstract tribute to Birmingham’s most celebrated politician, the reforming mayor Joseph Chamberlain, which is still standing; and what is more, the Chamberlain monument was clearly and fundamentally linked to the much more animated and personal monument to Dawson, which was not dismantled till 1951. Chamberlain himself said, “It is a great thing to say of a man that he has influenced the life of a great town, and it is true, and we know it, that if this great town . . . has its special characteristics . . . these . . . are chiefly due to the teachings of George Dawson” (George Dawson Collection 21: 1-4). It was Dawson’s vision which Chamberlain put into practice and, as a result, by the 1890s American observers were calling Birmingham the best governed city in the world (Briggs 184). If Dawson is remembered at all today, it is for his so-called Civic Gospel. To Dawson, according to the academic-turned-MP-turned- Director-of-the-Victoria-and-Albert-Museum, Tristam Hunt, the city was “the new corpus” (Hunt 327). Dawson promoted one great common, energetically progressive life, one which included everything - politics and culture, science and the arts and religion. His vision brought together all the different aspects of human life, but also the people in general. This double convergence, for Dawson, was religious in its significance: he spoke of “the great genius of the Christian religion . . . all things for all men: the highest to kiss the lowest: the manifestation of God in the world in order that the meanest of mankind might be brought to a knowledge of Him” (Dawson 160). In the same landmark speech, he suggested that the opening of Birmingham’s Corporation Library announced to the world “that one of the highest offices of civilization is to determine how to give access to the masterpieces of art and of literature to the whole people.” Such “freedom” he claimed was the “glory” of the Corporation Library (Dawson 160). One of the greatest glories of his civic gospel, as well as the most important surviving monument to him, is the Birmingham Shakespeare Memorial Library: a world-class research library that is still unique in the world in that it belongs to all the people of Birmingham. “Having watered the streets, seen to the drainage, lighted the lamps, and laid down stones,” Dawson suggested, the Town Council had thereby shown “that the range of its love and interest is the range of humanity” (Dawson 96; my emphasis). Dawson welcomed as a salient characteristic of the modern age “an increasing intention to give everything to everybody,” and he wanted specifically to give Shakespeare away (George Dawson Collection 11: 36). Shakespeare for him absolutely opened out into political change <?page no="35"?> Shakespeare and Incomplete Modernity 35 and a new age of freedom. In a lecture in Sheffield in December 1846, he insisted poets were “seers, because they were believed to see further than other men.” He further insisted that “Shakespeare’s characters were creations, and men disputed not whether Hamlet was represented as mad, but whether or not he was mad.” And yet, Shakespeare had created not life as it is, but life as it shall be. “Realism must be checked by poetry,” he said, and “the students of the possible, admitting that things were bad, had [to have] full faith in the future” (George Dawson Collection 11: 108). The plays, for Dawson, represented an expressly radical force: There are things in Shakespeare that he would have been burned for, if he had not been a player. There is heresy enough to have carried him to endless stakes, political liberty enough to have made him a glorious Jacobin in evil days, and carried him to destruction and doom. If he had appeared as a divine, they would have burned him; as a politician, they would have beheaded him. What would the Tudors have made of him if they had been wise enough to understand him? But God made him a player. (Dawson 105) Shakespeare, for Dawson, set out what he called “in deference to my clerical friends, the lay duty of mankind” (Dawson 83); he was the proponent of something like an alternative, a more secular and progressive religion. Ultimately, Dawson concluded that “[h]e who holds the cup to Shakespeare’s fount comes home full to the brim with the water of life - I say it very solemnly - the very water of life” (Dawson 100). Such a vision of Shakespeare’s significance meant that Shakespeare could not be segregated from life as such, which meant he could not be kept out of politics. Dawson always insisted that “life should be a manifestation of one spirit, and that should be the result of the highest style of thinking” (George Dawson Collection 11: 101). The Kossuth note to Dawson is held at the Shakespeare Centre because there is a Shakespearean tincture to Kossuth’s fight for freedom, and because Dawson was a committed Shakespearean, but it is also held there, I suggest, because Dawson was for a time successful in persuading people that Shakespeare was not just part of the ever-changing process of life and politics in the way that everything else is, but instead was a vital agency for change, the repository of a futuristic vision of personal and social fulfilment. Kossuth first landed on British shores in 1851. Dawson was there to greet him. At Southampton, he presented the Hungarian hero with an address from the men of Birmingham, and he was prominent in secur- <?page no="36"?> Ewan Fernie 36 ing Kossuth’s subsequent, extraordinary visit to the city (“Our Representatives” 92). When the Hungarian freedom fighter arrived at Small Heath outside the city centre, between sixty and seventy thousand men were there to escort him to a city centre festooned with the Hungarian tricolour (Langford, Modern Birmingham 401-04). As it were in token of lively Shakespearean associations, Kossuth’s wife was presented with a gorgeously bound and illuminated volume of Sentiments and Similes of W. Shakespeare, Selected from His Plays and Poems, which is now held along with the tribute presented to him in the London Tavern in honour of “the great statesman” by the National Széchényi Library in Budapest. “Meanwhile,” the Birmingham archive informs us, “the town was in a flutter of expectation and preparation”: Banners and flags of all colours and devices floated from every house between Small Heath and Five Ways. Groups of men wearing the insignia of different Orders, marched with music and banners through the streets. Then came the processions of the various trades, bearing emblems of their respective crafts. Foremost among them were the glassmakers, many of whom wore glass helmets, and bore in their hands rods of spiral crystal, surmounted with coloured streamers. Then came the venerable banner of the Old Political Union. Presently came a procession of gentlemen bearing aloft the Hungarian bannerette, surmounted by a Turkish crescent. Then came the Odd Fellows, of both Orders, wearing their regalia; and these were followed by the processions of gun makers, brassfounders, jewelers, brush makers, saddlers, tailors, shoemakers, bricklayers, stonemasons, and japanners; and finally came the men of Coventry, Leicester, Wolverhampton, Walsall, and other towns, all making their way to the rendezvous at Small Heath. (George Dawson Collection 1: 55) The same source suggests: “Certainly not fewer than three hundred thousand persons must have taken part in the day’s proceedings” (George Dawson Collection 1: 56). To put that figure in perspective, it is not far short of the then total population of Birmingham. “Kossuth,” we are told, “was dressed in a tight fitting, braided, blue military surtout closely buttoned to the throat, and wore a low crowned dark green felt hat with a drooping ostrich feather. In response to the shouting he uncovered and bowed gracefully” (56). Evidence of the broad appeal of the occasion is provided by a printed song sheet of “Kossuth’s Welcome to Birmingham.” I do not know the tune, but it reads as follows: <?page no="37"?> Shakespeare and Incomplete Modernity 37 You merry men of England, Come let us all rejoice, And loudly cheer the brave Kossuth, With a free and willing voice; He is the great Hungarian Chief, For liberty he stood out, So welcome him to Birmingham With a loud and glorious shout. CHORUS So welcome the Hungarian bold, And cheer him through the van, He nobly fought for Liberty, To claim the rights of Man. The day that he came in the town It was a glorious sight, To see the trades of Birmingham All meet him with delight, The banners from the different towns Were quickly seen unfurl’d. And nobly borne before the Chief, An example to the world. … The people shouted heartily, The music loud did play, And thousands by the railroads Were wending of their way; Towards the Bull-ring in the town, To see this man of might, They would not stop to have a drop, For fear they’d lose the sight. … At the great Town Hall, in Birmingham A banquet will be held, In honour of this warrior bold, For his valour in the field; And let us hope that one and all Who wishes Kossuth well, Will post the pony in a trice, And be among the swells. 12 12 Printed broadside by W. PRATT, Printer, No. 82, Digbeth, Birmingham; George Dawson Collection (1: 61 [1st leaf]). <?page no="38"?> Ewan Fernie 38 At that banquet in the Town Hall, a handwritten account suggests, Kossuth was visibly affected at the enthusiastic greeting he received and after the dinner was over and he rose to acknowledge the toast referring to himself he was so deeply affected as to be unable for a time to proceed - he wept for a time like a child - his speech lasted two and a ¼ hours. (George Dawson Collection 1: 61 [2nd leaf]) *** Thus, Kossuth’s note to Dawson acknowledging the funds which they’d raised together for, let’s face it, a further Hungarian revolution is held in the Shakespeare Centre Library and Archive because Dawson, the visionary behind the founding of Birmingham’s civic Shakespeare library, held Kossuth to be a Shakespearean phenomenon whether or not he was bigging up the Bard. The account I have shared from the Birmingham archives can help us understand why. The procession of so many different men, from different places and guilds, from Small Heath to an English City Centre that was so comprehensively decorated in Hungarian colours remembers Garrick’s Jubilee of 1769 but on a much greater scale, and in a much more ardently political key; and yet it is much more forgotten. Dawson would see it as perfectly continuous with Whitmore’s evocation of “Shakspere’s birthday, in the future.” The glassmakers in their glass helmets, twirling their rods of spiral crystal surmounted with Hungarian streamers, are an epitome of movingly largeminded internationalist industrial creativity. Kossuth’s tears at Birmingham, and his great speech, suggest some great Shakespearean actor, or hero. The ballad written for, and presumably sung on, the occasion enlarges its scope to that of the general franchise which Dawson’s Shakespeare library invited in, into the world of Shakespeare scholarship and, more importantly, the vision of vivid inclusivity that Dawson and Kossuth alike found in the plays. These nineteenth-century men saw perhaps more clearly than we do that Shakespeare’s is an art which encourages us to remain always, indefatigably open to the mobile, indeterminable possibilities that are engendered by the ongoing interaction of human selves now. As such, Shakespeare remains a vital agent for cultural and political change. We are living in a time where freedom has been tainted by its association not just with an ethically cynical (and, to my mind, unfortunately named) “neoliberalism,” that favoured critical term for the free-market fundamentalism which demonstrably works in the interests of the few at the <?page no="39"?> Shakespeare and Incomplete Modernity 39 expense of the many, and which was unleashed in a particularly virulent form on the world by the governments of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Neo-liberalism has, in short, given freedom a bad name. We are also living in a time when the Right have commandeered the politics of freedom for a dangerously regressive nationalism. One way of reclaiming that more progressive passion for freedom which has been such a major driver of western modernity might be to return to Shakespeare’s politics of freedom, and the largely forgotten struggle for freedom which it has inspired, a struggle for freedom that is epitomised by Garrick, Wilkes, Boswell, Cooper, Kossuth and Dawson. It might make us modern yet. <?page no="40"?> Ewan Fernie 40 References Bate, Jonathan. The Genius of Shakespeare. London: Picador, 1997. Bloom, Harold. The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages. London: Papermac, 1995. Boswell, James. Boswell in Search of a Wife, 1766-69. Ed. Frank Brady and Frederick A. Pottle. Melbourne, London, Toronto: William Heinemann Ltd, 1957. Briggs, Asa. Victorian Cities. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990. Cooper, Thomas. Letter. Northern Star, 3 September 1842: 6. ―――. The Life of Thomas Cooper. Introduction by John Saville. 1872. Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1971. ―――. The Poetical Works of Thomas Cooper. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1877. Cooper’s Journal: or, Unfettered Thinker and Plain Speaker for Truth, Freedom, and Progress. Published in Book Form. London: James Watson, 1850. Cooper’s Journal; or, Unfettered Thinker and Plain Speaker for Truth, Freedom, and Progress. Published in Book Form. London: B. Steil, 1849. Dawson, George. Shakespeare and Other Lectures. Ed. George St. Clair. London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Co., 1888. Deelman, Christian. The Great Shakespeare Jubilee. London: Michael Joseph, 1964. England, Martha Winburn. Garrick’s Jubilee. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1964. Fernie, Ewan. Shakespeare for Freedom: Why the Plays Matter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Gammage, R. G. Gammage’s History of the Chartist Movement. 1854. New York: A. M. Kelly, 1969. George Dawson Collection. Library of Birmingham. “George Julian Harney.” National Reformer, 30 April 1876: 278. Greenblatt, Stephen, ed. The Norton Shakespeare. New York: Norton, 2008. Griffiths, Lemuel Matthews. Newspaper Cuttings Relating to Shakespeare. Vol. 11. Library of Birmingham. Hegel, G. W. F. ‘“Dramatic Poetry,” from Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art.’ Philosophers on Shakespeare. Ed. Paul Kottman. Stanford: University of Stanford Press, 2009. 57-85. Hunt, Tristam. Building Jerusalem: The Rise and Fall of the Victorian City. London: Phoenix, 2005. Langford, John Alfred. Modern Birmingham and its Institutions: A Chronicle of Local Events, from 1841-71. Vol. 1. Osbourne: Birmingham, 1873. <?page no="41"?> Shakespeare and Incomplete Modernity 41 ―――. “To Kossuth.”Cooper’s Journal. 1.13, 30 March 1850: 198. Lincoln, Abraham. Lincoln on Democracy. Ed. Mario Matthew Cuomo and Harold Holzer. New York: Fordham University Press, 2004. Memoir of Ernest Jones’s Life. Manchester City News, 18 January 1919: 4. Murphy, Andrew. Shakespeare for the People: Working-Class Readers, 1800- 1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. “Our Representatives. XXII. - The School Board (Continued), Mr George Dawson.” Volume of Newspaper Cuttings Related to Local, National and International Events: Includes Obituaries of Mazzini, J. S. Mill and David Livingstone as Well as Accounts of Political and Religious Events in Birmingham. Miscellanous Cuttings. 1872-75. ER149/ 33, Shakespeare Centre Library and Archive. The Patriot’s Jubilee, Being Songs Proper to Be Sung on Wednesday, the 18th of April, 1770; the Day of Mr Wilkes’s Enlargement from the King’s-Bench. London: Printed for T. Evans, No. 54, Paternoster-Row; and to Be Had of All Booksellers, 1770. “Presentation of the Shakespeare Testimonial to Kossuth.” Illustrated London News, 15 May 1853. The Public Advertiser, 16 September 1769: 3. Roberts, Stephen. Thomas Cooper: Radical and Poet, c. 1830-1860. M.A. Thesis, University of Birmingham, School of History, Faculty of Arts, 1986. Taylor, Antony. “Shakespeare and Radicalism: The Uses and Abuses of Shakespeare in Nineteenth-Century Popular Politics.” The Historical Journal 45.2 (2002): 357-79. Whitmore, William. “To Mazzini and Kossuth.” Cooper’s Journal, 1.4, 26 January 1850: 56. Wilson, Wright. The Life of George Dawson, M.A. Glasgow, Being an Account of His Parentage and His Career as a Preacher, Lecturer, Municipal and Social Reformer, Politician and Journalist. Birmingham: Perceval Jones Limited, 87-89, Edmund Street, 1905. <?page no="43"?> “All Changed, Changed Utterly: A Terrible Beauty is Born.” What Did Easter 1916 Change? Martin Leer The centenary of the Easter Rising in Dublin in April 1916 brought out how much our perception of the event is still framed by W. B. Yeats’ poem “Easter 1916.” Nowhere was this clearer than in the leading Irish historian Roy Foster’s highly praised Vivid Faces: A Biography of the Revolutionary Generation in Ireland 1890-1923 (2014): Foster takes not only his title, but his historical judgement from Yeats’ poem. But also more recent revolutionary upheavals have brought the reaction so hauntingly formulated by Yeats’ refrain: “Changed/ changed utterly./ A terrible beauty is born”. The essay meditates on this response in connection with recent theories of revolution - Foster’s liberal scepticism, as well as Immanuel Wallerstein’s and David Graeber’s politically engaged reinterpretation: that revolutions have been for the past 250 years periodic realignments of political common sense and deep social change. Yeats’ poetry, it seems, had already found words for this, partly because of Yeats’ theories of permanent cyclical change. But also recent historical revisionist fiction in Ireland, such as Roddy Doyle’s A Star Called Henry and Jamie O’Neill’s At Swim, Two Boys, have found ways of narrating Easter 1916 in such a way that the events come to reflect social change in areas of class and gender, which had only just begun at the beginning of the twentieth century, such as feminism and a fully elaborated queer view of society. Key words: Easter Rising, Dublin 1916, W. B. Yeats, theories of revolutionary change, Roy Foster, David Graeber, revisionist histories of Ireland, macho feminism, queering of historical events. The Challenge of Change. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 36. Ed. Margaret Tudeau-Clayton and Martin Hilpert. Tübingen: Narr, 2018. 43-66. <?page no="44"?> Martin Leer 44 Can poetry effect change in the world or in our response to it - and if so, how? W. H. Auden is often quoted for proclaiming in his elegy “In Memory of W .B. Yeats” that “poetry makes nothing happen.” But in the continuation, even of the same line, Auden goes on to say that poetry . . . survives In the valley of its saying where executives Would never want to tamper; it flows south From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs, Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives, A way of happening, a mouth. (197) Far from ineffectual, then, poetry has become a river carving out a landscape in which people grieve, believe and die - mirrored aurally by the echo effects of those words, which come out of the mouth of this unexpected River Alph. This has come about because, as the elegy for Yeats puts it earlier, “the death of the poet was kept from his poems.” Not only did Yeats die on the Côte d’Azur, and not in Ireland. But with death his poems escape to come out of the mouths of other people: “The words of a dead man/ Are modified in the guts of the living,” who may not share his emotions, tastes or political views. And yet his words come to our mouth when we try to express our feelings, our reactions to events. It is the words, however, that matter, not concepts or historical contexts, or the beliefs of the poet who first voiced them. “Time,” Auden says with a perhaps over-cocky confidence “worships language and forgives/ Everyone by whom it lives.” Yeats was a fitting recipient of this homage by Auden in 1940, despite what Auden would have considered Yeats’ often reactionary political views. Yeats had expressed something about the twentieth century’s response to revolutionary change and the ravages of a sense of speededup time, which echoed also in Auden’s reflective, leftist mind (as it still was in 1940). The history of the twentieth and even twenty-first century would surely have been thought about differently, if it had not been for “The Second Coming” or “Easter 1916.” “The centre cannot hold” has become an almost unavoidable cliché. “The beast slouching towards Bethlehem to be born” has been identified with most transformative political figures from Hitler to Trump, and since that “terrible beauty” was born, it just won’t leave us alone: All changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born. (Yeats 203) <?page no="45"?> What Did Easter 1916 Change? 45 It is the refrain about change in “Easter 1916” that is the subject of my contribution to this volume about change. I want to trace its afterlife both in a poetically educated response to revolutions, but also in historians’, poets’ and novelists’ accounts of the Easter Rising. Strangely, since Yeats’ response to the Rising was so ambivalent, it seems to have remained valid while other explanations of revolutionary change have faded. I do not pretend to be a Yeats scholar, but it may take a fool from outside the demesne of the Tower to notice that we have reached a new stage in writing about Yeats and politics. After the elevation of the poet above politics that was characteristic of “the New Criticism,” which had a great investment in Yeats, came a period of ideological critique in the 1970s-90s, where Yeats was unmasked as a reactionary, even a proto-fascist, before Roy Foster’s great biography presented copious documentary evidence for a more liberal Yeats. What interests me is not how to categorise the poet’s politics, though I see him as immersed both in a well-developed if idiosyncratic ideology and in day-today political events. I want to try to understand Yeats’ poetic intuitions about the phenomenon of social and political change and what it may hold for an age where abrupt change seems to have become normal again, after the stability of the Cold War and the apparent liberal hegemony from the fall of the Berlin War to 9/ 11. Change is less and less explicable as the providential effects of the great god Progress. “All changed, changed utterly: / A terrible beauty is born.” The phrase has come back to haunt us, in all its ambivalence, from the Post Office in what was then Sackville Street (now O’Connell Street), Dublin in April 1916 to Tahrir Square in Cairo and Syntagma Square in Athens, to the demonstrations in Dar’aa in March 2011, which launched the Arab Spring in Syria, the brutal repression by the Assad regime and a Civil War, which seems to be ending with the Assad regime killing or driving out half its own population. It seems to be the great new truth for authoritarian regimes, whether Assads or Sisis or Putins or the economic masters of the EU: do not negotiate, repress, even beyond reason, and you will not create martyrs. But will it last? When I say “we,” I don’t just mean sentimental liberal humanists in front of TV screens in countries far from the events, who have too much to lose to become engaged in revolutions, but may be sympathetic to them if we don’t have to risk our security. I also mean “hard-headed” revolutionaries (if there are any left) and “realistic” defenders, down to the last bit of gratuitous violence, of the existing order. Because what is at stake here are not revolutions long planned by the Communist International, rogue Trotskyists or radical Islamists, who seize the state appa- <?page no="46"?> Martin Leer 46 ratus of structural violence and turn it against the former elite. Such revolutions are very rare in history, though the conservative political imagination was long obsessed with them. What is at stake are volatile moments of change, not the kind of change we think we can prepare for: progress or decline in “the course of history,” which we may assimilate to science: evolution or the second law of thermodynamics. The line “a terrible beauty is born” would be a cliché without the wonder at the sudden change that brings it into the world when it is least expected. There is an ambivalence in our response to the revolutionary sublime, which we owe to Yeats rather than to the original formulation by Danton of the principle of revolutionary repression: “Soyons terribles pour éviter au peuple de l’être” (Let us be terrible to prevent the people from being so; my translation). La Terreur in France was a pre-emptive strike by the revolutionary state to avoid even worse by mob rule. There is no Burkean or Kantian aesthetic in Danton’s terreur, by which he himself would die. It is Realpolitik gone wrong. Not so in Yeats, where the dreams and love of individuals become the new focal point of a nation in formation. A confusion of spent dreams, beauty, terror and suffering may be the underground source of the strength of nationalism: We know their dream, enough To know they dreamed and are dead; And what if excess of love Bewildered them till they died? I write it out in a verse - MacDonagh and MacBride And Connolly and Pearse Now and in time to be, Wherever green is worn Are changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born. (Yeats 204-5) It was, according to Roy Foster’s Life of Yeats, Maud Gonne herself (Yeats’ great love and estranged wife of the executed John MacBride), who first “unerringly spotted the poem’s central ambivalence” when he sent it to her in manuscript: My dear Willie - No I don’t like your poem, it isn’t worthy of you & above all isn’t worthy of the subject - Though it reflects your present state of mind perhaps, it isn’t quite sincere enough for you who have studied philosophy & know something of history know quite well that sacrifice has never yet turned a heart <?page no="47"?> What Did Easter 1916 Change? 47 to stone though it has immortalized many & through it alone mankind can rise to God - You recognize this in the line which was the original inspiration of your poem “A terrible beauty is born,” but you let your present mood mar or confuse till even some of the verses become unintelligible to many. Even Iseult reading it didn’t understand your thought till I explained your (? retribution) theory of constant change and becoming in the flux of things - . . . There are beautiful lines in your poem, as there are in all you write but it is not a great WHOLE, a living thing which our race would treasure and repeat, such as a poet like you might have given to our nation & which would have avenged our material failure by its spiritual beauty. (qtd. in Foster, Life 63) Maud Gonne is very astute about the aesthetics of the poem, its uncertainty about what exactly it is expressing, its wavering attempts to explain the changing situation through Yeats’ great cosmic theories. She is most critical of the poem’s moral judgement of the executed men as less-than-perfect beings caught up in “the casual comedy” of a great moment of change. To Gonne they are tragic heroes, such as heroes could be defined in an age which believed in the practical possibility of heroism as a conscious preparation for martyrdom, an ideology somewhere between Romanticism and Fascism and Christian martyrdom: But you could never say that MacDonagh & Pearse & Connolly were sterile fixed minds, each served Ireland, which was their share of the world, the part they were in contact with, with varied faculties and vivid energy! these were men of genius, with large comprehensive & speculative & active brains the others of whom we know less were probably less remarkable men, but still I think they must have been men with a stronger grasp of Reality a stronger spiritual life than most of those we meet. (Foster, Life 63) Foster focuses his comments on Yeats’ scepticism towards martyrdom: “Throughout the mounting rhetorical questions WBY’s doubts about the utility of self-immolation and the dangers of fanaticism beat an insistent rhythm” (Foster, Life 63-64). As I read it, however, the poem fails to crystallize into rhetoric, into elegy, or a liberal-humanist plea for reason. Elegy sits badly with abrupt change, even the kind of disturbed elegy that Auden would later write for Yeats. There is still too much doubt in “Easter 1916”; too much hurt; too vivid, but disjointed memories. The dead are still too individual for martyrdom or for becoming part of a rhetorical argument: <?page no="48"?> Martin Leer 48 I have met them at close of day Coming with vivid faces From counter or desk among gray Eighteenth century houses. I have passed with a nod of the head Or polite meaningless words, And thought before I had done Of a mocking tale or a gibe To please a companion Around the fire at the club, Being certain that they and I But lived where motley is worn: All changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born. (Yeats 202-3) The photographic nature of the memories make them too contemporary for classic elegy; the acquaintance and even the slight guilt at verbal back-stabbing are too banal, as is the memory of them in the context of urban middle class life in a mundane world “where motley is worn,” where people have different views (on Home Rule or independence) which coexist because nothing has been decided. That is not elegiac distance - nor is the “terrible beauty” a sublimation of sacrifice in which to reach God. The distance is that of life (“vivid faces”) against the past (“gray/ eighteenth century houses”): the rather grand Georgian architecture of Dublin is only a bland background, in which the memory of the rebellion of the United Irishmen in 1798 has been erased. This is the wrong time and scene for a great national rebirth of the kind Maud Gonne demands, and which Yeats had provided in his Celtic Revival mode. But all these lacks and negations make “Easter 1916” a modern poem. Rebirth is apocalyptic in “The Second Coming”; it is imminent, but not quite there. What is born, in “Easter 1916,” not only in Dublin, but “wherever green is worn,” is not yet a nation, and not quite an oxymoron because of the theory of the sublime. This is why we still “treasure and repeat” the poem. Maud Gonne was wrong about its afterlife. But we probably do not learn the whole by heart, as we do “No Second Troy,” “The Second Coming” or the Byzantium poems. The hesitations of the rhythm, the surprising linebreaks prevent this. To compare with the poems being written at the same time in the trenches of Belgium and France, it would be like memorising the heart-rending sprung rhythms of Ivor Gurney rather than the accomplished rhetorical articulations of Wilfred Owen. What we remember from “Easter 1916” is the phrasing, the character judge- <?page no="49"?> What Did Easter 1916 Change? 49 ment of the people involved and a mood which can only be articulated, it seems, in a kind of future past. Maybe revolutionary change can only be understood in its afterlife. This may seem counter-intuitive as revolutions are mostly thought of as progressive: a future-oriented new breakthrough. But that of course goes counter to the etymology of “revolution,” which would have been totally explicable in Yeats’ theory of gyres and eternal return. It may even be closer to contemporary definitions of revolution, for those who are not entirely disillusioned with them. David Graeber, one of the leading thinkers of the Occupy Wall Street Movement, asks in The Democracy Project: . . . What is a revolution? We used to think we knew. Revolutions were seizures of power by some kind of popular forces aiming to transform the very nature of the political, social and economic system in the country in which the revolution took place, usually according to some visionary dream of a just society. Nowadays we live in an age when, if rebel armies do come sweeping into a city, or mass uprisings overthrow a dictator, it’s unlikely to have any such implications; when profound social transformation does occur - as with, say, the rise of feminism - it’s likely to take an entirely different form . . . At moments like this, it generally pays to go back to the history one already knows and ask, Were revolutions ever really what we thought them to be? (Graeber, Democracy Project 274) Graeber finds the answer in the historian Immanuel Wallerstein, who has argued that the revolutions of the last 250 years are really “planetwide transformations of political common sense”: 1789 did not just affect France, 1848 “saw revolutions break out simultaneously in almost fifty countries, from Wallachia to Brazil,” and the Russian Revolution of 1917 or the events of 1968 were part of widespread tectonic plate-shifts. What they really do is transform basic assumptions about what politics is ultimately about. In the wake of a revolution, ideas that had been considered veritably lunatic fringe quickly become the accepted currency of debate. Before the French Revolution, the idea that change is good, that government policy is the proper way to manage it, and that governments derive their authority from an entity called “the people” were considered the sort of things one might hear from crackpots and demagogues, or at best a handful of freethinking intellectuals who spent their time debating in cafés. A generation later, even the stuffiest magistrates, priests and headmasters had to at least pay lip service to these ideas. Before long, we had reached the situation we are in today: where it’s <?page no="50"?> Martin Leer 50 necessary to lay the terms out, as I just did, for anyone to even notice they are there. They’ve become common sense, the very grounds of political discussion. (Graeber, Democracy Project 275) Yeats intuited something very similar, if not deeper, from a conservative sense of loss, as what Graeber writes from a wish to rehabilitate the “failed revolutions” of 1968 and 2011 (which may indeed have changed “political common sense” on sex, gender, bureaucracy and money in ways that are still only becoming clear). Yeats expressed his sense of loss obliquely in the Byzantium poems and directly in “Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen,” where it is balanced against the sense of the world of yesterday as having kept a lid on things for too long: We too had many pretty toys when young: A law indifferent to blame or praise, To bribe or threat; habits that made old wrong Melt down, as it were wax in the sun’s rays; Public opinion ripening for so long We thought it would outlive all future days. O what fine thought we had because we thought That the worst rogues and rascals had died out. (Yeats 233) Maud Gonne was certainly right that “Easter 1916” did not articulate a revolutionary nationalist spirit for Ireland, though the other woman of Yeats’ life, Lady Augusta Gregory, found it “extraordinarily impressive,” according to Foster, and “needed to read some Hillaire Belloc afterwards to restore balance” (Foster, Life 64). Yeats, like Lady Gregory, was opposed to the Rising in the first place. He was a fixture in the salon of the Prime Minister’s wife in London, Lady Asquith, and the Asquith government had ensured Home Rule for Ireland in 1913, as the Irish Parliamentary Party had demanded for a generation. Its introduction was merely suspended until the end of the War. The Rising was in late April, an unusually late Easter that year. By all accounts it was a fumbled disaster of an insurrection, with few people supporting it, outside of the two small militias of the nationalist Irish Volunteers and James Connolly’s largely socialist Irish Citizen’s Army and 200 women of Cumann na mBan (“the Women’s Council”), who managed to seize control of the General Post Office, and that only by dint of Connolly’s great skill and bravery. But it drew an incommensurate response from a frightened British army and government, obsessed with the difficult situation on the Western Front. Among the convicted leaders that Yeats would “write out in a verse,” the schoolteacher, poet and playwright Thomas MacDonagh, Major John MacBride, the syndi- <?page no="51"?> What Did Easter 1916 Change? 51 calist labour leader and Marxist theoretician James Connolly and the poet and teacher Padraig Pearse were executed in early May. The woman “whose days were spent/ in ignorant good will/ her nights in argument/ until her voice grew shrill,” Countess Constance Markievicz, née Gore-Booth, would be spared to become the first woman cabinet minister in the Irish Free State (1919-22). The only male Commander spared, Eamon de Valera, who held American citizenship, would emerge as the father of the new nation after 1932. Other nationalist leaders were executed in early August, principally the diplomat and humanitarian Sir Roger Casement, though he had in fact opposed the Rising, as he was hoping to secure arms support for a serious insurrection from Germany. This rebellion of the whole Irish Republican Brotherhood Yeats had in fact supported. Yeats, with other intellectuals, tried in vain to use his influence with Lady Asquith to intercede for Casement, who was in many ways the father of modern human rights activism in the Congo and Peru. Yeats finished “Easter 1916” in early September and sent it to friends like Gonne and Gregory, but by that stage he found it unpublishable. It would have been read as seditious in London. In December came Lloyd George’s putsch against Asquith in the Liberal government in London, and the commitment to Home Rule took a back burner. Yeats toyed with the idea of placing the poem at the beginning of his next volume of poetry, but withheld it from both the Irish and English editions of The Wild Swans at Coole (1916 and 1919). The poem, Foster concludes, “stayed out of public circulation until its publication in The New Statesman on 23 October 1920 - when the political situation in Ireland and Anglo-Irish relations with it, had changed more utterly than anyone could have imagined” (Foster, Life 66). Foster is here to some extent engaging with Peter Kuch’s argument that Yeats delayed publication because “as a great poet, as one who believed in the power of poetry to make things happen, he waited until the Rebellion had acquired its own myths in order that he might counter them with the fictions of his poem” (Kuch 200). I am inclined towards Foster’s view; though Yeats was always concerned with his stature as what Foster calls “the Arch-Poet,” he strikes me as being genuinely concerned about the change in real politics, as opposed to long-standing ideological strategy. Kuch’s argument seems to suppose that Yeats had read Auden. Maybe the turnarounds, betrayals and horrors of the Irish Civil War were unforeseeable and unimaginable. But it seemed as if Yeats had stated them in ways that turn tragically inevitable when the uneasy movement between iambs and trochees in each stanza of the poem <?page no="52"?> Martin Leer 52 rings out in a gong of spondees: “Changed, changed utterly,” followed by dactyls: “A terrible beauty is born.” There is a sense of “managed confusion” in Yeats’ poem, probably because he thought he could explain the confusion by reference to his great cosmological system. But within this is a very astute observation of historical causality and transformation, imaged in the stone/ heart that emerges first out of collective feeling: Hearts with one purpose alone Through summer and winter seem Enchanted to a stone To trouble the living stream. (Yeats 204) The seasons may change, the landscape of life reveal its many and varied beauties, but the common “purpose” remains submerged: “The stone’s in the midst of all.” It will out, like all hidden things: Too long a sacrifice Can make of the heart a stone. O when may it suffice? In Irish historiography this is what F. S. L. Lyons referred to as “the Yeats thesis” of the “long gestation” from 1890 to 1916-23. Yeats held that after the death of Parnell, in a moral scandal on the eve of achieving Home Rule, nationalism in Ireland divested from politics and became cultural and artistic (the Celtic Revival, to which Yeats himself contributed so much) only to break out seemingly from underground in 1916 with the transformative and devastating result of a revolution (nicely summarised in Foster, Vivid Faces xv). Graeber’s theory of revolutions, as appropriate for a Jewish internationalist anarchist, evades the nationalist element in the popular uprisings he is trying to explain. In the case of the Easter Rising that is not possible, and it may be a catalyst in many of them, even say, the Prague spring of 1968. This does not prevent the triggering effect across borders. Nationalism is an internationalist phenomenon, but not a constant flame, and it has leftand right-wing forms. There is no such thing as a national will or consciousness operating at all times, but in certain critical situations it comes readily to mind. All revolutionary upheavals share this suddenness and seemingly inexplicable timing, according to Graeber: One of the remarkable things about such insurrectionary upheavals is how they can seem to burst out of nowhere - and then, often, dissolve away just <?page no="53"?> What Did Easter 1916 Change? 53 as quickly. How is it that the same “public” that two months before say, the Paris commune, or the Spanish Civil War, had voted in a fairly moderate social democratic regime will suddenly find itself willing to risk their lives for the same ultra-radicals who received a fraction of the vote. Or, to return to May ’68, how is it that the same public that seemed to support or at least feel strongly sympathetic toward the student/ worker uprising could almost immediately afterwards return to the polls and elect a right-wing government. The most common historical explanations - that the revolutionaries didn’t really represent the public or its interests, but that elements of the public became caught up in some sort of irrational effervescence - seem obviously inadequate. (Graeber, Utopia 97-8) In the case of the Easter Rising (and I have been using this term deliberately rather than Rebellion, because of its apparent suddenness, later seen to have had mystical significance), ”the public” first rejected and then sanctified it. The notion of “the public” is spurious here, as Graeber points out: it is not “an entity with opinions, interests and allegiances that can be treated as relatively consistent over time”; it is an “audience to a public spectacle” (Graeber, Utopia 99). In the latter half of 1916 in Ireland, the public turns into a people, a nation, and a spontaneous insurrection becomes the turning point in what later becomes a teleological nationalist narrative. The Rising was suddenly inevitable, not contingent. The Easter Rising became the mythic point of transformation in the Irish nationalist history of martyrdom that took hold as the Irish Free State and subsequently the Republic of Eire emerged from the ruins of the Civil War. Easter 1916 came to be seen as the logical conclusion to a national history of heroic defeat that ranged from the Norman, Elizabethan and Cromwellian conquests and the failed rebellions to the Great Famine and the failed parliamentary road to Home Rule. But very little art dealt with it, or at least that had become the considered opinion of literary and cultural historians by the time James Moran wrote Staging the Easter Rising: 1916 as Theatre (2005). The main piece of literature by an actual participant in the Rising, Sean O’Casey’s play The Plough and the Stars (1926) puts the Rising off-stage (Padraig Pearse speaking outside the pub where the main action is taking place) - and deals with the aftermath, the British army reprisals as they affect the inhabitants in a working-class Dublin street. O’Casey’s play was considered blasphemous of the sacred event and the martyrs and caused a riot outside the Abbey Theatre. Even more recently, as anniversaries of the Rising were commemorated by major films, Neil Jordan’s Michael Collins in 1997 and Ken Loach’s The Wind that Shakes the Barley in 2006, they <?page no="54"?> Martin Leer 54 deal with the aftermath and the Civil War in their contrasting liberal and left-wing portrayals of political commitment and heroism. The Rising is a pre-credit moment at the very beginning of Michael Collins to place our hero at the mythic point of origin, and sow doubts about Eamon de Valera’s duplicity, which will later lead to Collins’ own martyrdom and his consecration in the state funeral ordered by the man who betrayed him. The film consecrates the benefits of the negotiated deal, at a time when the Good Friday agreement seemed to create a new, pragmatic, if not morally pure, future for Ireland. The Wind That Shakes the Barley begins deliberately not with a grand moment, but a small act of silly bravado, which will eventually lead to the hero’s sacrifice of his own life in a show of solidarity that is as inevitable as it is ineffectual, except to retain a hope of honesty and personal commitment. The two films portray the origins of the Civil War in credible, if contradictory, ways; but they are silent on the origins of the Rising. Moran in Staging the Easter Rising, however, draws attention to the Rising itself as a very successful piece of political theatre, played out in a nation obsessed with drama, of which the Abbey Theatre was only the visible peak. MacDonagh, the first on Yeats’ list, perhaps not only on rhythmical grounds, was a young Yeatsian playwright moving towards Ibsen’s realism. Moran also resurrects Yeats’ own play The Dreaming of the Bones, written in 1916, but first performed in 1932, and mainly discussed in terms of Yeats’ interest in the Japanese Noh plays. Like the Noh plays The Dreaming of the Bones portrays the present as a kind of shadow of a distant past, where an act was committed which determines anything people can later do. In this case Yeats uses the love affair of Diarmuid and Devorgilla in the twelfth century as, according to Moran, the original act of miscegenation between Gael and Norman, which has led to the Irish tragedy, and can only be excised by a form of cultural eugenics. Against Helen Vendler’s reading of the play, which sees it as Yeats rising above politics, Moran puts it straight back into the context of Yeats’ interest in eugenics and his belief in a new aristocratic, rather than “mob” rule, for an independent Ireland (Moran 53-67). Moran claims that Yeats originally wrote the phrase in “Easter 1916” as “a terrible beauty is born again,” which would put the poem more in line with Maude Gonne and the nationalists -and with those partisan stagings of the Rising all over Ireland and in Irish Clubs throughout the diaspora from North America to Australia, which Moran categorises as the Sinn Fein and Fianna Fail versions: the former seeing the Rising as prelude to the betrayed revolution; the latter a parade of the “sacrificial mummy” (meaning both the embalmed corpse and the mother figure) <?page no="55"?> What Did Easter 1916 Change? 55 which dominated the commemorations that de Valera stage-managed from 1936 onwards (Moran 76-78). By the end of the twentieth century the events and participants of Easter 1916 had achieved that terrible stasis of secular sacrality, which Eavan Boland evoked in her poem “The Dolls Museum in Dublin.” In the display case of “Easter in Dublin,” the dolls are terrifying. Any beauty or sublimity has gone: “The wounds are terrible. The paint is old.” The moment frozen in time is incapable of change: The eyes are wide. They cannot address the helplessness which has lingered in the airless peace of each glass case: to have survived. To have been stronger than a moment. To be the hostages ignorance takes from time and ornament from destiny. Both. To be the present of the past. To infer the difference With a terrible stare. But not feel it. And not know it. (Boland 10) The word “terrible” is what remains of Yeats’ “Easter 1916,” but it is no longer connected with beauty and change, but with being “hostages” to an unchanging view of the past. The collection in which it appears, In a Time of Violence, is Boland’s feminist critique of the male mythologisation of Ireland, from Yeats to Heaney. It thus complements and confirms James Moran’s over-all observation that the Easter Rising in its theatrical and literary afterlife seems to have had more to do with gender than with nationalism or a conflict between nationalists and socialists. From the genuine belief in women’s emancipation among leaders of the Rising like MacDonagh and Connelly through Yeats’ obsessions with feminine power and de Valera’s equally obsessive determination to restrain female power within the family and the mother role, Moran only sees a change of emphasis in more recent revisionist readings of the Rising, where gender politics have become explicit. Feminist revisionism first challenged the male dominance of the Rising - and of Irish literature - but towards the end of the twentieth century, in theatrical performance, TV dramas (which unlike feature film have a long tradition of actually portraying the Rising) and historical studies, there was an increasing concern with recovering the experience of women in the Rising and changing the perception of the role of women, like Padraig Pearse’s mother. Yeats’ poem, on the other hand, returns with a transformative vengeance in Roy Foster’s Vivid Faces, his biography of “the revolutionary generation of 1916” published to great critical acclaim in 2014. Colm <?page no="56"?> Martin Leer 56 Toibin in The New Statesman called it “the most complete and plausible exploration of the 1916 Rebellion and the power it subsequently exerted over the public imagination” while John Kerrigan in The Guardian struck even closer to home when he said that Foster “can pin character down as memorably as Yeats.” Foster in his book takes more than his title from Yeats’ “Easter 1916.” As far as I read it, it is almost an extended commentary on the poem, filling in the historical gaps. The epigraph quotes part of the poem and the conclusion ends on the whole of it; borrowed phrases are used throughout for characterisation and moral judgement. The book is a tribute to poetry as the formulation of the past that may best unlock it for a new interpretation. This is an interpretation that attempts to escape nationalist teleology. Roy Foster is the acknowledged leader of the school of revisionist historians of Ireland, who beginning with F. S. L. Lyons’ Ireland since the Famine (1971) have been critical of the nationalist school of Irish history, which they have seen as being based more in mythic interpretation and anti-English polemic than in an actual study of the sources. Foster’s own Modern Ireland 1660-1972 (1988) places Irish history squarely in the context of European modernity, rather than national exceptionalism. The revisionist historians, who initially tended to be Protestants, have been associated with the liberal-revisionist movement in Irish politics led by Garret FitzGerald (1926-2011), who sought ever closer integration in the European Union as a way to break out of the isolationism that de Valera had chosen. Neither Foster nor Lyons, however, have departed from the tradition in Irish culture that sees politics and literature as deeply connected, so that Foster’s biography of Yeats, perhaps the greatest myth-maker of them all, which he inherited from his teacher Lyons, is very careful in following precisely how Yeats’ mood and thoughts vacillated with those of the nation to which he was deeply committed, even as an appointed member of the Senate of the Irish Free State in the 1920s. When Foster comes to write the biography of the revolutionary generation, however, he deems Lyons’ “Olympian detachment” no longer appropriate. Though Foster initially questions the “Yeats thesis” with reference to the considerable success of the Irish Parliamentary Party under John Redmond, it is confirmed by the vast corpus of autobiographies, memoirs and correspondence of the Fenians and their families that Foster has recovered. The revolutionary generation came from a full range of class backgrounds: farmers, working class, shabby genteel, aspirational middle class, as well as the higher reaches of the Ascendancy (the feudal Protestant upper class) and the Dublin bourgeoisie, <?page no="57"?> What Did Easter 1916 Change? 57 like the genteel Gore-Booth sisters and the very wealthy Plunketts. Most seem to have been deeply emotionally committed to the Irish cultural revival, learning Irish and taking Irish names, before finding themselves involved in an armed resurrection. And they were as much motivated by a rebellion against their parents’ generational paralysis (to just touch on James Joyce’s theory of what happened to Ireland after Parnell), by socialism in some form or other, the suffragette movement (one of Foster’s great achievement is to put the women revolutionaries centre stage) or bohemian rebellion against the strictures of respectability, as they were motivated by any clearly thought-out nationalist political agenda. Such an agenda barely existed, except as a form of Catholic mysticism or Symbolism applied to politics. Above all, Foster argues, the main motivations were anti-Imperialist and Anglophobic, whether a Fenian was born and bred in Ireland or a returnee from Liverpool, Glasgow, New York or Boston. Foster’s account is by no means pro-revolutionary; it is urbanely sceptical, both as regards the nationalist ideology and the call to subsume the individual in the social through sacrifice, as comes out when he quotes Sean O’Faolain and Alexander Herzen: Writing a biography of Constance Markievicz in 1934, Sean O’Faolain asked himself “if revolutionary movements ever move towards defined ends, whether all such movements are not in the main movements of emotion rather than thought, movements arising out of a dissatisfaction with things as they are but without any clear or detailed notion as to what will produce satisfaction in the end.” Writing about revolutionary idealism Alexander Herzen remarked that “the submission of the individual to society - to the people - to humanity - to the idea - is a continuation of human sacrifice . . . What the purpose of the sacrifice was, was never so much as asked.” (Foster, Vivid Faces 331) But in Foster’s argument the last stanza of Yeats’ “Easter 1916” comes back to trump this post-revolutionary high humanist detachment, which makes a lot of sense after the moment when the revolution has already eaten its own. Yeats is closer to the moment: Too long a sacrifice Can make a stone of the heart. O when may it suffice? That is Heaven’s part, our part To murmur name upon name, As a mother names her child <?page no="58"?> Martin Leer 58 When sleep at last has come On limbs that had run wild. What is it but nightfall? No, no not night but death; Was it needless death after all? For England may keep faith For all that is done and said We know their dream; enough To know they dreamed and are dead; And what if excess of love Bewildered them till they died? (Yeats 204) Yeats’ tone clearly transcends the urbane liberal scepticism about individual human sacrifice into a pathos of doubt, some kind of eternal ambivalence of the human heart, which may well be in accordance with what Maud Gonne identified as “Yeats’ theory of constant change and becoming in the flux of things” or what Yeats wrote about in enigmatic poems like “A Dialogue of Self and Soul.” There is acknowledgement of sacrifice as well as doubt about it in Yeats’ vacillations; there is standard Christian theology in the abstention from ultimate judgement, but also the inevitability of sacred-secular martyrdom as the names begin to form a litany. In my reading, the real subject of Yeats’ poem is change itself, which may manifest itself in dreams of revolution before it reshapes the fabric of social thinking, and while the change is happening it is hard to identify what it is affecting. Foster admits as much when he takes centrally from Yeats the echoing word “dream” and sees the historian’s task as uncovering “the dream” of the revolutionaries: But “to know the dream” of the revolutionaries, it may help to strip back the layers of martyrology and posthumous rationalization, to get back before hindsight into that enclosed, self-referencing hectic world where people lived before 1916, and see how a generation developed, interacted and decided to make a revolution - which for many of them may not have been the revolution that they intended, or wanted. (Foster, Vivid Faces 332) Are revolutions redeemed by their dream? Looking at the Easter Rising and the revolutions it inspired in Russia and Hungary in 1917 (though sceptical of the extent of this inspiration, Foster provides much evidence of the connection from Dublin to Budapest and St Petersburg), the question becomes inevitable, given the generations of conservative repression that both precipitated and followed the revolutions. Nowadays that question is asked almost in prospect rather than retrospect. <?page no="59"?> What Did Easter 1916 Change? 59 Even for those of us who find it hard not to support Scottish or Catalunyan independence, there is the nagging question: what will happen after? Perhaps especially if the revolutions involve nationalism, as successful ones nearly always do. If I had been writing this 10 years ago, self-congratulatory remarks on the successful “revolutions” against Post-Stalinist dictatorships in Eastern Europe would have been de rigueur. Now doubt is ubiquitous all over Europe. Are there natural laws for revolutions like those “tipping-points” so often mentioned in the historiography of the American Revolution? Foster writes himself into a post-1970s tradition in the historiography of revolutions, which sees them not as Marxist-Hegelian upheavals in an eternal class struggle, for which there is admittedly little evidence apart from political discourse, especially as regards timing: if class struggle is permanent, why does it suddenly turn violent? The political theory that Foster works with “demotes the centrality of ideological dynamics and interprets ostensibly ‘political’ impulses as reflections of ethnic antagonisms, anti-imperial reaction and what one historian has resonantly called ‘the psycho-underground of masculinities and local community conflicts’” (Foster, Vivid Faces xviii). The “psycho-underground” of masculinity was certainly an area Yeats knew and wrote about in much of his poetry and drama, not least “that play of mine” which he felt had overly influenced the Fenians: Cathleen ni Houlihan (1902), the legend of the semi-divine young woman and old mother symbolising Ireland, for whom young men go out and sacrifice themselves. It is not hard to combine a sense of affronted masculinity with anti-imperialism and community conflict in the background to the Easter Rising. But there was also a change in that a contingent of armed women participated in the fighting - as was the case also in the February Revolution in St Petersburg less than a year later. The deeper revolutionary change of the 1916-18 insurrectionary cycle may have had as much to do with a change in the role of women, who achieved the vote in many countries around this time, as in a recognition of the rights of the industrial proletariat and lower middle class. The gender aspect of the afterlife of the Easter 1916, which James Moran explores in Staging the Easter Rising, takes another turn than redressing an imbalance and drawing attention to women’s changing role. There is a homoerotic and queer side to it that Moran finds much more uncomfortable. One of the most controversial aspects of Declan Kiberd’s postcolonial reading of Irish literature and politics in Inventing Ireland (1996) was that he took so seriously the feminisation of Ireland in the colonial relationship with Britain - and read Oscar Wilde as the <?page no="60"?> Martin Leer 60 most significant Irish literary figure of the last decade of the nineteenth century. Wilde’s trial takes on almost as much of a national Irish significance as the downfall of Parnell. The “outing” of homosexuality as a life-choice (though Wilde, of course, with his canny intelligence and moral integrity, never posits it as such) may be part of the deep underlying change which comes to the surface in the Easter Rising. Roger Casement had to be “outed” by British intelligence services through the publication of his Black Diaries to make his execution possible, and the homoeroticism of Padraig Pearse’s writings is undeniable. The “psychounderground” was ripe. A similar psycho-underground came to the surface in the Trenches of the First World War, where as Martin Taylor demonstrated in the long preface to his anthology Lads: Love Poems of the Trenches (1989), some of the most striking features of First World War poetry come from the application of the gorier effects of late nineteenth century Degenerate Aesthetics: unearthly beauty coexisting with death and defilement. Except that in the Trenches “the terrible beauty” was real: the terrifying death and maiming of beautiful young men in meaningless industrialised warfare. I do not think it far-fetched to read into Yeats’ “terrible beauty” a similar realisation of 1890s Aestheticism, which Yeats had after all used to its fullest in his Celtic revival phase. Fergus (Irish Feargus: “man-strength”) meets Dorian Gray. The psycho-underground of gender emerges strikingly in the historical revisionist fiction, which came into its own in Ireland in the 1990s with writers like Colm Toibin, Sebastian Barry, Roddy Doyle and Jamie O’Neill. Toibin, as an openly gay Catholic with the clearest inspiration from the history writing of Lyons and Foster, has explored the sexual psycho-underground of the national mythology that kept Ireland in its grip from the de Valera to the Haughey era in novels and non-fiction from The Heather Blazing (1992) to The Blackwater Lightship (1999), which also feature memories of the only rebellion of Easter 1916 outside of Dublin, in Toibin’s native Enniscorthy. Barry, with great sensitivity, has explored the Loyalist side left out of Irish history, from the almost incidental traitor in The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty (1998) to the woman incarcerated for fifty years in a mental asylum in The Secret Scripture (2008). But it is Doyle in A Star Called Henry (1999) and O’Neill in At Swim, Two Boys (2001) who have directly narrated the events of the Easter Rising. Doyle’s and O’Neill’s methods of narration form a complementary study of revolution and social change to Foster’s Yeats-based histoire de mentalité, especially perhaps as they enter the psycho-underground of <?page no="61"?> What Did Easter 1916 Change? 61 masculinity. Doyle’s is macho metafiction, while O’Neill’s is tragic queering. Henry Smart in A Star Called Henry becomes involved in the Rising mainly to avenge his brother Victor, who had died of TB while they were street kids, their mother no longer capable of looking after them in a Dublin slum which in Doyle’s portrayal seems almost exaggeratedly poor even for one of the poorest and most unequal cities in the Empire: some historians have ranked Dublin with Calcutta. Doyle seems to link Irish poverty with the Irish obsession with story-telling. Henry’s main revolutionary action is to shoot out the windows of the expensive shops across the street from the Post Office - and his main concern is class warfare on behalf of the women demanding food of the revolutionaries, who cannot give it, and will not, since many of the women are the mothers and widows of soldiers in the British Army. Even though he is certainly caught up in the excitement of the Rising and well-informed on all the participants (especially Connolly whom he regards as a kind of father figure), the excitement quickly fades: Another day of waiting. Day Two of the Revolution and I was already bored. Staring out on the empty street and the rain. Listening to the far gunfire, waiting for it to come closer. Waiting to be surprised. Wanting it. Badly. Wanting to shoot and wreck and kill and ruin. But Dublin, that part of it outside my window, didn’t really wake up at all. (Doyle 109) As for the revolutionary “dream,” “I kept a tight watch on all street corners and let Miss O’Shea make up my dreams for me” (Doyle 110). Miss O’Shea is his former schoolmistress turned lover - and “his dreams” in a superficial sense are of soup and sex. But there is a deeper level on which the women are the really determining dream figures in a metafiction of Ireland and storytelling. First there is Henry’s Granny Nash, an ageless, illiterate hag who carries round the collected works of Dickens and Tolstoy in her shawl to find spells, but who learns to read, magically, when Henry is born; there is his mother Melody whose fate is as tragic as the worst of Irish ballads; there is the brothel owner and perhaps prime mover in the Dublin underworld with the wonderful name Dolly Oblong, for whom both Henry and his father work as enforcers and contract killers, Henry wielding his dead father’s wooden leg as his main weapon as he tries to figure out the real story of his father’s death; and there is Kitty O’Shea as the only committed revolutionary with a dream for Ireland’s future. It is a curiously macho version of the strength - and weaknesses - of women. Compared to their mythical solidity, Henry is a transient shadow only made real by the urgency of <?page no="62"?> Martin Leer 62 his telling the story of how he was central to Irish history, before by the end of the book he emigrates to America. Almost as a materialisation of “subterranean masculinity” his secret knowledge which allows him to survive on numerous occasions, is that his father has passed on his knowledge of the sewer system of Dublin. But this does not allow him to figure out the plot behind his father’s death; a woman has to enlighten him. He is a fantasist, a figure of boasting and blarney characteristic of the stereotypical Irishman - partly because he is in a sense just a replacement: Henry is his father’s name and that of his dead brother, who is a “star” to his mother. And in such a devastating exposé (through metafiction) of the myth of the Rising, it is of course not insignificant that Henry II was the first Norman-English invader of Ireland. At Swim, Two Boys takes another metafictional route to the events of Easter 1916: that of intertextual allusion, with Flann O’Brien’s archmetafiction At Swim Two Birds in its title, with Joycean free indirect discourse in its narrative style, with Oscar Wilde, Roger Casement and Padraig Pearse, but overall a sense of foreboding that comes straight out of Yeats. The free indirect discourse brings the age to life; the events are internalised by being seen from different perspectives, and mainly through the love triangle of three young men. It is probably the very fine-tuned exploration of early twentieth century male-on-male sexuality that makes possible an overall sense of loyalty to the characters in their historical time, which is more or less consciously absent from A Star Called Henry with its tall tales and fast plot. Jim Mack is an academically gifted college student from the aspirational petty bourgeoisie, his father an army sergeant turned shopkeeper; Doyler Doyle is a dungman’s lad, son of a drunken ex-soldier, who was a comrade of Mr Mack’s in the Boer War; and MacMurrough is the scion of one of the most important Irish Catholic families, but also an officer in the British Army returned to his aunt’s house after a prison sentence for sexual misconduct with his batman. Their way to involvement in the events of Easter 1916 is indirect. Jim and Doyler are both preparing to participate in the Catholic Easter parade, where a nationalist priest has managed to sneak in a rendition of “A Nation Once Again.” Jim hears an inspired speech by Pearse; Doyler more seriously reads one of Connolly’s books on socialism and joins his Citizens’ Army; MacMurrough is involved through his aunt’s widespread charity work and her role as a natural hereditary leader if only she had been a man. But loyalties are still seriously divided in the lead-up to Easter: Jim’s brother is a soldier in France, Eva MacMurrough’s charities directed towards the Front as well as national- <?page no="63"?> What Did Easter 1916 Change? 63 ist causes, and dominated by her great admiration, which is also infatuation, for Casement. MacMurrough comes to articulate most strikingly the queering of nationalism when he is confronted by an old schoolfellow about whether he is “an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort.” MacMurrough answers, “If you mean am I Irish, the answer is yes” (O’Neill 309). The moving and sometimes stunningly beautiful effect of the book comes from a conflation of the political events and the sexual awakening of the three young men, which is also a conflation of irony and pathos. James Moran notes prudishly that the term Rising nearly always has an “obscene” double meaning (Moran 118), but this is not blasphemy, rather an amplification of the doomed Rising by the difficulties of same-sex relationships in Dublin in 1915-16. There is a brief moment and space where things might have turned out differently. MacMurrough and Doyler have sex, and Jim falls in love with Doyler on the Forty Foot beach at Sandycove, famous for the Martello Tower in which Joyce’s Ulysses begins and from which Stephen Dedalus and Buck Mulligan observe a ship rounding Muglins Rock. If the beach in At Swim, Two Boys is a zone where the young men have the freedom to explore each other and themselves, the Muglins come to carry all the promise of a political and personal Utopian dream for Jim and Doyler. Their bond of destiny based on it gives the novel its title: Doyler reached inside his shirt and tugged on the string that held his medal. Between thumbs and fingers he twisted the tin till it split in two. Jim saw the proffered half of St Joseph. “It’s my pledge to you. We’ll have our Easter swim, my hand and heart on that. We’ll make them rocks together, Jim. Are you straight so? ” “I’m straight as a rush,” Jim said. He sniffed. “I am too.” “Old pal o’me heart,” said Doyler. “Come what may,” said Jim. “Come what may.” Doyler grinned. “Come Easter sure. 1916.” (337) That the old pledge of Wolfe Tone’s United Irishmen, “Are you straight so? ” becomes queered as a personal pledge between the two boys, confirmed by Jim’s erection, is what makes this moving to a twenty-first century reader, especially once the foreboding is added, with the poignant pause of the full stop: “Come Easter sure. 1916.” For of course the boys will never make their swim; Doyler will be killed in the Rising, watched over as he dies by Jim and MacMurrough, who will later join the IRA as partisans and lovers. Jim’s and Doyler’s dream will be forever held in that comma of the title: At Swim, Two Boys. Irony and pa- <?page no="64"?> Martin Leer 64 thos return again to MacMurrough’s mind when the defeated rebels are paraded through Dublin: The British marched them through the streets. All hungry Dublin crowded the way. In all that taunting spitting mob one man gravely had lifted his hat. That little, lovely, silent act recalled MacMurrough to Wilde, when Wilde too had been paraded for the crowd. And MacMurrough had wondered could there truly be something to this business - that stooping so utterly low one should rise again to gain all. (O’Neill 640) It is in the end the personal that lifts MacMurrough out of nationalpolitical defeat into an acceptance of building change: It was true what Jim said, this wasn’t the end but the beginning. But the wars would come to an end one day and Jim would come there then, to the island they would share. One day surely the wars would end, and Jim would come home, if only to lie broken in MacMurrough’s arms, he would come to his island home. And MacMurrough would have it built for him, brick by brick, washed by rain and the reckless sea. In the living stream they would swim a season. For maybe it was true that no man is an island: but he believed that two very well might be. (O’Neill 641) It takes Doyler and his vernacular to bring Jim and MacMurrough out of sentimentality about the future, and being redeemed by the dream, into a “terrible beauty” and the wise-cracking of the boy who made them revolutionaries: He never again looked for his friend, until one time, though it was years to come, years that spilt with hurt and death and closed in bitter most bitter defeat, one time when he lay broken and fevered and the Free State troopers were hounding the fields, when he lay the last time in MacMurrough’s arms, and MacEmm so tightly held him close: his eyes closed as he drifted away, and that last time he did look for his friend. Doyler was far far away on his slope, and his cap waving in the air. “What cheer, eh? ” he called. (O’Neill 643) Perhaps what literature can add to the historians’ and social scientists’ theories of revolutionary upheavals is this element of fierce personal loyalties and the longing for companionship with or without a sexual component as well as energy that will lash out sometimes from complete humiliation. Revolutions are not, from our present vantage-point, it seems, redeemed by the dream, but by moments of liberation and solidarity, which may be early appearances of a wave of change. But the <?page no="65"?> What Did Easter 1916 Change? 65 underlying change may skip an upheaval or two, which makes possible the striking reinterpretations in the historical revisionist fiction that are opened by Roddy Doyle’s macho feminism and Jamie O’Neill’s gentle queering, which in its peculiar combination of tragedy (the overwhelming mode of gay love stories) and hope made possible in the shadow of gay marriage. <?page no="66"?> Martin Leer 66 References Auden, Wystan Hugh. Collected Poems. Ed. Edward Mendelsohn. London: Faber and Faber 1976. Boland, Eavan. In a Time of Violence. Manchester: Carcanet, 1994. Doyle, Roddy. A Star Called Henry. London: Vintage, 2000. Foster, R. F. Vivid Faces: The Revolutionary Generation in Ireland 1890-1923. London: Penguin, 2014. ―――. W. B. Yeats: A Life, vol. II. The Arch-Poet. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Graeber, David. The Democracy Project: A History. A Crisis. A Moment. London: Allen Lane, 2013. ―――. The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy. Brooklyn and London: Melville House, 2015. Kiberd, Declan. Inventing Ireland: Literature and the Modern Nation. London: Vintage, 1996. Kuch, Peter. “‘For Poetry Makes Nothing Happen’: The Poetry of Yeats and the Politics of Ireland.” Yeats: An Annual of Critical and Textual Studies 8 (1990): 188-205. Moran, James. Staging the Easter Rising: 1916 as Theatre. Cork: Cork University Press, 2005. O’Neill, Jamie. At Swim, Two Boys. New York and London: Scribner, 2001. Taylor, Martin. Lads: Love Poetry of the Trenches. London: Constable, 1989. Yeats, W. B. Collected Poems. 2nd ed. London: Macmillan, 1950. <?page no="67"?> Words as Witness: Remembering the Present in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein Scott Loren In times of radical change, a double bind underwriting modes of knowing increases as habits in perception are destabilized. The agency of cognition is greatly dependent on techniques of recognition, while the ability to rethink or recognize is bound up in and facilitated through processes of aesthetic organization, with representation important amongst them. In a context of radical change, what challenges might language and literature face as possible modes of cognition and representation? Originally published in 1818, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus emerges from an era defined by radical change. I want to reconsider its capacity for addressing change by reading it as a technography - writing that is both about technology while also functioning in the capacity of technology - with regard to its techniques of usage, how language as a theme in the novel has been and might be interpreted, and how these together relate to the novel’s historically situated reflections on technosocial transition. Keywords: Frankenstein, dual revolution, language as technology, modernity, technography, techno-social transition In his introduction to The Age of Revolution 1789-1848, Eric Hobsbawm writes: Words are witnesses which often speak louder than documents. Let us consider a few English words which were invented, or gained their modern meanings, substantially in the period of sixty years with which this volume deals. They are such words as “industry,” “industrialist,” “factory,” “middle class,” “working class,” “capitalism” and “socialism.” They include “aristoc- The Challenge of Change. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 36. Ed. Margaret Tudeau-Clayton and Martin Hilpert. Tübingen: Narr, 2018. 67-100. <?page no="68"?> Scott Loren 68 racy” as well as “railway,” “liberal” and “conservative” as political terms, “nationality,” “scientist” and “engineer,” “proletariat” and (economic) “crisis.” “Utilitarian” and “statistics,” “sociology” and several other names of modern sciences, “journalism” and “ideology,” are all coinages or adaptations of this period. So is “strike” and “pauperism.” (13) Hobsbawm directs attention toward the socio-historical specificity contextualizing a particular set of terms and associate meanings that might otherwise be taken for granted in a later cultural context, or for which quasi-essentialist and transparent meaning might be assumed. He thus begins his history of revolutionary change by introducing the legacy of cultural concepts in the form of language traces; or as he put it, words as witnesses. Most prominently, they are witness to techno-social transition rooted in the French and Industrial Revolutions. Hobsbawm thus initiates a cognitive experiment of imagining the world without these terms, which is also to say “without the things and concepts for which they provide names” (13). Originally published in 1818, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus also emerges from this age of revolution, characterized as much by radical transition in epistemic sense-making practices as by technical processes of organization and material production. What type of witness does Shelley’s Frankenstein bear? While some of the terms Hobsbawm notes are lacking and others not, most of the related material phenomena are in some form present in Frankenstein, even if by negation, though we are also dealing with different types of witness. While Hobsbawm’s terms are collected in the framework of historiography, the language witness Shelley constructs is conscious of its literariness and its particular existence as a witness through language. The words are articulated with attention to what they are capable of doing based on what they have done in the past, what they did at the present moment of their congregation, and what they might do sent back into the world as a novel aesthetic arrangement. As both a cognitive and a social technology, language concomitantly produces and is a product of aesthetic organization. And if the real praxes of aesthetic organization are inextricable from the specific media through which they take form, and no less embedded in the historical trajectories that articulate those specific media, language is equally subject to and helps to shape the contingencies of techno-social transition. How, then, does Frankenstein bear witness to the changes in the order of material phenomena, perceptual habit and symbolic expression? Known for its portrayal of out-of-control technologies, Frankenstein is concerned with the techne of proto-democratic systems and technical <?page no="69"?> Words as Witness 69 automation of human labor; but also more inclusively with novel modes of societal organization and their justification (institutionalism) or the lack thereof (slavery), with ideological shifts toward secularization and individualism (Enlightenment humanism), and with the epistemic shifts of rationalist empiricism (German idealism) that are inherent to the transitional conjunctures of the late eighteenth century. With such an abundance of the truly novel that Shelley’s Frankenstein is witness to, a common misreading has been to understand too narrowly the scope of out-of-control technologies this story addresses. Interpretations of Frankenstein as a literary record of techno-social transition have addressed developments in scientism, industrialism and institutionalism, and include a broader range of transformation across material and social praxes, as well as philosophical and ideological concerns of the time. While the political upheavals of post-revolutionary France and Europe may be more ideological at first sight than the material shifts of industrialization, it remains important to recall how material and ideological change are co-present and co-evolve in each of the revolutionary strands Hobsbawm recalls (revolution in France, industrialization in England), and further to recognize the manifold ways in which material changes of industry and political revision dovetail in localized technosocial transitions like framework knitting in Nottinghamshire or the local organization of labor-group resistance, as well as broader historical conjunctures like the transition from entrenched agrarian systems to emerging urban societies. Beginning with a reflection on the vast scope of techno-social transition in institutional modernity and the discontinuities generated therein, my intention is not to create a catalogue, nor to substantiate a particular set of historic phenomena as tenably constituting the focus of Shelley’s novel. I do so, rather, to make a proposition: that the scope and depth of techno-social change up to and around 1800 produce novel entities as things in the world that are largely unrecognizable. What is under investigation here, then, is the challenge of thinking and representing radical change through the medium of language. How might change be articulated? What are the strategies to re-present that which has so little history of presence? I want to consider Frankenstein’s capacity for addressing such questions as a work of technography - as writing both about and in the capacity of technology - with regard to its techniques of usage, how language as a theme in the novel is presented as a technology for cognition, and how these together relate to the novel’s historically situated reflections on techno-social transition and epistemic shift. <?page no="70"?> Scott Loren 70 Shelley’s Technography Jansen and Vellema describe technography as an “ethnography of technology” that descriptively examines human-technology interactivity; “an interdisciplinary methodology for the detailed study of the use of skills, tools, knowledge and techniques in everyday life,” as well as “for the integrative study of socio-technical configurations” in relation to technological change (169). Further, it may include any writing about technology “that implicates or is attuned to the technological condition of its own writing” (Connor 18). Frankenstein can be understood as technography and read technographically in differing but related capacities. According to Jansen and Vellema, technographic analysis should be divided into three categories: making, distributed thinking, and rule construction. For the dimension of making, a technographic study will consider “the use of skills, tools, knowledge and technique in the process of making” (172). The second dimension, distributed thinking, seeks to identify and characterize the particulars of task-related knowledge “transmitted in a group or network through time and space” (172). The final category enquires into the construction of “rules, protocols, routines and rituals” that “lead to or follow from task specialization and skill-based association” (172). One readily recognizes technography as engrained in the epistemic modes generated with transitions to technological and institutional modernity as well. Its categories of making, knowledge dissemination and rule construction might be rearticulated accordingly: (1) production, (2) distribution and (3) regulation. My technographic reading of Frankenstein will be organized according to the three dimensions as follows. (1) Language as production technology first examines the structural and formal characteristics of the text. The focus here will be on framing, intertextuality, and stylistic convention. Next it considers language-as-technology as a theme in the story. (2) Distributed knowledge examines group or type specific models of cognition as represented through three distinct narrative voices, genres of writing and philosophical iterations of the modern self. (3) Rule construction or regulation will address Frankenstein’s symbolic depictions of paradigm shift, moving from a logic of narrative discourse in which knowledge is generated, distributed and regulated through storytelling, to the scopic regime of institutional order, whose primary regulatory mechanisms are schematic compartmentalization and visuality. 1 1 For a historicized definition of visuality, see Mirzoeff. <?page no="71"?> Words as Witness 71 Representation: Language as Technology The technographic dimensions of production, distribution and regulation are already legible in some form from the outset through references embedded in the story’s subtitle. The Modern Prometheus refers at once to classical mythology from the book’s more distant past, and brings it into a present context of technological change with an indirect reference to Benjamin Franklin’s experiments with electricity; a reference that is made by way of Kant, who referred to Franklin as a modern Prometheus. Mobilizing the Prometheus myth in reference to Franklin provides an ideational framework for thinking the then current state of scientific experimentation and advance as radically disruptive. The plot logic invoked through this intertext also implies an imminent future in which the consequences of present action will result in revolutionary change: as progenitor of the human race and life-giver through the originary technology of fire, Prometheus has been associated with the pursuit of scientific knowledge and the consequences of obtaining it by breaking the frame of possibility. To consider how language is presented as technology in Frankenstein, in its capacity to make or produce, we want to examine further its use of skills, tools, knowledge and technique. While the fundamental mode of production is representation, there is also an accentuated textual presence of formal structures and diegetic meta-structures (like the subtitle’s intertextuality) that greatly influence the diegesis, and thus the way story meaning is generated. Shelley’s technical attention to and manipulation of and through language and text, her frequent use of “narrative and literary techniques . . . can be said to form part of her authorial signature or voice” (Allen 9). Among the techniques Shelley employs, layered frame narratives and polyphonic character of narrative voice significantly contribute to the complexity of the text’s narrative structures. Polyphonic narrative framing, or the mise-en-abyme, has the conventional function of story exposition, plot compression and mirroring. However, it also functions to blur narrative boundaries, destabilize the authority of narrative voice, and, in so doing, contribute more generally to the diversely rich depiction of rupture, disjuncture, inconsistency, multiplicity and discontinuity so central to the story. Frankenstein is a story of the radically new, both in its diegetic plot and in its symbolic reflections on the world. Insofar as its (or Shelley’s) contradictorily dynamic ossification of natural language into a work of print literature textually, formally and conceptually enacts the historical loss of narrative or discursive continuity through trans- <?page no="72"?> Scott Loren 72 formations wrought by technological and institutional modernity, the text is performative in its telling. With consistency, Frankenstein performs disjuncture as a theme in the storyworld, in the structures of the text, and in its communications with entities exterior to it (readers, but also intertexts and historical events). Frankenstein’s significant intertexts are taken from classic literature (Paradise Lost), mythology (Prometheus), natural sciences (Darwin and Franklin), current events (the Luddite revolts and advent of mass literacy) and philosophy (Hegel, Kant, Rousseau, Bentham) to cover a broad range of conceptual material that is sometimes complementary or consistent, and other times produces internal contradictions of logic. The distinctive range of stylistic elements is similarly rich, both in quantity as well as in the capacity for generating internal resonance or dissonance. Resonance and dissonance may take concomitant effect within one specific style, or between diverse styles. For example, the Gothic novel is identifiable when language takes a hyperbolic, emotive form, where figurations of horror and supernatural phenomena appear, in figurative tropes like the Doppelgänger or structural tropes like the frame narrative. And yet these elements of Gothic literature never seek to constitute a pure form. An incident of horror, such as the creature’s animation, might evince linguistic emotive hyperbole (“How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe”), but can just as readily switch genre codes and register to technical exposition (“His limbs were in proportion”), psychological reflection (“The different accidents of life are not so interchangeable as the feelings of human nature”) or historical account (Shelley 55). Graham Allen has noted that stylistic analysis of Frankenstein should be mindful of how the novel was received at the time of publication. On the one hand, the manner of language or lexical choice can be highly idiomatic: Shelley’s language emerges from and reflects a particular set of language-use characteristics that are historically and culturally specific (as natural language use generally is). By the same token, the text displays such a high degree of hybridity and style shifting that the bits with potential for striking an idiomatically natural tone can lose some of their naturalness, or authenticity, due to the stylistic diversity and artifice to which they contribute. On the other hand, there is the question of how the novel’s contemporary readership would have generically categorized the book. Allen notes that in the “earliest reviews we see that the novel was received as another example of what many call ‘the Godwinian novel’” (20). <?page no="73"?> Words as Witness 73 Identifiable in the Godwinian (or Jacobin) novel is a stylistic distinction in which the appearance of the monstrous, marvelous or sublime aims not merely to affectively dazzle or shock the reader, but to incite critical reflection, thus potentially taking on the function of social critique or political satire. The Godwinian novel “presents radically ambivalent human beings whose stories retain our sympathy at the same time that they challenge our sense of reason and the possibilities for rational action in the social world” (Allen 27). The description is readily applicable to each of the main characters in Frankenstein. However, there is an important distinction to be made between the potential ideologies or worldviews Shelley’s style cultivates and those of her parents’ legacy. Resonating throughout the writing of Godwin and Wollstonecraft is the Enlightenment tenet of reason with particular ideological intention. Whatever ambivalence characters or situations might evince at the diegetic level, their respective works are underwritten by a logic in which the reader, with her capacity for rational thought and sense of ethical propriety, will be receptive to depictions of personal struggle and social inequity in a manner that should unambiguously motivate identification on behalf of the reader with a need for real social reform. Thus while the central character of a Godwinian novel might be fraught with ambivalence in an authentically human manner, there is far less ambivalence in the real social ethos the novel promotes. As such, the worldview promoted by the Godwinian novel is unambiguously one of Enlightenment humanism, where the world is always knowable, where reason always has the capacity to recognize injustice, and rational action always has the capacity to function as a corrective measure. While Shelley’s central characters are radically ambivalent and worthy of sympathy, and while their story might challenge the reader’s sense of reason and promote rational action in the real world, the worldview promoted by Frankenstein is far less idealistic with regard to the power of reason. Frankenstein is misunderstood if read as a cautionary tale about playing God, not because of some ineluctable moral order or ideal, nor due to the limits of knowledge. In his presumptuous attempt to reduce the knowable world to a collection of calculable truths, the Enlightenment humanist (Victor) fails to recognize the limitlessness of knowledge: its malleability, multiplicity and endlessly situational contingency. One might not only know the world in a variety of ways; some complementary, others exclusive. The plural and conflicting ways the world might be known are also co-extant. The constant that stands out here, and that Victor’s failure to recognize leads to his demise, is that all knowledge is situational, as are tech- <?page no="74"?> Scott Loren 74 niques of knowing. There is no universal truth of the world independent of human perception yet attainable through it. Rather, there are diverse ways of representing the many and multifaceted valid perceptions in the world that often antagonistically coexist. Justine’s trial and execution is one prominent exposition of this. Justine did not kill William, we are told; a condition Victor is cognizant of while acutely aware of his own guilt in the matter. And yet the potential fact of Justine’s innocence is, like the truth of Victor’s knowledge, meaningless. Victor reasons that no one would believe the truth, were he to tell it. Thus while Justine’s innocence is true in the context of Victor’s private knowledge, neither the truth nor the knowledge have any functional value. And if truth and knowledge are devoid of function, are they not also devoid of meaning? The answer is yes and no: they are meaningful for Victor’s inner life, and may even effect change in him, yet meaningless for the world around him that maintains a different truth. The antagonisms Frankenstein produces, in the storyworld and ideationally in the reader’s reflections, proliferate without pointing toward resolution. The text resists ideologically prescriptive readings for resolving antagonisms, be they in the storyworld or the world the story reflects on. In a manner attuned to social and psychological realism, they live. If Frankenstein constructs a scene of Enlightenment humanism, it does so only to subsequently deconstruct it. As Barbara Johnson suggested, the story is less interested in marking the capacities or limits of human knowledge than it is in exposing knowledge, in particular scientific knowledge, as a fiction: “Far from marking the limits of the human, Shelley’s monster is nothing but the perfect realization of the humanist project par excellence: mastery of the knowledge of man” (5-6). The fundamental problem, or fiction, is that where Enlightenment humanism grants the rationalist capacity to seek out the unknown in the world and transform it into something recognizable, it fails to recognize that the unknown is not merely out there in the world waiting to be discovered: “That which the humanist remains blind to in its efforts to know man is the nature of his desire to know man” (Johnson 6). Thus in its conflation of styles and “clash of generic forms (realist, Gothic),” Frankenstein radically disrupts a series of oppositions upon which human beings tend to establish their sense of reason, logic and order: the rational and the irrational, the real and the fantastic, the plausible and the implausible, fact and fiction, the empirical and experimental against the imaginative and immaterial. In this sense, then, Frankenstein can be understood as a novel [. . .] in <?page no="75"?> Words as Witness 75 which the basic oppositions upon which we rely in constructing our sense of order and rationality are disturbed. (Allen 32) As with the Gothic characteristics in Frankenstein, its Godwinian characteristics are inscribed with or alongside elements that disrupt or contradict fundamental features of the genre’s internal logic. The ideology and worldview cultivated through Frankenstein are such that the indeterminacy and ambivalence generated through formal aspects of writing and symbolic re-presentation effectively mirror the fact of indeterminacy and ambivalence present in the real world. This effect is achieved by processes of implementing, manipulating and controlling stylistic features of language: by integrating and meaningfully rearranging texts, discourses and potentially recognizable forms whose origins are external to the diegesis, whether particular intertexts or generic styles, Shelley makes them mean differently. Altering how such elements contribute to meaning through written language in a particular work of literature, and in her unconventional manner of re-presenting language and literature to effect internal difference, Shelley alters the effect these intertexts, styles and genres have on the knowable world. This is one way to technographically read Shelley’s framing of language as technology and generative medium: language is a thing that might be manipulated through a variety of contextualized procedures, and the application of which will generate meaning in highly specific ways. By scrutinizing Shelley’s emphasis on processes of implementing, manipulating, controlling and producing meaning through language, I also want to facilitate a more dynamic understanding of the terms representation, recognition and remembering. To a considerable degree, Shelley’s framing of language as technology relies on manipulating the conditions of preexisting language-oriented skills, tools, knowledge and techniques. Beyond the necessity of literacy (which is also a diegetic theme in the novel and whose rates were exponentially rising at that particular moment in history), these include the dense complexity of intertextual allusions, the multiple narrative frames enabling a polyphony of narrative voices and accommodating shifts in generic and stylistic convention - from Walton’s letter writing, to Victor’s expository account of recent events, to the creature’s brief but comprehensive autobiography - as well as the construction/ deconstruction of Enlightenment rationalism represented both through the character of Victor and his creature as uncanny other, as well as through traces of the Godwinian novel. Frankenstein might not be exceptional in its mobilization of such techniques. What is exceptional is their particularity, their combination, <?page no="76"?> Scott Loren 76 and the highly explicit presentation of subjecting these iterations of narrative knowledge production to a universal procedure of disjunction and recombination. The mode of production for Shelley’s technography, then, takes what was or had been present in language and represents it in a manner that is recognizable and yet challenges the reader to rethink the conventions of representation when confronted with the particular iterations, departures and novel reorganization of narrative rules and rituals that construct Shelley’s story of Walton’s written record of Frankenstein’s oral recounting of the creature’s recollections; each struggling to ascribe sense (again, through and with explicit emphasis on the artifice of language) to the unthinkable conditions of their respective yet intertwined existence. If we place the notions of representation, recognition and remembering as they are outlined here in relation to Jansen and Vellema’s categorical criteria for technography, we will find further consequences for each. Frankenstein is very much about radical alterations to and wrought by the historical use of skills, tools, knowledge and techniques of production with the advent of technological modernity. Shelley’s method of representing what was already present in language, but with a difference, seeks to produce a style of communication capable of exceeding what had come before and thus adequately address the world it is witness to. Its reliance on preexisting knowledge thus also transmits (or produces) new knowledge particular to the time and place of those it addresses. The meta-diegetic dynamic of historic novelty, or confrontation with the unfamiliar, that attempts to find an adequate language for communicating the experience of unfamiliarity per se is mirrored diegetically in the narrators’ respective attempts to communicate that which exceeds the limits of language and knowledge at their disposal. Not only is the language inadequate; so are the channels of distributing knowledge. The creature relays its story to an audience that consistently fails to recognize the significance of what is communicated. Victor relays his story to a man trapped in the desolate arctic seas; his only company is a crew of men with whom, he explains, the possibilities for meaningful exchange are highly restricted. Walton presumably conveys all three stories by letter to his sister, a character who makes no appearance nor has any voice. And while historically there is a massive expansion in postal networks at the time, the improbability of Walton’s letters making their way back to civilization from the “vast and irregular plains of ice” that “stretched out in every direction” and “seemed to have no end” (23) is characteristic of Shelley’s technique of negation: constructing a possibility for the existence of something only to invalidate it the very <?page no="77"?> Words as Witness 77 next moment. Thus, in addition to the technique of subjecting the logic of intertextual references, the function of narrative frames, and the validity of narrative voice all to an aesthetic principle of disjuncture, the presentation of language as communication technology rendered defunct is equally prominent among Shelley’s techniques for novel modes of representation in the production of meaning at the meta-diegetic level. Where the previous pages have focused on language-as-technology as a conceptual trope identifiable in the formal and stylistic aspects of Shelley’s writing, and thus from a meta-diegetic perspective, what follows places emphasis on language-as-technology as a theme identifiable within the diegetic storyworld. The characters are privy to language-astechnology in the storyworld and have a relation to and through its presence. Here too, the technographic dimensions of production, distribution and regulation play an important role, both functional in the story and for its analysis. Language as Godlike Science While recounting its brief history of existence to its creator, the creature explains how it learned about human history and society in a dual scene of language acquisition. A silent witness and secret companion, it briefly resides in a hovel attached to the De Lacey cottage, where, through a boarded-up window with a “small and almost imperceptible chink through which the eye could just penetrate” (103), the creature is able to observe domestic life: I found that these people possessed a method of communicating their experience and feelings to one another by articulate sounds. I perceived that the words they spoke sometimes produced pleasure or pain, smiles or sadness, in the minds and countenances of the hearers. This was indeed a godlike science, and I ardently desired to become acquainted with it. But I was baffled in every attempt I made for this purpose. Their pronunciation was quick, and the words they uttered, not having any apparent connection with visible objects, I was unable to discover any clue by which I could unravel the mystery of their reference. By great application, however, and after having remained during the space of several revolutions of the moon in my hovel, I discovered the names that were given to some of the most familiar objects of discourse; I learned and applied the words “fire,” “milk,” “bread,” and “wood.” I learned also the names of the cottagers themselves. (108) <?page no="78"?> Scott Loren 78 In a kind of anachronistic inversion of Hobsbawm’s history-languagecognition experiment, the creature’s first words bearing witness to a history of development have an ahistorical quality to them. Witness to everything essential and nothing specific, they are the elements of physical necessity (rudimentary technology and nourishment) and fundamental features of language (the practice of naming as representation and abstract thinking). Yet while focus is drawn to the essential and fundamental, this initial framing of language acquisition also stages the theme of language as a multi-faceted, complex technology. First, we can recognize the technicity of language: it is medium for communication, a mode for identification, a tool for effecting change. Language is a way of knowing the world, the things in it, and oneself in relation to these. Here we get a glimpse of Shelley’s technographic description of language in accord with the three dimensions indicated by Jansen and Vellema. The creature is able to observe how language does things in the world. It recognizes that knowledge is transmitted through language in time and space - even knowledge about language itself; thus the creature’s capacity to learn it by observation. And learning it is contingent on the creature’s capacity to recognize, remember and reproduce language’s rules, protocols, routines and rituals. In a characteristic manner, Shelley brings attention to language-as-technology by thematically framing it in the diegesis, and also making it perform by weaving diegetically external discourses of language-as-technology into the fabric of the story. By referring to language as a godlike science, Shelley is able to inscribe language-as-technology into the often antithetical epistemes of Enlightenment scientism and pre-Enlightenment Christian creationism. In the rationalist tradition, language is a scientific thing that can be studied, mastered and applied to manipulate other things in the world. In the biblical tradition, it is a sacred thing that calls the world into being. Representing these two stories of language in a conjoined manner not only manages to recall together two conflicting logics of language. Shelley is also able to recall the myth of Prometheus, who with divine technology usurped bestows life or greater agency onto humans, making them more godlike. Furthermore, the myth is doubly reflected through the conditions of the creature’s language acquisition. When the Safie comes to live at the cottage, Felix helps her learn French by reading to her daily. By secretly listening and repeating, the creature is able to acquire and abscond with this godlike originary technology. Language-as-technology has two double frames here. First, there is the frame of doubled language acquisition, with both Safie and the <?page no="79"?> Words as Witness 79 creature learning concomitantly, yet under conditions that are at once the very same (regarding time, place, source and method) and radically different (regarding relations, conditions of shared knowledge, and, ultimately, function). Then, there is the frame of language-as-technology where, during the scene of double language acquisition, (at least) two types of knowledge are transmitted: technical knowledge for language comprehension and use of language as a technology, and knowledge about the world acquired through the technology of language. As Felix reads to Safie from Volney’s Ruins of Empire, the creature listens: Through this work I obtained a cursory knowledge of history and a view of the several empires at present existing in the world; it gave me an insight into the manners, governments, and religions of the different nations of the earth. I heard of the slothful Asiatics, of the stupendous genius and mental activity of the Grecians, of the wars and wonderful virtue of the early Romans - of their subsequent degenerating - of the decline of that mighty empire, of chivalry, Christianity, and kings. I heard of the discovery of the American hemisphere and wept with Safie over the hapless fate of its original inhabitants. These wonderful narrations inspired me with strange feelings. Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous, and magnificent, yet so vicious and base? He appeared at one time a mere scion of the evil principle and at another as all that can be conceived as noble and godlike. To be a great and virtuous man appeared the highest honour that can befall a sensitive being; to be base and vicious, as many on record have been, appeared the lowest degradation, a condition more abject than that of the blind mole or harmless worm. For a long time I could not conceive how one man could go forth to murder his fellow, or even why there were laws and governments; but when I heard details of vice and bloodshed, my wonder ceased and I turned away with disgust and loathing. (115) At this point in the multiply framed scene of language acquisition, language-as-technology takes a distinctly different focus with regard to its functions. There is no reference to it as technology for communication, nor for naming things, nor for effecting change in other people through its use. Where language is a technology of communication and communion in the earlier passage, here it is a technological medium for the dissemination of knowledge about the world. An initial knowledge of social organization, national identity and political power opens to a knowledge of cruelty, inequity and suffering, finally resulting in an irresolvable deliberation on human behavior. Language-as-technology in the function of mediating knowledge reaches its limits when the crea- <?page no="80"?> Scott Loren 80 ture can no longer make sense of what it is hearing, due not to lexical incapacity, but to the inability to identify with what it hears. In this moment, language-as-technology mediates knowledge of an exterior world that might be discovered and re-presented through it, but also of an interior world of self-discovery. As Shelley presents it in these scenes, language-as-technology can be understood as bifurcated in its functions. Its two primary functions are communication and cognition. The one is society oriented, the other self oriented. Although there are further bifurcations within these, the two primary functions generally operate in unison. Greater knowledge of and in language should enable those who command it to negotiate communication and navigate identity in community with greater facility. However, this is not the effect language-as-technology has on the creature. The Monstrosity of Knowledge The greater the creature’s knowledge of and, in particular, through language, the greater its sense of alienation from the world around it. This becomes evident in a quick progression between two degrees of alienation. First, the creature becomes alienated from language-asknowledge-technology. Upon learning of human cruelty and vice, “wonder ceased and I turned away.” Here, wonder can mean both curiosity and cognition: the creature’s inability to recognize itself in this scene of representation exposes the limits of a certain type of knowledge, and language-as-technology temporarily ceases to function. The creature is alienated through language-as-technology not due to language, but because it finds no place for itself in the field of representation to which it is exposed. This constitutes a between space, where the creature is suddenly outside of language-as-knowledge-technology. The next instance has a more radical effect, where language-as-technology leaves open access to cognition, or “wonder,” but in so doing, alienates the creature both from itself and from society: ‘Every conversation of the cottagers now opened new wonders to me. While I listened to the instructions Felix bestowed upon the Arabian, the strange system of human society was explained to me. I heard of the division of property, of immense wealth and squalid poverty; of rank, decent, and noble blood. ‘The words induced me to turn towards myself. I learned that the possessions most esteemed by your fellow creatures were high and unsullied <?page no="81"?> Words as Witness 81 descent united with riches. A man might be respected with only one of these advantages, but without either he was considered, except in very rare instances, as a vagabond and a slave, doomed to waste his powers for the profit of the chosen few! And what was I? Of my creation and creator I was absolutely ignorant, but I knew that I possessed no money, no friends, no kind of property. I was, besides, endued with a figure hideously deformed and loathsome; I was not even of the same nature as man. (115) Here, language-as-knowledge-technology allows the creature new selfknowledge through preexisting knowledge of the (self as) radically other, with the effect of alienating the creature from both self and other. As this knowledge becomes increasingly evident, so too does the nature of what is lost in this moment of alienation through language-asknowledge technology: the possibility of community. Once again, the representation of what was previously familiar but is newly organized has the paradoxical effect of concomitantly allowing and disallowing function at the same site. In this scene of language acquisition, it is as if an increase in the capacity to know of and through language decreases the capacity to employ it in a meaningful way. In a sense, language becomes an improper object; ill-suited to social communion or even to thinking about society and self. Such a complex and prominent presentation of language-as-technology, only to have it turn back on and cannibalize itself, calls further attention to Shelley’s rich representation of languageas-technology. Peter Brooks has claimed that, more than any other element, it is “in the question of language, both as explicit theme of the novel and as implicit model of the novel’s complex organization, that the problem of the monstrous is played out” (593), and that “in the Monster’s use of language the novel poses its most important questions” (592). Even beyond language as an explicit theme in the novel and the self-reflexive mode of its complex organization, one can find in certain meaningful extradiegetic parallels to historical events that Frankenstein addresses a similar focus on language; or evidence of language-as-technology playing an important role in the historical order of things. Like members of the Luddite Uprising who sought in vain dialogical engagement and diplomatic solution with those who governed and oppressed them, the creature will ardently seek communication through language as a technology of engagement and inclusion (i.e. in the function of community). 2 But language fails the creature in its attempts to “become linked to the chain of existence and events, from which I am now excluded” (Shelley 149). 2 See Gardner. <?page no="82"?> Scott Loren 82 Despite the thematic centrality of language in Shelley’s Frankenstein, however, and despite the perspicacity of Brooks’ Lacanian reading, I wonder if slightly too much has been taken for granted in appointing language absolute priority of place. For example, by claiming that “[t]hrough the medium of language, a first relationship is created” (593) between the creature and Victor, are we not neglecting the role of the specular so prominently addressed in Victor’s language at the moment of the creature’s animation? Beyond the fact that there is no communication between the creature and Victor, Victor’s justification for rejecting the creature as a failure based on its physical appearance is out of character up to that point and initially reads as insufficient given the circumstances. Even prior to these considerations, I would question whether it makes sense to read in this scene the establishment of a relation between Victor and the creature. Reading Victor’s reaction through the lens of psychoanalysis, it looks more like disavowal followed by hysterical fits of repression (Victor’s episodes of bed-ridden unconsciousness begin here). Moreover, we can say nothing of the creature’s reaction, as it is not described, and the creature has vanished by the time Victor regains consciousness. On the one hand, Brooks’ reading of the creature as monstrous through a theory of monstrous lack in language is convincing in its historicization of language’s stake in the techno-social moment of revolution: from agrarianism to industrialism, from the authority of the Word to the authority of reason. Claiming that the “Monster . . . uncovers the larger problem of the arbitrariness, or immotivation, of the linguistic sign,” Brooks situates Shelley’s representation of the monstrous with regard to “the displacement of the order of words from the order of things” (594), as Foucault has also put it. In this regard, “the ‘godlike science’ of language depends, not on simple designation, on passage from the signifier to the signified, but rather on the systemic organization of signifiers” (Brooks 594). As suggested in the previous paragraph, and perhaps also in the highly specular and yet also elliptic manner through which the creature acquires language-as-technology, Brooks’ Lacanian frame of thinking technologies of language and vision is highly specific in its ordering and function of each, and thus perhaps somewhat limiting. It partly derails, I think, the potential legibility and intelligibility of Shelley’s fuller range of representational techniques regarding both language and vision together. In the following sections, I want to consider their representation, and representation of other things through them, in terms that avoid facile displacement and replacement; in terms of degrees of difference, of in-between spaces, of presence and <?page no="83"?> Words as Witness 83 absence, of structures for cognition and recognition, where recognition can mean recalling, rethinking, or identifying. In addition to a rather binary on/ off model of recognition as a question of the creature’s being within or without language, prior to this we addressed Shelley’s framing of language-as-technology as containing native bifurcations in process and purpose (communicative and cognitive), and her ability to evacuate or enable through reorganization. Regardless of the model we apply, I want to draw attention to mirroring as a universal technique Shelley mobilizes for her representations of all three narrators, each one’s desire for recognition, and the strange conditions of re-presenting this desire in and with regard to language-astechnology. Each narrator expresses a desire for recognition. Each articulates the importance of recognition in a social capacity for and through the functions of both forms of language-as-technology: Walton, Victor, and the creature all desire someone to converse and communicate with. They each articulate how language as a mode of communion is necessary for their sense of self, and for thinking oneself in relation to others. Respectively, they each articulate desire for this form of recognition, sympathy and community not only in terms of language, but in terms of sight and vision: someone to return a gaze, to share a vision, to recognize oneself in. Accordingly, the task of thinking these similarities and differences of and through recognition will take into account their representation within language; but as it is not only the conventional mode of discursive language-cognition that Shelley mobilizes to frame representation and recognition for her readers, rethinking the habitual acts and borders of convention will continue to be important to the analysis. Recognition: Genre as Technique Frankenstein critically addresses diverse modes of recognition, both in the conventional sense of familiarity, or the ability to identify what one is confronted with, and with the less conventional notion of rethinking modes of identification. In the historical context of Frankenstein and its deliberations on techno-social change, notions of selfhood play an important role; in particular, the writing and renegotiations of individual identity slightly preceding and concomitant to loss of the transcendental signified. There are a number of relevant intertexts and genres here. My focus will be on thinking genre through letter-writing, autobiography and scientific observation. As intertextual points of reference, Hegelian <?page no="84"?> Scott Loren 84 models of being and related texts should facilitate an exposition of how group-specific types of knowledge are generated, distributed and regulated (the three technographic dimensions). Shifts in structural and formal distinctions will also concern our evaluation of Shelley’s exercise in novel forms of presenting thinking and rethinking. Although each of the three characters provide frames to and mirrors for understanding the others, and while incorporated in each of them is a Hegelian dynamic of development and perpetual change, their legible differences allow for the identification of three levels of development, or three different trajectories of the first man: the first man in something like a state of nature and subject to animal needs and desires (the creature), the first man as desiring recognition and fundamentally social with benevolent tendencies (Walton), and the first man in a “battle to the death for pure prestige” (Victor) (Fukuyama 143). 3 There are various elements working to crystallize the different trajectories of the first man while connecting them at the same time. As we shall see, the shifts in narrative voice that accompany the changes from one biographical account of being to another will make the distinctions in levels of development and trajectories of social being poignantly recognizable. While on an expedition to the North Pole, Walton encounters Victor Frankenstein, who is crossing the frozen landscape in pursuit of what he describes as his monstrous creation. In the fifth letter to his sister, Walton explains that what follows will recount Victor Frankenstein’s fantastic tale, told to him by Victor while recovering on board Walton’s ship. Here the organizational form of the text changes with the genre shift from letters to conventions of the novel and confessional autobiography. Victor will assume the positions of (false) first person narrative voice and focalizer, maintaining these for the majority of the novel. In the middle of the text of Frankenstein there is significant introjection on behalf of the creature, who briefly assumes control of narrative voice and focalization. With these shifts, the frame narrative is among the more conspicuous techniques Shelley employs at a formal level. Through it, three major shifts in narrative voice are constituted. All three are biographical in tone, but vary in style, recounting to a reader or listener the life experiences of another. In the diegetic frame, each account is addressed to a specific audience: Walton to his sister Margaret, Victor Frankenstein to his chronicler Walton, the creature to his creator Victor Frankenstein. 3 See Part III of Fukuyama regarding Enlightenment humanism and the Hegelian subject’s struggle for recognition. <?page no="85"?> Words as Witness 85 Empathic Sensibility - Robert Walton At Frankenstein’s outermost narrative frame, the story begins with a series of letters written by Robert Walton, a seafaring explorer, to his sister, Margaret Saville. Under the generic heading “Letter I,” the story begins: You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings. I arrived here yesterday; and my first task is to assure my dear sister of my welfare and increasing confidence in the success of my undertaking. (13) Already legible at the diegetic level in these first lines are the notions of glory-seeking and the need for recognition juxtaposed with a simple but meaningful act of benevolence in the form of social communion, where siblings are joined through the act of narrative exchange. Beyond the diegetic level and embedded in the genre of letter writing, biographical writing hints at individualism, with Rousseau’s legitimation and popularization of secularized autobiographical-memoir-confessional writing in the latter part of the eighteenth century. As a genre-specific narrative frame that situates internal to it the autobiographical accounts of Victor Frankenstein’s life as well as his creature’s, Walton’s letters to his sister recount his own adventures in an initial framing of the struggle for recognition which will mirror both Victor’s and the creature’s struggles for recognition in ways both similar and different. Like Victor, Walton seeks a discovery of “wondrous power,” in pursuit of which he “may tread a land never before imprinted by the foot of man,” and “whose enticements are sufficient to conquer all fear of danger or death” (13-14). Alongside articulations of the inspiration of vainglory are Walton’s valorization of risk to himself and others in the service of humanity, where he shall confer “inestimable benefit” “on all mankind to the last generation” (14). The framing mechanism of Walton’s letters act as a kind of structurally inverted mousetrap. Like a mise-en-abyme, it provides the reader with clues to decode the meaning of events in the narrative it mirrors; but where the textual conventions of mise-en-abyme allow for a mirroring of story events within the plotting of those events - a small-format story embedded within larger-format story of the text’s frame narrative - Walton’s letters function both as frame narrative to Victor Frankenstein’s story and as mousetrap mise-en-abyme at the periphery of its narration. As such, it is interesting for the way it dramatizes dislocation and <?page no="86"?> Scott Loren 86 decentering as themes that will be continually foregrounded throughout the book. Regarding Hegelian intertexts and thematic mirroring, Walton’s letters establish the symbolic topos of humanist individualism. With the combination of self-possessed agency and self-reflexive awareness as characteristics that enable human development and necessitate the struggle for recognition, Walton makes explicit reference to glory found in non-monetary achievements and the need to be recognized as a man by other men. Towards the end of his first letter, he explains that “life might have been passed in ease and luxury; but I preferred glory to every enticement that wealth placed in my path. Oh, that some encouraging voice would answer in the affirmative” (15). This sets the tone of the next letter, where focus shifts from glory-seeking to self-worth as other-determined. The second letter opens with a reflection on the passage of time and description of his crewmembers as men of action and courage, though lacking in their capacity for reflection. Intuitive as his description of the crew may seem (what else would we expect if not men of action? ), it allows for the contrast to himself that follows. While he too is courageous and able, Walton’s needs are also more refined than those of his crewmembers: I have one want which I have never yet been able to satisfy; and the absence of the object of which I now feel as a most severe evil. I have no friend, Margaret: when I am glowing with the enthusiasm of success, there will be none to participate in my joy; if I am assailed by disappointment, no one will endeavor to sustain me in dejection. I shall commit my thoughts to paper, it is true; but that is a poor medium for the communication of feeling. I desire the company of a man who could sympathize with me, whose eyes would reply to mine. You may deem me romantic, my dear sister, but I bitterly feel the want of a friend. (17) We see in Walton both the Hegelian subject as a man of action who seeks achievement and glory, who requires recognition, and whose needs are more refined than those of the good but simple crew. In these ways, Walton provides an important partial reflection of Victor’s story to come. What we do not see in him are two things that significantly distinguish him from Victor and the creature. First, like Victor, Walton is not a first man in a state of nature whose base needs and desires may be accompanied by non-material needs, but are free of engrained ideologies through social convention. This is the position the creature will occupy, though in constructively problematic ways. And while Walton’s <?page no="87"?> Words as Witness 87 desire for recognition verges on the desire for society per se (companionship), Victor will exchange the recognition he has in the form of social companionship for the self-determined ambition of the fanatic; or, in the battle to the death for pure prestige. Enlightened Individualism? Victor Frankenstein Under the heading “Chapter I,” the opening paragraph of Victor’s autobiographical account is as follows: I am by birth a Genevese, and my family is one of the most distinguished of that republic. My ancestors had been for many years counsellors and syndics, and my father had filled several public situations with honour and reputation. He was respected by all who knew him for his integrity and indefatigable attention to public business. He passed his younger days perpetually occupied by the affairs of his country; a variety of circumstances had prevented his marrying early, nor was it until the decline of life that he became a husband and the father of a family. (30) Like Walton’s self-description, a number of indexes to Hegelian being are immediately legible; particularly in relation to the bourgeois dilemma, and to man in a state of self-awareness. 4 However, where Walton’s opening address positions him as a liberal humanist subject in relation to glory-seeking self realization (or Hegelian freedom), desire for recognition, and marks the impulse for social communion, Victor’s opening positions the liberal humanist subject predominantly in terms of reflexive self awareness through genealogical cognizance and social status: I am by birth . . . and my family . . . most distinguished. Victor’s auto-subjective recounting of ancestry situates him in a larger historical and social context, marking a particular state of beingmind. And while his account signals authority in social status through heritage, it is a heritage distinguished from the bourgeois selfishness Fukuyama addresses in favor of a “self-understanding of liberal society which is based on the non-selfish parts of the human personality, and seek to preserve that part as the core of the modern political project” (145). The integrity of Victor’s ancestry is characterized first by public commitment and next by the private pleasures of familial responsibilities, marking the subjective space of “I” as characteristically civil and social. 4 See Fukuyama chapter 13 on the struggle for recognition and the bourgeois dilemma. <?page no="88"?> Scott Loren 88 To further accentuate her individual characterization of man in or through a state of self-awareness, Shelley supplements the thematic content of ancestry with formal textual and grammatical structures that equally prioritize an auto-subjective positioning of self in (genealogical) relation to other. Of the paragraph’s four sentences, the first two begin with first-person pronominal subjectivity: “I” and “My.” The third and fourth sentences shift subjectivity to a related other: “He.” At stake here is a specific form of self-recognition through other: not one of mirroring (as in a primitive form of the first man), but one of continuity on temporal and material axes (via genealogy). In relation to thematic content (which is ideational), the functional signifier communicating selfrecognition continuity over time and space is ancestral lineage. Regarding formal procedures (which are structural), the concept of subjective continuity is linguistically represented through syntax, repetition and modification in the application of personal pronouns. Initiating the autobiographical narrative, I takes priority of place. A quality of the singular or exceptional might be read in the fact that it is stated at the very beginning, but is not repeated again. A formal extension of I (or self) by means of possession, my initiates the second sentence. It occurs three times between the singular use of I at the beginning and subsequent use of he. He - indicating an other, yet one linked to I - initiates the final two sentences and occurs three times following the last use of my. On the one hand, subjectivity is accentuated here in the formal repetition of personal pronouns. On the other, relational continuity is expressed through a controlled progression of change from the first person pronoun in the opening position, to the possessive pronoun in a middle-secondary position, and to the third person pronoun in a third and final position. Such formal and ideational distinctions position Victor as distant to the (Locke-Hobbes-Rousseau) first man in a state of nature. Victor as man is situated in regard to a heritage of civility and refinement, and with a highly accentuated reflexive sense of self: a self seemingly incapable of intimating that there are fully legitimate ways of knowing and being in the world beyond its own. As becomes clear in plot progression and character development, Victor’s sense of self is organized in an utterly self-centric manner. A suggestion of this characteristic is identifiable in the paragraph above, in that the other men he holds up to reflect upon himself as an individual and social being are inscribed with superiority and entitlement. Presented expressly as possessions of Victor’s (genealogically and grammatically) - my family, my ancestors, my father - Victor’s others appear to be characterized with a greater degree of self- <?page no="89"?> Words as Witness 89 ness than otherness. As such, a contrast is provided to Walton’s otherbased sense of self, with his others characterized through distance: his sister by means of geography and gender, his crew by means of hierarchy and cognitive-communicative capacity. If the proximity of the other increased with the shift from Walton’s auto-subjective first man narrative frame to Victor Frankenstein’s, it becomes still more extreme with the shift to the nameless creature’s doubly embedded autobiographical narrative. In contrast to both Walton and Victor, the creature has neither identifiable familial relations nor approximate social equals that might offer a mirror of othering and thereby a sense of self. This difference - or the triple bind of differing in the lack of difference through similarity - is accentuated by inverted doubling ideationally and formally between Victor and the creature. The paradoxical effect of lacking any other on the creature’s behalf is a state of unmediated, enveloping alienation. Without the apparatus of other-based self-recognition, the creature occupies a position of radical otherness per se, and thus of monstrosity. Where Victor’s positioning as a liberal human subject is aesthetically negotiated in thematic content through the notion of ancestry and in linguistic form through the use of subjective/ personal pronouns, these categorical indexes become ellipses (or null-sum containers) for the creature, who has no ancestry, no name, no social context. Native Otherness - the Monstrous State of Nature The use of first person narrative voice in Walton’s, Victor’s and the creature’s autobiographical accounts signals knowledge and authority in each. And while they mirror one another in various ways, we have seen how the stories they tell and style of telling signal clear distinctions in states of being; or in three moments of becoming. If Walton at the outermost frame represents an empathetic, socially sensible and intellectually refined liberal spirit, and Frankenstein represents a state of acute selfawareness, embedded as a kind of core at the center of these is not an identifiable subject that might be addressed as he, she, you, or I, but a nameless thing: an it (conceptually, a potentially non-mediated state or moment of pure being). Although the characters and character biographies distinctly foreground a particular moment in Hegelian being/ becoming, development, and consciousness, they cannot be reduced to anything like stasis in a particular state. Each is represented as a dynamic location of realization, <?page no="90"?> Scott Loren 90 negation and transformation. The creature moves from pure undifferentiated being, to consciousness, to self-consciousness. Frankenstein moves from other-based self-consciousness to a negation of that state; and while he is in some ways more limited than the other two, he also inhabits a moment of absolute mind that transcends material nature and social institutions. Walton is portrayed as deeply engaged in a battle for prestige but, in a self-sublating moment, transcends the desire for recognition in favor of social morality (all three transform in moments of self-sublation or Aufhebung). At the innermost frame, contained within the double frame narratives of Frankenstein and Walton, and expressed in the form of two self-determining introjections, narrative voice and focalization shift to the creature. Through the embedded narrative of the creature’s autobiography, Victor learns of his extraordinary creature’s life. Centralized in a receding trajectory of pure being (abstract), life (negative), and mind/ spirit (concrete), the creature’s autobiography is a story of development in three stages. The first is a state of undifferentiated sensory experience, material immediacy, and animal necessity: It is with considerable difficulty that I remember the original era of my being; all the events of that period appear confused and indistinct. A strange multiplicity of sensations seized me, and I saw, felt, heard, and smelt at the same time; and it was, indeed, a long time before I learned to distinguish between the operations of my various senses. By degrees, I remember, a stronger light pressed upon my nerves, so that I was obliged to shut my eyes. Darkness then came over me and troubled me, but hardly had I felt this when, by opening my eyes, as I now suppose, the light poured in upon me again. I walked and, I believe, descended, but I presently found a great alteration in my sensations. Before, dark and opaque bodies had surrounded me, impervious to my touch or sight; but I now found that I could wander on at liberty, with no obstacles which I could not either surmount or avoid. The light became more and more oppressive to me, and the heat wearying me as I walked, I sought a place where I could receive shade. This was the forest near Ingolstadt; and here I lay by the side of a brook resting from my fatigue, until I felt tormented by hunger and thirst. This roused me from my nearly dormant state, and I ate some berries which I found hanging on the trees or lying on the ground. I slaked my thirst at the brook, and then lying down, was overcome by sleep. (98) This first state, as a kind of being in itself without internal differentiation between the senses, is free of reflection. Shelley’s highly controlled technical arrangement of pronouns is again remarkable, as is her use of the passive voice to present the creature as a pre-conscious, non-agential <?page no="91"?> Words as Witness 91 thing that is acted upon. The first word of the first sentence of the chapter, which is also the first word of the creature’s tale, is not I - the subject of the tale - but It. For the telling of its own biography, Shelley has the creature begin with a third-person neutral object pronoun. It is meaningful as an initial gesture not marked by subjectivity and agency, but also regarding the act of recollection: the creature is unsure of its initial state of being, as it was not conscious of being at that stage. The next sentence does something similar, syntactically and grammatically shifting agency to a thing (or the creature’s native thingness) that acts upon the creature: “sensations” occupies the active subject position, where the creature is an object (“me”) acted upon. These linguistic techniques for coding the creature as a non-agential object vis-à-vis nonhuman agents that, in a position of agential and grammatical priority, manipulate it are dominant throughout the passage. “I” necessarily occupies an active agent position throughout the passage as well. When it does, Shelley uses various linguistic techniques to compromise the authority of I (mostly in favor of it). This is evident in the first sentence, for example, where there is necessarily an I who remembers, but with difficulty and robbed of syntactic priority: where conventions of language commonly place the active-agent-as-subject towards the beginning of the sentence, the appearance of I is deferred. This technique is repeated with a similar effect by slightly different means in the second sentence. I as an active-agent-subject appears only following the coordinating conjunction, secondarily linking the clause in which it is the subject to a prior clause, in which the same I is subordinated to the object position of “me” - thus giving syntactic priority to “A strange multiplicity.” The effect is created again later in the same sentence by giving priority to “it” in the subject position, “was” as a non-active verb, and “long time,” which together precede “I” both in a function of adverbial temporality but also of symbolic authority (via syntactic priority) in the following manner: it was a long time before I . . . Shelley’s use of linguistic technique through pronominal syntactic arrangement repeatedly subordinates I as an active-agent-subject to a position of lower symbolic value. In correlation, the creature’s ability to identify various impressions (by recollection) is described as contemporaneous with and corresponding to its capacity for differentiating between and identifying the functions of its various senses. Here too, Shelley is careful to limit the emerging agency and will of the creature as it becomes capable of simple tasks. The development from an undifferentiated non-agential thing to a being with sensations and needs is signified in a highly controlled manner through developmental patters in <?page no="92"?> Scott Loren 92 linguistic structure and choice of terms that organize object relations and value. The increasing repetition of “I” as a subject pronoun suggests a presence of being in which the creature achieves more clearly internal differentiation, and begins to be differentiated from other things. However, the state of being is still to be understood as limited in agency and only minimally able to reflect on its position in relation to the world of things for the time being. In Shelley’s arrangement of auxiliary and action verbs, the main verbs take on an adjectival-descriptive function to generate a particular quality in the I presented to the reader: overcome, tormented, hanging, resting and receiving. It is an I that is primarily acted upon, gaining experiential knowledge in a passive manner. Shelley’s constriction of an emerging subject to a being with limited agency and awareness is thus symbolized in her particular choice and use of compound verbs as well as by repeatedly counter-balancing the subject-pronoun I with the object-pronoun me. Shelley’s linguistic strategy is again mirrored in the plot of story and character development. In this first stage of being, the creature describes itself as “a poor, helpless, miserable wretch” that “knew, and could distinguish, nothing” (98). “No distinct ideas occupied my mind; all was confused. I felt light, and hunger, and thirst, and darkness; innumerable sounds rang in my ears, and on all sides various scents saluted me; the only object that I could distinguish was the bright moon” (99). Soon after this description, the creature is able to distinguish light from dark, night from day, cold from heat, insects from plants, and one animal from another. With these developments, the distinction between its self and other things becomes increasingly intelligible. Finally, with the creature’s mastery of fire subsequent to these experiences, a new self-reflecting subject with a greater capacity for abstract thought emerges. In Hegel’s hierarchy of development from being to becoming, he refers to the lowest level of existence as being, which is followed by life, which in turn is subsumed under mind. For the creature’s development, Shelley marks the essential transition from the first stage to the second, and thus from being to becoming, by introducing the trope of fire as an originary technology. Thus, if the title of Shelley’s novel suggests that Victor Frankenstein is a Promethean figure bringing the spark of life to humanity, his creature’s discovery and mastery of fire symbolically frame its entry into a field of existence as analogous to the Hegelian concept of life. <?page no="93"?> Words as Witness 93 Dialectical Synthesis? There are various philosophical intertexts one might map onto Shelley’s triad of narrators, marked structurally by the complex of frame narratives and shifts in narrative voice, and linguistically (textually, grammatically) by the initial pronominal distinctions You, I, It the moment the narrator voice is assumed. Among them, David Shishido’s mapping of Hegel takes into account the historical conditions of slavery as a point of reference for the master/ slave dialectic. In the final moment, with the reader returned to the outermost narrative frame, Shishido suggests that apotheosis is achieved in an encounter between Walton, the “critical ethical character of the text” (123), and the creature. Unlike Victor, Walton can recognize the creature’s ethical being, as a result of which the creature achieves synthesis, and thus the highest state of becoming. Overall, Shishido provides convincing evidence for this line of argumentation. His reading is relevant here due to its resonance with historical techno-social transition relative to the dual revolution, the real historic conditions of slavery, the philosophical traditions of German idealism with Hegel and natural rights with Paine, as well as the more diffuse epistemic shift from the discursive authority of the Word, characteristically pre-secular and agrarian, to the syntagmatic authority of the sign, characterized by institutional schematicism and scopic identification or regulation. Like Hegel and Paine, Kant and Bentham provide historically relevant intertexts here. While Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason - which distinguishes between image as “a product of the empirical faculty of productive imagination” and schema as the organization of “sensible concepts” like “figures in space” that are a product of the imagination “through which and in accordance with which the images first become possible” (273-74) - is more abstract than Bentham’s utilitarian panopticism, both are deeply invested in non-discursive modes of producing, distributing and regulating knowledge and power; that is, in the three technographic dimensions relative to the scopic regime of institutional modernity. Finding additional features in Shelley’s text to substantiate Shishido’s claims would, I think, pose little challenge. However, the relative ease with which synthesis allows for the resolution of realistic psychological antagonism, and the multiplicity and ambiguity Shelley develops in an exceedingly complex manner throughout, is, I think, suspect. In the end, such a resolution would conceptually disarm the text of its political urge to continually reevaluate and rethink as it evacuates Frankenstein’s reliable patterns of generating complexity as opposed to seeking simplifica- <?page no="94"?> Scott Loren 94 tion. With the creature representing the new mass laboring class, this kind of reading also only partially corresponds to the ethical tone of Shelley’s text. 5 The growing proletariat receives support in Shelley’s and her husband’s writings, and from Byron’s political engagement, for example; but I would again stress how Shelley both constructs and deconstructs the rationalist ideals present in the Godwinian-Jacobin novel. As with Brooks, though, I would also argue that Shelley’s work not only permits multiple correct interpretations, even where they produce conflicts in logic; it encourages them. One possible way of problematizing or re-cognizing the historicized Hegelian dialectic model as resolution might be to map the novel’s character trajectories together with the character-specific narrative styles. If giving the creature a voice of scientific reason (as clinical selfobservation and reflection, whose objective position is symbolized in the priority of the pronoun It) functions to sublate some crucial but flawed element in Victor, the fanatical rogue scientist, is it not also antithetical to the Chthonic and domestic-oriented indexes for femaleness inscribed in the creature? Moreover, would such a reading hold up alongside the broader pattern of ambivalence toward the unfinished project of Enlightenment found throughout Shelley’s writing and the ontological demands of Romanticism? Remembering: Syntagmatic Technicity In accord with the technographic dimension of knowledge distribution, the previous section drew attention to Shelley’s distribution of typespecific models for self-knowledge and the technique of recognition through the intertextual integration of Hegelian philosophy; and to how these models are formally distinguished through shifts in genre and narrative voice, or linguistically through the technical application of pronouns and syntactic arrangement. I now want to focus on how Frankenstein can be read in accord with the third technographic dimension of construction and regulation. In so doing, I am primarily interested in symbolic depictions of paradigm shift in Frankenstein, where narrative or discursive sense-making practices, rules and rituals can be seen as giving way to the potential constitution of scopic and syntagmatic practices, rules and rituals. 5 See Edith Gardner or Warren Montag for Marxist readings. <?page no="95"?> Words as Witness 95 To recall Jansen and Vellema, the third dimension examines the “rules, protocols, routines and rituals [that] lead to or follow from task specialization and skill-based association,” how these “shape problem solving and performance,” “enable organizations to work,” and enquires into the “conditions under which actors are included in specialized, skillbased association” (172). Accordingly, the following terms will be used to distinguish between these three related areas of inquiry: rules and rituals, performance impact, conditions for inclusion. With regard to the reappearance of the disjunctive order of signs alongside the Enlightenment conception of Man, Foucault claims that “[m]an has existed since the beginning of the nineteenth century only because discourse ceased to have the force of law over the empirical world” (264-65). At this moment, the status of literature also changes: “it ceased to belong to the order of discourse and became the manifestation of language in its thickness . . . the hesitation that it manifests between the vague humanisms and the pure formalism of language is, no doubt, only one of the manifestations of this phenomenon, which is fundamental for us and makes us oscillate between interpretation and formalizations, man and signs” (265). The movement from a logic of narrative continuity in what Foucault referred to as Classical knowledge, to the epistemic order of the sign - structural, schematic, interchangeable, and, importantly, non-linear - is present in the various ruptures, disjunctures and ellipses in Frankenstein, as well as in the central theme of manipulating and rewriting boundaries. Symbolizing the discontinuous, interchangeable and non-linear arrangement of things in markedly novel organizational clusters, the creature’s body poignantly articulates the concept of remembering. One of the most striking characteristics about the creature’s body is what Bouriana Zakharieva referred to as its composite status. In its materiality, it conjoins individually isolated members of disparate other bodies that, in their material dismembering and remembering, are both present and absent. Concerning its function, if it can be animated, the remembered body of the creature will synthesize life and death, incorporating within it an opposition of things that conjoin to create something that is neither the one, nor the other, nor both, nor neither; but all of these possibilities at once. Regarding its historical symbolism, I should recall that the other prominent pairings potentially intelligible over the course of the story and at the site of the creature’s body are those enabled through revolutionary change: industrial production and mobilization of the masses. <?page no="96"?> Scott Loren 96 A technographic reading of the creature’s body makes evident how it finds greater resonance in the paradigm of syntagmatic technicity, with its characteristics of discontinuity and schematic arrangement. The rules and rituals leading to the body’s production constitute a site of rupture as well. Where the technologies of production were inadequate for the task at hand, Frankenstein must improvise in a way that will radically change the rules and rituals. Similarly, Frankenstein’s departure from and novel reconstruction of rules and rituals will radically impact the body’s performance capacities and ability to work. Finally, rupture is found in the conditions for inclusion at the site of the creature’s body. Epistemic shift away from narrative continuity or discursive authority (of the Word) toward technological and institutional modernity’s episteme of structural technicity (the sign and syntagm) is further evident in Victor’s renegotiation of the boundaries separating life and death: Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world. A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs. Pursuing these reflections, I thought, that if I could bestow animation upon lifeless matter, I might in the process of time (although I now found it impossible) renew life where death had apparently devoted the body to corruption. (51-52) The manipulation of boundaries between life and death has several implications for remembering secular modernity. First, there is the possibility of structural and relational malleability per se. This primary meaning may appear to lack complexity, but is not to be underestimated: the redrawing of familiar and formerly definitive lines around which a considerable part of society is organized has the potential to subdue and to excite. In her rich expositions on social boundaries and their cultural significance, Mary Douglas states that the figuration of society is a powerful and potent thing: “There is energy at its margins and unstructured areas. For symbols of society, any human experience of structures, margins or boundaries is ready to hand,” with thresholds symbolizing “beginnings of new statuses” (141). Shelley exhibits a similar sensitivity to the plurality and proliferation of boundary structures in society and human experience, and to their social significance. In the context of broad techno-social transition, the redrawing of boundaries and, accordingly, their potential as organizers and bearers of social meaning is <?page no="97"?> Words as Witness 97 paramount for the construction of, and regulation through, rules and rituals. We might also consider how the relation between life and death is conventionally characterized by a temporal order that is non-reversible, linear, or at most cyclical. As such, it is reflective of narrative continuity. If the temporal order and structural relations between life and death become malleable and interchangeable, what might the epistemic consequences be for narrative continuity? Shelley provides a seemingly adequate metaphor for thinking this conundrum in the creature’s education and emergence into self-awareness. By watching and experiencing the world around it, the creature learns about and can reflect on the world. By reading and reflecting on its own creation (via Victor’s journals) and existence (via the stories of others), the creature can function in the world, and gain a better understanding of it, but also identifies radical difference in its relation to the world through words. As noted earlier, when learning about human history and society, suddenly “the words induced me to turn towards myself” (115). The creature’s (representational) excision from narrative continuity radically excludes it from society and alienates it from itself. In addition and concomitant to these layered meanings as examples of remembering are the prominent framings of the creation myth, in which human life is formed on the authority of the Word, and its displacement through Enlightenment scientism or humanism, symbolized by Victor who usurps God’s authority (in the role of Prometheus), and the introduction of light into a world of darkness (once again, replacing the Chimera of non-secular discursive authority with Apollonian, Enlightenment clarity). And yet, despite Victor’s fantasy of Apollonian grandeur, and in a manner characteristic of Shelley’s ambivalence, Victor equally resists codification as an Enlightenment hero: One secret which I alone possessed was the hope to which I had dedicated myself; and the moon gazed on my midnight labours, while, with unrelaxing and breathless eagerness, I pursued nature to her hiding places. Who shall conceive the horrors of my secret toil, as I dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the grave, or tortured the living animal to animate the lifeless clay? My limbs now tremble, and my eyes swim with remembrance; but then a resistless and almost frantic impulse, urged me forward; I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit. It was indeed but a passing trance, that only made me feel with renewed acuteness so soon as, the unnatural stimulus ceasing to operate, I had returned to my old <?page no="98"?> Scott Loren 98 habits. I collected bones from charnel houses; and disturbed, with profane fingers, the tremendous secrets of the human frame. In a solitary chamber, or rather cell, at the top of the house, and separated from all other apartments by a gallery and staircase, I kept my workshop of filthy creation; my eyeballs were starting from their sockets in attending to the details of my employment. The dissecting room and the slaughterhouse furnished many of my materials; and often did my human nature turn with loathing from my occupation, whilst, still urged on by an eagerness which perpetually increased, I brought my work near to a conclusion. (52) Here again Victor is in the Promethean position of lightening thief, usurping divine authority through scientific mastery, mechanistic control, and calculated restructuring. Yet here the depiction is antithetical to Enlightenment humanism and to the robust optimism of scientific reason. Far from pouring torrents of light into the dark world (of pre- Enlightenment medievalism), a sense of Christian guilt resonates in Victor’s language as he labors under the Chthonic gaze of the moon in his singular vacillation between schematic scientific order and the cyclical impulses of nature, with her powers of generation and corruption. The passage distinctly mobilizes Christian symbolism - nature as the space of occult and profane knowledge, the clay man, a soul evacuated from the human frame in the presence of death, the atmosphere of judgment, the sepulchral and hellish charnel house - alongside images of industry in its uncanny conflation of life and death. Once again, structural control and an impression of spatial schematics are prominent. Despite its recourse to religious imagery and descriptions of terrific feeling, language in this passage does not display the emotive flair characteristic of the novel’s more Romantic passages (descriptions of natural landscapes, for example), but is measured, clinical, and deadened like the narrator’s self description (rigid, breathless, senseless, eyeballs starting corpse-like from their sockets). The passage accentuates structural technicity and remembering, or movement from discursive authority to techno-industrial institutional modernity, as it moves from descriptions of life, death and nature (breathless eagerness, the living animal and lifeless clay) to mechanistic, automated action (frantic impulse propelling a passive self, passionless, senseless pursuit, trance and habit), and man-made habitats associated with modern institutions (the cell, workshop, dissecting room and slaughterhouse). Comparably, Shelley uses terms for action or labor associated with agrarian or pre-revolution industriousness, and juxta- <?page no="99"?> Words as Witness 99 poses them with terms of engagement associated with post-agrarian institutionalism. Toil, for example, has its roots in Anglo-Norman toiller (to mark, fall, mix or stir) and Middle English tilen (to till). Victor pursues, as if hunting, tracking or trapping; animates, which is etymologically associated with breathing; collects, as if foraging; attends, as if tending animals; and creates, as if he were a craftsman. And as the domestic space of the chamber, house or apartment turn to the workshop and dissecting room, so to do the terms for a more domestic style of labor turn to employment, occupation and work, with many materials and perpetual increase. In Frankenstein, the intimation of an ideal space of pastoral wholeness is at times legible by inference or in descriptions of Victor’s youth, but it is with only this slight exception a space of invisibility in the novel; inaccessible to sight and not characterized through the image. In the predominant trope of remembering without access to memory, in disjuncture, discontinuity and rearrangement, a space of pre-industrial and presecular continuity approximates legibility. This is a form of legibility constituted through ellipsis: not through what is visibly present, but through what is invisibly represented. In Frankenstein, presence characterized by native, originary loss: at the body of the creature that disorients, in the “workshop of filthy creation” from which it emerges, or in the evacuation of agrarian domesticity at the De Lacey cottage concomitant to the creature’s appearance in the visual field. Inconsistencies in voice and narrative, discontinuities in time and space, ellipses in consciousness, language, vision and logic, and the more general rearrangement of disparate parts: all can be read as co-constituting the trope of remembering, as silent witnesses to an age of revolution. Like the presence of mind in a creature with no sense of a past, who is ultimately defined through radical discontinuity, fissure and disjunction, it is the lack of continuity that underwrites and significantly arranges the presence of radical change at all levels in Shelley’s technography. <?page no="100"?> Scott Loren 100 References Allen, Graham. Shelley’s Frankenstein. London and New York: Continuum, 2008. Brooks, Peter. “Godlike Science/ Unhallowed Arts: Language and Monstrosity in Frankenstein.” New Literary History 9.3 (1978): 591-605. Connor, Steven. “How to do Things with Writing Machines.” Writing, Medium, Machine: Modern Technographies. Ed. Sean Pryor and David Trottor. London: Open Humanities Press, 2016. 18-34. Deleuze, Gilles. Kant’s Critical Philosophy: The Doctrine of the Faculties. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984. Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger. London and New York: Routledge, 2002. Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An archaeology of the human sciences. London and New York: Routledge, 2010. Fukuyama, Francis. The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Free Press, 2006. Gardner, Edith. “Revolutionary Readings: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and the Luddite Uprisings.” Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies 1994 (1994): 70-91. Hobsbawm, Eric. The Age of Revolution. London: Abacus, 2006. Jansen, Kees and Sietze Vellema. “What is technography? ” NJAS - Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences 57 (2011): 169-77. Johnson, Barbara. A Life with Mary Shelley. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014. Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Mirzoeff, Nicholas. “On Visuality.” Journal of Visual Culture 5.1 (2006): 53-79. Montag, Warren. “The Workshop of Filthy Creation: A Marxist Reading of Frankenstein.” Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: A Case Study in Contemporary Criticism. Ed. Ross C. Murfin and Johanna Smith. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000. 384-95. Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. London: Penguin Books, 1994. Shishido, David. “Apotheosis Now: A Hegelian Dialectical Analysis of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.” Berkeley Undergraduate Journal 24.3 (2011): 111-26. Zakharieva, Bouriana. “Frankenstein of the Nineties: The Composite Body.” Canadian Review of Comparative Literature 23.3 (1996): 739-52. <?page no="101"?> “If wommen hadde writen stories”: Gender and Social Change in Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Wife of Bath’s Tale” and Jane Austen’s Persuasion Anne-Claire Michoux and Katrin Rupp Geoffrey Chaucer’s Wife of Bath and Jane Austen’s Anne Elliot both note that male authoritative writing delimits women’s social standing, something they are not willing to accept as an unchangeable fact. Each woman therefore offers textual alternatives that challenge the hegemony of male writing. While Austen uses free indirect speech to inscribe Anne’s voice within the authoritative framework of the narrative, Chaucer presents Alisoun’s body as a complementary text to the male literary corpus. As these two women thus resort to specifically female experiences, they call for a double revision of history: a transformation of society that allows women to participate in a world defined by male prerogatives, above all as authors, and a concomitant inscription of women in literary records as individuals with a voice of their own. Keywords: canonicity, female authorship, gender, social change, textual reception As a woman extremely well read in the classics of English literature, Jane Austen is likely to have been acquainted with Geoffrey Chaucer’s Wife of Bath from the Canterbury Tales (1378-1400). 1 Indeed, in Persua- 1 Austen could have read the Canterbury Tales in Thomas Tyrwhitt’s 1775-78 edition, which was reprinted in 1798 and widely anthologised. She may also have been familiar with modernised versions, most notably John Dryden’s adaptation of the Wife of Bath’s Tale and Alexander Pope’s paraphrase of the Wife’s Prologue (Harris, Jane Austen’s Art of Memory 189; for other paraphrases see Bowden 65-92). The Challenge of Change. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 36. Ed. Margaret Tudeau-Clayton and Martin Hilpert. Tübingen: Narr, 2018. 101-121. <?page no="102"?> Anne-Claire Michoux and Katrin Rupp 102 sion (1817), Austen re-examines some of the concerns regarding women’s position in society as expressed by the Wife in her Prologue and her Tale, most prominently through the voice of Anne Elliot. Thus, both Alisoun of Bath and Anne Elliot note that writing is central to delimiting women’s social standing, something they are not willing to accept as an unchangeable fact. Each woman therefore offers textual alternatives based on lived experience that challenge the hegemony of male writing. Alisoun’s experience derives from her body, specifically from the mouth and the vagina, the two female orifices that are metaphorically linked to textual im/ propriety in patristic hermeneutics. As she indulges in pronounced loquacity and generous sexuality, she presents her body as an alternative text to the authoritative literature that tries to confine women’s allegedly devious carnal appetites. She thus opens up a subversive site for a discussion of female authorship, which is illustrated by the tale she manages to insert into the male-controlled discourse that surrounds her. At the same time, she serves Chaucer as a model to explore his position as a vernacular writer, who likewise tries to integrate his writings into the canonical corpus of Latin texts. Yet, while Chaucer self-confidently situates himself as a vernacular writer among his Latin forebears, the Wife can only play with the idea of women as writers with a status equal to that of male authors. Four centuries later, Jane Austen will actually be a woman writer whose status is, however, still a source of contention for her contemporaries. In Persuasion, Austen explores the limited possibilities women have in her society, and specifically contests the authority male writing has in determining not just women’s social prospects, but how their character is shaped and perceived. Through Anne’s voice, Austen rebuts the invariable depiction in books of women as fickle and argues for a reevaluation of the parallel, unrecorded history of women’s experiences. The novel’s endorsement of lived experience allows Austen to uncover the actions of men that disown women their share in history. Albeit in different ways, Alisoun and Anne equally want their voice to be heard in order to change the prevalent conception of women as inferior and in need of male control. According to Jocelyn Harris, one of the few critics to note the echoes of Chaucer’s tale in Austen’s novel, such a change envisages constancy in love and gender equality in a relationship as both Anne and Alisoun “plead for the authority not of <?page no="103"?> Gender and Social Change in Chaucer and Austen 103 books but of experience” (Austen’s Art of Memory 212). 2 Both women certainly challenge the concept of stereotypical gender roles. However, rather than just pitting female experience against male writing, as Harris suggests, we argue that they want their stories to be inscribed in the literary discourse and thus become an authoritative part of socio-cultural history. Their idea of inserting themselves into the male-dominated literary sphere and of, thereby, changing it is underlined by their constant association with textual production. Indeed, Austen resorts to free indirect speech to inscribe Anne’s voice within the authoritative framework of the narrative. The narrator allows the heroine’s consciousness to dominate the narrative and thus the story. In the case of Alisoun, textuality is closely tied to the sexualised female body, which figures as an alternative text to the male literary corpus. In the General Prologue, we are told that Alisoun is from “biside Bathe” (445), an area which was well-known in the fourteenth century for its cloth production. 3 This is the place to be for the Wife as she is very skilled at “clooth-makyng” (447) and cloth-trading. Her textile inclinations are also underlined by the minute details we are given of her fashionable clothing: fine kerchiefs, a large hat, red stockings, soft shoes, a long foot mantle. Alisoun’s prominent connection with textiles subtly aligns her with the specifically female domain of telling stories by means of fabrics. As Kathryn Sullivan Kruger shows, the making of textiles was traditionally associated with women in most societies. In addition to its practical and representative functions, the cloth is a textile narrative that contributes to the fashioning of a community’s collective identity: the cloth, whether it was embroidered, woven, or dyed with the stories or symbols peculiar to their tribe, indicates the important presence of the contribution of women to the creation of culture, its texts, and its history (Sullivan Kruger 21). The production of textiles is therefore associated with a concept of female authorship that is defined by wielding the shuttle rather than the pen. Chaucer may tap into this gendered tradition of text/ ile creation when he presents the Wife as an expert manufacturer of fabrics. At the same time, he of course alludes to the etymological link between text 2 Deidre Shauna Lynch also briefly remarks in her footnotes that “Anne sounds like the Wife of Bath in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, who is exasperated by male clerics’ representation of women” (248). See also Margaret Tudeau-Clayton in this volume. 3 For more information on the surroundings of Bath as an important area of medieval cloth production, see Carruthers. <?page no="104"?> Anne-Claire Michoux and Katrin Rupp 104 and textile - both terms derive from the Latin texere, to weave - a connection which was widely explored in medieval literary, philosophical and exegetical discourse. 4 More than any other of the Canterbury pilgrims, then, Alisoun the clothmaker is intimately linked with textuality from the moment we are introduced to her. The Wife herself discusses women’s (hypothetical) role as producers of texts. She has just launched into a diatribe against the “book of wikked wyves” (685) that her fifth husband Jankyn enjoys reading, a collection of medieval antifeminist treatises (notably including St. Jerome’s Adversus Jovinianum), which depicts women as lecherous, greedy and garrulous. 5 Her furious conclusion is that women would well be able to answer, even to top such unfavourable descriptions of their sex if given a chance: By God, if wommen hadde writen stories, As clerkes han withinne hire oratories, They wolde han writen of men moore wikkednesse Than al the mark of Adam may redresse. 6 (693-96) In Alisoun’s textile imagination, women could easily re-dress men’s stories, but they are in fact excluded from the clerkly oratory, this specifically male locus of written, Latinate learning. In order to counter men’s writings effectively, women have to resort to other means. In her first line, the Wife famously juxtaposes the “auctoritee” inherent to the male, Latin texts produced in the oratory with “experience,” the female sphere of vernacular orality and unrestrained sexuality that she embodies. By indulging in verbosity (her Prologue is by far the longest in the Canterbury collection) and enjoying a sexually active life in and probably outside marriage, 7 Alisoun confirms the picture of wicked women in Jankyn’s book. At the same time she also undermines the role assigned to her by these misogynist traditions as submissive, chaste and silent. 4 For a further discussion of the text/ textile link see the two essay collections respectively edited by Clegg Hyer and Frederick and by Burns. 5 The Wife itemises the writers of these misogynist texts that are all “bounden in o volume” (681). See Hanna and Lawler for the complete primary texts included in Jankyn’s book. 6 Dinshaw (3-14) further examines the link of Adam’s mark with the potentially erroneous marks Adam the scribe leaves on the manuscript page in Chaucer’s short poem “Chaucers Wordes unto Adam.” 7 We are told in the General Prologue that the Wife has had five husbands so far, “withouten oother compaignye in youthe” (451). <?page no="105"?> Gender and Social Change in Chaucer and Austen 105 She insists that her voice be heard and exposes in her tale male wickedness as embodied by the rapist knight. As the Wife thus advocates a reconsideration of gender biases, she is a perfect mouthpiece for Chaucer that allows him to re-examine the position of his vernacular texts in the literary corpus, which are consistently “feminised” and thus face challenges comparable to those of women like Alisoun. As the Wife derives her power from the mouth and the vagina, she is a medieval type of Eve, the maternal source of deviant female appetites as located specifically in these bodily orifices. As Eric Jager shows, Eve’s ears (which opened up to the snake’s seductive speech) and her mouth (which willingly ingested the apple and subsequently instigated Adam into doing the same) are consistently sexualised in patristic discourse. Brought about by the unrestrained physical appetites of a woman, the Fall thus marks the beginning of sexual and textual impropriety. Indeed, patristic writers consider the deviant female body as a metaphor for improper writing, specifically vernacular or non-Christian texts, which requires the control of auctoritas, the proper corpus of canonical literature. 8 Carolyn Dinshaw amply explores this sexual / textual poetics for Chaucer’s works. As she points out, the Wife herself invites us to consider the intricate connection between her body and the authoritative text when she applies the term “glosing” (26, 119, 509), used in patristic discourse for proper textual hermeneutics, to both the reading of a text and her body. 9 The difference is that “The gloss undertakes to speak (for) the text; the Wife maintains that the literal text - her body - can speak for itself” (Dinshaw 115). Arguing that the Wife foregrounds her body as an alternative text to be read alongside the male literary corpus rather than being controlled or even obliterated by it, Dinshaw concludes that Alisoun “expresses a dream of masculine reading that is not antifeminist and a feminine relation to the condition of being read that is not antimasculinist” (117). According to Dinshaw, the Wife opts for “a renovated patriarchal hermeneutic that acknowledges, even solicits feminine desire” (25). While Alisoun certainly advocates feminine desire, the act of “being read” suggests that the female (textual) body remains a 8 See Jager, especially pages 75-82 and 99-142. 9 Incidentally, this connection of the body and text/ ile is already hinted at in the Wife’s portrait, where her clothes not only underline her hunch for stylish clothing, but actually suggest a merging with her body as the broad hat meets the size of her hips (both are “large”) and the red stockings match the colour of her face. <?page no="106"?> Anne-Claire Michoux and Katrin Rupp 106 passive object of the male gaze. 10 Aiming at exposing the control men have over women, Alisoun’s sexual/ textual poetics is, we contend, not limited to hermeneutics but extends to the position of a woman’s textual body within a literary canon that is exclusively defined by learned men. As the pilgrim most prominently linked with textuality, the Wife thus arguably also mirrors Chaucer’s concerns about the inclusion of his vernacular and hence “feminised” œuvre in the authoritative corpus of Latin texts. 11 However, while Chaucer manages to establish himself as a vernacular author in his own right - he is considered the father of English poetry by John Dryden -, Alisoun’s desire that her tale be inscribed in the male literary discourse remains a hypothesis at her time (“If wommen hadde writen”). 12 Female authorship will become a reality for Jane Austen some four centuries later, but as we will see, she too struggles to include her works in the literary canon. Concerned as it is with exposing the normative ways of patristic texts, Alisoun’s prologue culminates in the destruction of one such exemplar. Angry with the pleasure Jankyn takes in reading his misogynist book, Alisoun tears out some pages, which results in the couple’s verbal and physical struggle. Alisoun eventually gains the upper hand, and her victory is sealed when she makes Jankyn burn his book as well as commit his land and money to her. 13 While Alisoun relishes in her achievement, Jankyn remains silent, thus adopting the subservient position usually assigned to women. Ultimately, he becomes literally speechless when he dies, possibly as a result of his economic, verbal and sexual submission to his wife. The disappearance of Jankyn’s misogynist book and indeed the man himself leaves a creative gap for Alisoun to fill with her own text, and she promptly announces: “Now wol I seye my tale, if ye wol heere” (826, emphasis added). The tale is hers above all because it reflects her own 10 This intricate connection and indeed conflation of body and text can also be found in medieval Charter of Christ poems and in several lives of saints. For a discussion of these texts see e.g. Kay. 11 As Martin puts it: “Like her creator, she criticises through comedy, she weighs experience against authority, she is aware of the sexuality within textuality and she jokingly subverts the conventions of male authorship” (Chaucer’s Women 217). Dinshaw points out that the Wife is the only pilgrim that reappears throughout the Canterbury Tales. She is “a source of delight for this male author [Chaucer] precisely because through her he is able to reform and still to participate in patriarchal discourse” (116). 12 For a thorough discussion of Chaucer’s endeavour to establish himself as an authoritative writer of English see e.g. Arner; Minnis (Translations); Scanlon. 13 Martin (“Bookburning”) discusses a potential link between bookburning in Alisoun’s prologue and in Jane Austen’s Sir Charles Grandison. <?page no="107"?> Gender and Social Change in Chaucer and Austen 107 experience of the female body/ text as subject to the male gaze. Indeed, the loathly lady’s body is first the focus of male disgust and later of pleasure when it miraculously changes from foul to fair. 14 This metamorphosis appears to confirm the misogynist fantasies that women have to fulfil men’s desires and that the knight acts upon when he rapes a maiden at the beginning of the tale. However, as Elizabeth Biebel points out, the prospect of making love to the ugly old woman is like a rape for him and “thus the loathly lady reveals to the knight what it is like to be marginalized and to be stripped of self-governance” (74). Having learnt his lesson, the knight places the power of decision into his wife’s hands, thus relinquishing the cruel control he exerted on the maiden’s body earlier on. For Biebel, “[t]he transformed couple in their nuptial bed represent a world in which individuals share mutual respect and equality” (75). In order to reach such gender equality, women have to be given more power in society. Indeed, with her magical metamorphosis the loathly lady literally embodies a change in favour of woman’s social station. Her physical transformation occurs out of her own volition or, if you will, the “sovereynetee” (1138) so important to women in the tale, thus underlining her power to function as the author of her own body/ text. As the site of the hag’s female authorship, the bed therefore figures as an alternative, but equally important locus to the clerkly oratory. As Hollie Morgan shows, rather than just being the traditional room of female confinement, the late medieval bedchamber was actually also a place “owned by women, physically and linguistically” (172). 15 As a place of female empowerment, the bed and its chamber “had wider social implications and witnessed events that affected society on both a local and a national level” (Morgan 172). 16 Indeed, in Alisoun’s tale, the bed also marks the site where other social changes are advocated when the loathly lady tells the dejected knight that old age and poverty are not 14 Harris notes the correspondence between Wentworth’s response to Anne’s supposed physical transformation - he thought her “so altered he should not have known her again” (65) - and the knight’s disgust in Chaucer’s tale with the ugly old lady (Austen’s Art of Memory 191). 15 In her book-length study, Morgan includes the function of the bed in the Wife of Bath’s prologue, but not in her tale. Speaking of the tale specifically, Carter argues that “the bedchamber in which a husband is rendered as subservient as a lover subsumes the usual representation of the court, its hall, and Round Table, as the seat of masculine power” (335). 16 One example of the national importance allocated to the bed as linked to (aristocratic) women is the moment when the bloodline is secured through the birth of an heir, which happens in an exclusively female environment of the chamber (see Morgan 194). <?page no="108"?> Anne-Claire Michoux and Katrin Rupp 108 a shame and that nobility does not depend on rank, remarks that we come back to further down. The loathly lady’s observations tune in with the social changes at the end of the fourteenth century when chivalric privileges are increasingly challenged while a middle class is beginning to establish itself, as represented by the Wife of Bath. The rise of the non-ruling classes to more power is concomitant with a growing importance of the English language, a process that was also embraced by the aristocracy in its attempt to distinguish itself from the French enemy on the continent during the Hundred Years’ War. However, while English was beginning to be employed for official purposes, its use in literature continued to be contested. As mentioned, Chaucer seeks to establish English as an authoritative language next to Latin and possibly French throughout his work, an attempt that is certainly favoured at his time by the socio-political changes which affected all areas of life. In addition to being the site for the exploration of social changes that are ultimately beneficial to women, the bed also marks the place where the bodies of the hag and the knight are joined. In other words, the (complementary) dichotomy of female body/ text and male text/ body that Dinshaw posits is momentarily resolved here, which is precisely what the Wife is aiming at: women’s bodies should not just be alternatives to male texts, but their bodies/ texts should merge with the canonical male corpus. Her concluding wish that Jesus should send women “Husbondes meeke, yonge, and fressh abedde” (1259) invokes a reformed, fresh male body/ text in bed alongside that of the transformed female body/ text. Furthermore, by appealing to Jesus rather than God, Alisoun may allude to the androgynous nature of Christ’s body as both manly and maternal and thereby subtly underline her point that male and female (textual) bodies should be considered equal. 17 As the tale’s setting in “fayerye” (859) makes clear, female authorship remains, however, just a dream for the time being. It is only in this temporarily suspended world of fairies that women author their own texts and where the queen and her ladies are allowed to figure as judges to correct the erroneous body/ text of the rapist knight. In the world of Alisoun, it is still men who correct women. Indeed, the Friar and the Summoner try to prevent her from telling her story after what the Friar terms her “long preamble” (831). Representing religious and judicial authority respectively, the two men want to silence the Wife by telling their own tales. Only when they are in turn silenced by the Host can 17 For a study of Jesus as mother and man, see Walker Bynum. <?page no="109"?> Gender and Social Change in Chaucer and Austen 109 Alisoun proceed with her narrative. As soon as she has finished, the Friar again patronises her when he exclaims: “lete auctoritees, on Goddes name, / To prechyng and to scoles of clergye” (1276-77). 18 Not only is the Wife’s text denied any authority of its own, it is literally framed and controlled by men. Furthermore, Alisoun also depends on men to help her: the Host has to silence the two impostors and ultimately, it is of course Chaucer the poet who writes down her story, 19 a reality that women like Margery Kempe were also faced with. 20 Through the technique of mise-en-abyme, i.e. through the Wife through the hag, Chaucer arguably reflects on the way his vernacular writing too is controlled by other men as evidenced by the numerous Latin glosses that accompany the Wife’s prologue and tale in most manuscripts. As Graham Caie points out of the Ellesmere MS, most of the glosses are from St. Jerome’s Adversus Jovinianum. The misogynist treatise that is prominently included in Jankyn’s destroyed book of wicked women thus reappears on the manuscript page to frame the (female) textual body. Furthermore, since “the glosses are given a highly prominent position side-by-side with the text” (Caie 350) it seems that they not only vie with the vernacular text but actually try to outwit it with their Latinate erudition - just as the Friar and Summoner attempt to outmanœuvre the Wife by their alleged literary superiority. However, while Caie sees the glosses as moral correctives to the Wife’s idiosyncratic interpretation of authoritative texts, they also offer “a playful or ambiguous layer of reading” (Kerby-Fulton 220). If, as Kerby-Fulton suggests, these glosses were actually authorised by Chaucer himself, the manuscript page thus opens up an additional site for him to gesture to the position of his feminised, vernacular text. 21 But even if Chaucer’s hand in the glosses cannot be fully verified, they were read as comments empowering women. As Theresa Tinkle points out: 18 The Friar’s desire to silence the Wife surely also stems from his anger at her mocking attack on his profession at the beginning of her tale. 19 Speaking of the reversed gender roles in the tale, Carter interestingly maintains that Alisoun here “rewrites the script” (334), when writing is precisely something she cannot do. 20 Since Margery Kempe was illiterate, she had to ask men to write down her mystical experiences. For a discussion of authoritative writing and the role of the female body in Margery Kempe’s works see Herbert McAvoy. 21 In her close analysis of the glosses’ content and their interaction with the text in the Ellesmere MS, Kerby-Fulton finds that there is “support to the case for their being Chaucer’s” (216). <?page no="110"?> Anne-Claire Michoux and Katrin Rupp 110 Whereas Chaucer develops the Wife of Bath as a contained subversion of Against Jovinian, many of his scribes present her as a credible lay preacher of marital rights and responsibilities, suggesting approval of her challenge to clerical asceticism. (116) Just as Alisoun’s body/ text usurps the traditional position of the authoritative author/ glossator, so Chaucer successfully insinuates his vernacular œuvre into the Latin corpus of his literary forebears. The Wife, however, remains a “fallible author,” to adapt Alastair Minnis’s term: she can exert some oral authority, but she cannot author a written text. 22 Persuasion resumes the Wife’s discussion of women as sources of “auctoritee” and the possibility for their story to be inscribed in the public discourse of history. The novel opens on this very notion of who writes history and whose authority lies behind it. In the opening scene, Sir Walter is poring over the entry for the Elliot family in the Baronetage, a publication which provides the list of the order of baronets, a title handed down from father to son. The Baronetage encodes patrilineage, a system that writes women out of history. The Elliot wives are an anonymous mass of “all the Marys and Elizabeths they [the male heirs] had married” (4). They are merely instrumental in producing descendants who will carry the family name and keep the property within the family line. Anne’s mother suffers this fate: the grammatical construction “by which lady (who died 1800) he has issue” (4) dispossesses Elizabeth Elliot of her individuality and her role as mother since it assigns the children to Sir Walter. She is a simple vehicle, with no agency and no history. The Baronetage on the other hand represents a “textual mirror” (Tanner 206) for Sir Walter, who moreover inscribes his own version of history when he annotates the volume to add family events, thus constructing the Elliot family in his view. The pen is in his hand, giving him the advantage over the Elliot women. Austen’s narrative therefore points to two parallel histories: on the one hand the official, male, printed history, encountered in the Baronetage, newspapers, or the “navy-list” (70) that for instance records the ships Captain Wentworth commanded, and on the other hand the unpublished history of daily life, which concerns mostly women and cannot be traced in books. As Adela Pinch notes, “while men can find their past in books of public chronicles, women, like Anne Elliot, can turn only to personal memory, for which there is no book” (Pinch 111). Women cannot find their history in books, a silencing Persuasion de- 22 In Fallible Authors, Minnis argues that Chaucer explores heterodox ideas via the Pardoner and the Wife while staying fully within orthodox discourse. <?page no="111"?> Gender and Social Change in Chaucer and Austen 111 nounces and attempts to redress. Men may have “satisfying relations to books” (Pinch 111), unlike women, but social changes in the early nineteenth century mean that even they can no longer simply rely on old forms of “auctoritee” to secure their social relevance. Rather than representing authority, Sir Walter’s marginal inscriptions reveal his growing social impotence: Wentworth has entered the realm of official history through his naval career. It is through experience that his name in inscribed in history. “Auctoritee” no longer dictates place. Just like the loathly lady in Alisoun’s tale, Persuasion calls for a double revision of history: both a transformation of the male-dominated society that “clerkes” commemorate and the reinscription of women in literary records as individuals in their own right. As Sir Walter himself detects in his recognition of “the unfeudal tone of the present day” (150), England is undergoing large-scale social changes that unsettle a system based on property and ancestry. 23 Just like Chaucer, Austen, through an examination of the figure of the gentleman, questions the right England’s nobility has to its authority to lead the country. As the hag argues in the Wife’s tale, He nys nat gentil, be he duc or erl, For vileyns synful dedes make a churl. For gentillesse nys but renomee [. . .] It was no thyng biquethe us with oure place. (1157-59; 1164) “Place” refers to birth, an element that Sir Walter sees as defining identity, a view Persuasion disproves. Indeed, an inherited title such as Sir Walter’s baronetcy does not confer the moral qualities that “gentillesse” implies. Gentility cannot be found in a book or in an inherited name but must be sought outside of official history, in a person’s actions. The “auctoritee” of the Baronetage is replaced by experience, in the form of contributions to society. Wentworth as well as his fellow naval officers rise socially through meritocracy, not birth. Just as Alisoun’s tale, Persuasion redefines “gentilesse,” or gentility: the true nobility is one of character. It is in this redefinition of gentility which re-examines men’s “place” as well as in her parallel exploration of women’s inscription in history that Austen continues the debate Chaucer’s Wife started. 23 English society is in a period of transition, emblematised by the Musgrove family in the opposition between the parents’ “old English style” (38) and the children’s new modern approach, exemplified in the “improvement” (39) the family home undergoes. <?page no="112"?> Anne-Claire Michoux and Katrin Rupp 112 The social changes advocated in the Wife’s tale and in Persuasion open up a site for women to assert themselves. Even though Anne may seem the embodiment of submissiveness and compliance (Wentworth after all blames her for following her surrogate mother, Lady Russell’s advice to break off their engagement, for giving in to “persuasion”), her family at times literally crawling over her, 24 Anne’s voice is in fact heard throughout the novel. While a change from a first-person narrator in the Wife’s case to a third-person narrative could indicate that agency has been lost, Anne’s voice is not heard directly but filtered through the narrator’s. Critics have observed that it is Anne’s consciousness that dominates the narrative, through the use of free indirect speech. 25 What we hear is her story. The reader’s perception of her character is not determined by a man’s voice. Both Alisoun and Anne dispute the right that male “auctoritee” has to determine women’s character. Like Alisoun, Anne pursues this debate opposite a male interlocutor. Surprised by his friend Captain Benwick’s sudden engagement to Louisa Musgrove, when he had seemed incapable of overcoming his fiancée Fanny Harville’s death, Captain Harville shares with Anne his thoughts on the differences in the endurance of feelings between men and women, the advantage falling on men’s side. Anne contests Harville’s claim that women are less faithful. Harville nevertheless believes that history corroborates him: “[L]et me observe that all histories are against you - all stories, prose and verse. If I had such a memory as Benwick, I could bring you fifty quotations in a moment on my side the argument, and I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman’s inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman’s fickleness. But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men.” Anne replies: “Perhaps I shall. - Yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.’ (254-55) For Captain Harville, it would seem that all of world literature is one large “book of wikked wyves.” His knowledge of “all histories” is, how- 24 The young William Musgrove, Anne Elliot’s nephew, decides to “fasten” (86) himself to his aunt and Anne is unable to remove him physically or by giving him orders. 25 See for instance Booth 250-51; Litz; Prewitt Brown. <?page no="113"?> Gender and Social Change in Chaucer and Austen 113 ever, dubious since, unlike his friend Benwick, Harville is “no reader” and needs “constant employment” (106). He does not share his friend’s “decided taste for reading, and sedentary pursuits” (104). Anne’s comment is equally striking since she is an avid reader, is described as “fall[ing] into a quotation” (91) and as recommending to Benwick “a larger amount of prose in his daily study” (108) to help him overcome his grief. Just as the Wife is slightly disingenuous in her claim that she will not allow books any authority yet refers to a plethora of classical texts to build her case, Anne recognises the usefulness of literature and of the works of male “first-rate poets” (108). Even as she acknowledges their value, Anne underlines their limitations as models for lived experience, especially in telling a woman’s story. Through her speech, which concentrates on individual experience, Anne is able to communicate her own story to Wentworth and assure him of her unchanged feelings. What has taken place in this scene is in fact a reversal of power. During this conversation, Wentworth was writing a letter addressed to Anne, a direct response to her comments. He lets the pen fall exactly at the moment when Harville claims they will never agree. Anne’s suspicion that it is “because he had been occupied by them, striving to catch sounds” (254) is later confirmed. Her words indeed cause Wentworth’s agitation: “‘I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me’” (258). Her speech almost dictated the content of his letter since it is a direct response. Anne disarms Wentworth with her words. She has been able to redress the truth and this time influence the course of her history. It seems that it is only when the pen falls from men’s hands that women can reposition themselves. Austen’s feminist agenda is even more apparent when we examine the history of the composition of this sequence. Persuasion is a rare case in Austen scholarship, for a manuscript of the final chapters survives. The original hand-written version portrays an intimate scene between the two protagonists. There is no gender debate or discussion of authority and authorship, as there is in the published novel. In the revised, published, chapters, Anne speaks while Wentworth is silent and the defence of women’s character in the face of unfair scholarly and fictional representations is at the heart of Anne’s conversation with Captain Harville. 26 The Regency loathly lady - indeed, at “seven and twenty” (151), Anne is considered too old to entertain thoughts of marriage - has convinced the modern knight to trust a woman’s words. 26 See cancelled chapters, Austen Persuasion 278-325. <?page no="114"?> Anne-Claire Michoux and Katrin Rupp 114 Another “loathly lady” who redresses men’s words is the penniless Mrs Smith, Anne’s old school-friend. 27 Mrs Smith illustrates the detrimental effect men’s words can have and the truth of the importance of allowing action to speak for one’s character. An invalid and a widow, confined to cramped lodgings in an undesirable part of the city, Mrs Smith is symbolically removed from history. If her means are so straitened it is because her husband had been tricked by the duplicitous Mr Elliot, heir to the title of baronet and Kellynch Hall, proving that lineage does not automatically confer gentility. Her only way of re-inscribing herself in Bath society is to produce Mr Elliot’s letter which reveals his true character and regains her a respectable position in society, as it reestablishes the truth and Mr Elliot’s guilt. Mrs Smith’s testimony challenges Mr Elliot’s claim to the title of gentleman. 28 This also coincides with Alisoun’s claim that women would write many shameful accounts of men’s deeds if they were given the possibility. Like Alisoun, Mrs Smith’s main source of wisdom is experience. She too weaves, her knitting maintaining her connection to the outside world. It is her illness, however, that has taught her to value experience. It has also placed her in contact with people whose knowledge comes from observation and lived experience rather than from a theoretical authority, as she saw with her nurse, Mrs Rooke: “Hers is a line for seeing human nature; and she has a fund of good sense and observation, which, as a companion, make her infinitely superior to thousands of those who having only received ‘the best education in the world,’ know nothing worth attending to. Call it gossip, if you will; but when nurse Rooke has half an hour’s leisure to bestow on me, she is sure to have something to relate that is entertaining and profitable: something that makes one know one’s species better.” (168-69) What is valued here is practical experience, opposed to the theoretical “best education in the world,” and its ability to improve one’s knowledge of human nature. It is the close and constant interaction with individuals that gives Nurse Rooke this authority. Gossip is surprisingly aligned with knowledge, arguing for an alternative history away from the volumes of literature produced by men. It is thanks to Mrs Smith’s chatting, for instance, that Anne is able to discover Mr Elliot’s real character and his intention to marry her. As “fund” implies, this parallel source of 27 Harris draws a comparison between Mrs Smith and the loathly lady in relation to their pronouncements on poverty (Austen’s Art of Memory 200). 28 Mr Elliot is often presented as a most “gentlemanlike” man, e.g. 152. <?page no="115"?> Gender and Social Change in Chaucer and Austen 115 knowledge is considered more valuable than scholarly instruction. It provides a truer insight into human nature and is of real human benefit to its listeners, since it enables Mrs Smith to overcome her personal difficulties and redress Mr Elliot’s (his)story. Similarly, Alisoun’s confides her “herte” (531) and her “privetee” (531) to her “gossib” (529), her close friend whose name is also Alisoun, thus literally putting double emphasis on the lived experience of women. Regency women’s fate seems even more precarious than that of women in Chaucer’s time. Where Alisoun marries for personal reasons and relies on her trade to support herself, marriage is often the only recourse available to women of Anne Elliot’s class. A member of the gentry, Anne cannot work to secure her independence and her father’s mismanagement of his finances places her in a very uncertain position. Jane Austen is often presented as a romantic writer, whose heroines marry the (wealthy) man of their choice, with the promise that they will live happily ever after. Yet Austen’s novels, Persuasion included, do not paint a naïve, sentimental picture of marriage. There are in fact very few happily married couples in her fiction. Her novels sketch a trenchant analysis of the reality of matrimony in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, revealing its financial imperative. Austen may not have used so daring a statement as Mary Wollstonecraft’s declaration that marriage is a form of “legal prostitution” (229), but her novels reveal a clear awareness of the often harsh reality of marriage in her period. That is not to say that Austen shares a radically different view of marriage from Alisoun and that she rejects the institution of marriage as a whole. Like Chaucer’s Wife, Austen believes that the ideal marriage is one based on mutual respect and gender equality. With the union between Admiral and Sophia Croft, Austen offers a model for marital companionship and partnership, which is best exemplified by their idiosyncratic way of driving their gig, “no bad illustration of the general guidance of their affairs” (99). When Mrs Croft notices her husband might hit a post, “by coolly giving the reins a better direction herself, they happily passed the danger; and by once judicially putting out her hand, they neither fell into a rut, nor ran foul of a dung-cart” (99). This instance of a woman’s recovery of a man’s action is a daring narrative choice. Sophia Croft thus demonstrates the “sovereynetee” Alisoun’s loathly lady argues is women’s strongest wish. Sophia Croft has clearly always been in the habit of deciding the events in her life. We learn that she has accompanied her husband during his naval expeditions, and she concedes that some women have an even greater experience of life on board ship, having “crossed the Atlantic four times” (75). <?page no="116"?> Anne-Claire Michoux and Katrin Rupp 116 More significantly still, Sophia corrects her brother Captain Wentworth’s pronouncements on women: ‘“I hate to hear you talking so, like a fine gentleman, and as if women were fine ladies, instead of rational creatures. We none of us expect to be in smooth water all our days”’ (74). 29 Mrs Croft does not just express her opinion, she challenges her brother’s construction of women. She also enters the realm of male speech by using a maritime metaphor, which quietly argues for the similarity of men’s and women’s experiences. Women can have their voice heard and begin to achieve “sovereynetee.” The very fact that Austen was able to publish her work suggests that the Wife’s hypothesis has become a reality. Ironically enough, Austen’s own voice would, however, be remodelled by male “auctoritee” for over a century, as the textual reception of Persuasion shows. Even if women are temporarily allowed to hold the pen, as Austen does for her heroines, her text is ultimately reclaimed and refashioned by male writing. Persuasion was published posthumously alongside her first completed novel, Northanger Abbey, to which we shall return. Her brother Henry, with whom Jane Austen often stayed while conducting business with her publisher John Murray, appended a Biographical Notice which in effect framed Austen’s words and conditioned the reading of her works for decades to come. The notice constitutes what Gérard Genette calls a “zone of transaction” that exerts “an influence on the public, an influence that [. . .] is at the better service of the reception for the text and a more pertinent reading of it” (2). Our reading of this zone slightly qualifies the usefulness Genette underlines since we see it as a way of framing and controlling female speech, just as the glosses in medieval manuscripts control the Wife’s words. Henry’s short biographical account inaugurated the enduring image of Austen as a writer shying away from political commentary, constructing her as the polite, proper lady of the early nineteenth century: demure, deferential, always bending to male authority, she is more importantly to be seen as having shunned the title of “authoress.” While this does not deny authorship - Austen is still credited as the creator of her works - it greatly limits the range of her voice. Henry insists on her reluctance to publish her works, suggesting she did not wish for her work to participate in history. Henry symbolically picked up his sister’s pen and through his writing determined the reception of her texts, while claiming to present his sister to the public in the way she would have wanted. 29 In her reference to “rational creatures,” Mrs Croft echoes Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication. <?page no="117"?> Gender and Social Change in Chaucer and Austen 117 Austen’s brother assigns himself the role of transmitter and translator of her words by dictating how her novels should be read. The title of Persuasion itself was Henry’s decision, when Cassandra Austen’s letters indicate that the “The Elliots” was Austen’s mostly likely choice (Todd and Blank lxxxiii). This is particularly visible in his postscript to the notice, which includes some extracts from her private correspondence that are supposed to be “more truly descriptive of her temper, taste, feelings, and principles than anything which the pen of a biographer can produce” (331). While this on the surface looks like it is giving Austen her own voice, it is in fact another instance of framing and controlling female speech. The letters are not presented in full but edited (only a few lines are reproduced, and they are accompanied by Henry’s comments), thus constructing a specific image of their author. This piece of paratext conditioned the understanding of both Austen’s work and her life. It encouraged future generations of readers to overlook the potentially subversive, unseemly, and unbecoming aspects of Austen’s work. Austen’s own life and work have been rewritten by male discourse. Subsequent editors of her novels sealed this vision of Austen as detached from political controversy. In the preface to his Standard Novels Series, Richard Bentley claims that “She is, emphatically, the novelist of home” (Bentley xv). Her pen cannot go further than the parlour. It is a form of silencing, which recent criticism has sought to reverse. 30 Austen operated in a world of print dominated by men, a fact to which her work is sensitive. Published together with Persuasion, Northanger Abbey contains a much-discussed defence of the novel which can be interpreted as an epitext that develops the argument that the pen has always been in men’s hands. Public opinion is shaped by male “Reviewers” (Northanger Abbey 30), who often dictated the fate of women’s productions. A marked example of this is the reception of Frances Burney’s last completed novel, The Wanderer (1814), whose popularity was greatly affected by the vitriolic and very personal review produced by the highly influential John Wilson Croker for the Quarterly Review (April 1814). A significant element of Croker’s review is its pointedly gendered attack: women in general and older women in particular are not welcome in the male world of print, just like Anne is socially side-lined because of her age. Croker effectively silenced Burney since his review led her to subsequently abandon novel-writing. 31 Northanger Abbey’s defence of the 30 See for instance Butler; Johnson; Kirkham. 31 Harris suggests that Persuasion is partly a response to this review (Austen’s Art of Memory 25-27). <?page no="118"?> Anne-Claire Michoux and Katrin Rupp 118 novel demonstrates Austen’s early awareness that, even though women’s writing can enter the public sphere of print, it is not given the same authority as men’s, when female productions offer a more accurate exploration of “human nature” (31). In Northanger Abbey, Austen establishes a clear difference between men’s and women’s writing. Supremacy is granted to abridgers of history and compilers of poetical extracts, when, Austen argues, the novel is far superior. 32 The defence contests the authority granted such works as the Spectator, arguing that the novel provides “the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties” (31). It offers an endless source of human experiences. While men are still placed on the side of “real” history as Alisoun remarks, women in Austen’s time are now writing novels, a secondary, supplementary form of history, no less authoritative for being fictional, that increasingly could not be silenced. 32 There may be a parallel between Austen’s “man who collects and publishes in a volume some dozen lines of Milton, Pope, and Prior, with a paper from the Spectator, and a chapter from Sterne” (Austen, Northanger Abbey 31) and the compiler of Jankyn’s “book of wikked wyves” since both are anthologies of sorts. 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Steiner Octavia Butler’s fiction teems with bodies that metamorphose as a result of the inevitable changes imposed by environments and biology. Hence, critics more often than not recruit her novels as expressions of posthumanist yearnings. This essay follows the opposite direction investigating Butler’s corrective glance towards the past. In particular, her trilogy Xenogenesis speaks to the void in critical awareness, by linking posthuman bodies to a progressive narrative that is rooted in Enlightenment metaphysics, the mother-narrative which posthumanism seeks to overcome. The towering figure that connects the posthuman world of the trilogy with its past is Prometheus. Butler’s reworking of the myth revisits and rectifies Classical and Romantic articulations of Prometheus, while validating the past of Black America in ways that reject post-racial forms of posthumanism. Keywords: race, posthumanism, classical and romantic Prometheus, civil rights, non-violence All that you touch You change All that you change Changes you The only lasting Truth Is Change God is Change. Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower (1993) The Challenge of Change. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 36. Ed. Margaret Tudeau-Clayton and Martin Hilpert. Tübingen: Narr, 2018. 123-142. <?page no="124"?> Enit K. Steiner 124 Few writers have dealt with the topic of change as openly as African American science-fiction novelist Octavia E. Butler (1947-2006). “God is Change” reverberates in her increasingly discussed novel Parable of the Sower (1993) echoed by the imperative that human action “Shape God,” hence, shape change. 1 In Parable of the Sower, Butler constructs a narrative that cautions against the equation of change with progress and asks how human action in the midst of an ever-changing reality can bring about ameliorative change. This is a much-debated question by feminist thinkers. Carol Gilligan in her book The Birth of Pleasure (2002) forcefully argues that myths have a performative influence on cultural and social arrangements. To make this point, her book explicates that obsession with the Oedipus myth has given love and pleasure a tragic name, connecting them to loss, violence and death. What, Gilligan asks, would the Western world look like if it drew on a myth where love, rather than being riveted to tragedy, is strengthened by resistance and leads to pleasure and new life? Her book embarks on a journey that explores the myth of Psyche, Cupid and their child Pleasure, as an alternative to the death-driven Oedipal map. At the end of the book, Gilligan impresses on the reader the recognition that not only do myths shape us, but that deep structural transformation involves myth-changing. This is an insight that I see at work in Butler’s oeuvre, in particular, in her trilogy Xenogenesis. The trilogy made up of Dawn (1987), Adulthood Rites (1988) and Imago (1989) bears change in its title as an unprecedented beginning, the beginning of the strange or foreign (xeno). Here, Butler deliberates the inevitability and challenges of change, scrutinizing imaginatively processes of physical and behavioural transformation. Her peeks into the strange and unprecedented have earned Butler the praise of critics for whom her scenarios are intelligent efforts that seek to thread humanity’s way out of the maze of the past looking ahead to cyborg imageries: imageries that contest firm boundaries, the mind-body dualism and replace a common language with what Donna Haraway calls an “infidel heteroglossia” (Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs 181). This essay follows somewhat the opposite direction, arguing that Butler, indeed, moves humanity ahead into uncharted territories of the posthuman and post-terrestrial, however, again and again, as it advances into the unknown, her narrative throws a corrective glance 1 Parable of the Sower has gained momentum for its prophetic “Make America Great Again,” the mantra of nationalist forces in the novel that was to spearhead Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. The slogan harks back to anti-Roosevelt campaigns in the 1930s before being revamped as an exhortation - “Let’s Make America Great Again” - by Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign in 1980. <?page no="125"?> Posthuman Prometheanism and Race in Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis 125 backwards. In this sense, in Xenogenesis, change occurs through investigations of the past. I take the change that results from this corrective glance to be a warning sign for those too eager to recruit Butler’s work as celebration of posthuman politics and aesthetics. The posthuman is a contentious, if not ultimately, ineffable term that evades categorizing for the sake of producing the kind of inclusive fragmentation and openness that contrasts the self-contained, unified, exclusive human. There is little difficulty in accommodating Butler’s novels within the notion of posthumanism understood as an umbrella term that offers “a way of naming the unknown, possible, (perhaps) future, altered identity of human beings, as we incorporate various technologies into our bodies” (Thweatt-Bates 1). On these terms, Xenogenesis’s genetically enhanced Humans, 2 or her human-enhanced aliens represent the crossing of boundaries associated with posthuman bodies. The difficulty arises when posthumanism stands for a progression, a moving beyond the past, most pertinently a racialized past, that dodges “a more comprehensive examination of the role of race in the human’s metaphysics” (Jackson 216). As Lewis Gordon aptly puts it, posthumanism has a different valence for dominant groups whose “humanity is presumed” than it has for racially subordinated groups who “have struggled too long for the humanist prize” (Gordon 39). Butler’s trilogy speaks to this void in critical awareness, by linking her posthuman bodies to a progressive narrative that is rooted in Enlightenment metaphysics, the very mother-narrative which posthumanism seeks to overcome. The towering figure that connects the posthuman world of the trilogy with its past is Prometheus. Xenogenesis premises some of its fundamental transformations on changes infused into this myth. Prometheus, identified in Ancient Greek sources as creator, liberator and father of human civilization, was revitalized with singular emphasis in the works of European Romanticism. Like some of the most influential afterlives of the myth, Xenogenesis retains the central concern with tyranny and Promethean freedom, but renounces the violent component of the titan’s rebellion. Warfare and physical violence are etymologically linked to rebellious behaviour, but as I hope to demonstrate, Butler’s fiction conceives of the Prometheus as a pacifist figure aligned with the Civil Rights movement’s creed of non-violent revolution. 3 My argument unfolds in two stages: I first argue that, in its representations of posthuman 2 The capitalization here keeps with Butler’s spelling. 3 Rebellion shares with war the Latin root bellum, which is also the personification of the Greek daemon of war Polemos, or Bellum in Roman mythology. <?page no="126"?> Enit K. Steiner 126 bodies, the trilogy displays unacknowledged affiliations to key Enlightenment values such as perfectibility and Bildung as well as the reduction of Blacks to mere bodies. Second, these affiliations are the seedbed for Butler’s reworking of the myth of Prometheus, allowing her to revisit the narrative of justice and hope through her Black Prometheus, and thus revise Romantic articulations of the myth. Ultimately, this revision validates the past of Black America in ways that contest post-racial forms of posthumanism. 4 A few words on the future imagined in the trilogy might be helpful for the uninitiated reader to follow this essay’s argument: the first book of Xenogenesis starts out with an Earth devastated by nuclear war and one single individual, an African American woman, Lilith, who realizes that she has been kept captive in suspended animation on a spaceship for more than two centuries by an alien race called Oankali. Not harmed, although cured of cancer through genetic modification by her captors, Lilith in exchange for her life receives the task to awaken other Humans and convince them to accept to mate with the Oankali. But the Humans, repelled by the Oankali’s snake-like sensors spreading all over their bodies, reject interbreeding in order to preserve their human genetic material unchanged. Except for Lilith: in a half-willed, curiositydriven approach, she explores Human-Oankali sexuality, which involves a human male, human female and a genderless Oankali. Later, unknowingly, she is impregnated by her Oankali partner, finding herself estranged from her human peers. With this unwilled pregnancy, a change is introduced into the order of human procreation, a change burdened by its affiliation to rape. The inception of such a new life form, the first of its kind, constitutes the cliff-hanger in book one. Back on Earth, in book two and three of the trilogy, we meet different kinds of communities falling into two groups: those made up of human-Oankali families that originated with Lilith and grow through human-Oankali reproductive intercourse, and only-human resisters’ communities that live in physical stasis. Here, through Oankali genetic modification, Humans age very slowly, but despite their prolonged youth, they cannot procreate. In book three, another kind of resister community emerges: Humans, who due to unpredictable physiological changes can procreate, but because of endogamous intercourse, their offspring is malformed and sicknessridden. 4 For a discussion of the limits of posthumanism as a paradigm for theorizing race see Holly Jones and Nicholas Jones. <?page no="127"?> Posthuman Prometheanism and Race in Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis 127 All three books pivot on the question of futurity of a postapocalyptic Earth and humanity, as all three must deal with the unexpected changes of interbreeding: in book one, the inception of mixed offspring; in book two, the birth of a male Human-born hybrid, the human gender feared for its violent tendencies; in book three, the birth of a genderless human-born hybrid, which signals a shift in the power relations between the races. With the birth of a genderless hybrid, or construct to use Butler’s term, the Oankali lose monopoly over reproductive technologies. Up to this point, genderless Oankali have engineered the mixing of human-human, human-Oankali, or Oankali- Oankali genetic material. Now, the human-Oankali construct can engineer reproduction, and thus, be not only sexually acted upon. By imagining a race like the Oankali - acquisitive, oriented toward collectivity, forward-thinking about preservation through change and adaptation that requires continual splitting, moving, and merging with other species - Butler’s Xenogenesis conceives of the posthuman as a departure from Cartesian individuality. While for Humans the Oankali are unwelcome saviours who have resuscitated humanity from the ashes of self-destruction only to tamper with it and transform it into a new living thing, the xeno, Butler endows the Oankali with an acquisitive drive to mingle with whatever non-Oankali material comes their way, as long as it generates life. They covet any kind of life that propels the evolution and, thus, ensures the survival of all involved species albeit in new modified forms of existence. Because the unity and atomic individualism attached to Cartesian subjectivity is not part of Oankali ethos, it has been often argued that Butler breaks with the past when she parts ways with identity traits held dear by the European Enlightenment. In this vein, critics like Jim Miller understand Butler as a novelist who “prods us to move beyond old dilemmas and imagine a different future” (Miller, “Post-Apocalyptic” 340). There is little doubt about her focus on a future that differs from the past, but as for her treatment of old dilemmas, it would be hasty to speak of a move beyond them. Rather, the changes she introduces in her future scenarios result from mutations produced through the merging of old solutions with old dilemmas. Take for example her conceptualization of alien life, the Oankali race, in Xenogenesis. They are chiefly the reason for the alignment of Butler’s novels with cyborg theories: with three partners being necessary for procreation (male, female, and genderless), they dissolve the binary reproductive scheme as we know it; the genderless partner (called ooloi) dissolves the impermeable boundaries of the human body, by merging the skill to act upon another body with the ability to live that body’s <?page no="128"?> Enit K. Steiner 128 experience. The heterodiegetic narrator succinctly summarizes this sensory synchronicity: “What it [the ooloi] gave, it also experienced” (Dawn 161). And as Oankali reproductive technologies mingle with Humans, the construct family itself expands from a dualistic (one mother, one father giving birth to offspring ) to a pluralistic structure (two mothers, two fathers - of each gender, one Oankali, one human - and a genderless parent, the ooloi, the genetic engineer in this pentadic structure). Yet the Oankali are neither entirely alien, nor agents of absolute change, but rather friends or guests, the other meaning of xeno, from the past. They enter the scene as humanity’s rescuers with a justification that looks back to Enlightenment values such as perfectibility. For the Oankali, stagnation heralds extinction, whereas survival dictates change, fusion with other species not simply to change for change’s sake but to acquire better life-sustaining abilities. For Oankali perfectibility, Humans represent a boost and an impediment: they house valuable genetic material but also the hierarchical thinking that triggers violent behaviour and undermines the species’ survival. Consequently, Humans should not be allowed to procreate in the absence of Oankali technologies that keep their death drive in check. In their first encounters with Humans, the “literal unearthliness” of the Oankali’s bodies should not distract from the familiar goal they envisage for the Humans (Dawn 11). The Oankali awaken the victims of the nuclear war from suspended animation for the purpose of further development, their own and Humans’ next phase of evolution. Why bother to take Humans out of the spaceship, Lilith asks, why restore their consciousness, what expects them in the wake of such desolation on Earth? Oankali’s answer, “Education. Work. The beginning of a new life,” unexpectedly aligns the narrative centred on an alien species with the legacy of the Bildungsroman (Dawn 10). Compelled by curiosity about terrestrial life-forms, in particular Humans, they see in Lilith a subject of study and agent of education: “You’re rare,” they tell her, “a human who can live among us, learn about us and teach us. Everyone is curious about you” (Dawn 106). Curiosity, according to Barbara Benedict, a double-edged concept first conceived as the vice causing the fall of Adam and Eve in the Judeo-Christian tradition, became linked to the spirit of inquiry that fuelled the Early Modern European explorations. At this juncture of Western history, curiosity’s connection to both meliorism and transgression strengthened, while curiosity came to connote “the transgressive desire to improve one’s situation in the world” (Benedict 18). Not least, curiosity emerged as the engine of scientific knowledge, or Bildung, that would prove humankind’s propensity toward <?page no="129"?> Posthuman Prometheanism and Race in Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis 129 betterment. In Butler’s science-fiction, to “learn about us and teach us” captures the Oankali’s Bildung-driven ethos. But when the Oankali use the term “trade” or “gene trade” to describe the nature of their work, that is, interbreeding with Humans as a transaction of mutual benefit, Bildung hints at the dark underbelly of an acquisitive thirst reminiscent of the imperial quest that sent European explorers in search of new worlds and condoned, in the name of improvement and progress, the unspeakable horrors of the slave-trade. As Cathy Peppers rightly reminds us, the first Oankali-engineered child born to Lilith and her dead human partner cautions readers to note that “any historically accurate genealogy of African-Americans must acknowledge the spectre of coerced miscegenation at its origins” (Peppers 50). The pregnancy is a transgression that Lilith even as mother of several construct children never writes off. Impregnated by her genderless Oankali partner with the material of her human lover without her consent, she never accepts that partner’s justification that her body yearned for the pregnancy against the voice of her cultural upbringing and prejudice. After years of peaceful and loving cohabitation with the Oankali, she still relives this negation of her right to choose with “flares of bitterness” (Adulthood Rites 25). Relating the dark genesis of her posthuman family to a stranger in the presence of her son Akin, the first male human-born construct, she asserts the value of free will that later acquires a trade-changing value for Akin: “They forced you to have kids? ” the man asked. “One of them surprised me,” she said. “It made me pregnant, then told me about it. Said it was giving me what I wanted but would never come out to ask for.” “Was it? ” “Yes.” She shook her head from side to side. “Oh, yes. But if I had the strength not to ask, it should have had the strength to let me alone.” (Adulthood Rites 25, emphasis added). Encouraged by Butler’s and more importantly Lilith’s African-American origin, most critics consider this pregnancy, and by extension the entire interbreeding project, to be a reminder of the rapes that marked the fates of thousands of slaves in the Atlantic slave trade (Peppers 29; Boulter 175-77). 5 Perhaps because this reading relies mostly on the shocking conclusion of book one, failing to address the complexity added in book two, it comes dangerously close to injuring the very vic- 5 Jeff Tucker questions the accuracy of this mirror narrative, making the important point that Lilith’s integration in her human-Oankali family is based on love and is “more than simple Stockholm Syndrome” (Tucker 174). <?page no="130"?> Enit K. Steiner 130 tims about whom it seeks to raise awareness. Lilith’s answer to the question whether she wanted this pregnancy before it happened, a very different question from whether she grew to love the offspring once the deed could not be undone, is “Yes. Oh, yes.” This answer cannot be mapped on the raped bodies of the Atlantic slave trade. Taking cue from Naomi Jacobs’ astute remark that Butler is more invested in questions of “symbiosis” than of slavery, it is worth noticing the coexistence of opposites in this pregnancy which Lilith describes as a “surprise” (Jacobs 104). Recovering earlier, darker and ambivalent usages of the word, especially that of rape, Lilith’s choice of the word surprise (surprendre, to be seized upon), draws attention to the dual nature of her pregnancy as both forced and wanted. As Christopher Miller’s Surprise: The Poetics of the Unexpected from Milton to Austen (2015) tells us, in the works of the Enlightenment, surprise underwent a noteworthy semantic shift from rape to military ambush, violent attack - Milton writes in Paradise Lost about being “surprised by sin” - to signifying nothing less than a pleasurable experience. Butler’s “surprise” condenses this two-century-long transition in one single ambivalent act: in days of peace and days of war, this pregnancy haunts Lilith relentlessly because the impregnation came upon her as an ambush harbouring unfathomed pleasure and desire. This unsettling mixture of desire and passivity remains for Lilith as much a source of self-condemnation as of resentment towards the alien Oankali. Insisting on free will and speech - “if I had the strength not to ask, it should have had the strength to let me alone” - Lilith pegs down a definition of free will to which Oankali technology is blind (Adulthood Rites 25). My arguing against a straightforward rape paradigm of the Black enslaved body in Xenogenesis does not downplay the importance of race in the unwilled pregnancy of Butler’s Black protagonist. On the contrary, Butler’s scenario belies the post-raciality of posthumanism and exposes the latter’s complicity with the racialized conception of the human deployed to legitimize the buying and selling of Blacks: when Nikanj impregnates Lilith, reading her consent in her body, Butler has her alien rehearse Enlightenment theories that conceived of blackness uniquely as embodiment, and of Blacks as mere bodies. 6 The negation of will is a wrong that the narrator never allows Lilith to forget, even when Lilith’s biography follows a kind of co-existence with the Oankali redolent of what Donna Haraway calls companionship with other species (Haraway, 6 It would exceed the scope of this essay to address various Enlightenment representations of Blacks that recognized their subjectivity and decried their enslavement as human fellow-beings. <?page no="131"?> Posthuman Prometheanism and Race in Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis 131 Companion Species 12). After this initial transgression, Butler’s syntax projects this companionship of bodies necessarily as a companionship of wills. The fluidity and, therefore, ambiguity of wills in the trilogy, is announced in the sentence that concludes the disclosure of Lilith’s unconsented pregnancy: “She let Nikanj lead her into the dark forest and to one of the concealed dry exits” (Dawn 248). Here, the narrator distributes agency among her Human and Oankali protagonists: Lilith allows Nikanj to lead and show her the way out into a new future as the first mother of a construct child. At the end of book one, Humans and non-Humans are locked in each other’s wills and knowledge. This last sentence plants the seed of a struggle for re-distribution of power between Humans and non-Humans that will bear fruit in book two which steers toward the restoration of human agency projected in book one only at the syntactic level (she lets him lead her). For this, the myth of Prometheus explored in book two is crucial, as it enables the narrative to tackle issues such as self-determination, general will, and change achieved through persuasion rather than force. At the same time, by attaching a persuasive strategy to Prometheus, Butler keeps her Prometheanism rooted in the history of Black America and its post-slavery insurrection for equality. The main Promethean figure of the trilogy is Lilith’s construct son, Akin, pronounced ah-kin, the protagonist of book two and the first human-born male since the war. I say main because more than one character and more than one species bear resemblances to the myth of Prometheus. Nonetheless, most Promethean affiliations gather around Akin, whose very name (akin) conjures shifting resemblances in the different communities he inhabits in the book. The narrative places Akin’s fate in the hands of Humans who refuse miscegenation and, therefore, were sterilized by the technologically superior Oankali. As a consequence, outside Oankali-human settlements, where construct children are born and raised, the rest of the Earth is populated by only-human settlements full of adults who wait to die without the hope of renewal through procreation. As one character summarizes the bleak situation, the Oankali have erased the future of resisting Humans: “We die and die and no one is born” (Adulthood Rites 107). An act of rebellion as well as Human’s desperate effort to steal new life brings the human-Oankali Akin in contact with the resisters: as a young child Akin is kidnapped by sterile Humans to be sold in only-Human settlements. Even when Akin is discovered to be a construct who will shed off his human features during metamorphosis, the stage where sexual maturity is achieved, his kidnappers value him dearly, in the hope that after the surgical removal <?page no="132"?> Enit K. Steiner 132 of all Oankali physical apparatus, such as sensory spots and body tentacles, what remains is the first human-looking child. From the very first pages then Akin’s story navigates the waters of the Prometheus myth: through an act of theft, rebels bring the child Akin to the Humans like a Promethean gift, carrying the hope of new life. The energy of the classical Prometheus, “a thief, a rebel against authority, creator of mankind” informs the childhood of the hybrid Akin (Dougherty 20). At first extrinsic to Akin himself, this energy melds with his role as a hero, a saviour, a liberator, and as the one who restores human fertility, a second creator of mankind. The reader is primed to expect the emergence of heroic protagonism in Akin’s character when she learns that Akin means “hero” in Yoruba. Clear-sightedly, Akin links his physical exceptionality to his name: “if you put an s on it, it means brave boy. I’m the first boy born to a Human woman on Earth since the war” (Adulthood Rites 104). Hence, Akin’s existence in itself introduces a novelty in the power relations between Humans and non- Humans which by the end of the narrative will signify the restoration of human fertility and the rebirth of human civilization. During his stay in the resisters settlement, tellingly called Phoenix, Akin experiences the yearning of his human hosts for the survival of their race, which he acutely understands to be more than about the survival of biological material but about the desire to determine how to live and die. On the heels of this recognition, Akin assumes the full weight of his responsibility: “Giving life to a dead world, then giving that world to resisters” (Adulthood Rites 225). It is equally important to note that, although a posthuman, or construct, Akin represents a racialized Prometheus: as the construct son of an African American mother thrust in the process of passing as a Human during childhood, he embodies suspended and reactivated raciality. The Promethean exceptionality of his mission starts to unfold first in Akin’s empathy for Humans, his capacity to read like no one before human behaviour and the centrality of free will in Humans’ ways. First, captivity makes him painfully aware of Lilith’s conflicted choice as a mother of construct children: “Lilith sometimes hated herself for working with the Oankali, for having children who were not fully Human. She loved her children, yet she felt guilt for having them” (Adulthood Rites 115). In light of his mother’s hate and guilt, Akin himself a child of guilt, increasingly questions the Oankali’s decision to deprive Humans of their ability to procreate free of the Oankali. Life among Humans confronts him with different interpretations for the Oankali trade: to Humans, the gene-trade is synonymous with “infect[ion]” and “af- <?page no="133"?> Posthuman Prometheanism and Race in Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis 133 flict[ion],” that is, the nemesis of life (119). He starts questioning Humans’ subjection to a choice between a guilt-ridden or death-ridden existence. Early socialization among Humans imbues him with an unprecedented recognition of humanity. No one before Akin had come to know Humans “as a truly separate people” (133), a recognition that fosters in him the “utter certainty” that the Oankali should not coerce Humans to either change genetically or die (133). Due to their commitment to change, Oankali are regarded by Humans in the novels (but also by most critics) as agents of boundless transformation and difference. There are two aspects that complicate this view: first, change does not mean indefinite identity and the erasure of the past. While, unlike the Humans of the novel, the Oankali do not indulge in what Frederic Jameson calls post-modern nostalgia, the desire to return to an idealized past that never existed, this does not signify erasure of the past. On the contrary, the Oankali family, despite its construct structure, cultivates deep bonds with living and deceased generations: “these bonds expanded, changed over the years, but they did not weaken” (Adulthood Rites 184). Every adult and child carries in their names their genealogy, including the kin groups of every parent and their homes. The results are long names that function as identity markers. Humans expect the Oankali to drop these impractical, convoluted names in the course of the evolution set in course by interbreeding. Why would they keep record of the intricate structure of their construct posthuman families? But Oankali deny that kind of traceless change: “No. We’ll change them to suit our needs, but we won’t drop them” (Imago 7). This practice of retaining and adapting the past gives to Butler’s aliens a firmness rarely recognized, comparable to the way Stuart Hall sees “post” theories operate: “as not deserting the terrain but rather, using it as one’s reference point” (Hall 140). Second, Akin recognizes a deeply entrenched principle of liberty among the Oankali: the right to accept change through interbreeding or to refuse it. Not all Oankali mate with Humans. One section, the Akjai, continue unchanged, while remaining connected to the entire Oankali collective. And here resides the seed of injustice that Akin makes it his life’s mission to rectify: Humans should have the right to remain unchanged by the trade just as some Oankali do (133). The first to see the potential of liberation in this imbalance, Akin fashions himself in Promethean individualism: Who among the Oankali was speaking for the interest of resister Humans? Who had seriously considered that it might not be enough to let Humans choose either union with the Oankali or sterile lives free of the <?page no="134"?> Enit K. Steiner 134 Oankali? Trade-village Humans said it, but they were so flawed, so genetically contradictory that they were often not listened to. He did not have their flaw. He had been assembled within the body of an ooloi. He was Oankali enough to be listened to by other Oankali and Human enough to know that resister Humans were being treated with cruelty and condescension. (Adulthood Rites 159) Seeing himself as the missing link, as the right and rightful spokesperson on behalf of Humans before the Oankali, gene-Gods and gatekeepers to the future of the human race, Akin resembles Aeschylus’ Prometheus to the extent that he bestows hope on humanity. In Prometheus Bound, the titan tells the chorus of the Oceanides that he changed Humans’ destiny by placing “blind hopes” in them and by giving them fire which would teach them many skills (Aeschylus 250). Fire and hope meet in Akin’s narrative: he learns the human proclivity for selfdetermination and hope, - at times “vain” hopes, a fitting synonym for “blind hopes” - in the settlement called Phoenix, a name reminiscent of both annihilation and rebirth (Adulthood Rites 159). Fire, and by extension warmth, as the source of human life, together with the skills to control it are promised by the Oankali to Akin: in preparation for the exodus of human resisters towards Mars, the Oankali will teach Akin “the processes of changing a cold, dry, lifeless world into something Humans might survive on” (216). Akin’s story on Earth ends with hope and fire: Phoenix, the settlement divided by the prospect of Akin’s Mars colony, burns. This is also the end of book two, but in book three we learn that many settlers rising from the ashes of Phoenix have joined Akin and for some, although not all Humans, the Mars colony continues to represent the best of all choices. In the end of book two, like Lot’s wife, Akin throws a last glance at Phoenix but that is as much the announcement of an ending as of a hopeful new beginning. Being that one individual who will “try to save them - what is left of them - from their empty unnecessary deaths,” Akin resembles the Romantic Prometheus (Adulthood Rites 182). Byron’s “Prometheus” (1816) exalts the titan as the one who changed human destiny by “making Death a Victory” (Byron 241, line 59). This is a good moment to note that empathy for human suffering motivates the redemptive energy of Byron’s Prometheus, as it does Butler’s: Titan! to whose immortal eyes The sufferings of mortality, Seen in their sad reality, Were not as things that gods despise. (Byron 239, lines 1-4) <?page no="135"?> Posthuman Prometheanism and Race in Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis 135 Butler’s alignment with the Romantic Prometheus is not surprising. Since the Romantics, who wrote in the context of racial slavery and saw in Prometheus a potent vehicle of reform, his myth “has come to serve as something like a myth of modernity itself” (Hickman 2). But as Carol Dougherty shows in her survey of the myth from Greek Antiquity to the present, Prometheus showcases an “innate flexibility”: not one of the earliest sources gives a complete telling of the myth, rather we must glean “the parameters of the Prometheus plot” from a variety of texts (15). It is a flexibility that the Romantics make their own more than previous generations. It is also a flexibility harnessed in Xenogenesis. Several afterlives of the Prometheus myth coalesce in Butler’s narrative: Plato’s, Byron’s as mentioned above, Percy and Mary Shelley’s. And there is the influence of the non-violent Civil Rights movement endorsed and defended by Martin Luther King that informs the solution of the conflict between the Promethean protagonist and the power he challenges in Xenogenesis. As Promethean aspirations crystallize in the character of the human-alien Akin, the reader starts wondering how the narrator is going to resolve the opposition between one individual and the power structure in which he is embedded. This is also where Plato, Percy and Mary Shelley bring modifications to the myth. While Plato eschews the opposition between the titan and Zeus, the Shelleys highlight the collision of wills through the rhetoric of the curse that unravels suffering and violence. Butler’s solution is a strategy of persuasion based on equal rights which are informed by empathy in their claim to remove the curse-like sterility imposed on Humans. Her Promethean Akin, once knowledgeable about human ways of life and subjection, joins the Oankali-construct community on the spaceship where all kin groups can communicate and whose consensus he must have for human fertility to be restored. First mediated by a representative of the unchanged Akjai Oankali, and then through his own reasoning and feeling, Akin pleads with the entire collective, Oankali and constructs, for an extension of empathy and equality: “Look at the Human-born among you [. . .] If your flesh knows you’ve done all you can for Humanity, their flesh should know as mine does that you’ve done almost nothing. Their flesh should know that resister Humans must survive as a separate, selfsufficient species” (Adulthood Rites 229). Impassioned as this speech is, it does not meet with consensus; rather, confusion, dissension, and fear spread among the collective. Humans’ fertility seems an impossible goal. But even when contemplating his failure to convince the collective, Akin never flirts with belligerence. His future attempts will go towards the honing of persuasive skills <?page no="136"?> Enit K. Steiner 136 that will win other people with whose help he can argue again in front of the collective. In face of denial and opposition, Akin’s mediation then remains faithful to a non-violent ethos that not only unites a discourse of empathy with one of rationality but also acknowledges the limits of solitary Prometheanism: “Then let me [give Humans a world of their own],” he pleads “and those who choose to work with me do it” (Adulthood Rites 226). In the end, young Akin puts his case in the care of the representative of Akjai Oankali, who stands for full identification with the other: “If I were a Human, little construct,” he tells Akin “I would be a resister myself. All people who know what it is to end should be allowed to continue if they can continue” (Adulthood Rites 229). The result of such non-violent perseverance is a compromise: human fertility is restored but Humans cannot be allowed to rebuild their civilization on Earth where their unchanged hierarchical thinking threatens the survival of other species. For this reason, they must be removed to Mars, where, the Oankali-construct collective predicts they will end up killing the new life the Oankali re-enabled them to create. Butler’s chosen collaboration between Akin and the collective offers a peaceful resolution to the Prometheus myth. Although the tradition of the rebellious Prometheus sparked by Hesiod and Aeschylus has had more proliferations, a joint effort to rebuild mankind between Prometheus and Zeus can be found in Plato’s Protagoras. Peaceful, although after much suffering and obstinate longing for change (the word occurs more than twenty times), is also Percy Shelley’s choice of a middle way in Prometheus Unbound (1820): Shelley keeps intact Prometheus’ defying politics against despotism, but boycotts the discourse of hate and rebellion, when he has Prometheus renounce violence and through this very act usher a new era of hope “till Hope creates/ from its own wreck the thing it contemplates” (Shelley, Prometheus Unbound 286, 4. 573-75). Butler’s Prometheus shares with Percy Shelley’s a modification of the very concept of radical change. Its radicalism consists in going against the history of radical thinking. David Bromwich is right to read Prometheus Unbound as pressing beyond the ethic of revenge, the bedrock of radical thinking, attempting to make “the idea of revolution impossible to imagine in metaphors of leveling or turning-the-tables or violent overthrow” (Bromwich 241). 7 This revolutionary idea shaped when Percy 7 It should be mentioned that in both Prometheus Unbound and Xenogenesis, despite adherence to an ethos of non-hate, the revolutionary energies erupting from Prometheus figures do not eschew violence completely. Shelley licenses the presence of violence through the character of Demogorgon, the executor of Jupiter’s destruction, while <?page no="137"?> Posthuman Prometheanism and Race in Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis 137 encountered the anti-Promethean romance of Mary Shelley. Xenogenesis, too, reflects on lessons drawn from Frankenstein, in more ways than Prometheus Unbound does. Mary Shelley’s choice to plant in the realm of the family a conflict rich in implications for mankind in its entirety, prefigures Butler’s decision to plug her posthuman narrative into family networks and formulate both an ethics of empathy and justice from within these networks. Of course, Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus (1818) can hardly be praised for non-violence, but its consensus and sympathy-seeking efforts are all the more remarkable because they fail. Significantly, before vowing to persecute his creator and rob him of everyone he loved, the creature whose scientifically assembled body resembles Akin’s (assembled by an ooloi), appeals to Victor’s empathy and sense of justice. Murder is the consequence of Victor’s failure to respond to what the creature calls “fellow-feeling in misery” and “reason.” 8 This is not the case in Xenogenesis, which glances back to not such a distant past. Here, the call for the exercise of fellow-feeling and reason that marked the history of twentieth-century Black America with its road to justice through non-violent participation matters. In his trailblazing article “Non-Violence: The Only Road to Freedom,” Martin Luther King affirmed his commitment to non-violent opposition writing: “The nonviolent strategy has been to dramatize the evils of our society in such a way that pressure is brought to bear against those evils by the forces of good will in the community and change is produced” (King 32). The history of non-violent opposition and disobedience is older than the Civil Rights movement and the instances of peaceful resistance in face of suffering, war and injustice are too many to be mentioned here. However, King’s formulation of “the American racial revolution” that he was leading as “a revolution to ‘get in’ rather than overthrow” resonates in important ways with Butler’s approach to power in Xenogenesis (King 32). Before addressing these resonances, it is worth recalling that King’s commitment to a non-violent way has led critics to more readily associate Malcolm X with Prometheanism, writing of his vision of revolutionary violence as taking hold like Promethean fire prior to his resolution to join forces with King (Joseph 85). 9 Butler surrounds Akin’s pacifist negotiations with the rage and fire of Phoenix’s unconvinced resisters. 8 The creature specifically draws on these discourses speaking about having sought “fellow-feeling in misery” and “reasoned” with Victor to no avail (Shelley, Frankenstein 242, 192). 9 See also Bryan Shih and Yohuru Williams. <?page no="138"?> Enit K. Steiner 138 King’s non-violent “strategy for change” (a subtitle of his article) rejects rebellious Promethean politics that seek to throw out rather than get in. I understand Butler’s solution to remove non-changed Humans to Mars as being informed by King’s non-violent politics of change. While relocation to Mars may seem like a cutting loose from the ruling power structure, a segregation imposed by the power structure, a getting out since overthrow is impossible, Promethean Akin argues this move as a “getting in,” a vindication of the same right to continue unchanged that Oankali allow themselves. It is also a “getting in” in the sense that King conceived of the non-violent racial revolution as sharing in the opportunities accumulated by the power structure in place (King 32). Although segregated because of their violent tendencies, Akin’s Mars colony can survive not only through Oankali’s extension of the right to procreate, but also through Oankali’s active participation and sharing of the life-sustaining technologies that make Mars habitable. The other salient aspect of this resolution is that Akin’s intervention, brought about by the desire to get in rather than overthrow, rectifies the shortcomings of Mary Shelley’s Prometheus. Theodora Goss and John Paul Riquelme argue for a bridge between Frankenstein’s superhuman and Xenogenesis’s posthuman that connects Romantic Gothic to technological imaginary. A key aspect of this connection is Butler’s embrace of difference through the figure of the Oankali. In them Butler plants an attraction to the kind of difference that repels Frankenstein: the unexpected, immeasurable novelty of the hybrid offspring (Goss and Riquelme 441). This is largely a valid point, but there is one crucial difference that the Oankali until Akin’s mediation have kept at bay by censure rather than embrace: human’s tendency towards violence, a by-word for their death-drive, amply proven in the nuclear war that nearly extinguished them. Also not addressed - I think because Goss and Riquelme do not describe the bridge between Frankenstein and Xenogenesis as Promethean - is the fact that the narrative allows for enclaves of relative sameness, such as the Akjai Oankali or the Mars colony negotiated by Akin. Akin’s Promethean endeavour, in the sense of the cutting-edge scientific endeavour that Western science-fiction would give it, to inhabit an inhospitable planet like Mars with the help of Oankali genetic skills, enlists the Oankali’s acceptance of the nurturing role they can and, as rescuers and life-givers in a post-war reality, must play in the rebirth of humanity. They not only agree to restore human fertility, provided that Humans conduct their deadly experiment on Mars, but also provide their knowledge of making a lifeless planet liveable through Oankaliengineered, fast-growing plants and animals (Adulthood Rites 246). In this <?page no="139"?> Posthuman Prometheanism and Race in Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis 139 sense, Akin succeeds in persuading the Oankali collective to concede to Humans two rights that Victor Frankenstein never concedes to his creature: first, the right to be nurtured after being brought to life, and second, the right to procreate. When he realizes that Victor will never live up to his duty towards him, the creature promises to segregate himself in the plains of South America with the female companion that Victor will create for him. A promise that never materializes because Victor destroys and disperses the assembled female in the waters of the Orkney Islands out of fear that “a race of devils would be propagated upon the Earth, who might make the very existence of the species of man a condition precarious and full of terror” (Shelley, Frankenstein 190). The fear of terror must be faced also in Xenogenesis. So must the fear that the Promethean gift may be a curse in disguise. It is more a fact than a fear in some Greek sources, most notably in Hesiod’s Works and Days, that Prometheus’s intervention marks the dawn of an era of toil and hard manual labour for humankind. This awareness also weighs on Butler’s Akin, who even in the hour of victory must contemplate: “He would give them a new world - a hard world that would demand cooperation and intelligence. Without either, it would surely kill them” (Adulthood Rites 257). The fear of violence, crushing hardship and unresolved past chastens any jubilant reading of Butler’s imagined futures. In Xenogenesis, for Humans, a post-terrestrial scenario signifies an extension of the Copernican wound: if Copernican theory displaced Earth as the centre of the known universe, Butler’s fiction displaces Earth (and its Humans) from being the sole locus of life, intention, development or kinship-based social arrangements. It is also a wound that reaches deep into the very critical thought that more often than not celebrates such displacement at the expense of engaging critically with its devastating potential; a wound that testifies to the unacknowledged seed of past dreams of perfectibility and transcendence in posthumanist thought. Butler’s protagonist leaves for the Mars colony as a liberator but also as the one aware of the limited future of the Earth and the latent harm to which his exodus will expose an untouched planet and a multitude of soon-to-be-born lives. He can counter the evidence for Humans’ casual and cosmic belligerence only by hoping that a new life on Mars, ironically, an environment adapted to human needs through Oankali technology, can also produce positive socio-genetic change. Such endorsement of the human, as Terry Eagleton puts it, is “hope without optimism”; sober and aware of unpredictable changes like those that gave life to Akin himself, both fearful and beneficiary, and about which Butler refuses to give calming certainties. Thus, expanded and changed, <?page no="140"?> Enit K. Steiner 140 Butler’s Prometheanism, presses forward in unweakened form the chastening and hard wisdom won by some of the British Romantics: that, in order to be and remain life-affirming, the Promethean endeavour must reinvent itself in ways that resist what Réne Girard calls “the mimetic attraction of violence” (Girard 837). <?page no="141"?> Posthuman Prometheanism and Race in Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis 141 References Aeschylus. Prometheus Bound. Ed. Mark Griffith. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Benedict, Barbara M. Curiosity: A Cultural History of Early Modern Inquiry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. Boulter, Amanda. “Polymorphous Futures: Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis Trilogy.” American Bodies: Cultural Histories of the Physique. Ed. Tim Armstrong. New York: New York University Press, 1996. 170-85. Bromwich, David. “Love against Revenge in Shelley’s Prometheus.” Philosophy and Literature 26.2 (2002): 239-59. Butler, Octavia. Adulthood Rites. New York: Warner Books, 1988. ――― . Dawn. New York: Warner Books, 1987. ――― . Imago. New York: Warner Books, 1989. ――― . Parable of the Sower. New York and London: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1993. Byron, George Gordon. Byron’s Poetry and Prose. Ed. Alice Levine. New York and London: Norton, 2010. Dougherty, Carol. Prometheus: Gods and Heroes of the Ancient World. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2006. Eagleton, Terry. Hope without Optimism. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2015. Gilligan, Carol. The Birth of Pleasure: A New Map of Love. New York: Knopf, 2002. Girard, René. “The Plague in Literature and Myth.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 15.5 (1974): 833-50. Gordon, Lewis R. “African-American Philosophy: Theory, Politics, and Pedagogy.” Philosophy of Education (1998): 39-46. Goss, Theodora, and John Paul Riquelme. “From Superhuman to Posthuman: The Gothic Technological Imaginary in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis.” Modern Fiction Studies 52.3 (2007): 434-58. Hall, Stuart. “On Postmodernism and Articulation: An Interview with Stuart Hall.” Ed. Lawrence Grossberg. Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies. Ed. David Morley and Kuan-Hsing Chen. London: Routledge, 1996. 131-50. Haraway, Donna. Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Others. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2003. ――― . Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, 1991. <?page no="142"?> Enit K. Steiner 142 Hickman, Jared. Black Prometheus: Race and Radicalism in the Age of Atlantic Slavery. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Jackson, Zakiyyah Iman. “Outer Worlds: The Persistence of Race in Movement ‘Beyond the Human.’” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 21. 2-3 (2015): 215-18. Jacobs, Naomi. “Posthuman Bodies and Agency in Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis.” Dark Horizons: Science Fiction and Dystopian Imagination. Ed. Rafaella Baccolini and Tom Moylan. New York: Routledge, 2003. 91-111. Jones, Holly, and Nicholas Jones. “Race as Technology”: From Posthuman Cyborg to Human Industry.” Ilha do Desterro 70.2 (2017): 39- 51. Joseph, Peniel E. Dark Days, Bright Nights: From Black Power to Barack Obama. New York: Perseus Books, 2010. King, Martin Luther. “Non-Violence: The Only Road to Freedom.” Ebony 21.12 (1966): 27-32. Miller, Christopher. Surprise: The Poetics of the Unexpected from Milton to Austen. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015. Miller, Jim. “Post-Apocalyptic Hoping: Octavia Butler’s Dystopian/ Utopian Vision.” Science Fiction Studies 25.2 (1998): 336-60. Peppers, Cathy. “Dialogic and Alien Identities in Butler’s Xenogenesis.” Science Fiction Studies 22.1 (1995): 47-62. Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. Ed. D. L. Macdonald and Kathleen Scherf. Peterborough: Broadview, 2001. Shelley, Percy Bysshe. “Prometheus Unbound.” Percy Bysshe Shelle’s Poetry and Prose. Ed. Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat. London and New York: Norton, 2002. 202-86. Shih, Bryan and Yohuru Williams. The Black Panthers: Portraits from an Unfinished Revolution. New York: Perseus Books, 2016. Thweatt-Bates, Jeanine. Cyborg Selves: A Theological Anthropology of the Posthuman. Burlington: Ashgate, 2012. Tucker, Jeff. “The Human Contradiction: Identity and/ as Essence in Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis Trilogy.” Science-Fiction 37.2 (2007): 164- 81. <?page no="143"?> “even now,/ Ev’n now”: Coleridge’s Interval Simon Swift This essay focuses on Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem of 1798 Fears in Solitude in order to explore the peculiarities of a thinking of the present time as an interval between past and future in Romantic lyric poetry. Where Modernist prose might be understood, after Hannah Arendt, to describe the present as a gap or lag between different historical epochs, Coleridge’s lyric present finds ways to make the past and future iterable within a presentation of the “now” as a moment of suspension. It does so through its play on a number of temporal markers such as “still,” “yet,” “meanwhile” and “even now,” and through its uses of grammatical tense (especially the present perfect) in scoping forms of time. I situate Coleridge’s present tense in relation to the topographical verse of the earlier Eighteenth Century from which he took inspiration, and point to some of the ways in which he anticipates a sense of the present as both urgent and empty time in later thinking about political and ecological states of emergency. Ultimately, I argue, Coleridge’s interval yields a time of the now in which the sources of comfort become difficult to distinguish from the sources of vulnerability, and in which the prospect of redemption becomes entangled with the prospect of catastrophe. Keywords: lyric, Romanticism, present tense, catastrophe, war Even now, now, very now…… - Othello (1.1.88) 1 [T]he poem stands fast at the edge of itself; it calls and brings itself, in order to be able to exist, ceaselessly back from its already-no-longer into its always-still. - Paul Celan, “The Meridian” 1 My thanks to Roy Sellars for suggesting this reference. The Challenge of Change. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 36. Ed. Margaret Tudeau-Clayton and Martin Hilpert. Tübingen: Narr, 2018. 143-160. <?page no="144"?> Simon Swift 144 In her extraordinary 1946 review of Hermann Broch’s historical novel The Death of Virgil, a fictional account of the last 24 hours of the Roman poet’s life, Hannah Arendt describes a peculiar “historical no man’s land” that exists at certain turning points or moments of crisis in history (Arendt 158). The birth of the new, Arendt argues, does not always follow immediately upon the death of the old. Instead there is often a delay, pause or interval between them, the time or space of the “No Longer and Not Yet” that gives her review its title. Broch, in Arendt’s account, understands the last day of Virgil’s life as a space between life and death, with death understood as an “ultimate task instead of as an ultimate calamity” (161). The novel’s style, she writes, is shot through with “concentrated tension,” and is marked by a “passionate urgency” that nothing of importance should be missed, even as its exciting descriptions of the natural world come across as “a long and tender song of farewell to all Western painters.” It is as though those descriptions “embraced all that is beautiful or all that is ugly, all that is green or all earthly dustiness, all nobility or all vulgarity” (160). If the death of Virgil marks, in Arendt’s reading of Broch, the end of Classical antiquity’s last great golden age and the imminent arrival of a new, Christian order, Arendt finds a similar transition between historical epochs to be discernible in more recent history, during and after the First World War. So too, she finds the best writing about that turning point in history to involve a tender farewell to the old that is also a passionate effort to record things as they are. But the Twentieth Century’s interval, according at least to Arendt, is altogether more like a void or a no-man’s-land than a last, passionate invocation of created nature. Turning, as she often does, to European literature to provide an index of the meaning of what would otherwise be overwhelming historical and political realities, Arendt tries to make sense of what she calls her own century’s “abyss of empty space and empty time” by drawing a contrast between the work of that literature’s two greatest masters (159). Marcel Proust, her author of the “no longer,” offers in his work, Arendt says, “the last and the most beautiful farewell to the world of the nineteenth century,” whereas Franz Kafka wrote as though “from the vantage point of a distant future, as though he were or could have been at home only in a world which is ‘not yet’” (159). Both untimely, Proust and Kafka, are bridged, in Arendt’s account, by Broch’s capacity to describe the very gap or empty interval that divides them, just as Virgil, for Broch himself, took up his historical place in the transition between the ancient and the Christian worlds. While Broch shares with Proust “a deep fondness for the world as it is <?page no="145"?> Coleridge’s Interval 145 given to us,” he shares with Kafka a belief “that the ‘hero’ of the novel is no longer a character with certain well-defined qualities but, rather, man as such” (159). This triangulation of writers from the space between past and future suggests that Modernist literature, here as elsewhere in Arendt, is not only able to describe the untimeliness of modernity, its reaching toward a future that hasn’t yet happened and its staying with a past which is already gone; it is also able to make the interval between them somehow habitable. Modern lyric poetry, for its part, is particularly adept at both creating and pointing to a sense of the present moment through its use of what Susan Stewart calls “the deictic now” (Stewart 197-208). It may describe the present as the kind of gap between what is over and what is yet to come that Arendt discerns in Broch’s novel. It may also, consequently, maintain the separation between backwards and forwards deixis that accounts, in Arendt, for the contrasting styles of Proust and Kafka. Yet the modern lyric’s imagining of the now often appears as an anticipation of what is coming or held in prospect (Arendt’s “not yet”) which is filtered through a sense of shock or surprise that the anticipated thing, is in fact already happening, already underway in ways that it can be difficult to discern. At the same time, this surprise sits alongside of another form of awareness: that what is supposed to be past (Arendt’s “no longer”) leaves traces and signs of its ongoing presence. I want to suggest in what follows that this particular overlap between past and future characterizes especially the lyric poetry of the Romantic period. It is as if the Romantic “now” cannot quite tell the difference, to coin another Arendtian phrase, between past and future. Much of the affective charge of Romantic poetry grows out of the surprising collision of past and future in the time of the now that it describes; a time which is somehow still perceived as a moment of lag or interval. My main example will be Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s topographical poem Fears in Solitude, which finds a supine Coleridge imagining in prospect the ravaging of a peaceful English landscape by an invading French army (the poem is subtitled “Written April 1798, During the Alarm of an Invasion”). In line with the topographical genre’s tendency to reflect onto the landscape moral and historical questions about how an uncertain future is being produced out of a morally dubious past, Coleridge reads the anticipated invasion as a punishment for Britain’s moral failings, especially its involvement in a globalized economy, including the trade in human beings and wars of colonial aggression, and the ways in which the media haves made of these latter an entertaining spectacle which morally degrades the spectator. But perhaps more unusually, <?page no="146"?> Simon Swift 146 Coleridge also wants to read the coming invasion as an opportunity to undo the very corruption that caused it, through a morally strengthening and purifying effort of national resistance. Also passing through his call to arms is Coleridge’s attempt to publicly distance himself from his own earlier radicalism and reputation as a Jacobin sympathizer. I focus here especially on the ways in which Coleridge’s poem increasingly and intentionally mixes up traces of the past and the future in its articulation of the now. It is not alone in doing so; Charlotte Smith’s topographical poem Beachy Head, first published posthumously nine years later in 1807, is equally haunted by a sense of the now as a shocking collision between a realization that what had been thought over is still ongoing or present in its latency, recalled to mind by current events, whether for good or ill, and another realization that what is anticipated is in fact already happening. These realizations cut, in Smith, between public anxiety about the ongoing threat of invasion and personal crisis. 2 Perhaps there is something in the experience of time in modern lyric poetry that steers it toward this strange conflation of past and future. Writing recently about the modern lyric’s “longing for the now, for a kind of presentness if not always a present tense,” Matthew Bevis also describes the lyric’s realization that “[k]knowledge, unlike experience, is never now” (Bevis 587). I want to bring Bevis’s subtle thought about the lyric’s inhabiting of what might be described as an unknowing now into contact with the thought, in Romantic writing and some of its philosophical and political descendants, that this complex temporal sense is produced under the pressure of public events, or at least under the pressure of their threat. Any conference which uses words such as “field” and “environment” in its call for papers, as did our SAUTE conference on “The Challenge of Change” in 2017, necessarily calls for a treatment of climate change. While my essay is about a war poem rather than be- 2 Many examples from Smith’s poem might be offered; to focus on the idea of a past brought to presence again under the pressure of current events, Smith describes how Pevensey Castle on England’s south coast “frowns even now/ In vain and sullen menace” over its bay (Wu 125); while “With fond regret I recollect e’en now/ In spring and summer what delight I felt/ Among these cottage gardens” (Wu 131). Drawing on Reinhart Koselleck’s identification of the present as both “beforehand not yet” and “afterwards no longer,” Jonathan Sachs has recently drawn attention to how Beachy Head “uses a lyric present, an enduring sense of the now, to unfold the rich layers of time accruing beneath the present” (Sachs 11, 23). I turn to Coleridge’s own uses of the lyric present towards the conclusion of this essay; but where Koselleck’s account of progress involves a temporal acceleration into an “open future” predicated on the arrival of new and unprecedented experiences, my claim is precisely that lyric poetry in this period serves to undermine the notion of an unknown, open future by making anticipation difficult to distinguish from recollection. <?page no="147"?> Coleridge’s Interval 147 ing directly about the current ecological crisis, I hope at least that through the kind of phenomenology of time that I will examine here, and especially through a study of the shock that anticipation of war figures in Romantic poetry, I can begin to describe something of the peculiar relation between lag and catastrophe that shapes our experience of the present, including the temporal phenomenon of climate change. Romantic poems often figure the present as a moment of delay or lag before the sudden onrush of an anticipated, spectacular or catastrophic change. But they just as often stage a realization that that anticipated, violent change has already always been underway in quieter, less noticeable ways. This temporality of the now is marked in those poems by appeals to a clutch of words and phrases such as “while,” “meanwhile”, “even now,” and “yet now,” that mark this realization. Yet these words, alongside another of Romanticism’s key terms, “still,” do double duty by also figuring the equally surprising failure of the past to close itself off from the now. These markers of time are inherited from the meditative and topographical verse of the earlier Eighteenth Century, as I hope to show in what follows, but Coleridge, especially, makes them conspicuously self-divided. This divided temporality, and pathos, of the now also shapes our imagining of climate time. However much we may want to think of climate change as a catastrophe that lies up ahead, that we are yet spared from, it is in fact something that is affecting our lives, even now. But at the same time, we continue to think that there may still be hope that our behaviour around its threat to so many forms of life might change, and that hope too forms part of the present’s structure of feeling. The surprising discovery that something which has been ongoing in the past is still possible, “even now” or that something remains true in spite of other changes, sometimes brings comfort in Romantic poems. When Keats writes that “in spite of all,/ Some shape of beauty moves away the pall from our dark spirits” in Endymion, we are to feel comforted that a thing of beauty is a joy forever, still a joy, despite other, implicitly bad changes (Keats 107). But a realization that something heavily anticipated is already happening can be a discomfiting thing. It is in this latter sense that Coleridge uses the phrase, “even now”, twice in succession, in “Fears in Solitude.” While Coleridge’s phrase is in direct dialogue with poetic precursors like Thomson and Cowper, as I hope to show, it is also worth noting as an aside that there is a deep theological time at play in his phrasing. Twice in the Gospel of John in the King James Version of the Bible the phrase “even now” is used to warn that the Antichrist is already among us. Yet in the same Gospel, Martha says <?page no="148"?> Simon Swift 148 to Jesus, just before his raising of Lazarus, “But I know, that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee” (John 11: 22). “Even now” denotes in John both that a bad possibility that is heavily anticipated, the presence of the Antichrist, is in fact already happening, and that a good but remote possibility, the raising of a dead person, is still possible, even now, after their death. Coleridge’s poem is still alert to the theological coding of time. In his poignant appeal, mid way through, to “spare us yet awhile,/ Father and God! Oh spare us yet awhile! ” the time of the now seems like a kind of remnant or saved time before catastrophe (Wu 656). The urgency of the now, both here and in the gospel, is balanced by a different mode of time in John, that is also audible in Coleridge’s desperate plea; the time of the interval, the “little while longer” that Jesus tells his disciples, shortly before crucifixion, they must wait before his disappearance and the arrival of the comforter or Paraclete. “Yet a little while [eti micron] and the world seeth me no more,” (John 14: 19) says Jesus to the disciples. While the figure of the Paraclete helped Geoffrey Hartman to account for the powerful sense of time running out in Andrew Marvell’s “The Nymph Complaining for the Death of her Faun,” in Anne-Lise François’s recent homage to Hartman, the phrase “a little while” (which also occurs at key points in the contemporaneous verse of Coleridge’s friend Wordsworth) shapes the time that remains of our current ecological crisis: facing catastrophe and yet spared, like Coleridge, for a little while longer (Francois 178-82). 1. Coleridge opens his poem with a picture of a beautiful and harmonious English landscape, apparently at early morning, before suddenly shattering its peaceful silence with the thought, or rather with the anticipated sound, of an expected French invasion. Describing himself in the third person as a “humble man,” Coleridge writes: oh my God, It is indeed a melancholy thing, And weighs upon the heart, that he must think What uproar and what strife may now be stirring This way or that way o’er these silent hills- Invasion, and the thunder and the shout, And all the crash of onset; fear and rage And undetermined conflict - even now, <?page no="149"?> Coleridge’s Interval 149 Ev’n now, perchance, and in his native isle, Carnage and screams beneath this blessed sun! (Wu 654) Walter Benjamin wrote powerfully of National Socialism in his “Theses on the Philosophy of History” that “[t]he current amazement that the things which we are experiencing are ‘still’ [noch] possible in the twentieth century is not philosophical. This amazement is not the beginning of knowledge - unless it is the knowledge that the view of history that gives rise to it is untenable” (Benjamin 249). What for Benjamin would be a conformist effort to treat the National Socialist state of emergency as the exception, rather than as the rule, is supported here by an affective state of shock or amazement. The kind of stupor that in thinking of that state of emergency as a “throwback” to a condition of “barbarism” wants to quarantine National Socialism from a progressive, liberal idea of history, and thereby to keep thoughts on the move into the future rather than to countenance their arrest. Shock, we might say, makes war on stillness in the name of forward movement, and against it Benjamin sets the dialectical arrest of what he calls the “time filled by the presence of the now” [Jetztzeit] (Benjamin 252-53). 3 While it might seem tempting to read Coleridge in just the way that Benjamin condemns, as an advocate for a conformist view of history that puzzles over the historical anachronism of a French invasion, as if it were surprising that the events of 1066 should still be possible in 1798, in fact Coleridge’s temporal sense, and in particular his sense of what might still be possible is much more complex. On the one hand, he reads the threat of invasion as a kind of divine punishment for Britain’s own recent wars of imperial aggression, and the public’s revelling in war 3 For the Arendtian phrase “not yet” that I have been working with, but also for Benjamin’s intensification of the “still,” compare Martin Heidegger’s hyphenated phrase “this not-yet” (dieses Noch-nicht) in Being and Time. According to James K. Lyon, Heidegger “was making a basic poetic move by using a hyphen [. . .] to turn what had been literal into figurative language and abstract concepts that had not existed before the creation of this new compound form” (Lyon 15-16). Heidegger’s own time of the now also chimes with Arendt’s; in Explications of Hölderlin’s Poetry he describes “the time of the departed gods and the coming God” as a “desolate time because it exists in a double deficiency and nothing: in the no-longer of the departed gods and the not-yet-of -that-which-is-tocome” [im Nichtmehr der entflohenen Götter und im Nochnicht des Kommenden] (Lyon 57). The fact that this definition of the now occurs in a work on Hölderlin is suggestive of the Romantic roots to the thinking of the time of the now in Heidegger and Benjamin that I’m trying to point to here. Coleridge is certainly closer to Benjamin’s sense of the now as, not an idle or desolate interval between different theological regimes, but rather itself shot through with chips of messianic time under the pressure of a state of emergency which has become the rule. <?page no="150"?> Simon Swift 150 as a mediatized spectacle, or what Coleridge calls “The best amusement for our morning meal! ” (Wu 656). But at the same time, to defend Britain against the coming invasion is understood by Coleridge to constitute another, different kind of war, closer to a holy war, that will undo the guilt brought about by the violence of the first. Coleridge in his poem imagines a form of defensive violence that, like Achilles’ lance, as Jean- Paul Sartre famously put it, “can heal the wounds that it has inflicted” (Fanon 25). It would be easy to read this poetic argument as contradictory, and many have written about Coleridge’s struggle in this and associated poems over his public recantation of radicalism. My claim in what follows will be that Coleridge is not blind to this contradiction, but actively pursuing it: like predecessors, especially James Thomson in his great poem of landscape from 1730, The Seasons, Coleridge is actively drawing attention to the problematic idea of a clean, empty future which arrives on the scene to act on or even to redeem a degraded past. Coleridge’s investment in the past, and its relation to the time of the now, then activates a critical sense of history. The very word “still” (noch) that organizes Benjamin’s attack on progressive historicism is, in fact, a key site of repetition in Fears in Solitude and related verse. Just two months earlier in February 1798 in the conversation poem Frost at Midnight, Coleridge recalls his childhood hopes of a visitor from home while at school. He writes that “still my heart leaped up,/ For still I hoped to see the stranger’s face! ” (Wu 646). The repetition might alert us to the possibility that “still” is a word that refuses to keep still; that its very reiteration of continuity might shelter change in repetition. The lines themselves are in fact repeating a use of “still” from another poem published three years earlier, Book 4 of William Cowper’s blank verse epic The Task, titled “The Winter Evening.” Both poets are referring to the common superstition that the flaring up of a flame in the grate of a fire is prophetic of the arrival of someone at the door - “prophesying still,/ Though still deceiv’d, some stranger’s near approach” as Cowper has it (Favret 71). Coleridge’s repetition of his own and of Cowper’s use of “still” happens in a poem which, as recent critics have noted, is concerned with states of quiet, stillness and the inert, figured by the poem’s environment of a frozen midnight (Favret 98-116, Jager 1-30). One doesn’t have to delve too far into Romantic poetry (just think of Keats’s “still unravished bride of quietness,” the Grecian urn, an excised comma famously shifting “still” from an adverbial to an adjectival use) to notice that Romantic poets are alert to the dangers of think- <?page no="151"?> Coleridge’s Interval 151 ing continuity, aware that any claim to the ongoing, the “still” might actually harbour some form of movement (Keats 344). Working with Book 4 of Cowper’s poem, Mary Favret has recently written about the surprising discovery of what she calls “nodes of stillness” in poetry about the agitation of warfare in this period (Favret 49). She quotes another passage from Book 4 of Cowper, to this effect: To-morrow brings a change, a total change! Which even now, though silently perform’d And slowly, and by most unfelt, the face Of universal nature undergoes. (Favret 98) The sense would almost be, in a mode that we have come to associate with Romanticism and its ecological thinking, of a change so mighty that it seems somehow almost unnoticeable, of something that is imagined up ahead being active even now, like the freezing of the whole landscape on a winter’s night that begins, in fact, at “even”, at sunset. A difference is arguably made, though, by knowing or acknowledging this change, whereby the heightened awareness signalled by the phrase “even now” mimes the way that the poem seeks to overcome the kind of forgetfulness that might otherwise take a blanketing of snow as its figure. As if anticipating Garret Stewart’s stunning recent account of “potential” in the literary text as “not an option somewhere waiting, however near or far off, not a something missing at all, but instead the present absence of the still possible, intrinsic to process rather than exhausted by it,” such moments call up a sense of deathly stillness only to fill it with uncanny motion, to note that anticipation of coming movement is itself a posture of activity, which becomes mindful of what is already happening under the shadow of anticipation (Stewart 48). 2. We might think of the word “now” as the primal unit through which the coming to be of a narrative event operates against a background of ongoing motion in Eighteenth-Century verse. This typically muscular couplet from Pope’s translation of the Iliad, the scene where the Trojans attack the Greek camp with stones, gives a good representative example: Their Ardour kindles all the Grecian Powr’s, And now the Stones descend in Heavier show’rs. (Favret 99) <?page no="152"?> Simon Swift 152 But by the time of Romantic verse, “now” has often taken on what, following critics like Geoffrey Hartman and Anne-Lise François, we might describe as a gentling power, a record of a turning back or even of a not quite happening. Think of Tintern Abbey for which “now” signals not so much new event but revival and return: And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought, With many recognitions dim and faint And somewhat of a sad perplexity, The picture of the mind revives again (Wu 417) And think too of Wordsworth’s claim toward the end of that poem, “Therefore am I still/ A lover of the meadows and the woods” (Wu 418). Or think of the third, deeply Thomsonian stanza of Keats’s To Autumn which softens an event that is still left in anticipation at the poem’s end, the poem’s ending being somehow still before action, as and now with treble soft The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft; And gathering swallows twitter in the skies. (Keats 435) Thomson in The Seasons is already developing this sense of the deliberately indecisive nature of the now in ways that will be formative for later poets such as Coleridge. In his now-classic study of Thomson across multiple books, John Barrell claimed that The Seasons is driven by two contradictory accounts of history: one, in line with Thomson’s Whig Patriot, anti-Walpole politics, of decline from a golden age of innocence into factionalism and a culture of luxury and political disengagement, one a triumphalist account of British industry and empire. Barrell argued that the two views are often closely intertwined; “It is not simply,” he wrote, “that these two, inconsistent accounts can appear side by side in the same book of The Seasons; but that many of the terms which are first used to differentiate a primaeval golden age from a modern iron age have been preserved in the second, alternative account of history, and transferred from one age to the other, in a way that calls attention to the inconsistency of the two accounts” (Barrell 56). “Now” itself could well be one of those terms, and it resonates as much through Barrell’s account of Thomson’s poem as it does through the poem itself. Here is Barrell on Thomson’s “Spring”: . . . according to one account of history, the “first fresh Dawn” of “uncorrupted Man” was the pattern from which pastoral poets have described the <?page no="153"?> Coleridge’s Interval 153 golden age; but now we live in “iron Times.” The mind has now become “distemper’d”; it has lost “that Concord of harmonious Powers,” whereas, before, “Music held the whole in perfect Peace.” The passions are now selfinterested only . . . and men’s thoughts are now “partial,” “cold, and averting from our Neighbour’s Good.” (54) Then Barrell quotes another passage, 500 lines on in the poem, describing a shepherd and his flock: [. . .]And now the sprightly Race Invites them forth; when swift, the Signal given, They start away, and sweep the massy Mound That runs around the Hill [. . .] (54) Barrell continues: “The cheerful Tendance of the Flock” had been one of the pleasant occupations, earlier, of pre-Fallen man; now it seems to be an occupation enjoyed by the modern shepherd precisely because the peace of modern society has left him secure. If in the age of innocence the whole creation was held together in “Consonance” by the harmony of music, now it seems that harmony is enjoyed by this shepherd too, in the “various Cadence” of his flock, but can hardly have been earlier, in “disunited BRITAIN.” (54-55) It is tempting to suggest that the intensification of the presence of the now by the premodification of “even” is what brings the kind of contradiction that Barrell describes to a head - or that perhaps even resolves it. Certainly, strong iambic poets like Thomas Gray and Oliver Goldsmith writing in the wake of Thomson exploit the trochaic potential of the word to signify a mild sense of discord. 4 Elsewhere in “Summer,” celebrating Britannia’s “solid grandeur” in what may be considered the source text for Coleridge’s imagining of Fears in Solitude’s “crash of onset,” Thomson describes 4 Goldsmith, especially committed to an unequivocal narrative of decline in The Deserted Village (1770), will maximize this disruptive potential of the phrase for a line of iambic pentameter: Even now the devastation is begun, And half the business of destruction done; Even now, methinks, as pondering here I stand, I see the rural virtues leave the land. (Fairer and Gerrard 428) <?page no="154"?> Simon Swift 154 . . . A simple scene! Yet hence BRITANNIA sees Her solid grandeur rise [. . .] Hence, fervent all, with Culture, Toil, and Arts, Wide glows her Land: her dreadful Thunder hence Rides o'er the Waves sublime, and now, even now, Impending hangs o’er Gallia's humbled coast; (Thomson 80) While this is a “simple scene,” it is haunted, as Barrell shows, by the threat of dissipation; that is perhaps why there is an odd note of comfort sounded by Thomson’s traditional invocation of the British navy as a final ballast, that can save us, “even now,” in a scene that otherwise seems one of simplicity and solidity. “Even now” at once acts as ballast, while casting a shadow of threat over the scene’s simple and solid grandeur, as if the sources of both comfort and threat that militarized security emblematize had become indistinguishable. Coleridge, of course, inverts Thomson’s reconciling logic; even in a stiller scene than anything Cowper could imagine, invasion is imminent, available to the imagination. And if for Thomson British history is a spectacle of continual decline and Whiggish improvement, for Coleridge, as I’ve tried to suggest, war is at once an offence against heaven and a way of cleansing that offence. His “even now” stands at once for the running out of time and the possibility of redemption. 3. Facing, now, the opening of Coleridge’s poem: A green and silent spot amid the hills! A small and silent dell! O’er stiller place No singing skylark ever poised himself! The hills are heathy, save that swelling slope Which hath a gay and gorgeous covering on, All golden with the never-bloomless furze, Which now blooms most profusely; (Wu 653) In Spring, the season of dynamic change, springing forth, and potential foreign invasion, the still becomes hypertrophic, the adjectival form rendered comparative. The “green and silent dell” that is the scene for Coleridge’s poem is, in fact, hyper-still; the stiller dell offering a kind of calm which is burying, in a way that perhaps prefigures the death that <?page no="155"?> Coleridge’s Interval 155 the crash of onset is expected to bring to the calm landscape, or even the digging-in of armed resistance, even now. The comparative form of “still” is bound up here with an odd uncertainty over whether the skylark is really in this place or not, and therefore an uncertainty over the place’s reality, which then blends into the typically Coleridgean double negative of “the never bloomless furze/ Which now blooms most profusely.” If the place is hyper-still, time also appears to be out of joint: now the furze is doing what it is always doing anyway, but doing it in a qualitatively or rather quantitatively heightened way. The “now,” we might say, is an intensification of what is never not happening. A few lines later, the skylark (or is it a different bird, the skylark being a hyponym of lark? ) comes to manage a further form of continuity, as this odd non-place becomes decisively associated with the ultimate non-place, utopia. This is where Coleridge first figures himself as the humble man who “dreams of better worlds,/ And dreaming hears thee still, oh singing lark” (Wu 654). Even within this dream of a better world something of the real still endures in the form of birdsong. More generally, but in line with this curious disruption of time and place, Coleridge is playing continually throughout the early part of the poem with tense and location. He is continually modulating, in particular, between present and past continuous tenses, enacting grammatically the oddly divided sense of the now. Many examples could be given: here he is describing the relation between moral corruption at home and in export: Ev’n so, my countrymen, have we gone forth And borne to distant tribes slavery and pangs [. . . . ] Meanwhile, at home, We have been drinking with a riotous thirst Pollutions from the brimming cup of wealth - (Wu 654) The phrase “Meanwhile, at home” perhaps speaks to the “meantime,” the sense of simultaneity that Benedict Anderson found to exist in the new space of the imagined community of the nation, imagined as it was through newspapers in this period (see Favret 73). But the meantime is subtly divided here. Home wrongs are put in the past continuous (“we have been drinking. . . .”) as Coleridge wants to signal incompletion, wrongs which are still going on. But colonial activity appears perhaps slightly more securely in the past by prioritizing the auxiliary verb in the formulation “have we gone forth. . .,” as if grammar would will the burial of a crime more intolerable and less virtual, but also more remote than spectatorship. <?page no="156"?> Simon Swift 156 Coleridge is playing off of the multiple senses of the “even,” the sense of urgency or simultaneity but also the evenness of equilibrium or balance that suggests a logic of “this crime here, that crime there, this crime (still now), that crime (please) then” in a set of pairings which serve to heighten our awareness of difference. And the pairing of crimes I’ve just invoked is itself balanced by an image of possible redemption in the present in Coleridge’s description of “the sweet words/ Of Christian promise (words that even yet/ Might stem destruction, were they wisely preached)” (Wu 655). Here we have the inverse of Antichrist “even now among us” in an image of the last chance, the possibility of being spared, even yet; a hope that is brought forth by the very thought of the capacity of words to change history that we have just seen in Coleridge’s playing on tense. Words, we might say, are managing the transition between past and future in both corrupt and pure ways. The words of Christian promise, if read aright, might even yet stem the tide of corruption. But Coleridge also imagines a different form of reading in his condemnation of the moral crime of turning foreign war into breakfast media to which I alluded earlier. Coleridge writes that we have “read of war”; “read” of course being a verb whose present and past forms are identical. Is this a past or present action? Read (or read) allows itself to be read across time. As well as making use of different modes of conditional tense, Coleridge also plays with apparently less complex tenses such as the present perfect. His use of this tense speaks powerfully to Jonathan Culler’s recent account of the effect of the “lyric present” as “to make what is reported more than what I am doing in a particular moment.” For Culler, modern lyric’s characteristic use of the simple present tense in relation to a first person creates the effect of “an iterable now of lyric enunciation, rather than [. . .] a now of linear time.” Poetic examples offered by Culler include Auden’s “I sit in one of the dives/ On Fiftysecond street,” Blake’s “I wander through each chartered street,” and Yeats’s “I walk through the long schoolroom questioning.” Such present actions with lack of temporal specification (such as “I often sit in one of the dives on Fifty-second Street” would give) pushes this, for Culler, “distinctive tense in English poetry” more toward a condition of state than occurrence (Culler, 288-89). The simple present tense, according to Suzanne Langer the base form of the verb but seldom used in everyday communication, throws over its familiar lyrical enunciation something like the veil of an “eternal present” (cited in Culler 294). What is striking about Coleridge’s poem is that it makes no use of the <?page no="157"?> Coleridge’s Interval 157 lyric simple present, nor indeed of the first person pronoun itself (relying instead, as we have seen, on the third person figure of the “humble man”), until the end of the penultimate verse paragraph after which there is a sudden accumulation of uses: “I walk”, “I wind”, “I behold”, “I tend”, and, perhaps most stunningly, “I find myself”, all in the space of one final verse paragraph (Wu 658). It is as if Coleridge’s speaker were finding himself in a grammatically perfect present that is oddly uncoupled from eventhood, in a scene which has already, through its hailing us to the “now,” marked out a politically ambiguous space of the eternal present as a site both of suffering and possible, overhanging redemption. It is undoubtedly a truism, but nevertheless needs to be said, that any enunciation of the “now” names a moment that is already necessarily in the past by the time that the act of enunciation is over. This was literally true for a period beginning to experience the mass-mediation of war via newspapers, which offered in this period as “news” events that had happened sometimes months earlier. But Coleridge’s disturbances of tense are elongated through the repetition, “even now,/ Ev’n now” which, as I’ve tried to show, marks both anticipation and endurance. In a note to his poem The Thorn published two years after Fears in Solitude, in 1800, Coleridge’s friend Wordsworth defends what he calls “repetition and apparent tautology” by describing them as “frequently beauties of the highest kind” (Wu 519). Wordsworth thinks of repetition and tautology as confirmation that poetry is passion, the effort to communicate impassioned feelings with what he calls an “accompanying consciousness of the inadequateness of our own powers” (Wu 519). This inadequacy, Wordsworth continues, creates a “craving in the mind” which is what causes us to cling to the same words. The “even now,/ Ev’n now” emits a passion of surprise, I’ve been arguing, that something is still or already happening, and its clinging to temporal sense through repetition perhaps also creates a breathing space in which the unexpected can be managed or absorbed. We might then say that repetition expresses the mind’s straining to make sense of the double time of the now I have been describing. But if the presence of what is expected might also be a continuity of what was already happening, a state of war, then the repetition changes in being brought home, in collapsing the distance between “here” and “there,” and in doing so it holds out an uncomfortable image of redemption. As T. J. Clark argues, “form - repetition - is change” (Garrett Stewart 5). But looking further, the line break that splits this repetition (“even now,/ Ev’n now”) is also suggestive of a peculiar undermining of the surprise or shock that something new is <?page no="158"?> Simon Swift 158 already happening. Where on the next line we might expect some kind of forward movement or modification of what has been said, what we encounter is in fact nothing more than a slightly modified form of the same words. The repetition of the same at the beginning of the next line where we’d expect progress, turn, or development of some sort is itself surprising, but because it emphasizes the startling repetition of the same. We might say that there is here something like the collapse of the distinction between the exceptional and the mundane. It is surprising simply because nothing has changed, but Coleridge wants to say that everything has changed. It is also worth thinking in this vein about the slight change that Coleridge does allow: the change in the form of the word “even” which draws attention to that word’s multiple meanings. As well as signalling emphasis and equilibrium, even is also, of course, a form of time -such that “even now” might be read to mean “it is even or evening now.” Coleridge’s poem gives us the sense of having passed through a day, the light on the never bloomless furze suggesting early morning at the poem’s opening, and then dusk towards the end: But now the gentle dew-fall sends abroad The fruitlike perfume of the golden furze; The light has left the summit of the hill, Though still a sunny gleam lies beautiful On the long-ivied beacon. (Wu 658) Evening is the time of the interval - no longer day and not yet night; but still in light, registering an even balance between two states. We might also say that the repetition of “even now” stands alongside the poem’s work of tense. The conditional present continuous of “may now be stirring” is somehow substituted by the second form of “Ev’n now” in order to make the sheer noise, carnage and screams, emphatic but also somehow timeless, without a tense. This is perhaps the same working to a position somehow out of time and yet meditatively eventful that is enacted by Coleridge’s startling turn to the simple present, and his presencing of himself in place of the “humble man,” at the poem’s end. Coleridge is as aware of the horror of an eternal screaming as he is of the oddly denaturalized finding of himself on the way home at the poem’s end, and refuses to naturalize either of them. If for George T. Wright, the simple present tense gives an effect of “simple, ordinary natural English” which “reports an event that has happened - is happening - happens,” the oddly unnatural way in which Coleridge suddenly bombards his reader with this apparently organic lyric enunciation <?page no="159"?> Coleridge’s Interval 159 in the poem’s last paragraph makes us aware of the horror that has preceded it, making dubious any claim to take natural comfort that the poem’s late turn to perfect presence might otherwise seem to offer (Culler 294). There cannot be a turning and winding away because something else more sinister may now be stirring. That was going on; it is going on; it will go on. Yet no more than surprise or amazement can be surrendered to a quiet perfection it is still going on, the people are burning in the tower, even now - the halo of hope that even now horror’s collision with a simple present could be annulled keeps shining. <?page no="160"?> Simon Swift 160 References Arendt, Hannah. “No Longer and Not Yet.” In Jerome Kohn, ed. Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954: Formation, Exile and Totalitarianism. New York: Shocken Books, 2005. Barrell, John. English Literature in History, 1730-1780: An Equal, Wide Survey. London: Hutchinson, 1983. Benjamin, Walter. “Theses on the Philosophy of History.” In Hannah Arendt, ed. Illuminations. London: Fontana, 1992. Bevis, Matthew. “Unknowing Lyric.” Poetry (2016), 575-89. Culler, Jonathan. Theory of the Lyric. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015. Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Preface by Jean-Paul Sartre. Translated by Constance Farrington. London: Penguin, 2001. Fairer, David and Christine Gerrard, eds. Eighteenth-Century Poetry: An Annotated Anthology. Oxford: Blackwell, 1999. Favret, Mary. War at a Distance. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009. François, Anne-Lise. “‘A little while’ more: Further Thoughts on Hartman’s Nature as Paraclete.” Philological Quarterly 93: 2 (2014), 178-82. Jager, Colin. Unquiet Things: Secularism in the Romantic Age. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. Keats, John. “Endymion: A Poetic Romance.” In John Barnard, ed. John Keats: The Complete Poems. 2nd edition. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977. Lyon, James K. Paul Celan and Martin Heidegger: An Unresolved Conversation 1951-1970. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. Sachs, Jonathan. The Poetics of Decline in British Romanticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Stewart, Garrett. The Deed of Reading: Literature Writing Language Philosophy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015. Stewart, Susan. Poetry and the Fate of the Senses. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002. Thomson, James. The Seasons. Ed. by James Sambrook. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981. Wu, Duncan, ed. Romanticism: An Anthology. 4th edition. Oxford: Blackwell, 2012. <?page no="161"?> The Figure of Scheherazade and Jane Austen’s Changing Senses of an Ending Margaret Tudeau-Clayton This essay brings together the 200th anniversary of the death of Jane Austen and the 50th anniversary of the publication of Frank Kermode’s seminal study of narrative fiction, The Sense of An Ending, in a comparative analysis of the endings of the three novels with which Austen was occupied in the period during which she was also struggling to make sense of what would turn out to be a fatal illness, most strikingly in letters penned from January to May 1817. The changing senses of an ending in accounts of her health are linked to the contrasting, if similarly self conscious endings of the two novels that sat together on her mental desk and that would be published together posthumously as Persuasion and Northanger Abbey. Of key importance is an intertextual reference to the figure of the female story teller Scheherazade, added by Austen in revisions to the ending of Persuasion, which is thus associated not only with disclosure of the truth but also with death. In this context the description of two portraits of the dead with which Austen ends the unfinished novel (later called Sanditon) that she began in January 1817 and stopped at a date between two (contrasting) letters to her niece Fanny in March, acquires a poignant charge as a metonymy for the only form of survival for which she could now hope from readers to whom she delegates the project of Scheherazade to thwart her premature death by a cultural afterlife for her stories, her characters and herself. Keywords: Scheherazade, senses of an ending, Austen’s letters, Persuasion, Northanger Abbey, Sanditon The Challenge of Change. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 36. Ed. Margaret Tudeau-Clayton and Martin Hilpert. Tübingen: Narr, 2018. 161-178. <?page no="162"?> Margaret Tudeau-Clayton 162 This year (2017) sees the 200th anniversary of the death of Jane Austen and the 50th anniversary of the publication of Frank Kermode’s seminal study of narrative fiction, The Sense of An Ending (1967). I want to bring together these two anniversaries in order to take a fresh look at the endings of the three novels with which Austen was occupied in the period during which she was also struggling to make sense of what would turn out to be a fatal illness, most strikingly in letters penned from January to May 1817. Of central importance is an intertextual reference which has received little attention despite its prominence at the beginning of the chapter added in the revisions made in the summer of 1816 to the end of her last completed novel that would be called (though not by Austen) Persuasion. The reference is to Scheherazade, figure of a female story teller who thwarts the project of a figure of male tyranny, prejudice and violence as well as the unjust, premature death of women with which he is associated (Austen, Persuasion 249). The reference bears on the contents of the revised chapter which follows it as well as on the deferral of the end of the narrative it announces, which is explicitly assimilated not only to disclosure of the truth but also to death - for Kermode the end which is often, if not always, immanent in imagined endings (7). This deferral of closure is in telling contrast to the equally self conscious acceleration of closure in Catherine as Austen called the novel that sat beside Persuasion on her mental desk and that would be published posthumously with it as Northanger Abbey. 1 In what follows I want to draw a parallel between these contrasting endings and contrasting accounts of her health and their different senses of (her) ending, especially in two letters written to her niece Fanny Knight in March 1817. I will also suggest a connection between these contrasting senses of an ending in the novels and the letters and the end of the novel that she began in January 1817 and stopped at a date between the two letters to Fanny (March 18). For this unfinished and unnamed novel that would later be called Sanditon stops on a (deliciously ironic) description of the portraits of two dead husbands. Like earlier examples of visual portraits of fictional characters, these portraits are, I propose, a metonymy for cultural afterlife, which was for Austen perhaps the only, or at least only imaginable afterlife. Summoning this afterlife in “a deliberate . . . signing-off” (Todd and Bree lxxxiii), Austen, I suggest, delegates to her readers the 1 As we will see, Austen’s preferred title for Persuasion was similarly a name - that of the Elliot family. The later choice of other titles illustrates how Austen’s writing was appropriated and reframed by men (notably her brother Henry) after her death, as Anne- Claire Michoux discusses in her essay in this volume. For this reason I will throughout refer to Northanger Abbey as Catherine. <?page no="163"?> Jane Austen’s Changing Senses of an Ending 163 project of Scheherazade to thwart her (premature) death by “spinning out” her “story” “to an endless length,” as Diana Parker (in Sanditon) puts it (Austen, Later Manuscripts 188 [my emphasis]) - another figure of the female story teller, who is an invalid spinster as productive of fake news as she is of fake illnesses. 2 The central insight of Kermode’s seminal study is that humans need a sense of an ending to give meaning and coherence to their individual and collective lives, even if the confrontation with reality - “a reality check” as it is called today - requires constant revision (or what Kermode calls “adjustments”) to the imagined endings of their projected narratives - whether historical, scientific, fictional or theological, as in his exemplary case of apocalyptic narratives. The sense of an ending in narrative fictions was subsequently given a poststructuralist turn by D. A. Miller who argues that the classic novel, exemplified by Austen, is constructed on the contradictory tension between the aspiration to closure and the aspiration to defer it. Following Michel Foucault, Miller assimilates closure to “the sovereign act of nomination” (45) - an act that, as we shall see, is significant for closure in Austen’s accounts of her health as well as in her novels. More recently, Deidre Shauna Lynch has given a further twist to the sense of an ending in the novels by pointing out the presence of embryonic plots, such as that of Fanny Price’s sister Susan in Mansfield Park, which counter the effect of closure by soliciting sequels - new stories - such as have proliferated in the 200 years since Austen’s death (166-67), precisely, that is, the cultural afterlife summoned, I have suggested, by the “end” of Sanditon. Within this framework of critical ideas then fresh perspectives open up not only on the ending, which is not one, of Sanditon, but also on the endings of the two other novels with which Austen was occupied during the period of her struggle with the uncertainties of what Park Honan has described as a “fickle illness” (385), as if it were one of the elusive male figures in the novels the knowledge of whose character and desire is a crucial object - end - of the female protagonist’s quest, which is coterminous with the narrative. Indeed, Austen suffered not from one of the “infectious diseases” to which, as Thomas Laqueur observes, most of “our ancestors” rapidly “succumbed,” but rather from a slow “hidden” illness such as many in the West experience today with uncertain symptoms that summon speculation - is it something or nothing? and, if something, what? (Laqueur 13). Her hidden - inscrutable - ill- 2 Compare the discussion by Michoux and Rupp of “a concept of female authorship . . . defined by wielding the shuttle rather than the pen.” <?page no="164"?> Margaret Tudeau-Clayton 164 ness was then as productive of “news” - narratives as well as speculation - in her letters as the secrets - what is hidden about past events as well as about characters and their desires - are productive of “news” in the novels. Moreover, like what is hidden in the novels, this elusive illness has continued to generate “news” insofar as critics and biographers have continued to speculate, even as they have sought closure, by naming it - whether Addison’s disease, cancer or both (Honan 391-92). Austen herself sought closure through the naming of her condition in a letter to a friend Alethea Bigg dated 24 January 1817: I think I understand my own case now so much better than I did, as to be able by care to keep off any serious return of illness. I am more & more convinced that Bile is at the bottom of all I have suffered, which makes it easy to know how to treat myself. (Austen, Letters 326-27) Getting to “the bottom of all” - finding the proper name - is the end to which, as Miller argues, the classic novel, exemplified by Austen, aspires. Indeed, there is a clarity of achieved understanding here such as the protagonists - and readers - enjoy at the end of the novels, and an attendant sense of ease in the felt ability to prevent “a return of illness.” The empowering effect of this sense of an ending is indicated by the fact that three days later she begins a new novel in which her investment - of confidence as well as money - is signalled by the three booklets of increasing size that she prepared for it (Todd and Bree lxxxi, lxxxiii). 27 January is the first date on the MS of this novel, which is peopled notably by a family of two brothers and two sisters three of whom enjoy imaginary illnesses - illnesses, that is, without ground, or bottom, which are consequently infinitely productive of “news.” 3 Especially striking in this respect is the figure of Diana Parker, a spinster (whose ironic telling name recalls the maiden goddess) and pseudo-invalid whose account of an “attack” of her “old grievance, spasmodic bile” which left her “hardly able to crawl from . . . bed to the sofa” (163) and her “habit of self-doctoring” (165) recall her creator’s self diagnosis of “Bile” as the “bottom” of her condition as well as a later description of herself (in May) as confined to her bed “with only removals to a Sopha” (22 May) (cf. Todd and Bree lxxxiv). Empowered by the desirable end of getting to the bottom of her own condition - naming it - Austen “moves on,” as the current idiom has it, to write a new story, Scheherazade-like 3 Michael Caines has recently made the interesting suggestion that Austen’s experience at Cheltenham spa in May 1816 may have fed into this novel. My thanks to the author for this reference. <?page no="165"?> Jane Austen’s Changing Senses of an Ending 165 thwarting death, and even producing a self caricature in the figure of Diana Parker, another female story teller whose remark that she is “spinning out her story to an endless length” (Austen, Later Manuscripts 188), reflects less on her “linguistic hypochondria,” as Miller suggests (35), than on the productivity of the spinster’s false - bottomless - illnesses which, in this respect, resemble the real, if elusive illness suffered by her spinster-creator until the liberating and empowering “closural act of nomination” (Miller 53) recorded in the letter to Alethea Biggs. This act turned out, however, not to be the end of the story, but rather a “pseudoclosure” as Miller describes the false or inadequate explanations given by unreliable characters (53), including Diana Parker whose story about the family she has persuaded to come to Sanditon turns out to be “a mistake” (Austen, Later Manuscripts 201). Lived experience - “reality” - requires what, as I have indicated, Kermode calls adjustments, or revisions, as characters in the novels, especially the female protagonists, learn more and less painfully, and as Austen has to learn (again). 4 Uncontained by the attempt at closure her condition continues to elude her and the sense of an ending in explanatory naming yields in her letters to less precise ends, often of “recovery,” but also, as I take up below, the end of “blooming.” The possible imminence of the end of death is admitted in the extant correspondence only in May (though she writes a will on 27 April [Honan 394; Todd and Bree lxxxvi]), and then in a roundabout way, when she speculates in a letter to another friend, Anna Sharp: “if I live to be an old Woman I must expect to wish I had died now,” “blessed in the tenderness of such a Family” and the “kindness” of friends (22 May; Austen, Letters 341). Recalling perhaps Othello’s “If it were now to die / ’Twere now to be most happy” (Shakespeare 2.1.187-88), Austen at once admits the reality, even the desirability of death “now” even as she defers it to a future moment. There is, in short, just such a contradictory tension between a desire for closure and a desire to defer it which Miller finds in the novels and which is illustrated with particular intensity in the novel she had revised in the summer of 1816, deferring closure as she self consciously acknowledges through reference to the figure of Scheherazade. As I take up below, this explicitly conflates the end of naming/ explanation, or getting to the bottom of things - the end for which desire is heightened by deferral - with the end of death - the desired deferral of which is 4 The ironic discrepancy between human projections and reality is a recurring topic in earlier letters to her sister, though of amused rather than pained reflection, as when she writes on 24 May 1813: “whatever I may write or you may imagine, we know it will be something different” (Austen, Letters 214). <?page no="166"?> Margaret Tudeau-Clayton 166 achieved by the figure of the female story teller shadowed by the author, a figure who, thanks to her ability, like Diana Parker, to tell a new story, “must live another day” (Austen, Persuasion 249). It is of Persuasion that Austen writes to her much loved niece Fanny Knight in two letters dated respectively 13 March and 23-25 March. In both, accounts of the novel are immediately followed by accounts of her health, which are infiltrated by the novel’s narrative structure and images. The first letter is upbeat, opening on a joke about how Austen would not be able to make an adequate reply to Fanny’s letter were she to “labour at it all the rest of [her] Life & live to the age of Methusalah” (Austen, Letters 331-32). The mood is expansive and the end of life is perceived as neither imminent nor immanent, but at a distance, even slightly unreal. She is indeed optimistic when she writes about her health: she has “got tolerably well again,” is up to “walking about & enjoying the Air,” and has a “scheme” “for accomplishing more, as the weather grows springlike” (333). Her state of health is here conceived as a return - “well again” - associated with the return of spring. This association with the cyclical time of the seasons - “the time of eternal return” as Baudrillard puts it (Clarke and Doel 31) - recalls her most recently completed novel in which the heroine, Anne Elliot, is “blessed with a second spring of youth and beauty” (Austen, Persuasion 134). That she is thinking of her novel is suggested by the immediately preceding announcement that she has “something ready for Publication, which may perhaps appear about a twelvemonth hence” (Austen, Letters 333). The return of spring is here again evoked (if perhaps less consciously) in association with the publication of her next book, which she clearly expects she will be alive to see. There is indeed a cyclical dimension to the (regular) production of her novels - each of which, as Ruta Baublyte Kaufmann has shown, itself reproduces, if more and less explicitly, the cyclical time of the seasons as well as a linear plot of desire and marriage, intricately woven into it. 5 Like the daily renewed project of Scheherazade, that is, the production of her novels belongs to the time of eternal return, hence perhaps their force, like the return of spring, to counteract the sense of a definitive end - what Baudrillard calls “the time of no return” (Clarke and Doel 31) - rather as, in Persuasion, the seasonally linked work cycle of the farmer “meaning to have spring again” has the effect of “counteracting” the absolute dejection of “poetical despondence,” “the image of youth and hope, and spring all gone 5 My thanks to Ruta for enlightening me on this aspect of the novels as well as for the reference to Baudrillard. <?page no="167"?> Jane Austen’s Changing Senses of an Ending 167 together” that comes to Anne Elliot on the November walk when she believes she has lost Wentworth for ever (Austen, Persuasion 91). Without a name, without, that is, the sovereign sign of closure and of no return, which is still deferred, as I take up below, 6 this “something ready for Publication” is set alongside the named - thus presumably in Austen’s eyes, finished novel - “Miss Catherine” which, she writes to Fanny, “is put upon the Shelve for the present, and I do not know that she will ever come out” (Austen, Letters 333). This is surely a glance at her own socially anomalous condition of unmarried and unmarriageable woman, complete in herself, but stuck “on the shelf,” in a social limbo, publicly invisible, like an unpublished book, without the sense of ending bestowed by the marriage plot, which is reproduced in Catherine, as in the other novels, but explicitly undercut by irony, as we will see. 7 That these two novels sat together on her mental desk is underscored when she writes of the “something ready for Publication,” that it is “short, about the length of Catherine.” Indeed, they share much more than this formal likeness. As others have observed, Bath is revisited as is the topic of books and their influence on the minds and manners of men and women. 8 What has not been observed is how - unlike any of the other completed novels - their respective ends are marked by what Adela Pinch has called, in relation to the revisions done to the end of Persuasion, “authorial rustlings” (113), which are still louder at the end of Catherine. If, however, they are alike in their self-conscious reflections on closure - and in their engagement through this reflection with injustice towards women, as we will see - the strategies adopted in each are diametrically opposed and suggest very different perspectives on the sense of an ending. For while in Catherine, there is a self-conscious acceleration of closure, in Persuasion the movement to closure, is, on the contrary, as I have indicated, deferred. This difference, I want to suggest, is linked to the immanence of death summoned through the reference to Scheherazade in Persuasion, which is entirely absent from Catherine. 6 Compare the Cambridge editors’ comment: “Jane Austen had begun ‘Sanditon’ before the final touches had been put to Persuasion - if they ever were” (Todd and Bree, lxxxix). 7 The first example in the OED of the phrase, as used specifically of women past their marriageable date, is 1839, but it is included by J. O. Halliwell in his dictionary of archaic idioms (first published 1847), which suggests that it was in circulation well before 1839. Halliwell’s gloss reads: “ SHELF . On the shelf, said of ladies when too old to get married” (Halliwell, vol. 2, 730). 8 The Cambridge editors point out that the topic “of fiction permeating life is to the fore” in Sanditon too, which has consequently been linked to Northanger Abbey (Todd and Bree xcv). <?page no="168"?> Margaret Tudeau-Clayton 168 In what Deidre Shauna Lynch describes as a “breezy postmodern idiom” (166), the narrator in Catherine steps outside her story to advertise the contrast between her protagonists and their “anxiety” as to the “final event” and “my readers, who will see in the tell-tale compression of the pages before them, that we are all hastening together to perfect felicity” (Austen, Northanger Abbey 259). Dripping with irony this advertised acceleration of closure highlights the fictional character of this (any) ending, which is exposed as egregious an illusion as the absolute state of “perfect felicity” - here or hereafter - with which it is associated. The irony carries the critical thrust of a “reality check,” the confrontation of the imagined sense of an ending with lived experience, which, as Kermode argues, calls for adjustments/ revisions, as we saw earlier. Indeed, the conventional ending of the marriage plot is exposed as unreal as the fantasies peddled by the gothic romances to which Catherine had been earlier addicted. A collective “awakening,” like that of the heroine, is thus implicitly called for which would recognise alternative narrative trajectories for women such as Austen who do not submit to the imperative of the marriage plot and its attendant illusion of “perfect felicity” and who consequently suffer the public invisibility of being “on the shelf.” With its sceptical critical thrust this ironic treatment of the sense of an ending is entirely without a sense of death as immanent or imminent. On the contrary, it points up the continuity of life. In this respect it is like the first letter to Fanny in which, as we have seen, death is viewed as remote, even slightly unreal. The second letter to Fanny, written some ten days later on 23-25 March, is as much a contrast to the first letter as the self-consciously deferred ending of the “something ready for Publication” is to the selfconsciously accelerated ending of Catherine. Indeed, there is no mention of Catherine in this second letter, only, again, “another ready for publication,” which, Austen opines, without giving any reason, Fanny “will not like,” though she “may perhaps like the Heroine, as she is almost too good for me” (Austen, Letters 335). This is immediately followed by a very different account of her health. Without the optimism of the earlier letter, which appears to have been forgotten, she writes of not being well “for many weeks” and of being “very poorly” “about a week ago.” Though she asserts that she is now “considerably better,” she writes only of “recovering” her “[l]ooks a little” and of having to accept that she “must not depend upon being ever very blooming again” (335-36). As others have observed, “bloom” is a word that recurs in Persuasion, most often in relation to the heroine Anne Elliot whose “bloom” “had vanished early” (Austen, Persuasion 6), “destroyed” together with her <?page no="169"?> Jane Austen’s Changing Senses of an Ending 169 “youth” (65), “an early loss of bloom” (30) that is, however, counteracted when “the bloom and freshness of youth” are “restored” (112) in the “second spring of youth and beauty” with which she is “blessed” (134). If in the first letter Austen imagines for herself a return of health/ spring that rhymes with that of her heroine, here she recognises (though for herself only - Fanny has not seen the book) that hers will be a different story, a story rather of a time of no return: “not . . . ever very blooming again.” Hence perhaps the rejection projected on to Fanny (“You will not like it”) and her own turn away from the heroine, which the Cambridge editors describe as “curious” (Todd and Blank lxi), but which we might take as an (understandable) expression of resentment towards Anne not so much for being “too good” for Austen but rather for being too lucky. Indeed, there is to be not only no more blooming, but also no more writing of novels - the cultural (re)production preferred by Austen, who sometimes referred to her novels as her children, 9 over the biological reproduction implied in the word “bloom,” as Amy King has shown, to which the majority of her sex (including her heroines) were destined. 10 This is signalled by the date written immediately below the last line in the MS of the novel that she had begun in January: March 18 (for the Cambridge editors a “deliberate . . . signing-off” [Todd and Bree, lxxxiii]). For this corresponds to the moment a “week ago” when, as she recalls in the second letter, she was “very poorly.” Physically very unwell she may too have suffered a deep dejection at having to face the ineluctable - that she would not only not complete this novel, but also never write again, that, in short, there would be no return of spring for her. Tellingly - and I think deliberately - she stops with a description of the dead, although, as I have indicated, the dead as they are remembered in portraits, a metonymy for cultural afterlife, which is now the only return for which she can hope. She thus implicitly delegates to readers the project of Scheherazade to thwart her (premature) death by continuing not only this story, but all her stories - “spinning” them out “to endless length.” It is a task poignantly highlighted by the blank page under the final date in the MS and by the many blank pages that follow. For, as the Cam- 9 Most famously when she writes of Pride and Prejudice to her sister in January 1813: “I have got my own darling Child from London” (Austen, Letters 201). 10 In relation specifically to Anne’s loss of bloom King comments: “Simply put, the lack of bloom is a lack of a marriage plot” and her recovery of bloom signals “sexual attractiveness and readiness” as well as “marital eligibility” (5). The sense of the word is not so restricted when it is used in the letter by Austen, who is well aware she is “on the shelf,” no longer eligible for marriage (see above). <?page no="170"?> Margaret Tudeau-Clayton 170 bridge editors point out, only half of the eighty pages of the third booklet prepared for this novel were used (Todd and Bree lxxxiii). The visual portraits which mark the “end” of this unfinished novel are not of course the first to feature in her novels, although they tend to be neglected in discussions of the many references to, or descriptions of portraits scattered through the completed novels. 11 The most well known - and most pertinent - prior instance is the gallery of portraits of dead ancestors through which Elizabeth Bennett passes before being “arrested” by the portrait of the current living occupant of Pemberley (Austen, Pride and Prejudice 277). Though important primarily for the development of the heroine’s knowledge of (and desire for) Mr. Darcy, the place of his portrait at the end of a gallery highlights the social as well as familial continuity carried by this cultural form. It is, moreover, by means of this form that Austen imagines a life after the end of the marriage plot for the two principal female figures - Elisabeth and Jane Bennett - when she writes to Cassandra how, on a visit to an exhibition in London in 1813, she found “a small portrait of Mrs. Bingley, excessively like her” - a portrait she describes in some detail - and how she was disappointed not to have found one of Mrs. Darcy (Austen, Letters 212). Though scholars and critics have felt compelled to describe as light hearted and ironic what might otherwise seem like girlish naiveté, there is a serious point to such fantasies, namely the evocation of a life after the end - here of the marriage plot - with its implicit invitation to readers to imagine what happens next. Undoing the sense of an ending, specifically of the marriage plot, which is undercut in Catherine by caustic irony, as we have seen, such projections summon a cultural afterlife such as Deidre Shauna Lynch has argued is solicited too by the embryonic plots of new stories scattered throughout the novels. In addition to the summoning of a cultural afterlife the description of the two portraits with which she ends her unfinished novel is, like the end of Catherine, pervaded by an irony which carries a critical thrust. For the two dead husbands remembered in the portraits are not given equal standing by the woman who has buried them both: the seriously rich first husband, Mr. Hollis, is now “[p]oor Mr. Hollis,” remembered as he is by “one among many miniatures” placed in a “little conspicuous” “part of the room” - the main sitting room of his own house - while “placed” very conspicuously “over the mantelpiece” is “the wholelength portrait of a stately gentleman,” Sir Harry Denham, the second - 11 These portraits have been shown to serve various (narrative) purposes as well as illustrating Austen’s understanding of different painting styles. For a helpful overview see Nigro. <?page no="171"?> Jane Austen’s Changing Senses of an Ending 171 titled - husband that his widow acquired thanks to her first husband’s wealth (Austen, Later Manuscripts 209). 12 This deliciously ironic description - a remarkable achievement given Austen’s physical weakness - suggests how a cultural afterlife may perpetuate the injustices of this life, specifically, how it is likely to perpetuate the privileging of rank over wealth. That Austen should choose to end her writing career on this image of cultural afterlife bestows a neat, if entirely unnoticed pertinence on the decision in 2017 to remember her by means of a portrait on the new £10 note, all the more so as this has been perceived as a corrective to the cultural injustice towards women - the privileging of men over women - perpetuated by the Bank of England (Morris). For, though Austen would doubtless have made comic capital of the form that this remembrance takes - and in particular its prettification of her portrait - she would surely have appreciated the corrective justice done towards women as cultural and economic agents. For justice towards women is a recurring, if not always explicit, concern, notably in the two complete novels with which she was preoccupied at this time and which have so much in common, as I indicated earlier. Most importantly here, it is at the heart of the crucial conversation between Anne Elliot and her friend Captain Harville in the chapter which Austen added when she made her revisions to the end of Persuasion and which she introduced by reference to the figure of Scheherazade. Indeed, as I shall now show by way of conclusion, the story of Scheherazade itself illustrates not only how the figure of the female story teller thwarts the project of the male tyrant to inflict unjust (and premature) death on women, but also how she counters the prejudiced view of women that such men propagate. The frequently cited conversation between Anne Elliot and Captain Harville turns on the question of male/ female constancy/ inconstancy. Regretting what he regards as inconstancy towards his (dead) sister Fanny on the part of Captain Benwick (who is now to marry Louisa Musgrove), Captain Harville (rather inconsistently) proceeds to argue the case for male constancy and female inconstancy, evoking “all histories . . . all stories, . . . [s]ongs and proverbs” which testify to “woman’s inconstancy,” although conceding possible prejudice as “these were all written by men” (Austen, Persuasion 254). This is taken up by Anne who, rehearsing a repeated complaint, as Deidre Shauna Lynch has noted 12 It is worth noting two changes made to the MS by Austen: “stately” has replaced “portly” to highlight the distinguished social status of Denham rather than his (ungainly) physical size, while “represented” has replaced “was” in “was Mr. Hollis” to highlight that the miniature portrait is a construct - art, not life. <?page no="172"?> Margaret Tudeau-Clayton 172 (Introduction and notes 248), 13 points out how men “have had every advantage of us in telling their own story” “the pen has been in their hands” and books consequently do not “prove any thing” (255). Indeed, the question does not admit of proof one way or the other, she argues, even as she seizes on the occasion to communicate her own constancy to Wentworth who, in his eagerness to listen to the conversation, has dropped his pen. It is precisely the inconstancy - or “disloyalty,” as the title page of the 1792 edition puts it - of his first wife, who exemplifies “the treachery of women” (vol. 1, 5), that leads the Sultan to take his revenge on the sex by vowing “to marry a Lady every Day” and “have her put to Death the next Morning” (title page). It is this vow, which propagates as it is motivated by a view of women as unfaithful/ inconstant, that Scheherazade manages to “divert” (title page) by telling stories which summon erotic as well as intellectual desire in the Sultan who finally decides “to renounce a vow so unworthy of him” and the sacrifice of women to his “resentment,” which he recognises as “unjust” (vol. 4, 239-40). Such a yielding of prejudice/ resentment - and power - is signalled too in Wentworth’s dropping of his pen the significance of which is generalised by Anne’s use of the trope of “the pen” in the comment which follows about the propagation of male prejudice against women. 14 Wentworth as lover-listener is indeed as captivated by Anne’s words as the Sultan is by the words of Scheherazade, who succeeds not merely in diverting his purpose but in changing his mind. Whether or not Austen was conscious of it (as I think she was), the scene of the conversation that she adds in the new chapter is clearly infiltrated by the story of the figure to whom she refers in the opening lines - a story which illustrates not only the point emphasised by Anne that stories have tended to spread male prejudice against women, especially their capacity for fidelity, but also the ability of the female story teller to counter such prejudice. If it is Anne who is in the position of Scheherazade here, as Kuldip Kuwahara has observed, she clearly speaks for the authorial narrator whose own story counters the prejudice Anne denounces. The selfconsciously announced deferral of the end opens then a space for Aus- 13 Particularly pertinent, given the essay by Anne-Claire Michoux and Katrin Rupp, is Lynch’s comment that “Anne sounds like the Wife of Bath.” 14 Anne-Claire Michoux too sees in this scene “a reversal of power” in the essay in this volume. <?page no="173"?> Jane Austen’s Changing Senses of an Ending 173 ten to engage explicitly with injustices towards women as she engages, if more implicitly, in Catherine, through the similarly self conscious, if contrasting, acceleration of the end. As I argued above, this tends to expose as illusion the “perfect felicity” of the end of the marriage plot - an “end” which she also undermines, as we have seen, by imagining afterlives for her heroines. If the two endings engage with injustice towards women, the stakes of the end of Persuasion are raised by the intertextual reference to Scheherazade, which, in its overt reflection on closure, anticipates the theoretical discussions of Miller as well as Kermode. For the deferred end is explicitly associated with explanation as well as with death: One day only had passed since Anne’s conversation with Mrs. Smith; but a keener interest had succeeded, and she was now so little touched by Mr. Elliot’s conduct, except by its effects in one quarter, that it became a matter of course the next morning, still to defer her explanatory visit in Rivers-street. She had promised to be with the Musgroves from breakfast to dinner. Her faith was plighted, and Mr. Elliot’s character, like the Sultaness Scheherazade’s head, must live another day. (Austen, Persuasion 249 [emphasis mine]) “To defer her explanatory visit”: explanation and its deferral precisely sum up Miller’s analysis of the contradictory tension in the classic novel exemplified by Austen. On the one hand, there is the movement towards, and desire for explanation and clarity, “the right names on feeling and conduct” (Miller 45), and, on the other, in contradictory tension with this desire, there is the desire to defer the dissolving of the conditions of narratability - the indeterminate or unknown - whether the character and desire of male figures (Mr. Darcy, Mr. Elliot or Captain Wentworth), or the character of Diana Parker’s, or Jane Austen’s, illness(es). This dissolving of the narratable - no more to tell - is, in addition, associated in the passage quoted above, with death, which, as I have mentioned, is for Kermode often immanent in imagined endings, while its deferral - something more to tell - is associated with the thwarting of death: “liv[ing] another day.” Though there is a spark of irony in the incongruous joining of a man’s “character” with a woman’s “head,” as I take up below, the comparison introduces an added charge to the emotional intensity generated by the revisions, which readers and critics have often observed. With consummate skill Austen holds off the desired end through obstacles which heighten the desire for it even as she underlines its precarious contingency: changes of plan and chance conversations in crowded places briefly open possibilities for the expression of desire, which are then closed. The screw is turned and <?page no="174"?> Margaret Tudeau-Clayton 174 turned so that we are, in the appropriate phrase, dying for it - longing for the final (re)union of Anne and Frederick Wentworth and the attendant mutual explanations. Indeed, Anne not only gets her man and her second “blooming” spring, but also a new name. In this, of course, she is like the heroines in the other novels, whose renaming is, for Miller, “only the most obvious thematization of closure as an act of nomination” (45). The act is, however, specifically telling in the case of Anne, especially given Austen’s putatively preferred title, The Elliots (Todd and Blank lxxxiii). For, in a telling play on her name/ the indefinite article, An(ne) Elliot - the indeterminate familial member (“only Anne” [6]) - is renamed Anne Wentworth, a new name that bestows a distinct sense of self, in contrast to the “anonymous mass” of “Elliot wives,” as Austen’s opening reference to “all the Marys and Elizabeths” mentioned in the Baronetage is glossed by Michoux and Rupp (Austen, Persuasion 4). In the separation from her family (name), that is, Anne finds herself. Tellingly, however, this act of (re)nomination is not always thus positively viewed by Austen, notably with respect to her beloved Fanny to whom she writes in February 1817: “the loss of a Fanny Knight will be never made up to me; My “affec: Neice F. C. Wildman” will be but a poor Substitute” (Austen, Letters 329). Indeed, the aunt both wants and does not want the end of the marriage plot for her niece, oscillating between desire for this end and the desire to defer it, as she will do in relation to the end of death in the letter of May quoted earlier: “I only do not like you shd marry anybody. And yet I do wish you to marry very much. . .”. The rupture of the familial bond marked by the woman’s new name is, moreover, a loss not only for the aunt, but also for the niece, who is so “agreeable” in her “single state” and whose “delicious play of Mind” will on marriage be “all settled down into conjugal & maternal affections.” This may remind us less of the sober, sensible Anne than of the lively Emma whose “play of Mind,” as Miller observes, epitomises as it carries the indeterminacy of the novel’s condition of narratability (13). To be settled down in marriage is to lose the indeterminacy of play (and/ or flirtation, as Miller suggests [20-27]), which is the condition of narratability. The end of the marriage plot is, in short, a kind of death. The association of marriage and death may be a subtext in the reference to Scheherazade who, through her story telling, thwarts the premature death of women. For, as Austen may hint in her use of the word “head,” their execution - the loss of their head - follows the loss of their maidenhead in the consummation of their marriage to the Sultan. <?page no="175"?> Jane Austen’s Changing Senses of an Ending 175 If this suggests the sexual violence attendant on the marriage plot, this is suppressed in what follows the intertextual reference. For, as I have pointed out, the end of the marriage plot brings Anne a new distinct sense of self in the rupture with the original family bond marked by her new name. Would this rupture, one wonders, even allow her to relax into the “play of mind” that she so conspicuously lacks as an(ne) Elliot? Indeed, if the heroine is (re)named, the novel is, as I have discussed, not named by Austen who, as we have seen, describes it to Fanny as “something ready for Publication” and “another for publication.” There is, that is, something still to tell, the definitive act of closure in nomination suspended in an indeterminate “play” as if to ward off the end which is death (and, as noted above, the Cambridge editors suggest Austen may have had further revisions in mind [see note 6]). Death is indeed evoked as immanent in this ending as it is not in the ending of Catherine in which the end of the marriage plot is not shadowed by death, but exposed as an illusion. Immanent in the revised ending of the something for publication, death is also prominent in the ending, which is not one, of the new novel that Austen began in January and stopped in March 1817 when she understood that there would be no more blooming - and no more writing - for her. The figures of the dead are, however, as I have discussed, described as they are “represented” in visual portraits, a metonymy I have suggested for the only form of survival for which Austen could now hope from readers to whom she thus delegates the project of Scheherazade to thwart her premature and unjust death by a cultural afterlife for her stories, her characters and herself. *** Austen could not, of course, have imagined the extent and diversity of the afterlife that she has enjoyed, including the portrait on the new £10 note issued in 2017 (discussed above). The figure of Scheherazade too has enjoyed a vigorous, if not so extensive and varied afterlife. In a pertinent recent instance, her story (and stories) have been taken as an allegory of the ongoing collective project of modern scientific research to ensure the continued survival of the human species by constructing constantly renewed and changing narratives (Vetterli). Vetterli’s emphasis on the imperative to change finds echo in Kermode’s key point that narrative constructs - whether fictions or non-fictions - must change if they are to accommodate the exigencies of “inhuman reality” and “hu- <?page no="176"?> Margaret Tudeau-Clayton 176 man justice” (64). In Austen’s changing senses of an ending we register an aspiration to justice for women as well as cultural survival in the face of human injustice towards women and the inhuman reality of her premature death. <?page no="177"?> Jane Austen’s Changing Senses of an Ending 177 References The Arabian Nights Entertainments. Consisting of One Thousand and One Stories, Told by the Sultaness of the Indies, to Divert the Sultan from a Cruel Vow He Had Made, to Marry a Lady Every Day, and Have Her Put to Death Next Morning, to Avenge Himself for the Disloyalty of his First Sultaness. Containing A Familiar Account of the Customs, Manners and Religion of the Eastern Nations, the Tartars, Persians, and Indians, &c. Freely Transcribed from the Original Translation. . . . 4 vols. London, MDCCXCII. [1792]. Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Gale. University of Neuchâtel. 21 September 2017 Austen, Jane. Later Manuscripts. Ed. Janet Todd and Linda Bree. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. ―――. Jane Austen’s Letters. Ed. Deidre Le Faye. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995 ―――. Mansfield Park. Ed. John Wiltshire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. ―――. Northanger Abbey. Ed. Barbara M. Benedict. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. ―――. Persuasion. Ed. Janet Todd and Antje Blank. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. ―――. Pride and Prejudice. Ed. Pat Rogers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Caines, Michael. “Trifling in Cheltenham.” TLS: The Times Literary Supplement, 6 October 2017. www.the-tls.co.uk/ articles/ public/ triflingin-cheltenham/ . Accessed 10 October 2017. Clarke, David B. and Marcus A Doel. “Jean Baudrillard.” Key Thinkers on Space and Place. Eds. Phil Hubbard, Rob Kitchin and Gill Valentine. London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi: Sage Publications Ltd, 2004. Foucault, Michel. Les mots et les choses. Paris: Gallimard, 1966. Halliwell, James O. A Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, Obsolete Phrases, Proverbs and Ancient Customs, 3rd ed. 2 vols. London: Thomas and William Boone, 1855. Honan, Park. Jane Austen: Her Life. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1987. Kaufmann, Ruta Baublyte. The Architecture of space-time in the novels of Jane Austen. London: Palgrave Macmillan(forthcoming). Kermode, Frank. The Sense of An Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967. <?page no="178"?> Margaret Tudeau-Clayton 178 King, Amy M. Bloom: The Botanical Vernacular in the English Novel. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Kuwahara, Kuldip Kaur. “The Power of Storytelling and Deferral: Anne Elliot, Jane Austen and Scheherazade.” Persuasions On-Line 28.2 (2008). www.jasna.org/ persuasions/ online/ vol28no2/ kuwahara.htm. Accessed 30 September 2017. Laqueur, Thomas. “Nothing Becomes Something.” London Review of Books 38.18 (2016): 13-15. Lynch, Deidre Shauna. Introduction and Notes. Persuasion. By Jane Austen. Ed. James Kingsley. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. ―――. “Sequels.” Jane Austen in Context. Ed. Janet Todd. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Miller, D. A. Narrative and Its Discontents: Problems of Closure in the Traditional Novel. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981. Morris, Steven. “Jane Austen Banknote Unveiled - with Strange Choice of Quotation.” The Guardian, 18 July 2017. www.theguardian.com / business/ 2017/ jul/ 18/ jane-austen-banknote-unveiled-with-strangechoice-of-quotation. Accessed 10 August 2017. Nigro, Jeffrey A. “Reading Portraits at Pemberley.” Persuasions On-Line 34.1 (2013). www.jasna.org/ persuasions/ online/ vol34no1/ nigro.html? . Accessed 15 August 2017. Pinch, Adela. “Lost in a Book: Jane Austen’s Persuasion.” Studies in Romanticism 32.1 (1993): 97-117. Shakespeare, William. Othello. Ed. E. A. J. Honigmann. Walton on Thames: Thomas Nelson, 1997. Vetterli, Martin. “Science: A Tale of 1,100 Stories.” Horizons 111 (2016). www.snf.ch/ en/ researchinFocus/ newsroom/ Pages/ news-170111 horizons-science-a-tale-of-1001-stories.aspx. Accessed 16 June 2017. <?page no="179"?> Capitalism and Dirty Talk: Donald Trump’s Crowdfunded Discourse and the Demise of Political Community Boris Vejdovsky This essay seeks to come to terms with the new political and ethical paradox proposed by the use of language of Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States. While some of his statements have been denounced as slander and many others as lies, such rational understanding of Trump’s discourse has had but little effect on his supporters and, indeed, has not kept him from winning the presidency. The essay resorts to a linguistic analysis of a philosophical tradition about lies established by Immanuel Kant and reexamines it through the work of thinkers such as Jacques Derrida, Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault. Thus, the essay exposes the linguistic novelty of Trump’s discourse in what may be called the “history of the lie” and the ethical and political impact on the political community. The essay concludes, with the help of Michel Serres, that Trump’s discourse coalesces with malfeasant forces at the heart of late capitalist discourse that appropriates the world by defiling it. Keywords: Donald Trump, lying, ethics, political community, capitalism, speech acts, ecology. So that’s life, then: things as they are, This buzzing of the blue guitar. Wallace Stevens, “The Man with the Blue Guitar” Be prepared. You have to understand Trump to stand calmly up to him and those running with him all over the country. - George Lakoff The Challenge of Change. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 36. Ed. Margaret Tudeau-Clayton and Martin Hilpert. Tübingen: Narr, 2018. 179-200. <?page no="180"?> Boris Vejdovsky 180 In The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Immanuel Kant claims that a lie is the exclusive property of the person who utters or writes it. For Kant, a lie defines the person who proffers it, and, like that person’s pain or death, that speech act cannot be shared by the community. Conversely, Kant suggests that truth is a common good shared by all. Truth belongs to all and founds the very sense of ethical and political community. Lies are personal and idiosyncratic and rest outside the democratic metaphysics of common sense that establishes the community and in which “common sense appears not as a psychological given but as the subjective condition of all ‘communicability’” (Deleuze 21). Lies, rather, are harangues thrown at the crowd. While lies are practically indistinguishable, from a linguistic point of view, from a truthful statement, they are distinguishable in that the latter is shared by the community while the former aims at exciting the personalities of the individuals forming a crowd. This essay examines the changes made to our understanding of language and politics by the language of the 45th president of the United States of America, Donald Trump. Performative speech acts form the basis of social life, and Trump’s language nullifies this sociality, rendering community no longer a community, but simply a “crowd.” In his reading of Kant, Deleuze insists that “knowledge implies a common sense, without which it would not be communicable and could not claim universality” (22). Trump’s language and its performance are a contemporary and disquieting development in what Jacques Derrida has called “The History of the Lie,” and this development, which linguist George Lakoff calls Trump’s “Big Lies,” is a clear and present danger to the representational power of language that forms the core of modern representative democracies. It has been difficult to pin down Trump’s lies because they undermine what Deleuze calls after Kant a claim of universality, and because, politically, crowds and communities can have the same electoral leverage. Thus, Trump may be the emergence of a threat to democracy - a political system entirely predicated on the symbolic forms of language - something that thinkers such as Walter Benjamin or Hannah Arendt prophetically warned us against when they were confronted with totalitarian power. By outlining the connections between the performative language of the president and his policies, this essay further proposes that the change introduced by Trump’s language is related to the alignment of his language with the aggressive capitalist ethos that shaped him as a public figure before he became a politician. It is a privatizing language of appropriation that consists in not sharing. Far from being a “Machia- <?page no="181"?> Capitalism and Dirty Talk 181 vellian necessary evil” related to the exercise of power, Trump’s language reveals a new linguistic and political position in which he - as well his crowds of followers - refuse to contribute to the language of community and ultimately to the universality of the common good. For this part the essay relies on the theoretical work of French philosopher Michel Serres, especially his essay Malfeasance: Appropriation Through Pollution? in which he discusses the relation between capitalist appropriation - the branding - and the defiling of the world. My essay also draws on Michel Foucault’s late work of 1982-83 on “Discourse and Truth.” Here, I focus on Foucault’s reflection on parrhesia, that Greek concept, Foucault writes, “which is ordinarily translated into English by ‘free speech’ (French franc-parler and German by Freimütigkeit). Parrhesiazomai is to use parrhesia, and the parrhesiastes is the one who uses parrhesia, i.e., is the one who speaks the truth.” In this essay, I read Serres and Foucault to see if President Trump’s claim to be saying “things as they are” might be considered as a case of parrhesia, and if not, it will be necessary to see what change it introduces in the discourse of representational democracies and what differentiates his discourse from the parrhesia that characterizes, Foucault tells us, the language we hold in common in a democratic Politeia. During the 2016 presidential campaign, as well as since his inauguration as the 45th president of the United States, Donald Trump’s language has repeatedly attracted attention, either for the way it has smeared individuals or groups of individuals - thus seeking to detach them from the national community -, or for his lies. New York Times columnists David Leonhardt and Stuart A. Thompson write, “Many Americans have become accustomed to President Trump’s lies. But as regular as they have become, the country should not allow itself to become numb to them.” Although it is common to accuse politicians of lying, a form of reserve is usually observed by the media; this is not the case with Trump for whom the words “lie” or “liar” have become a standard way of describing his speech. There is indeed a numbing effect at work - so, he is a liar; what are you going to do about it? 1 1 Many commentators have exposed Trump’s lies by comparing his statements or what he promised he would do with what he actually did. According to PolitiFact, only 17 percent of the president’s statements are either “True” or “Mostly True”; the figure goes up to 32 percent if one cares to add “Half True” statements, which leaves the president with 68 percent of statements that range from “False” to what the fact-checking site calls “Pants on Fire.” It has to be noted that this is a significant improvement, since a similar survey conducted a year before suggested that 76 percent of Donald Trump’s statements were not true - that they were lies. This may sound surprising, as one of the arguments of Donald Trump’s supporters is that he is a man who says “things as they <?page no="182"?> Boris Vejdovsky 182 Trump’s slanders and lies had already attracted attention during the 2016 presidential campaign, but were often attributed to the heat of the race. His lies became more prominent when they could be traced to the president of the United Sates and were dubbed “alternative facts.” This started a few hours after Trump was sworn in on Abraham Lincoln’s Bible - and his own. 2 It is significant that the phrase “alternative facts” was coined by Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway on American national television channel NBC , for as Derrida writes, “the media, [which are] the place of gathering, production and archiving of public speech, occupy a determining place in any analysis of political lies and falsification in the space of the res publica” (53). Conway used the carefully crafted phrase during a Meet the Press interview on 22 January 2017. She sought to defend the assertions of then White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer about the attendance at Donald Trump’s inauguration as president of the United States. When asked during the interview with anchor Chuck Todd to explain why Spicer had “utter[ed] a provable falsehood” about the size of the attendance at the inauguration, Conway stated that Spicer had provided “alternative facts.” Todd responded, “Look, alternative facts are not facts. They’re falsehoods” (Blake). Todd’s retort to the president’s counselor was modeled on the Kantian premise of the democratic common good and on the conception that within the accord among the faculties truth equated with the undeniable. On the other hand, Conway’s more strategic than sincere point was that there was room for personal doubt and that if there was doubt, at least personal doubt, she and other people in the crowd should be allowed to freely say so. She argued furthermore that whatever the performance of the president’s affirmation may have been, it was not his intention to deceive anyone, and she further suggested that if anyone was deceived it did not really matter, for nobody would suffer from these personal “alternative facts.” Conway thus posed two important questions about the lie, which are firstly its intentionality and secondly its pejorative effects. are,” but from this assessment it would seem that Donald Trump says things as they are not (“Search Results for ‘Trump’”). 2 U.S. presidents are usually sworn in over - literally - a stack of Bibles. Thus, Barack Obama “solemnly [swore] that [he would] faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States” on Lincoln’s Bible and Martin Luther King’s so-called “travelling Bible.” Trump also used Lincoln’s Bible, but the second Bible was his own. Although there are conflicting ways of reading the symbolism of the pledge, it is noteworthy to see the bifurcation in Trump’s case: on the one hand, he aligns himself with history and on the other he introduces his own Word at the moment of swearing to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution. <?page no="183"?> Capitalism and Dirty Talk 183 Photos which appeared in U.S. media and around the world showed that the attendance was smaller in 2017 than they had been in 2009 for President Obama’s inaugural, Sean Spicer’s peremptory statement that “this [had been] the largest audience to ever witness an inaugural, period! ” notwithstanding (“Spicer” 0: 47). The words of the president voiced by his proxies have been difficult to pin down as lies, even though there was a jarring difference between his performative speech in the media and a “reference to values of reality, truth and falsehood that are supposedly independent from any performative decision” (Derrida 27). Todd called the question of the inauguration attendance “a small thing,” but this lie uttered by his Press Secretary on the first day of his presidency became Trump’s linguistic signature as president. The exchange that happened live and has since then been disseminated almost indefinitely on the internet and the social media has posed the question of the media and of the linguistic, political, ethical and juridical consequences of the president’s language. The allegations of the president appeared to be untruthful, but “for structural reasons, it [is] always . . . impossible to prove, in the strict sense, that someone has lied even if one can prove that he or she did not tell the truth” (Derrida 34). There is a vast difference between truth and ascertainable reality, but the real point is that even when the untruthfulness of an allegation can be demonstrated, this demonstration does not necessarily translate into performative political effects. As experience with the 45th U.S. president has shown, “One will never be able to prove anything that overturns such an allegation, and we must draw the consequences of this. They are formidable and without limit” (Derrida 34; emphasis added). It is necessary to ponder what Derrida calls the “formidable” and (potentially) “limitless” consequences of the linguistic, political and ethical predicament we face with Trump’s lies for which it is extremely difficult to hold him accountable. The consequences of these lies for the nation and for the rest of the world where the words of the president have inaugural performative effects are indeed formidable. Arguably, there is, as Derrida argues, a “prevalent concept of the lie in our culture” (33) that has a long and vexed history that pre-dates Trump’s election. However, Trump’s presidency may have marked a new “phase” in the history of the lie and its performative effects. Trump may be an instance of a “mutation in the history of the lie” (40), a possibility to which Hannah Arendt drew attention in “Truth and Politics,” a 1967 article which she published in the wake of the controversy caused by her reporting on the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem. Arendt who <?page no="184"?> Boris Vejdovsky 184 knew the workings of Nazi anti-Semitic slander and the effects of the lies of Nazi propaganda emphasizes the role of the media in “the relatively recent phenomenon of mass manipulation of fact and opinion as it has become evident in the rewriting of history, in image-making, and in actual government policy” (12; emphasis added). One can only be struck by the accuracy of Arendt’s statement and recognize the accelerating effect of the mass media in a history that was pointing according to her to an “absolute lie.” “The process of the modern lie is no longer,” Arendt writes, “a dissimulation that comes along to veil the truth; rather, it is the destruction of reality or of the original archive” (quoted in Derrida 42). Arendt speaks about the physical destruction or manipulation of the archive that often occurred under Nazism or Stalinism. In a scene that is uncannily reminiscent of Trump’s inaugural ceremony and the photographic controversy that ensued, Milan Kundera introduces this mediatization of the political lie in his novel, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting: In February 1948, communist leader Klement Gottwald stepped out on the balcony of a Baroque palace in Prague to harangue the hundreds of thousands of citizens massed in the Old Town Square. That was a great turning point in the history of Bohemia. A fateful moment of the kind that occurs only once or twice in a millennium. Gottwald was flanked by his comrades, with Clementis standing next to him. It was snowing and cold, and Gottwald was bareheaded. Bursting with solicitude, Clementis took off his fur cap and set it on Gottwald’s head. The propaganda section made hundreds of thousands of copies of the photograph taken on the balcony where Gottwald, in a fur hat and surrounded by his comrades, spoke to the people. On that balcony the history of Communist Bohemia began. Every child knew that photograph, from seeing it on posters and in schoolbooks and museums. Four years later, Clementis was charged with treason and hanged. The propaganda section immediately made him vanish from history and, of course, from all photographs. Ever since, Gottwald has been alone on the balcony. Where Clementis stood, there is the bare palace wall. Nothing remains of Clementis but the fur hat on Gottwald’s head. (3-4) In Kundera’s scene the spectral presence of the lie haunts history, and as in the case of the size of the attendance at Trump’s inaugural, the scene is both comic and tragic. The scene also foreshadows the new phase in the history of the lie that Trump embodies and where the problem is no longer, as in Kundera and Arendt, the mere destruction of the archive, but rather that of the disappearance of a horizon of truth or a universal claim against which the archive can be read. <?page no="185"?> Capitalism and Dirty Talk 185 The problem of the lie is both linguistic and ethical, and as Kundera suggests, it is also historical, for ultimately the modified and thereby nullified archive will become what we will refer to as “history.” From the ethical point of view, Trump’s lack of truthfulness betrays the “performative promise or oath and that constitutes the element, the medium of all language” (Derrida 60) and that makes any speech act possible. Indeed, every speech act - whether we introduce ourselves, say what our favorite color is, promise to meet someone at a given time and place, or pledge to defend the constitution - contains this implicit oath that carries information, but even more importantly reaffirms language as a possible communicative performance. Although we may not always feel fully committed to that oath and to what Derrida calls (after Rousseau) the “sacral horizon” of truth (39), we need to remind ourselves that there would be no possible language, let alone politics or ethics without that implicit oath. That implicit oath is what separates the political community from the crowd of fans and supporters. From a linguistic point of view, a lie is also an intransitive speech act in which someone says, utters, or promises with no object attached to these transitive verbs. On the other hand, “A lie . . . also aims to create an event, to produce an effect of belief where there is nothing to state or at least where nothing is exhausted in a statement,” Derrida proposes (37). Trump’s almost obsessive use of the phrase “believe me” confirms that his speech acts are performative events where his personal testimonial replaces any kind of referential truth and where what he seeks to achieve is not the conveyance of facts, but rather an effect of personal persuasion in his listeners. This is also what explains Trump’s preference for Twitter over any other mode of address: not only does Twitter enable him to frequently reiterate his performative testimonial, but the brevity of the messages and their paratactic structure also keep him from having to worry about the grammatical and semantic coherence of what he is Tweeting. The only thing that matters is the speech performance itself. From a linguistic point of view too, Trump relies on a series of deeply imbedded metaphors in American culture and on the performance of their constant reiteration. While Trump is often seen as an ignoramus - something he may actually be - he intuitively taps into these simplified metaphors. One of them, identified by linguist George Lakoff, consists in referring to the U.S. “metaphorically in family terms” (“Understanding” 2). In Trump’s parlance, the U.S. is a home, an oïkos: the administration of the home - that is literally its economy - and the moral code of the house is placed under the strict authority of the authoritarian pater familias. By extension, the symbolic patriarchal figure is <?page no="186"?> Boris Vejdovsky 186 also the father and origin of logos, that is, the origin of truth that suppresses any reference outside himself. “In the Strict Father family,” Lakoff writes, “father knows best. He knows right from wrong and has ultimate authority to make sure his children and his spouse do what he says, which is taken as what is right” (“Understanding” 2; emphasis added). Trump performatively poses as the source of what is right (and wrong) and can thus remodel “truth,” even though we can demonstrate he is lying. This demonstration does not impress his supporters who believe the incarnated source and origin of logos and not what universal evidence shows. Trump’s detractors, on the other hand, are numbed and defeated by this performative rolling fire of lies, for it does not suffice to demonstrate that something is inaccurate; Trump produces a logos whose reactivation in the media does not only modify the archive, but also produces its own ever-changing archive: “The more Trump’s views are discussed in the media, the more they are activated and the stronger they get, both in the minds of hardcore conservatives and in the minds of moderate progressives” (Lakoff, “Understanding” 6). During the 2016 campaign, what Hillary Clinton was saying was true - “and it was irrelevant,” Lakoff writes (“Understanding” 6; emphasis added). Indeed, her discourse was predicated on explicating her experience and on the complex exposition of policies while Trump had crowds chant, “Lock her up.” In front of the crowds that he or one of his proxies was arousing, Trump was simply posing as the phallic symbol of moral authority and the embodiment of U.S. libidinal fantasies. While Clinton was inadvertently reactivating Trump’s “Big Lies” (Lakoff, “Understanding” 8) by seeking to debunk them, Trump’s language relied then, as it does now, on anaphora and the repetition of phrases that align the moral superiority of the father figure with the myth of winning: We’re gonna start winning again. We’re gonna win at every level: we’re gonna win economically, we’re gonna win with the economy, we’re gonna win with the military, we’re gonna win with healthcare and for our veterans, we’re gonna win on every single facet, we’re gonna win so much you may even get tired of winning and you’ll say please, please Mr. President, It’s too much winning! We can’t take it anymore! (“Donald Trump”) 3 3 Trump is also remarkable from the point of view of the delivery. The use of “gonna” is a marker of what Columbia University linguist John McWhorter calls Trump’s “unadorned” language, or his language “without deodorant.” Also remarkable is the amount of attention that Trump’s language has been gradually gaining. There have been countless comments (and jokes! ) on the president’s use of language and linguists such as McWhorter (sic) are becoming regular pundits on liberal channels such as MSNBC . <?page no="187"?> Capitalism and Dirty Talk 187 While Clinton was appealing (admittedly rather clumsily) to “grand principles deriving from the Enlightenment [whose] central idea was universal reason, the notion that there is only one form of rationality and that that is what makes us human” (Lakoff, Political Mind 21), Trump uses the performative presence of his body (language) and the performative iteration of his speech acts that are reverberated ad infinitum by the media and social networks to debase any sense of origin and historical universality in his words. Trump’s grammar also is indicative of a simplification of the world that we believed to be reserved to the realm of allegory or caricature. In his celebrated Western movie Stagecoach (1939), John Ford has the villain of the movie, a banker named Gatewood, spew out a rhetoric reminiscent of the Trump harangues. Almost eighty years before Trump promised to “Drain the Swamp” of Washington, Ford’s Gatewood is a proleptic allegory of American history: I don’t know what the government has come down to. Instead of protecting businessmen it punctures noose into business. . . . America for Americans! The government must not interfere with business. Reduce taxes. They’re even talking about having bank examiners now, as if we bankers didn’t know how to run our own banks. . . . What this country needs is a businessman for president. (Ford 34: 24-34: 38) Ford’s movie - which is centrally about the construction of language and community - might sound almost prophetic, but it also makes us realize that Trump’s rhetoric taps into deeply rooted national fantasies of Franklinian eighteenth-century capitalist meritocracy and of the destiny of a chosen people as defined by the American Jeremiad of the seventeenth century. Trump’s (failed) promise during the campaign was to run the nation like a successful business, a business that would function like a general store or a local bank at the time of the frontier. In the tirade in Ford’s movie, as in Trump’s diatribes, business and politics are understood within the grammatical framework of direct causation, which is “easy to understand, and appears to be represented in the grammars of all languages around the world” (Lakoff, “Understanding”). As Lakoff points out, “many of Trump’s policy proposals are framed in terms of direct causation” (“Understanding” 5). Simple causes call for simple effects. Trump unabashedly transposes the everyday street lingo to the language of politics where one expects another tone and another register (“Language Expert”; “Donald Trump”). <?page no="188"?> Boris Vejdovsky 188 Are there too many immigrants in the U.S.? Deport all aliens who entered the country illegally, even though millions of them are living in the country and make its economy run and have children who serve in the U.S. military. Do too many Mexicans (characterized as “drug dealers and rapists”) cross the border? Build a wall. A Muslim may be connected with an act of terrorism? Ban all Muslims from entering the country. Similarly, in this kind of direct causation thinking, if global warming were true, it would not be cold: “This very expensive GLOBAL WARMING bullshit has got to stop. Our planet is freezing, record low temps, and our GW scientists are stuck in ice” (@realDonaldTrump, 1 January 2014, 4: 39 PM). But global warming, international diplomacy, or world economics do not function according to direct causation. They rather function according to systemic causation, one that “is more complex and is not represented in the grammar of any language” (Lakoff, “Understanding” 5). Thus, when Trump accused Clinton of being weak because she refused to “name” “radical Islamic terrorism,” he created a word and world grammar in which the paratactic structure of the phrase equates the three terms that it contains, while the process of naming provides things with a grammatical identity: “just saying ‘radical Islamic terrorists’ allows you to pick them out, get at them, and annihilate them” (“Understanding” 8). The complex connections between education, foreign policy, racial conflict and capitalist hegemony which are at work in the question of “terrorism” have no grammar that makes it possible to express them in one declarative sentence, a motto or the 140 characters of a tweet. Trump’s paratactic or incoherent structures thus correspond to a simplified grammar of the world. He caters to the fears of crowds in order to have them rally around him as the reassuring phallic totem of the tribe. Having the crowds chant “Lock Her Up,” “Build that Wall” or “He will do it” is reminiscent of some of the darkest moments of Western history in which what the leader said matters less than his embodiment of the words he speaks. Lakoff insists that “Enlightenment reason does not account for real political behavior” and “emotion is both central and legitimate in the political arena” (Political Mind 21). While we might be tempted to dismiss the incoherence of the language or the absence of truthfulness of Trump’s language as the indication of his stupidity and incompetence, we need to recognize that the aura of the leader and its performative action on the crowd are not to be underestimated as we should not underestimate how this influence debilitates the sense of political community. <?page no="189"?> Capitalism and Dirty Talk 189 While Trump is not a second Hitler, he is reminiscent of a latter-day version of Herman Melville’s Captain Ahab, a man driven by monomaniac obsessions and posturing as the origin of truth. In Moby-Dick, when Captain Ahab arouses his crew - a crowd in which he undermines communal solidarity - against the white whale, his arch-enemy, he has the crew chant, “Death to Moby-Dick” (970; ch. 36). Ishmael, the narrator, comments on how he too is swept off his senses and becomes part of the chanting crowd: “But [Ahab] drilled deep down, and blasted all my reason out of me! I think I see his impious end; but feel that I must help him to it” (973; ch. 38). Ishmael comes to the realization that he has been under the influence of Ahab’s language that has activated primordial fears and desires in him: I, Ishmael, was one of that crew; my shouts had gone up with the rest; my oath had been welded with theirs; and stronger I shouted, and more did I hammer and clinch my oath, because of the dread in my soul. A wild, mystical, sympathetical feeling was in me; Ahab’s quenchless feud seemed mine. With greedy ears I learned the history of that murderous monster against whom I and all the others had taken our oaths of violence and revenge. (983; ch. 41) In The American Renaissance, a book published a few weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor and the U.S. engaging in WW II , F. O. Matthiessen commented on Melville’s Captain Ahab and Hawthorne’s puritan minister Chillingworth, the dark male figures that people the “American Renaissance.” Such figures might appear to be unreasonable fictional characters or mere allegories, “but,” Matthiessen writes, “living the age of Hitler, even the least religious can know and be terrified by what it means for a man to be possessed” (307). While the shouts of the crowds at Trump’s rallies are reminiscent of “possession,” it is important to note that Trump is no Ahab or Chillingworth in their mystical and metaphysical dimensions. Trump is really a pure opportunist, a confidence-man. Melville portrayed such a character in his eponymous novel, a character impossible to pin down in referential discourse. Of course, Melville’s confidence-man is a Dyonisiac and celebratory figure of anti-Platonic discourse, but like any discursive figure, the confidence-man has its dark side. Thus, at the end of the novel, which takes place aboard a ship, an old man asks the confidence-man to give him a life-preserver (a life-jacket). The confidence-man gives him a chamber-pot and assures him that it is “so perfect - sounds so very hollow” (1111). Even though the old man “scrutinize[s] it pretty closely” and is repelled by the bad “smell,” he entrusts his life to this <?page no="190"?> Boris Vejdovsky 190 object that will certainly not save his life but doom him. One can only be struck by the analogy here: Trump’s crowds of supporters are confronted with Trump’s malfeasance, the bad smell of his lies, and yet they are willing to entrust him their lives. *** Not unlike Derrida who speaks of the “formidable” and “limitless” consequences of the impossibility to nail down the reasonable and truthful limits of the language of someone like Trump, Lakoff argues that Trump “change[s] the brains of millions of Americans” in what he sees as “a form of mind control” (“Understanding” 8). “When you’re the president, you have to think about what we call ‘truth conditions in linguistics,” another linguist, John McWhorter, declared in an interview, adding that, “Oratorically, [Trump] is the beginning of something new.” Trump’s novelty is not only in his performative aura on crowds and the annihilation of truth, but also the alignment of his discourse with the post-capitalist violence of contemporary U.S. culture. Cornel West has spoken of Trump’s era as the advent of a “neofascist” era, “an American-style form of fascism” (“Cornel West on Donald Trump”), while philosopher Sheldon Wolin has echoed Arendt and referred to contemporary America as “inverted totalitarianism,” a state whose functioning is no longer in the hands of the demos, but rather in those of entrepreneurial plutocrats that manipulate discourse for their own interest: Inverted totalitarianism works differently. It reflects the belief that the world can be changed to accord with a limited range of objectives, such as ensuring that its own energy needs will be met, that “free markets” will be established, that military supremacy will be maintained, and that “friendly regimes” will be in place in those parts of the world considered vital to its own security and economic needs. (Wolin 46-47) This shift is important, for Trump is not an “occasional liar,” or someone who occasionally disguises the truth as a sort of necessary Machiavellian evil. Arendt writes: Only the occasional liar will find it possible to stick to a particular falsehood with unwavering consistency; those who adjust images and stories to everchanging circumstances will find themselves floating on the wide-open horizon of potentiality, drifting from one possibility to the next, unable to hold <?page no="191"?> Capitalism and Dirty Talk 191 on to any one of their own fabrications. Far from achieving an adequate substitute for reality and factuality they have transformed facts and events back into the potentiality out of which they originally appeared. (15; emphasis added) It is probably impossible to submit Donald Trump to the stringent imperative of unconditional truth which Kant develops in The Doctrine of Right, and which is known as the “doctrine of the murderer at the door.” Admittedly, few presidents or even citizens of the United States, or of any other country in the world, those whom Arendt calls “occasional liars” would successfully stand that test. On the other hand, it is necessary to examine Trump’s language to show how it correlates with the development of latter-day capitalism. Indeed, Trump’s strictly personal language coalesces with “The benignity of inverted totalitarianism as contrasted with the harshness of classic totalitarian regimes [and it] is revealed in the ecumenical character of the one and the xenophobia of the other” (Wolin, Democracy 49- 50). Trump’s “alternative facts” are not only alternative, they are also personal and constitute his exclusive ownership. Trump’s language is coextensive with his personal entrepreneurial attitude, which has consisted in creating gated communities with very exclusive membership rights and in erecting buildings that bear his name in very large lettering on them. In all cases, his discourse consists in excluding people from his territory while affirming that territory as an undeniable fact, and affirming that it is his right to brand them and appropriate them. In that respect, Trump affirms his right to say things as they are: this is my building; this is my name; this is my property. Trump’s language - his lies - belongs only to him -it is, properly speaking, unshareable. During his first year as the president of the United States, Trump has sought to transform what used to be his personal economic and (un)ethical economic model into national policy. The Muslim ban, the attempt at dismantling Obamacare, the intention to build the wall with Mexico, and the extension of oil drilling rights and the reversal of the designation of areas as National Monuments - including Mount Katahdin in Maine, so dear to Henry David Thoreau - are coextensive with his language. Trump’s language is indicative of the transformation of corporate strategies into U.S. national policies; his language, which, as all agree, is absolutely idiosyncratic, is also indicative of a personalizing and privatizing of politics. As a result, U.S. politics resembles Trump’s personal attitude to space and people and consists of radical appropriation of the world. <?page no="192"?> Boris Vejdovsky 192 In Malfeasance, Michel Serres proposes that there is a direct connection between pollution, dirtying and the capitalist appropriation of the world. Michel Serres’s multi-semantic French title - Le Mal propre - puns on several meanings related to ownership and what is proper. In English, as in French, the adjective propre or “proper” comes from Latin proprius, “one’s own, particular to itself,” from pro privo, “for the individual, in particular,” from ablative of privus, “one’s own, individual.” The etymology is echoed in both French and English in the word “proper” itself, as in a “proper word” or a “proper way of behaving,” and in the adverbs derived from it, as in “to speak properly,” or “properly speaking.” The meaning of the word also appears in the adjective “appropriate,” the related verb “to appropriate,” but also in “property” and “propriety.” In French, the pun is even more prolific insofar as a “malpropre” (in one word) is a disreputable, untrustworthy person, literally someone who is not proper, not clean, someone so unclean, in fact, that they dirty everything they touch with their mere presence. They thereby appropriate it and make it their property. The canny English translation of the title carries over some of the metaphors, in particular in the phonemic associations of “malfeasance” and “feces.” In English, a malpropre is a swine. Serres invokes this meaning, but spells his title in two words: Le Mal propre. His title, then, suggests that what is bad, or really evil, is that which we make our property, that which we appropriate. Proudhon had suggested that “property is theft”; Serres proposes that the appropriation of the world is a malfeasance, something that hurts and defiles the world and causes the demise of a democratic ethos. This is what Trump’s language is: an appropriation of the world and of the people through a defiling of the world and the people. In a 2005 conversation with television host Billy Bush, Trump was caught on a live microphone, describing a failed seduction, saying, “I did try and fucked her, she was married.” He added that when he meets beautiful women, he feels entitled to “grab them by the pussy.” “You can do anything,” he further bragged to Bush. 4 To say it provisionally with Serres, appropriation means dirtying; talking dirty about women by referring publicly to their physical appearance, their menstruation or their genitals, to describe Mexicans by generically referring to them as rapists 4 Billy Bush, the TV host, is a cousin of George W. and Jeb Bush. The other pun in Serre’s title is that of the Mâle propre, in other words, Serres has the meaning of “swine” echo with the French word for “male” - what is properly male is dirt (le propre du male, c’est le sale). That this whole question of appropriation of the world through defiling it is also gendered is something Trump has made all too blatant (Jacobs et al.). <?page no="193"?> Capitalism and Dirty Talk 193 and drug dealers, is a way of dirtying them and thereby appropriating them. Lies defile the world, for, as Derrida argues, “The duty to tell the truth is a sacred imperative” (38). Derrida comments that for Kant “the contrary of a lie is neither truth nor reality, . . . but rather veracity, truthfulness, speaking-the-truth, the will-to-truth ([Kant’s] Warhaftigkeit) (43). It has often been pointed out that people lie because of vested interests; to put things in a nutshell, money seems to be the name of the game. For Kant, however, lies do not need a reason, and someone does not need to either benefit from them or be impaired by them: Hence a lie defined merely as an intentional untruthful declaration [eine unwahre Deklaration] to another man does not require the additional condition that it must do harm to another. . . . For a lie always harms another; if not some other human being, then it necessarily does harm to humanity in general, inasmuch as it vitiates the source [die Quelle] of right of the law it makes it useless [die Rechtsquelle unbrauchbar macht]. (Kant, “On Humanity’s Supposed Right to Lie”; quoted in Derrida 44) What matters for Kant is the breach of the social contract established by performative speech acts: a lie invalidates all other speech acts and nullifies them. In German, the lie makes the source, or spring of the law useless [unbrauchbar]; Peggy Kamuf translates that as “vitiates the source of right.” Indeed, the lie soils the spring or the source from which the community drinks and from where it takes water for its ablutions. Talking dirty about people is a form of pollution that not only defiles the world and the people, but it also marks them as territory and property that can be exploited. Lies and dirty talk mark territory as a form of appropriation: Tigers piss on the edge of their lairs. And so do lions and dogs. Like those carnivorous mammals, many animals, our cousins, mark their territory with their harsh, stinking urine or with their howling, while others such as finches and nightingales use sweet songs. (Serres 1; emphasis in the original) Serres makes it clear that the language of territorial and economic appropriation has racist overtones that echo with the vexed U.S. history of slavery and territorial imperialism on the one hand, and sexual assault, or even rape, on the other. Thus, on 2 May 2017, President Trump said in an interview, “I mean, had Andrew Jackson been a little later you wouldn’t have had the Civil War. . . . [H]e had a big heart. He was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War, he <?page no="194"?> Boris Vejdovsky 194 said ‘There’s no reason for this.’” Amy S. Greenberg, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of History at Penn State University, also replied to the president: Indeed in 1844 [Andrew Jackson] pushed to have the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Martin Van Buren, dropped from the ticket after Van Buren opposed annexing Texas out of a belief that it would exacerbate sectional tensions. Jackson preferred James K. Polk, an avid expansionist, and like himself, a slave holder. Had Jackson seen the Civil War coming, would he have deliberately made tensions between the North and South worse? (“Historians”) David S. Reynolds, Distinguished Professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, concurred: Andrew Jackson, a Tennessee slaveholder who sent thousands of Native Americans to the West on the Trail of Tears, refused to take a moral position on slavery expansion, which in the 1850s led to plans for a U.S.controlled slave empire to include Cuba and parts of Central and South America. Had Jackson, who died in 1845, been around in the 1850s, doubtless he would have defended slavery’s expansion. The only deal Andrew Jackson might have offered the South to prevent the war would have been to allow slavery to persist and spread. (Reynolds) As we are tragically reminded on a daily basis, every word spoken by the president of the United States has repercussions in the nation and beyond its borders. From that point of view, the president’s words are very particular speech acts whose effects - unlike those of the words of an ordinary citizen - have the performative power to affect the lives of people around the world. The words of the U.S. president mark the world. As a private capitalist entrepreneur, Trump has erected buildings with his name in large letters to mark his territory; as the 45th president of the United States, Donald Trump seeks to impose by synecdoche, but this time in the name of the country, such dirtying signs onto the world. Serres reminds us that this marking of the world is not only inscribed in animal ethology, but also in entrepreneurial strategies: In bygone days, the story goes, the whores of Alexandria used to carve their initials in reverse order on the soles of their sandals. This enabled prospective clients to read the imprints on the sand and discover both the desired person and the direction of her bed. The presidents of great brands promoted by advertisers on city billboards today would no doubt enjoy know- <?page no="195"?> Capitalism and Dirty Talk 195 ing that like good sons they are the direct descendants of those whores. (Serres 1) As president of the United States, Trump has extended the drilling rights of privately owned oil companies that will appropriate large tracts of the world by marking and defiling it with their pollution. Of course, animals too appropriate their territory with their feces, but they do so “physiologically and locally” (Serres 74); on the other hand, “Homo [sapiens] appropriates the world with his hard refuse” (Serres 74), and when that homo (sapiens) has at his disposal the power of the world’s first economy - and the launch codes - one can only shudder at the thought that this is not an empty metaphor. This is what oil companies do thanks to the performative power of the president’s words that, in effect, soil and pollute the world. This contamination - this pollution - of the world comes along with the abandonment of the “sacred moral imperative” enunciated by Kant. We come to the realization that Kant’s imperative is not only the esoteric ratiocination of a philosopher, but the imperative under which democratic societies function. While we associate the word today with impending ecological disaster, Serres reminds us that “pollution” is a word of “religious and medical origin” that first meant “the desecration of places of worship by some excrement and, later, the staining of the bedsheets by ejaculation, usually resulting from masturbation” (49; my translation). This is the kind of pollution with which the U.S. president’s dirty talk defiles the world. With varying amounts of cynicism, Trump and his supporters have been arguing that they are not the liars: on the contrary, they are the ones who denounce the lies of others; they say things as they are. In his typically reductive way - which participates in the dirty talk by stripping language of its human characteristics of doubt and nuance - Trump tweeted, for instance, “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive” (@realDonaldTrump, 6 November 2012, 11: 15 AM) or, “This very expensive GLOBAL WARMING bullshit has got to stop. Our planet is freezing, record low temps, and our GW scientists are stuck in ice” (@realDonaldTrump, 1 January 2014, 4: 39 PM). Trump and his supporters may thus seem to exercise their right to use “free speech,” or parrhesia, which is expressed in the first amendment to the U.S. constitution. In his late work, Michel Foucault traces the possibility to speak one’s mind, even if it disturbs the possibly well-meaning majority, to the very origins of democracy. On the other hand, Foucault also points out, <?page no="196"?> Boris Vejdovsky 196 The explicit criticism of speakers who utilized parrhesia in its negative sense became a commonplace in Greek political thought since the Peloponnesian War; and a debate emerged concerning the relationship of parrhesia to democratic institutions. The problem, very roughly put, was the following. Democracy is founded by a politeia, a constitution, where the demos, the people, exercise power, and where everyone is equal in front of the law. Such a constitution, however, is condemned to give equal place to all forms of parrhesia, even the worst. Because parrhesia is given even to the worst citizens, the overwhelming influence of bad, immoral, or ignorant speakers may lead the citizenry into tyranny, or may otherwise endanger the city. Hence parrhesia may be dangerous for democracy itself. Thus this problem seems coherent and familiar, but for the Greeks the discovery of this problem, of a necessary antinomy between parrhesia - freedom of speech - and democracy, inaugurated a long impassioned debate concerning the precise nature of the dangerous relations which seemed to exist between democracy, logos, freedom, and truth. (Foucault, “Parrhesia”) Written more than thirty years ago, this text seems to be a sort of proleptic allegory of the current situation of the U.S. President Trump has presented himself as the parrhesiaste who speaks the truth when nobody else does - the rest being “Fake News.” In fact, Trump only acts as a parasite of the democratic system who transforms the politeia into a vociferating crowd by vitiating the system and thereby appropriating it. 5 5 Foucault stipulates that there are five features of the parrhesiastic act: First, the speaker must express his own opinion directly; that is, he must express his opinion without (or by minimizing) rhetorical flourish and make it plain that it is his opinion. Second, parrhesia requires that the speaker knows that he speaks the truth and that he speaks the truth because he knows what he says is in fact true. His expressed opinion is verified by his sincerity and courage, which points to the third feature, namely, danger: it is only when someone risks some kind of personal harm that his speech constitutes parrhesia. Fourth, the function of parrhesia is not merely to state the truth, but to state it as an act of criticizing oneself (for example, an admission) or another. Finally, the parrhesiastes speaks the truth as a duty to himself and others, which means he is free to keep silent but respects the truth by imposing upon himself the requirement to speak it as an act of freedom. (Robinson) It is with Socrates, Foucault says, that the care of the self first manifests itself as parrhesia, though not only Socrates; Foucault considers parrhesiastic practices throughout the ancient Greek and Roman epochs: The essence of Socratic parrhesia is located in his focus on the harmony between the way one lives (Greek: bios) and the rational discourse or account (Greek: logos) one might or might not possess that would justify the way one lives. Socrates himself lived in a way that was in perfect conformity with his statements about how one ought to live, and those statements themselves were supported by a rigorous rational discourse defending their truth. Because Socrates bound himself in his conduct to his own philosophically explored standards, his interlocutors under- <?page no="197"?> Capitalism and Dirty Talk 197 As in the case of the “source of right” mentioned by Kant, once the water is polluted, the source becomes unavailable for the community. By soiling it - like a child that spits in his soup to make sure nobody will eat it - the dirty talk of the president secures him and his victims (primarily his own supporters) the exclusive right of that source. Arendt insists, “Persuasion and violence can destroy truth, but they cannot replace it” (16); the violence of Trump’s language has that destructive power, but it does not have the power to rebuild and cleanse the world it has soiled and shattered. stood him to be truly free. Socrates’ harmony is the condition of his use of parrhesia in identifying and criticizing the lack of harmony in his interlocutors, with the aim of leading them to a life in which they will bind themselves in their own conduct to only those principles that they can put into a rational discourse. Socratic parrhesia therefore manifests the care of the self because its intent is ethical, for it urges the interlocutor to pursue knowledge of what is true and conform their conduct to the truth as ethical work. (Robinson) <?page no="198"?> Boris Vejdovsky 198 References @realDonaldTrump. “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing noncompetitive.” Twitter, 6 November 2012, 11: 15 AM, twitter.com/ realdonaldtrump/ status/ 265895292191248385? lang=en. ―――. “This very expensive GLOBAL WARMING bullshit has got to stop. Our planet is freezing, record low temps, and our GW scientists are stuck in ice.” Twitter, 1 January 2014, 4: 39 PM, twitter.com / realdonaldtrump/ status/ 418542137899491328? lang=en. Arendt, Hannah. “Truth and Politics.” The New Yorker, 25 February 1967. idanlandau.files.wordpress.com/ 2014/ 12/ arendt-truth-andpolitics.pdf. Accessed 4 May 2017. 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Paris: Editions Galilée, 2012. “Donald Trump: You Gonna Win So Much You May Even Get Tired of Winning.” YouTube, uploaded by Ottoman Empire, 20 May 2016. www.youtube.com/ watch? v=daOH-pTd_nk. Accessed 4 May 2017. Ford, John, director. Stagecoach. Walter Wanger Productions, 1939. Foucault, Michel. “The Meaning and the Evolution of the Word Parrhesia.” Discourse and Truth: The Problematization of Parrhesia. Digital Archive: Foucault.info, 1999. Michel Foucault Info. foucault.info / doc/ documents/ parrhesia/ foucault-dt1-wordparrhesia-en-html. Accessed 3 May 2017. <?page no="199"?> Capitalism and Dirty Talk 199 ――― . “Parrhesia and the Crisis of Democratic Institutions.” Discourse and Truth: The Problematization of Parrhesia. Digital Archive: Foucault.info, 1999. Discours et vérité. Paris: Vrin, 2016. Michel Foucault Info. foucault.info/ doc/ documents/ parrhesia/ foucault-dt3-democracyen-html. 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The Political Mind: Why You Can’t Understand 21st-Century American Politics with an 18th-Century Brain. New York: Viking Penguin, 2008. ――― . “Understanding Trump.” George Lakoff, 23 July 2016. georgelakoff.com/ 2016/ 07/ 23/ understanding-trump-2/ . Accessed 4 May 2017. “Language Expert: Donald Trump’s Way of Speaking Is ‘Oddly Adolescent. The 11th Hour. MSNBC .’” YouTube, uploaded by MSNBC , 15 September 2017. www.youtube.com/ watch? v=phsU1vVHOQI. Accessed 20 September 2017. Leonhardt, David and Stuart A. Thompson. “Trump’s Lies.” New York Times, 23 June 2017. www.nytimes.com/ interactive/ 2017/ 06/ 23/ opinion/ trumps-lies.html. Accessed 15 September 2017. Matthiessen, F. O. The American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman. 1941. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968. Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. New York: The Library of America, 1983. <?page no="200"?> Boris Vejdovsky 200 ――― . The Confidence Man: His Masquerade. New York: The Library of America, 1984. Reynolds, David S. “What Trump Could Learn.” CNN, 16 March 2017. edition.cnn.com/ 2017/ 03/ 15/ opinions/ trump-jackson-hermitagereynolds-opinion/ index.html. Robinson, Bob. “Michel Foucault: Ethics.” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. www.iep.utm.edu/ fouc-eth/ . Accessed 4 May 2017. “Search Results for ‘Trump.’” PolitiFact: A Service of the Tampa Bay Times. www.politifact.com/ search/ ? q=trump. Accessed 4 May 2017. Serres, Michel. Le Mal propre: Polluer pour s’approprier? Paris: Editions Le Pommier, 2008. Malfeasance: Appropriation Through Pollution? Trans. Anne-Marie Feenberg-Dibon. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011. “Spicer: Inauguration Had Largest Audience Ever.” CNN, 21 January 2017. edition.cnn.com/ videos/ politics/ 2017/ 01/ 21/ sean-spicer-don ald -trump-inauguration-crowd-bts.cnn. Accessed 27 April 2017. Wolin, Sheldon S. Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008. <?page no="201"?> Jane Austen’s Sensitivity to the Subjunctive as a Social Shibboleth 1 Anita Auer Over the last fifty years, the language of Jane Austen has received much attention, especially as she lived at the time when “correct” English grammar was codified, but education opportunities were still variable across social layers and regarding gender. Her language use, in manuscript and print, therefore allows for the study of the influence of eighteenth-century normative grammars. In his work on Austen’s language, Phillipps (155) makes some interesting claims about her use of the subjunctive, i.e. a linguistic feature that underwent change during the Modern English period. He suggests that (a) Austen was sensitive to “correct” language use and aspired to it, (b) her sensitivity is reflected in the corrections carried out in different editions of her novels, and that (c) she used the subjunctive more frequently than can be found in presentday novels. To verify these suggestions, this paper investigates Austen’s subjunctive use in her novels and letters. Key words: Jane Austen, subjunctive, mood, normative grammar, historical sociolinguistics 1 I want to thank the editors and the anonymous reviewer for their useful comments on a previous version of this paper. Any remaining shortcomings are my own. The Challenge of Change. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 36. Ed. Margaret Tudeau-Clayton and Martin Hilpert. Tübingen: Narr, 2018. 201-222. <?page no="202"?> Anita Auer 202 1. Introduction K. C. Phillipps’ monograph Jane Austen’s English (1970), which constitutes the earliest comprehensive study of Jane Austen’s language (for more recent studies, see Page, Tieken-Boon van Ostade’s In Search of Jane Austen, and Bray), contains the following statement about Jane Austen’s use of the subjunctive mood: Jane Austen seems to have used the subjunctive in appropriate contexts when she thought about it; a good deal oftener than it would be found in a modern novel. A ‘correct’ use of the subjunctive was something to which she clearly aspired; we see this from corrections in later editions of her work, done in her lifetime. It seems natural enough that Mr Darcy’s housekeeper should maintain that she could not meet with a better master “if I was to go through the world” (PP 249); this is the reading of the first (1813) edition. But in the second (1813) and third (1817) editions, the subjunctive form were appears. Similarly in this quotation from the second (1816) edition of Mansfield Park, where the first (1814) edition has was: Whether his importance to her were quite what it had been (MP 417). (Phillips 155) Phillipps makes some interesting claims in the latter quote, namely (1) the suggestion that Jane Austen was sensitive to “correct” language use and that she aspired to it, (2) that this sensitivity with respect to subjunctive use is reflected in the corrections carried out in different editions of her novels, and (3) that Jane Austen used the subjunctive more frequently than can be found in present-day novels. All of these claims are illustrated and most likely also based on a couple of changes of past indicative forms into past subjunctive forms, i.e. “whether his importance to her was quite what it had been” into “whether his importance to her were quite what it had been.” This scarcity of empirical evidence immediately poses a number of questions: How frequently did Jane Austen in fact use the subjunctive in her novels? How does Austen’s subjunctive use compare to that of other authors of novels, both contemporary and present-day? How much say did Jane Austen have in the publication process of her novels, i.e. can changes in language in different editions of her novels be attributed to her or to an editor? Based on the latter question, if it were the case that changes had been carried out by an editor, what does this tell us about Jane Austen’s actual language use and her sensitivity to “correct” language use? This essay seeks to address the above-listed questions by investigating Jane Austen’s subjunctive use in her novels and letters and by viewing the results in the context of the standardisation of the English lan- <?page no="203"?> Jane Austen and the Subjunctive 203 guage and the history of education, and, in particular, Jane Austen’s education, her view on language as well as her involvement in the publication of her novels. 2. The aspiration to “correct” language use in Jane Austen’s lifetime In Jane Austen’s lifetime (1775-1817) state-supported education did not exist. Female education in higher social classes was carried out at home either by the parents or a tutor, or in a boarding school. In any case, it was largely confined to practical and religious training that would prepare the young ladies for their domestic role. The teaching of classical languages and literature largely appears to have been a masculine privilege. Jane Austen and her sister Cassandra were briefly taught by a Mrs. Cawley in 1783 and from 1785 to 1786 they attended the Abbey Boarding school in Reading (cf. Ross 9-10; see also Nokes, Tomalin, and Le Faye, A Family Record). Apart from that, Jane Austen was educated at home. Note that grammars of English such as Robert Lowth’s Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762), which has been ascribed a normative status and is by many considered a key publication and a model for other grammars (see for instance Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Grammars), had already been published when Jane Austen received her education. Devlin claims that “We can be sure that she [Jane Austen] had read Locke’s Thoughts and Chesterfield’s Letters to his Son; we know that she read Dr Johnson (‘my dear Dr. Johnson’), Blair’s Rhetoric and Sherlock’s sermons, but we can be certain of very little else” (49). While this suggests that Jane Austen was familiar with Dr. Johnson’s works, it is not clear whether this includes Johnson’s dictionary, which is prefaced by an English grammar. It is therefore also not possible to elicit what kind of English grammar models Jane Austen was taught, if she was taught any at all. Grundy (189) argues that, unlike her brothers who studied the classical literary canon at school, Jane Austen did not inherit an obvious, precisely defined literary tradition. Her reading, which was extensive in the fields of history and belles lettres, was desultory. One result of this lack of comprehensive and systematic knowledge of one literary tradition can be found in the fact that Austen does not confer authority on her fictional work by quoting great writers. Nevertheless, books play an important role in Austen’s novels for “the daily uses that people make of their reading,” which is reflected “in conversation, argument, and the shaping of imaginative characters” (Grundy 190). <?page no="204"?> Anita Auer 204 The period during which Jane Austen lived and wrote her novels has been much investigated by language historians because the written English language was codified and thus standardised in spelling books, grammars, and dictionaries at the time. Within that context, it is interesting to investigate Jane Austen’s sensibility to grammatical issues and in particular the subjunctive mood. 3. The development of the subjunctive mood in Late Modern England As indicated in Section 2, grammarians in the Late Modern English period (1700-1900) were concerned with codifying the English grammar and recommending certain “correct” linguistic features while stigmatising others, as e.g. pied piping versus preposition stranding (cf. Yañez- Bouza) and the use of you were versus you was (Tieken-Boon van Ostade, You Was 91-95; Laitinen 208; Auer, Nineteenth-Century English 162- 65). As regards the inflectional subjunctive, certain grammarians such as Johnson (Preface), Priestley (15), Lowth (52), Buchanan (174-75; see quote below), and Brittain (128; see quote below) were aware of the gradual decline of subjunctive usage in the history of English and commented on it, and some even advocated a revival of the inflectional subjunctive in their grammars. A couple of illustrative quotes are provided below: 2 The Subjunctive Mood differs but little, in English Verbs, from the Indicative Mood: yet as there is some difference, and that difference established by the practice of the politest Speakers and Writers, however unattended to by others; it will become me to place that difference before you. (White 9) The Mood, [. . .] formerly used by the purest Writers, and by some called the Conjunctive Mood, [. . .] is entirely neglected by modern Writers; who instead of Writing, if thou burn, tho’ he refuse, unless he repent, whether he acknowledge it, &c. the Indicative, and write, if thou burnest, though he refuses, unless he repents, whether he acknowledges it, &c. (Buchanan 174- 75) The Subjunctive mood seems, indeed, daily falling into disuse; each respective conjunction sufficing to express all that this mood implies. It is, however, often retained, especially in poetry and oratory; to avoid the too fre- 2 For a detailed account of descriptions of the subjunctive mood in Late Modern English grammars see Auer, The Subjunctive Chapter 2). <?page no="205"?> Jane Austen and the Subjunctive 205 quent and hissing sound of s. So, that, in general, if the sound permits it, the indicative may be used. (Brittain 128) The statements made by some grammarians, as illustrated by White’s quote above, clearly indicate that the subjunctive mood was considered a social shibboleth, i.e. the use of this linguistic feature distinguished “polite” speakers and writers from those that did not belong to the educated elite (cf. Auer, The Subjunctive 61). From a usage point of view, by the Late Modern English period, i.e. the time during which Jane Austen lived, the inflectional subjunctive had become almost identical in form to the indicative. In the present tense it is only possible to tell a difference in the third person singular of verbs, i.e. while the indicative in the present tense carries the agreement suffix -s (she writes), the inflectional subjunctive lacks this suffix (she write). Even though the verb to be marks an exception in that the subjunctive form differs from the indicative form in all persons, most existing studies on the subjunctive as well as this study are restricted to the third person singular in the present tense for comparative purposes. As linguists today, as well as eighteenth-century grammarians, have agreed that the functions of the subjunctive have largely been taken over by modal auxiliaries or the indicative mood (see for instance Jespersen 623; Denison 160; Traugott 148; see also Auer, The Subjunctive), the inflectional subjunctive is best compared to these two competitors. The modal auxiliaries that serve as competing forms are can, could, may, might, must, shall, should, will and would. The three competing options in the present tense are illustrated below, notably based on Jane Austen’s manuscript novels: 3 a) Inflectional subjunctive: At the same time do not forget my real interest; - say all that you can to convince him that I shall be quite wretched if he remain here; - you know my reasons - Propriety & so forth. [ms. Lady Susan, p. 132] b) Modal auxiliaries: If the old Man would die, I might not hesitate; but a state of dependance on the caprice of Sir Reginald, will not suit the freedom of my spirit; - and if I resolve to wait for that event, I shall have excuse enough at present, in having been scarcely ten months a Widow. [ms. Lady Susan, p. 125] 3 Source: http: / / www.janeausten.ac.uk/ <?page no="206"?> Anita Auer 206 c) Indicative: Miss Manwaring is just come to Town to be with her Aunt, & they say, that she declares she will have Sir James Martin before she leaves London again. [ms. Lady Susan, p. 142] In the past tense the difference between indicative and subjunctive forms is even more difficult to determine, which is why the data in the past tense is usually restricted to the verb to be, as illustrated below: d) Past subjunctive: I charged her to write to me very often, & to remember that if she were in any distress, we should be always her friends. [ms. Lady Susan, p. 150] e) Past indicative: Her folly in forming the connection was so great, that tho’ M r . Johnson was her Guardian & I do not in general share her feelings, I never can forgive her. [ms. Lady Susan, p. 119] Before investigating Jane Austen’s subjunctive use in some detail, I will present the overall development of the subjunctive form during the Late Modern English period and beyond based on the multi-genre ARCHER corpus, which reveals some interesting results with regard to both the present and the past subjunctive (see account above; cf. Auer, The Subjunctive 70). The discussion is restricted to adverbial clauses, which are introduced by the following conjunctions: if, though, tho’, before, whether, ere, unless, however, whatever, except, whatsoever, whomsoever, howsoever, whosoever, whoever, lest, until, till, as if, although, and so that. The corpus was searched for the conjunctions, and it was then determined whether the conjunctions were followed by the inflectional subjunctive, the indicative, or modal auxiliaries (see examples a-e above). <?page no="207"?> Jane Austen and the Subjunctive 207 Figure 1. The diachronic development of the present subjunctive (cf. Auer, The Subjunctive 70) The present subjunctive development in Figure 1 clearly shows that the form swiftly declined from 1650 onwards, with its functions being taken over by both the indicative and the modal auxiliaries. From 1700-1749 to 1800-1849, we can observe a stabilisation in the present subjunctive use, notably c. 25%, which is followed by a further decline and neardisappearance in the present day. In Auer (The Subjunctive 71), I suggest that “[f]actors that gradually led to an increase in usage can be considered to be the enormous influx of grammar books in the country and the determination of social climbers to become part of the ‘polite British society’ by acquiring the correct and polite English grammar.” It is noteworthy that Jane Austen wrote during the observed period of stabilisation of the present subjunctive. As regards the past subjunctive and therefore the variation between indicative was and subjunctive were in the third person singular following the previously listed conjunctions, the investigation of the ARCHER corpus reveals a fairly frequent use of subjunctive were in 1650-1699, notably at 70.3%. In line with the present subjunctive development, subjunctive were then rapidly declines to 34.8% in 1700-1749 and 20.8% in 1750-1799. Thereafter, notably in the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries, the use of the form stabilises and even increases slightly in the second part of the nineteenth century, notably 27.4%. In the period 1900-1949, subjunctive were decreases to 20% and then increases again to 40% in 1950-1990. <?page no="208"?> Anita Auer 208 It is thus both for the present and the past subjunctive that we can observe a stabilisation of the forms during the lifetime of Jane Austen. 4. Jane Austen’s use of the inflectional subjunctive Even though, as previously observed, we cannot know for certain how Jane Austen was taught English grammar and whether she was familiar with certain grammar books, Phillipps’ comment above does suggest that Jane Austen was aware of the subjunctive as a social shibboleth and therefore aspired to use this particular linguistic feature. This assumption as well as whether Jane Austen’s usage is in line with the temporary stabilisation of the subjunctive forms will be tested below. 4 4.1. The Jane Austen text collection In order to investigate Jane Austen’s subjunctive use and to draw conclusions regarding her sensitivity to this particular linguistic feature as a social shibboleth, three sets of texts have been selected. First, available manuscript material written by Jane Austen will be investigated. The texts to be studied with respect to the subjunctive usage are taken from Kathryn Sutherland’s digital edition of Jane Austen’s Fiction Manuscripts, which is freely available online (accessed in March 2011). 5 This project, which brings together fiction written in Austen’s own hand, covers the writer’s development from her childhood (1787, aged 11/ 12) to her death in 1817 (aged 41). The manuscript material will thus serve as a test case regarding subjunctive usage in comparison to her published novels and letters. The second set of texts to be studied are published editions of Jane Austen’s highly acclaimed novels Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), Emma (1816), Northanger Abbey (1818), Persuasion (1818), Sense and Sensibility (1818) (ed. by R.W. Chapman) as well as her shorter and/ or unfinished novels Lady Susan (1794), The Watsons (1804), and Sanditon (1817). Third, R. W. Chapman’s edition (ed. 1995) of Jane Aus- 4 It needs to be pointed out that the multi-genre corpus ARCHER does contain data by Jane Austen, which has not been excluded in the study by Auer (The Subjunctive). As it only concerns a small sample, i.e. 2 letter samples (1800, 1815) and a sample from the novel Persuasion, this would not have had a major effect on the overall findings (see also footnote 11). 5 The manuscripts can be viewed on the following website: http: / / www.janeaus ten.ac.uk/ <?page no="209"?> Jane Austen and the Subjunctive 209 ten’s private letters to her sister Cassandra and others, as well as additional letters written by Jane Austen, will serve as a data corpus. 6 The three sets of texts will briefly be described below. 4.1.1. Jane Austen’s Fiction Manuscripts The fiction manuscripts retrieved from Sutherland’s digital edition, which will be investigated in terms of subjunctive use in Section 4.2, are fair copies of Juvenilia (3 volumes, c. 1792-1793) and Lady Susan (c. 1805), two draft chapters of Persuasion (July 1816), as well as drafts of The Watsons (c. 1804/ 1805) and Sanditon (1817). 7 Juvenilia, Volume the First (MS. Don. e. 7, Bodleian Library Oxford) is a compilation of sixteen of Austen’s early works, which represent a variety of genres such as stories, playlets, verses and moral fragments. The final inscription in the fair copy indicates that the transcription was completed on 3 June 1793. The earliest pieces were most likely composed when Jane Austen was aged 11 or 12, i.e. around the time that she left Abbey School in Reading ( JAFM website - Juvenilia: Part 1 - head note). Volume the Second of Juvenilia (Add. MS . 59874, British Library, London) contains nine compositions, namely two brief epistolary novels, i.e. Love and Freindship and Lesley Castle, a spoof History of England, and five pieces that are entitled Scraps. The dates inscribed in this fair copy suggest that Juvenilia, Volume the Second was written between 1790 and 1793, which means that Austen must have been aged 14 to 17 at the time. Sutherland refers to Southam (ed. iv) when stating that the date/ s of transcription, if at all distinct from composition, are likely to have been copied out before 6 May 1792, which is when Jane Austen started writing Juvenilia, Volume the Third ( JAFM website - Juvenilia: Part 2 - head note). This final volume (Add. MS . 65381, British Library, London) contains two early unfinished novels, which are entitled Evelyn and Catharine, or the Bower ( JAFM website - Juvenilia: Part 3 - head note). 6 I am grateful to Victorina González-Díaz for allowing me to use her Jane Austen text collection (both novels and letters) compiled from the Oxford English Text Archive and the web. Thanks also go to David Denison and Linda van Bergen for the plain text (searchable) version of Jane Austen’s Letters to her sister Cassandra and others (ed. by R. W. Chapman in 1952). I am aware of the existence of newer letter editions, however, for comparative purposes with González-Díaz’s work, I have decided to use the same corpora (11). 7 Additional information on Austen’s works can be found in Sutherland (Jane Austen’s Textual Lives). <?page no="210"?> Anita Auer 210 Even though some works contained in the three Juvenilia volumes were composed earlier than others, I will take all three volumes together in the subjunctive investigation below and take the transcription dates as points of reference, thus 1792/ 1793. The untitled and unfinished manuscript of The Watsons, which now exists in two portions ( MS . MA 1034, Morgan Library & Museum, New York; no accession number, Queen Mary, University of London), contains c. 17,500 words and appears to be the beginning of a novel. The Watsons was first published in 1871, but was probably composed during Jane Austen’s stay in Bath in 1804/ 1805 (see Austen-Leigh (Memoir [1871: 295], as referred to on JAFM website - Watsons - head note). The fair copy of the novella Lady Susan (MS. MA 1226, Morgan Library & Museum, New York), which was given this title only upon publication in 1871, was composed no earlier than 1805. This fair copy may be considered the only complete manuscript of Austen’s novels that has survived. Nevertheless, the first published edition (1871) is based on a non-authorial copy ( JAFM website - Lady Susan - head note). The two chapters of Persuasion ( MS . Egerton 3038, British Library, London) are believed to be the only surviving holograph extracts of any of Jane Austen’s novels. The first edition of Persuasion was published posthumously in 1818. The two draft chapters, which were written in July 1816 (according to the three dates given on the manuscript fragment, i.e. July 8, July 16. 1816, and July 18.- 1816), did not make it into print; instead, these two concluding chapters were replaced by a new version that Jane Austen must have written between 18 July and 6 August (memorandum of Cassandra Austen) ( JAFM website - Persuasion - head note). The untitled manuscript of the unfinished novel Sanditon (no accession number, King’s College, Cambridge) contains 120 pages (c. 24,000 words), which make up approximately a fifth of a completed novel. The dates inscribed on the manuscript, i.e. Jan: 27.-1817; March 1. st , and March 18, suggest that Jane Austen was working on this draft during the period January to March 1817 ( JAFM website - Sanditon - head note). These fiction manuscripts will thus be compared to Jane Austen’s printed texts, i.e. to the extent possible. This comparison is bound to give some insight into Jane Austen’s language use and possible changes that may have been carried out. <?page no="211"?> Jane Austen and the Subjunctive 211 4.1.2. Jane Austen’s Printed Novels One of the questions I raised in the introduction was how much of a say Jane Austen had in the publication process of her novels. In order to shed light on this issue, we need to take a look at the publication history of Austen’s novels. Southam (“Texts and Editions” 51) appropriately describes the history of Jane Austen’s texts as “relatively uncomplicated”. Of Austen’s six acclaimed novels no manuscript has survived, except for one fragment, i.e. two chapters that were planned to mark the ending of the novel Persuasion. This thus means that the published texts available for comparison with manuscripts are very limited. Out of the six novels, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Mansfield Park were the only three of which second editions were published during Jane Austen’s lifetime. According to Southam (“Texts and Editions” 51), “the only revisions certainly attributable to the author relate to the incomes in Sense and Sensibility and an area of naval detail in Mansfield Park.” Jane Austen started writing Sense and Sensibility in 1795, Pride and Prejudice in 1795, and Northanger Abbey in 1798. A first step to get an early version of Pride and Prejudice published was taken by Austen’s father in November 1797 but this attempt was not successful (Southam, ed. 4). Similarly, Susan, which may be considered an early version of Northanger Abbey, even though sold to the London publisher Benjamin Crosby in 1803, was never published. The first of Austen’s novels to be printed was Sense and Sensibility, which was published “on commission,” i.e. at Austen’s expense, by Thomas Egerton in October 1811. Due to the success of the novel, Egerton suggested to publish a second edition, which came out in October 1813. As mentioned above, some revisions were made to the 1813 edition. As Southam states, “either Egerton or Austen herself, took the opportunity to make corrections and three significant changes” (“Texts and Editions” 52). Table 1 provides an overview of Jane Austen’s potential involvement in the editing and printing of her novels. The overview in Table 1 suggests that Jane Austen could have potentially only been involved in the editing / publication of few of her novels, notably Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park and Sense and Sensibility, but there is no firm proof that she was involved and that she corrected English grammar. Nevertheless, it will be interesting to see how the subjunctive was used. <?page no="212"?> Anita Auer 212 Edition investigated here Background information Jane Austen’s involvement in the publication of her novels Pride & Prejudice (1813) first and second edition published in 1813, third edition in 1817 first or second edition - copyright sold to Egerton, no record that JA had any involvement with later editions Mansfield Park (1814) first edition 1814 (Egerton), second edition 1816 (Murray) “Austen corrected mistakes in her use of naval language; and throughout the novel the punctuation was changed, how much by Austen and how much by the new printers - a different one was employed for each volume - is uncertain.” (Southam 52) Emma (1816) first and only edition (Murray), published at the author’s expense no knowledge of JA’s involvement with editing / the publication Sanditon (1817) first published in 1925 JA did not finish the novel, no involvement in the publication process Northanger Abbey (1818) one edition, published by Murray in a four-volume set published after Jane Austen’s death, no control by JA Persuasion (1818) one edition, published by Murray in a four-volume set published after Jane Austen’s death, no control by JA Sense & Sensibility (1818) first edition 1811 (Egerton), published at the author’s expense; second edition in 1813 JA could have potentially been involved (cf. Southam 52) Lady Susan (1871 [1794]) probably written in 1794 but first published in 1871 no control by JA The Watsons (1871 [1804]) writing started in 1804 (not completed) but first published in 1871 no control by JA Table 1. Jane Austen’s involvement in the printing of her novels, based on Southam (“Texts and Editions” 51-54) <?page no="213"?> Jane Austen and the Subjunctive 213 4.1.3. The Letters 8 The entire collection contains 171 out-letters, of which 96, i.e. 56.1%, are addressed to Jane Austen’s sister Cassandra (see footnote 5). The letters to Cassandra were written over the period of 21 years, from 1796 to1817. 9 It is this particular collection of Austen’s letters that was edited by R. W. Chapman (second edition, 1952). In order to ensure that the data is philologically accurate, I have compared samples from Chapman’s edition with Deirdre Le Faye’s 1995 letter edition. The latter edition, which is based on Chapman’s collection, states in the preface that “the printed version reflects as closely as possible Jane Austen’s own spelling, capitalization, and punctuation [. . .].” Based on the samples that were compared and showed not to differ in spelling, it may be assumed that Chapman also tried to stay as close to the original as possible. The study of Jane Austen’s subjunctive use will be based on the method outlined in Section 3 above. This allows for a comparison to the ARCHER findings, both with regard to the present subjunctive and the past subjunctive. 4.2. Jane Austen’s sensitivity to the subjunctive With respect to the inflectional subjunctive and its competitors in adverbial clauses, a distinction in presentation and discussion will be made between (a) third person singular present forms and (b) third person past subjunctive versus past indicative (were vs. was). 8 It is noteworthy that Tieken-Boon van Ostade in her monograph In Search of Jane Austen, which is based on manuscript letters, also focuses on the subjunctive use (194- 200). Unfortunately, it was not possible to use the findings for comparative purposes as the method applied is different from the one used here. More precisely, while Tieken- Boon van Ostade has also used conjunctions as search terms (notably not entirely overlapping with the ones used in Auer, The Subjunctive and here), she only provides tokens of inflectional subjunctive forms and does not provide a systematic comparison with competing forms, i.e. indicative forms and modal auxiliaries, which is the focus of the current study. As a consistent method is required for the comparison with the ARCHER findings (Auer, The Subjunctive) as well as the comparison between the inflectional subjunctive and its competing forms, I provide a separate analysis of the subjunctive and its competitors here. 9 For a discussion of Jane Austen’s use of the subjunctive across her life-span, see Tieken-Boon van Ostade, In Search of Jane Austen 199. <?page no="214"?> Anita Auer 214 First, Jane Austen’s fiction manuscripts will be looked at (see Table 2) as this text collection reveals her actual (unedited) language use. Manuscripts Juvenilia (1792/ 1793) The Watsons (1804/ 1805) Lady Susan (1805) Persuasion (2 ch.; 1816) Sanditon (1817) Total Pres. Subj. - 1 (5.3%) 6 (17.7%) - - 7 (4.5%) Modal Aux. 40 (54.1%) 10 (52.6%) 15 (44.1%) 6 (85.7%) 8 (36.4%) 79 (50.6%) Pres. Indic. 34 (45.9%) 8 (42.1%) 13 (38.2%) 1 (14.3%) 14 (63.6%) 70 (44.9%) Total (present) 74 19 34 7 22 156 Past Subj. 13 (41.9%) 3 (37.5%) 5 (41.7%) 3 (50%) 5 (35.7%) 29 (40.8%) Past Indic. 18 (58.1%) 5 (62.5%) 7 (58.3%) 3 (50%) 9 (64.3%) 42 (59.2%) Total (past) 31 8 12 6 14 71 Table 2. The subjunctive and its competitors (present and past) in Jane Austen’s fiction manuscripts The study of the manuscripts’ language reveals that Jane Austen rarely used the inflectional subjunctive in the present tense. In fact, she clearly preferred modal auxiliaries and indicative forms in the third person singular in adverbial clauses. To compare the total numbers (column on the right), there are only 7 instances (4.5%) of the present subjunctive as opposed to 79 instances (50.6%) of modal auxiliaries and 70 instances (44.9%) of indicative forms. Interestingly enough, the subjunctive forms are found in only two texts, namely 1 instance in The Watsons (1804/ 1805) and 6 instances in Lady Susan (1805). The subjunctive examples in sentences 1-5 will be illustrated below: (1) You know how glad we are to have any of you with us; - if it be for months together. [The Watsons, p. 8/ 6] (2) Thoughtful & pensive in general her countenance always brightens with a smile when Reginald says anything amusing; & let the subject be ever so serious that he may be conversing on, I am much mistaken if a syllable of his uttering, escape her. [Lady Susan, p. 65] <?page no="215"?> Jane Austen and the Subjunctive 215 (3) She shall have all the retribution in my power to make; - if she value her own happineſs as much as I do, if she judge wisely & command herself as she ought, she may now be easy. at peace. [Lady Susan, p. 106] (4) At the same time do not forget my real interest; - say all that you can to convince him that I shall be quite wretched if he remain here; - you know my reasons - Propriety & so forth. [Lady Susan, p. 132] (5) This Event, if his wife live with you, it may be in your power to hasten. [Lady Susan, p. 144] It has been claimed by Strang that the subjunctive has largely become a function of the verb to be from the fifteenth century onwards. It is thus striking that Jane Austen, when on rare occasions she chose the present subjunctive over the indicative and modal auxiliaries, used the subjunctive form with lexical verbs, notably, escape, value, judge, command, remain, live (all of which are found in Lady Susan), rather than the verb to be, which can only be found in the single example from The Watsons. It remains to be seen whether Jane Austen’s published novels and letters reveal similar results. As regards the competition between past subjunctive (if he were) and past indicative forms (if he was) in Austen’s manuscripts, the data show that Jane Austen used the past indicative more frequently than the past subjunctive, i.e. 42 instances (59.2%) of indicative forms versus 29 instances (40.8%) of subjunctive forms. A comparison between the present and the past tense results indicates that Jane Austen, if she was in fact aspiring to “a ‘correct’ use of the subjunctive” (cf. Phillipps 155), was clearly more inclined to use the past subjunctive rather than the present subjunctive. We now turn to the question of whether this distribution is also reflected in Jane Austen’s published novels. As most of Austen’s novel editions were published posthumously, these data will not allow us to find out to what extent they are representative of her language use. Nevertheless, the novel data can reveal similarities and/ or stark differences to the manuscript material. The findings of the corpus-based investigation are presented in Table 3. <?page no="216"?> Anita Auer 216 Novels Lady Susan 1794 The Watsons 1804 Pride & Prejudice 1813 Mansfield Park 1814 Emma 1816 Sanditon 1817 Northanger Abbey 1818 Persuasion 1818 Sense & Sensibility 1818 Total Subj. pres. 6 (19.4%) 0 4 (2.7%) 8 (4.9%) 11 (5.8%) 0 10 (12.7%) 3 (3.7%) 4 (3.4%) 46 (5.5%) Perip. 12 (38.7%) 8 (53.3% ) 87 (58.8%) 105 (64.4%) 100 (52.9%) 5 (31.3%) 46 (58.2%) 58 (71.6%) 81 (69.2%) 502 (59.8%) Indic. pres. 13 (41.9%) 7 (46.7% ) 57 (38.5%) 50 (30.7%) 78 (41.3%) 11 (68.7%) 23 (29.1%) 20 (24.7%) 32 (27.4%) 291 (34.7%) Total present 31 15 148 163 189 16 79 81 117 839 Subj. past 7 (63.6%) 3 (50%) 34 (45.3%) 44 (55.7%) 63 (66.3%) 5 (41.7%) 11 (22.4%) 31 59.6%) 27 (38%) 225 (50%) Indic. past 4 (36.4%) 3 (50%) 41 (54.7%) 35 (44.3%) 32 (33.7%) 7 (58.3%) 38 (77.6%) 21 (40.4%) 44 (62%) 225 (50%) Total past 11 6 75 79 95 12 49 52 71 450 Table 3. The three-way distribution (third person singular present tense) in Jane Austen’s novels Table 3 shows that Jane Austen did not use the inflectional subjunctive in adverbial clauses very often in her novels - only 5.5% (46 instances) as opposed to 59.8% modal auxiliaries (502 instances) and 34.7% indicative (291 instances). The distribution is thus fairly similar to that in Austen’s manuscript texts. In the published novels the form is not used at all in The Watsons (1804) and Sanditon (1817). In comparison to the competing forms, Lady Susan (1794) contains the highest percentage figure of subjunctive forms with 16.7% (6 instances), followed by Northanger Abbey (1818) with 12.7%. In fact, a comparison between Austen’s Lady Susan manuscript and the published novel reveals that exactly the same sentences contain the subjunctive forms (see examples 1-5 above), all of which are lexical verbs. Even though the first published edition of Lady Susan (1871) is based on a non-authorial copy (see above), the sentences with subjunctive forms are exactly the same as those found in Austen’s autograph manuscript. This clearly indicates that there was no editorial interference with regard to the subjunctive in this particular case. Con- <?page no="217"?> Jane Austen and the Subjunctive 217 sidering the other published novels cannot be compared to autograph material, an insight into Austen’s subjunctive use may be gained by investigating (a) the lexical verb vs. to be distribution and (b) how the Jane Austen novel results relate to contemporary and present-day usage. As for the distribution of lexical verbs and to be in all the novels containing the present subjunctive in the third person singular in adverbial clauses, 22 instances of to be are contained, i.e. 47.8%, as opposed to 24 lexical verbs (52.2%), which are have (3), get (2), live (2), marry (2), remain (2), speak (2), continue (1), command (1), cost (1), escape (1), fall (1), grow (1), judge (1), make (1), take up (1), think (1), and turn (1). While, in contrast to the results in Lady Susan, the distribution between lexical verbs and to be is more balanced in total, this outcome differs greatly from an investigation of other LModE fiction as contained in A Representative Corpus of Historical English Registers ( ARCHER ). 10 The fiction samples in ARCHER clearly prefer to be to lexical verbs. There are 75.9% of to be as opposed to 24.1% of lexical verbs. Jane Austen’s use of the present subjunctive may thus be seen as more archaic in comparison to her contemporaries, i.e. based on the fact that she preferred lexical verbs to to be, which had become the more frequently used verb choice since the fifteenth century. As concerns a comparison to present-day usage of the subjunctive, considering that the form has almost disappeared (see Figure 1), Jane Austen has used the subjunctive form more frequently (cf. Auer, The Subjunctive 82). As regards the past subjunctive use, i.e. subjunctive were, in adverbial clauses in Jane Austen’s novels, the comparison of the total in Table 4 reveals 50% indicative was and 50% subjunctive were. This suggests equal variation between the past subjunctive and the past indicative forms overall in Jane Austen’s published novels. The most striking imbalance can be observed in Northanger Abbey (1818) where subjunctive were only makes up 22.4%, followed by Sense and Sensibility (1818) with 38%. In comparison to the ARCHER data (cf. Auer, The Subjunctive 77-78), Austen’s past subjunctive use in her published novels is much higher than the findings for the period 1800-1850, which was 25.6%. If we compare the overall distribution to the past subjunctive use in the autograph material, we notice that the use of past subjunctive forms in Austen’s manuscripts is lower by almost 10%. Interestingly enough, the Lady Susan manuscript contains fewer past subjunctive forms than the edited version, notably 41.7% in the manuscript version versus 10 It is noteworthy that ARCHER contains one sample from Persuasion, which does however not contain any present subjunctive forms. <?page no="218"?> Anita Auer 218 63.6% in the edited version. This may be taken as an indication that somebody must have carried out some changes. 11 Novels Lady Susan 1794 The Watsons 1804 Pride & Prejudice 1813 Mansfield Park 1814 Emma 1816 Sanditon 1817 Northhanger Abbey 1818 Persuasion 1818 Sense & Sensibility 1818 Total Subj. 7 (63.6%) 3 (50%) 34 (45.3%) 44 (55.7%) 63 (66.3%) 5 (41.7%) 11 (22.4%) 31 (59.6%) 27 (38%) 225 (50%) Indic. 4 (36.4%) 3 (50%) 41 (54.7%) 35 (44.3%) 32 (33.7%) 7 (58.3%) 38 (77.6%) 21 (40.4%) 44 (62%) 225 (50%) Total 11 6 75 79 95 12 49 52 71 450 Table 4. Past subjunctive versus past indicative (were vs. was) in Jane Austen’s published novels In Table 5, a comparison of the subjunctive use in Jane Austen’s published novels and her letters reveals that Austen’s use of the inflectional subjunctive in the present tense in her letters is even lower than in her novels, i.e. 4.7% in the letters as opposed to 5.4% in the novels. It is noteworthy that while the predominant form in the novels is the periphrasis, i.e. the modal auxiliaries, with 59.9%, in the letters, the indicative is the most frequently used form with 63.4%. Austen’s published novels Austen’s letters Subjunctive 45 (5.4%) 12 (4.7%) Periphrasis 502 (59.9%) 82 (31.9%) Indicative 291 (34.7%) 163 (63.4%) TOTAL 838 257 Table 5. The three-way distribution (third person singular present tense) in Austen’s novels and letters As for the past subjunctive (Table 6), in both the published novels and the letters, the distribution is fairly equal, i.e. around 50% of subjunctive were and indicative was. 11 The topic of the editors’ influences on Austen’s language has also been discussed in relation to two versions of Mansfield Park (cf. edition by Sutherland and Tieken-Boon van Ostade, In Search of Jane Austen 214-21). <?page no="219"?> Jane Austen and the Subjunctive 219 Austen’s published novels Austen’s letters Subjunctive 225 (50%) 17 (47.2%) Indicative 225 (50%) 19 (52.8%) TOTAL 450 36 Table 6. Past subjunctive versus past indicative (were vs. was) in Austen’s novels and letters As already pointed out with regard to the printed novels, Jane Austen’s past subjunctive use exceeds the average use at the time, which was much lower at 25.6%. 5. Concluding remarks This essay set out to examine and empirically test Phillipps’s suggestion (155) that Austen was aware of the subjunctive as a social shibboleth, and that, more generally, Austen was sensitive to “correct” language use. With regard to the subjunctive, this was, according to Phillipps, reflected in the corrections that were carried out in the different editions of her novels. These points will be discussed in turn here. As regards Jane Austen’s subjunctive use in her novels, it is striking that the manuscript novels only contain very few present subjunctive forms (4.5%), notably as opposed to c. 40% of past subjunctive forms. What is striking though is that Austen mostly used the subjunctive form with lexical verbs rather than to be, which had mostly become associated with the subjunctive mood at the time. The present subjunctive use in Austen’s published novels reflects the findings of the manuscript novels, i.e. there are very few present subjunctive forms (5.5%). Here the distribution between to be and lexical verbs is approximately half and half, which is still not representative of the distribution in contemporary novels and other genres, where to be is clearly favoured with the subjunctive (cf. Auer, The Subjunctive 83-84). The comparison between Lady Susan’s manuscript and the published version shows complete agreement with regard to the present subjunctive forms, i.e. no changes have been carried out. This is however not the case with the past subjunctive where the published version contains more subjunctive forms, therefore indicating that an editor must have interfered; after all, the novel was only published in 1871 and thus long after Austen’s death. <?page no="220"?> Anita Auer 220 A comparison of the subjunctive use in Jane Austen’s published novels and her letters reveals that the present subjunctive use in her letters is even lower than that in her novels, while the past subjunctive use in her letters - albeit slightly lower - almost matches the use in her novels. 12 Finally, how much say did Jane Austen have in the publication process of her novels and can changes in language in different editions of her novels be attributed to her or to an editor? As most novels were published posthumously, it is difficult to make comparisons. As previously pointed out, it is striking that no changes have been made with respect to the present subjunctive from manuscript to the posthumously printed novel, however, an editor added some past subjunctive forms to the printed version. The findings presented in this essay suggest that Jane Austen was not aware of the subjunctive as a “correct” form of language to be adhered to, i.e. in comparison to contemporary subjunctive use. In any case, it would appear that the past subjunctive - rather than the present subjunctive - was considered a politeness form and possible social shibboleth, i.e. the eighteenth-century ideology of politeness was linked to class membership and the use of what became “standard English” (cf. Watts 162). Not only was this form found more frequently in Jane Austen’s language (in comparison to the present subjunctive), it was also the form that editors made changes to, i.e. converting indicative was to subjunctive were in adverbial clauses. I did not consider the subjunctive use (present and past) of different characters in Austen’s novels, but the low number of subjunctive occurrences would have most likely not allowed us to make strong claims about the subjunctive as a social shibboleth. Linked to this, it would be interesting to consider the latter matter with regard to Late Modern English novels that feature characters from different social layers of society, for instance the works by Elizabeth Gaskell and Charles Dickens; after all, Austen’s characters are largely representative of the middling sorts. Novels by Gaskell and Dickens may therefore be a better testing case for the use of the subjunctive as a social shibboleth. 12 For a discussion of Phillipp’s claim in relation to Austen’s language use in her letters, see Tieken-Boon van Ostade, In Search of Jane Austen. <?page no="221"?> Jane Austen and the Subjunctive 221 References Auer, Anita. The Subjunctive in the Age of Prescriptivism: English and German Developments in the Eighteenth Century. Palgrave Studies in Language History and Language Change. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. ―――. “Nineteenth-Century English: Norms and Usage.” Norms and Usage in Language History, 1600-1900. A Sociolinguistic and Comparative Perspective. Ed. Gijsbert Rutten, Rik Vosters and Wim Vandenbussche. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2014. 151-70. Bray, Joe. The Language of Jane Austen. London: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming 2018. Brittain, Lewis. Rudiments of English Grammar. Louvain: L. J. Urban, 1788. Buchanan, James. The British Grammar. London: Printed for A. Millar, 1762. Chapman, Robert William, ed. Jane Austen’s Letters to her Sister Cassandra and Others. London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1952. Denison, David. “Syntax.” The Cambridge History of the English Language. Vol. 4: 1776-1997. Ed. Suzanne Romaine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. 92-329. Devlin, David Douglas. Jane Austen and Education. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1975. González-Díaz, Victorina. English Adjective Comparison: A Historical Perspective. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2008. Grundy, Isobel. “Jane Austen and Literary Traditions.” The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen. Ed. Edward Copeland and Juliet McMaster. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 189-210. Jane Austen’s Fiction Manuscripts: A Digital Edition, edited by Kathryn Sutherland (2010). http: / / www.janeausten.ac.uk/ Jespersen, Otto. A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles. Part 4: Syntax. Vol. 3. London: Allen and Unwin, 1931. Johnson, Samuel. A Dictionary of the English Language, 2 vols. London, 1755. Laitinen, Mikko. “Singular YOU WAS/ WERE Variation and English Normative Grammars in the Eighteenth Century.” The Language of Daily Life in England (1400-1800). Ed. Arja Nurmi, Minna Nevala and Minna Palander-Collin. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2009. 199-217. Le Faye, Deirdre. Jane Austen’s Letters. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. ―――. Jane Austen: A Family Record. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. <?page no="222"?> Anita Auer 222 Lowth, Robert. A Short Introduction to English Grammar. London: Printed by J. Hughs; for A. Millar and R. and J. Dodsley, 1762. Nokes, David. Jane Austen. London: Fourth Estate Limited, 1997. Page, Norman. The Language of Jane Austen. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1972. Phillipps, K. C. Jane Austen’s English. London: André Deutsch, 1970. Priestley, Joseph. The Rudiments of English Grammar. London: Printed for R. Griffiths, 1761. Ross, Josephine. Jane Austen: A Companion. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2002. Southam, Brian, ed. Jane Austen. The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968. ―――. “Texts and Editions.” A Companion to Jane Austen. Ed. Claudia L. Johnson and Clara Tuite. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. 51-61. Strang, Barbara. A History of English. London: Methuen, 1970. Sutherland, Kathryn, ed. Jane Austen, Mansfield Park. London: Penguin, 1996. ―――. Jane Austen’s Textual Lives from Aeschylus to Bollywood. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid. “You Was and Eighteenth-Century Normative Grammar.” Of Dyversitie & Change of Language: Essays Presented to Manfred Görlach on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday. Ed. Katja Lenz and Ruth Möllig. Heidelberg: C. Winter, 2002. 88-102. ―――, ed. Grammars, Grammarians and Grammar-Writing in Eighteenth- Century England. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2008. ―――. In Search of Jane Austen. The Language of the Letters. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Tomalin, Claire. Jane Austen, a Life. London: Penguin, 1997. Traugott, Elisabeth Closs. A History of English Syntax. A Transformational Approach to the History of English Sentence Structure. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972. Watts, Richard J. From Polite Language to Educated Language: The Reemergence of an Ideology. Alternative Histories of English. Ed. Richard J. Watts and Peter Trudgill. London: Routledge, 2002. 155-72. White, James. The English Verb. London: Printed for A. Millar, 1761. Yáñez-Bouza, Nuria. Grammar, Rhetoric and Usage in English: Preposition Placement 1500-1900. Studies in English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. <?page no="223"?> Scribes as Agents of Change: Copying Practices in Administrative Texts from Fifteenth- Century Coventry 1 Tino Oudesluijs This essay, which is a part of the Emerging Standards Project, 2 compares two versions of an administrative text from Late Medieval Coventry in order to scrutinise the way in which the copyist changed or maintained the language of the original. Through close reading and quantitative comparisons, this study reveals that copyists have mostly influenced the orthography and morphology of administrative texts. It furthermore shows that the manuscript context should also be considered as a likely external influence when it comes to the lexical level. Finally, it is argued that the influence of the exemplar on the individual copying scribe should not be ignored. Keywords: historical sociolinguistics, Middle English, copying practices, manuscripts 1. Introduction When scrutinising the English language in various texts from the Middle English period (c. 1100-1500), it quickly becomes apparent that variation - in particular spelling variation - is the rule rather than the excep- 1 I would like to thank Jacob Thaisen, Alpo Honkapohja, and the anonymous reviewers for commenting on earlier versions of this article. 2 See emergingstandards.eu/ for more information. The Challenge of Change. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 36. Ed. Margaret Tudeau-Clayton and Martin Hilpert. Tübingen: Narr, 2018. 223-248. <?page no="224"?> Tino Oudesluijs 224 tion. This variation in writing is predominantly due to the various spoken dialects in the Middle English period (cf. Williamson), the lack of a standardised written variety across the country (cf. McIntosh et al.; Milroy and Milroy Ch. 1, 2; Bergs, “Middle English Sociolinguistics”; Schaefer), and the fact that many texts were copied at least once, which often resulted in a so-called Mischsprache, or mixed language (cf. McIntosh et al. Ch. 3.5). As pointed out by McIntosh, a scribe who copied a text could do one of three things: 1) leave the language more or less unchanged, like a modern scholar transcribing such a manuscript. This appears to happen somewhat rarely. 2) convert it into his own kind of language, making innumerable modifications to the orthography, the morphology, and the vocabulary. This happens commonly. 3) do something somewhere between 1 and 2. This also happens commonly. (McIntosh 60) The way in which scribes copied documents in the Middle Ages thus has a significant impact on our understanding of the languages and dialects from that time, as it is crucial to know whose language it is that we are looking at when trying to determine how language variation and change worked in the past. Understanding copying practices better helps us to determine not only the social and geographical distribution of linguistic variation (synchronic), but it can also tell us something about the likely direction of ongoing linguistic changes over time (diachronic). For example, when we consider a text written by scribe A in location B and in year C, we can analyse its language and compare it to that of other texts - about which we have similar metadata - within the social, geographical and temporal dimensions in which linguistic variation and change take place (cf. Berruto 226-27). I will not discuss the situational dimension in which variation and change can also occur, since - in the case of written language - this concerns different text types or registers. My focus will be on linguistic variation and change within, rather than across, specific text types, as I only consider original texts and their subsequent copies. Unfortunately, when considering Middle English, most of the surviving texts have come down to us as copies made by anonymous scribes rather than the originals (Horobin, “Mapping the Words” 61; Horobin, “The Nature of Material Evidence”; Milroy, “Middle English Dialectology” 188). Moreover, it is often impossible to know for sure how many other copies of a text were once in existence, and which ones - if not the original itself - would have been used to create the copies we now <?page no="225"?> Copying Scribes as Agents of Change 225 have left. This makes it extremely difficult for historical (socio)linguists to determine whose language it is that we are looking at: (a) that of the author of the original text, (b) that of the scribe who copied it, or (c) a mixture of both. The little evidence that we have suggests that many copyists regularly changed the language at least in part, if not completely. It is thus often the case that historical (socio)linguists deal with a so-called “mixed language” when scrutinising Middle English texts (McIntosh et al. Ch. 3). Given the importance of these implications concerning the influences of copying scribes on the Middle English language, historical (socio)linguists have regularly addressed this issue (e.g. McIntosh et al.; Horobin, “Mapping the Words”; Bergs, Writing, Reading, Language Change; Milroy, “Middle English Dialectology”). Despite the fact that we often know very little about the copying scribes other than their profession, these scholars have found ways to successfully determine the circumstances in which the scribes would have been copying, as well as the possible influences on the linguistic structure of the texts that they produced (Laing and Lass; Peikola; Thaisen and Rutkowska; Wagner et al.). We know for example that scribes could copy the original text directly from the original, but also via dictation, from drafts on which they could elaborate, or simply from a list of key words (Bergs, Writing, Reading, Language Change 246). Moreover, recent palaeographical research has contributed much to our understanding of the circumstances and ways in which scribes copied texts (cf. Wakelin, “Writing the Words”; Wakelin, Scribal Correction). An example of this is the notion that copying scribes could consciously change or preserve certain features of a text by introducing new conventions or adhering to old ones based on a variety of factors (e.g. contemporary ideologies, nature of the text, intended audience), thus affecting the linguistic variation in the text. Until today, most of the texts under scrutiny in relation to this topic have concerned literary texts such as Piers Plowman, The Prick of Conscience and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, poetry (cf. Wakelin, “Writing the Words” 53-55; Wakelin, Scribal Correction 45-48), and sometimes personal correspondence (Nevalainen; Bergs, Writing, Reading, Language Change; Horobin, “The Nature of Material Evidence”) and chronicles (Bergs, Writing, Reading, Language Change). Although some generalisations regarding copying practices for other genres such as civic records and similar local administrative writings can definitely be made based on these findings, few studies have touched upon examples of scribal copying behav- <?page no="226"?> Tino Oudesluijs 226 iour in local administrative texts in great detail, 3 despite the fact that they make up a large part of the remaining written evidence from the Middle English period. When considering the intended audiences and the role that such texts played in society, one could assume that scribes may have treated them differently from other genres. Because of this under-researched aspect in previous studies with regard to administrative writings (texts such as agreements, leases, reports, civic records, wills, etc.), and the fact that these texts form a significant part of the overall Late Middle English written evidence that has survived to date, in this essay I will focus on an administrative text in order to determine to what extent scribes could change the language when copying something other than what has previously been studied in this light. I will do so by looking at a survey written in Coventry in 1423 and a copy made by a different scribe almost 100 years later in 1520 in the same place, when all of the original documents were copied into a new book, namely the Coventry Leet Book. This comparison will allow me to determine to what extent the second scribe changed the language of the source material on various levels, i.e. orthography, morphology, syntax and lexis. Moreover, as I have more data from both the copying scribe and other scribes working in Coventry on similar texts in the same book in the first half of the sixteenth century, I will be able to determine to what extent the differences may be due to a diachronic change of scribal conventions in Coventry in general, or due to the personal preferences of the scribe, since I can compare the copy to other copies that he made around that time. In the following sections I will first consider Late Medieval English copying practices in general, based on various texts from all over England (Section 2), before turning to the local copying practices and scribes working in Coventry (Sections 3 and 4), and finally the two versions of the survey and my linguistic analysis of them (Section 5). In the last two sections I will discuss the results (Section 6) and present some conclusions (Section 7). 3 Wakelin (Scribal Correction 87-94) briefly discusses urban clerks - about whom he states that they would have copied documentary texts rather accurately compared to literary works due to their content - but not much more. I must add here that, despite the fact that literary works have generally evoked more interest from the academic community, administrative texts have often formed the cornerstone of seminal resources for the Late Medieval period, including LALME (Angus et al.), LAEME (Laing), MEG-C (Stenroos et al.), and MELD (Stenroos et al.). As noted before, in such projects, the issue of scribal copying practices is often addressed (e.g. McIntosh et al.), albeit not always to the same extent compared to other, more literary, works. <?page no="227"?> Copying Scribes as Agents of Change 227 2. Late Medieval English copying practices As mentioned earlier, scribes could generally copy documents in a number of different ways in the Late Medieval period (cf. Bergs, Writing, Reading, Language Change 246). An important method that should be mentioned in the context of copying practices is internal dictation (cf. Wakelin, “Writing the Words” 51, 55). Internal dictation could have been used when scribes were copying in cursive scripts (as is the case with the Survey of the Commons, see also Section 5 below), as they were then able to look at - and subsequently remember - multiple words at a time when copying a text, rather than copying it letter by letter or word by word (often depending on how difficult the script was). This means that the written mode influences the copy only indirectly as the scribes were instead copying from their internal dictation. Thus, using cursive scripts may have enforced “dialectal translation” 4 (cf. Benskin and Laing 90, 94), when scribes were copying them. However, it should be noted that not all changes in copies reflect such “dialectal translation,” as some would reflect visual elements such as the replacement of <th> with thorn <þ>, or vice versa (cf. Benskin 14). When considering the general trends with regard to copying practices in Medieval England, we must also not assume that copyists were always trying to follow the original word for word (Wakelin, Scribal Correction 20, 77, 162-70). When copying, scribes were often encouraged to correct and alter the original text - especially in the religious settings in which most scribes worked until the fourteenth century. After that century, scribes started working as clerks for local councils as well. With regard to corrections in fourteenthand fifteenth-century English texts, Wakelin (Scribal Correction 162-65) points out that it is somewhat surprising to see that scribes also sometimes tinkered with spellings and grammatical forms even though the original forms were not uncommon at the time. He attributes this to the fact that no standardised written variety was in place then, and dialectal features were not as firmly stigmatised as they were in later times. Furthermore, as was suggested in a fifteenth-century preface to an alphabetical concordance 5 (Kuhn 272; 4 I follow Benskin and Laing as well as McIntosh et al. (Section 3.5.2) in their use of the term “dialect” in this instance: the written linguistic repertoire of an individual scribe, i.e. not necessarily representative of how he would have spoken but rather a reflection of where he was trained, where he subsequently worked, and what he worked on. 5 London British Library MS Royal 17.B.I. It contains a concordance to the Wycliffite New Testament made by an anonymous compiler in the first half of the fifteenth century (Kuhn 258). <?page no="228"?> Tino Oudesluijs 228 see also Wakelin, Scribal Correction 163), “Sumtyme Þe same word & Þe self Þat is writen of sum man in oo manere is writen of a-noÞir man in a-noÞir manere” [Sometimes the same word that is written by some man in one way is written by another man in another way]. 6 Further on, the author of this preface states the following: “If it plese to ony man to write Þis concordaunce, & him ÞenkiÞ Þat summe wordis ben not set in ordre aftir his con- [5b] seit & his manere of writyng, it is not hard, if he take keep wiÞ good avisement in his owne writyng, to sette suche wordis in such an ordre as his owne conseit acordiÞ wel to” [If it pleases any man to write this concordance, and he thinks that in his opinion certain words were not set in order and written in his way, it is not hard to consider his own writing and set such words in the order of his conviction]. 7 (Kuhn 272) This implies that in Late Medieval England, altering spellings and grammatical forms was to some extent encouraged, and in any case most likely not considered undesirable. Given that Late Medieval English did not have a widespread written standard variety and linguistic variation was broadly tolerated, Wakelin (Scribal Correction 164) finds it strange that scribes made seemingly needless changes to spelling and grammar. Why did they feel the need to alter a given spelling or structure? It will be argued here that it is precisely the lack of a standardised written variety that leads scribes towards unconsciously changing spellings and grammatical forms according to their own “style-sheets,” which reflect how they learned to write English when they were trained. Once trained, scribes could be rather consistent in their individual writings. Moreover, getting the exact wording from the exemplar was often not necessary (see the preface’s comments above), so why pay close attention to the spelling when copying a text? This also implies that most scribes would not have been consciously changing the language of texts, which, in a pre-standard written culture, makes sense. It should be noted at this point that substantial passages of many texts were often left untouched by copying scribes. As with language change, people tend to focus on what has changed rather than on what has been maintained (cf. Milroy, Linguistic Variation and Change), but scribes often copied large parts of a text directly and with few changes 6 My translation. 7 My translation. <?page no="229"?> Copying Scribes as Agents of Change 229 (Wakelin, Scribal Correction 19-42, 49). Once again, though, in such studies the focus habitually lies on literary texts and poetry, whereas administrative writings, which had different purposes and catered to a different audience, have generally received less attention with regard to copying practices in Medieval England. 3. “A Survey of the Commons” and copying practices in Coventry The text I will focus on in this essay is called “A Survey of the Commons” 8 (cf. Harris, The Coventry Leet Book Part I 45), which was written in Coventry in 1423 (cf. Section 5 for a more detailed description of the text). The only known copy was made almost 100 years later around 1520 in the same place, when many original documents that were in the possession of the local Leet Council were copied into the new court leet book, the Coventry Leet Book. 9 The latter was transcribed and edited by the historian Mary Dormer Harris, who transcribed, edited and published the entire book in four volumes between 1907 and 1913 (EETS OS 134, 135, 138, 146). The manuscript of the Leet Book contains mostly copies of texts pertaining to the council written between 1421 and 1555, and a great part of its content concerns mayoral elections and court sittings, but it also includes copies of letters, accounts, reports, bylaws and other legal documents relating to council matters. Regarding the local copying practices in the Leet Book, Harris states the following: As far as we may judge, the copyist followed his original closely, though now and then he chose to summarize rather than transcribe in full, referring the reader to his authority in some such phrase as “as it appeareth in the book of recognizance”, or “the book of council; ” or in the case of a leet entry, “ut in filaciis plenius apparet” - as it appeareth in the files more at large. (Harris, The Coventry Leet Book Part IV xii-xiii) Unfortunately, as almost all of the original texts have been lost (the Survey of the Commons seems to be one of the few surviving originals), and since Harris was a historian focussing more on the content of the Leet Book rather than on its language, nothing more is said on the subject. With regard to the Survey of the Commons, Harris (The Coventry Leet Book Part I 45) only states that “the language of [the original] is, of the two, the more archaic,” and she subsequently only marks a few or- 8 BA/ A/ A/ 3/ 1 in the Coventry Archives. 9 BA/ E/ F/ 37/ 1 in the Coventry Archives. <?page no="230"?> Tino Oudesluijs 230 thographic differences between the two versions throughout her transcription (Harris, The Coventry Leet Book Part I 45-53). 4. Scribes working in fifteenth-century Coventry Even though Harris did not elaborate in more detail on the linguistic differences between the two versions of this text in her edition of the Coventry Leet Book (or any other linguistic commentary throughout the book), she did include an overview of the scribes that had worked on the Leet Book (see Table 1 below), which she based on a thorough analysis of the different handwritings in the book (Harris, The Coventry Leet Book Part IV 846). She identified seventeen different hands, although this does not exclude the possibility that more than seventeen scribes worked on the volume. Based on this overview, it becomes apparent that scribe A copied the Survey of the Commons into the Leet Book. Scribe Description A Later copyist of Leet ordinances and chronicle from 1414-44; writes - with one exception - on crescent marked paper (Briquet 8352, Florence 1391-1396); date c. 1520. B Later copyist of Leet ordinances from 1426-74, and thenceforward contemporary recorder of both Leet and chronicle entries to 1506; to be identified with John Boteler; date c. 1480-1506. B types Chronicle entries 1426-65. Probably in some instances contemporary, but may be as late as c. 1480-1520. C Later copyist of Leet ordinances from 1430-1507; date probably contemporary with scribe B, i.e. c.1480-1506. D Contemporary copyist of chronicle entries, 1463-71 (a dot over the <y> is characteristic of this scribe). He is described as having an “ill-educated hand”. E Contemporary copyist of chronicle entries, 1472-74. F Inserts a few entries in Boteler’s town-clerkship (mayor’s election). Probably a contemporary scribe. G, H, I, J, K, L Sixteenth century scribes. Entries are contemporary. Z Elizabethan scribe. Thomas Banester, town clerk. His thirteenth and fifteenth century entries are not contemporary. O, P, Q Elizabethan and Stuart scribes; entries are contemporary. Table 1: Scribes working on the Coventry Leet Book according to Mary Dormer Harris (The Coventry Leet Book Part IV 846) <?page no="231"?> Copying Scribes as Agents of Change 231 This overview allows us to take three factors into account that could have had an influence on the linguistic variation and change attested in the Leet Book: 1. the original texts 2. the scribes who copied them 3. time, as we have similar documents from one single place spanning more than a century As most scribes copied multiple texts into the Leet Book, we can compare not only the language between the different scribes but also the language between the different entries for each scribe. This allows us to see if the scribes themselves were consistent, and if not, how that inconsistency was structured. For example, if scribe A wrote certain words in one particular way in all his copies and other scribes did not, this indicates linguistic variation by the hand of the copying scribe, in this case scribe A. Another possible explanation for such a scenario would be that only Scribe A and none of the other scribes received texts with that one particular variant. This is, however, less likely than a scenario wherein scribe A consistently altered the language of the original texts to a certain extent. This then allows us to infer possible influences of the original texts on his copies, for instance when we see clear outliers: if we have ten texts from scribe A in which certain words are written one way but then also two texts in which he does something completely different, this may be the original text “coming through,” thus influencing scribe A’s copying language. Lastly, we can also compare the various entries of the Leet Book over time, as we are dealing with contemporary copies (i.e. copies made around the same time as the originals) from the 1460s onwards (cf. Table 1 above; Harris, The Coventry Leet Book Part IV 845-46). In the case of the Survey of the Commons, we can only compare the language that scribe A uses in his copy of this text to his other copies made c. 1520, as well as the language of the copies made by the other scribes working on the Leet Book in the first half of the sixteenth century. The latter will allow us to say something about whether other scribes seemed to be writing in a similar fashion, i.e. indicating local scribal conventions and writing practices, or whether the individual scribes seemed to have been copying in their own different ways, depending on where and when they received their training. <?page no="232"?> Tino Oudesluijs 232 5. The Survey of the Commons: two versions As mentioned earlier, there are two known versions of the Survey of the Commons from Coventry: BA/ A/ A/ 3/ 1 (dated 1423 by the Coventry Archives) and one that was written in the Coventry Leet Book (BA/ E/ F/ 37/ 1) around 1520. Given the chronology, it would seem that the Leet Book version is a copy of the 1423 version, which would then be the original. This was also the assumption of Mary Dormer Harris (The Coventry Leet Book Part I 45), who noted that the 1423 version was probably the original. However, there is no definitive evidence that BA/ A/ A/ 3/ 1 is the original version of this text, other than the fact that we have no other version of it, and it may well be a copy of the original, or even a copy of another copy of the original. Therefore, even though it may very well be the original version of the text used for the 1520 copy, I shall not refer to BA/ A/ A/ 3/ 1 as the original, nor to its scribe/ copyist as the author of the text, but instead as the first version and the apparent source text for the copy in the Leet Book (second version). The two versions are different in a number of ways. First of all, there is almost a century between them, and this becomes apparent in the handwriting. The first version was written in Anglicana Script, whereas the second version was written in Secretary Script, a script that was increasingly used in administrative writings in the course of the fifteenth century in England (cf. Parkes; Roberts). Both scripts are cursive scripts and could therefore have been subject to internal dictation by the copying scribes as they could be read and copied relatively fast. They do not necessarily reflect a full cursiva currens, however, but rather a cursiva media, especially the first version in Anglicana, as some of the letters are not connected in a cursive manner, meaning that it most likely took more time and effort to write down. 10 The second version, on the other hand, despite not necessarily being a full cursiva currens either, already allowed for much faster writing, and internal dictation may have played a larger role here. Secondly, the first version was written down on a single large sheet of parchment whereas the second version was written down in the Leet Book (13a-16a), which had more (but much smaller) paper pages. The first version received slightly more graphic attention in the form of small blue paragraph markers, which is most likely due to the amount of available space. Whereas more pages could have been added to the Leet 10 I would to like to thank Alpo Honkapohja for drawing my attention to this. <?page no="233"?> Copying Scribes as Agents of Change 233 Book, the first version only had one sheet of parchment, which compelled the scribe to use as much of its space as possible. This resulted in the use of coloured paragraph markings as it would have taken much more space to start a new paragraph on the left hand side of the parchment every time. In the Leet Book, however, the scribe could start a new paragraph after each section without worrying about running out of space. It has also been noted that this dense way of writing documentary texts could be due to preventing others from intruding words and thus causing legal problems (Wakelin, Scribal Correction 285), although this does not seem to have been the case for the second version. A third significant difference between the two versions, and the focus of this essay, concerns the language. I will now turn to my methodology and analysis of this aspect (Sections 5.1 and 5.2), before interpreting and discussing the results (Section 6). 5.1 Methodology As with all data obtained for the Emerging Standards Project, both texts were transcribed in XML (Extensible Markup Language) using Oxygen XML Editor 18 and the His TEI framework, which allowed me to transcribe texts in TEI in a word-processor-like view. 11 I subsequently carried out my analysis through a close reading of both versions of the text as well as a more quantitative approach by using AntConc version 3.4.4 (Anthony), which enabled me to search for specific words (or combinations thereof) and carry out key-word analyses for which I applied loglikelihood tests. With a key-word analysis (usually carried out using either a Chi-squared or log-likelihood test; cf. Baker 24, 35-36, 38, 62), one can calculate the chances of a particular word occurring more often in one text compared to another than we might expect to happen by chance alone. For example, we might find out that the word the is “key” for text A compared to text B (which mostly has the variant form ye), which means that the probability for the to occur in text A and not B by mere chance is extremely small. Therefore, a particular variable must be structurally influencing the distribution of these realisations of the across the two different texts, and one can subsequently start looking for that variable (e.g. where the two scribes were trained). 11 github.com/ odaata/ HisTEI/ wiki <?page no="234"?> Tino Oudesluijs 234 5.2 Data analysis 5.2.1 Syntax and lexis First of all, it quickly becomes clear that not much has been changed between the two versions in terms of the syntax. The order of words has been left unchanged for the most part. However, a noteworthy change appears in the description of the city, in which the order of two highways is switched around, i.e. “from highway X until highway Y” becomes “from highway Y until highway X” (see passage 1 below). In general, however, an analysis of three randomly chosen paragraphs from the text confirms that the syntax has not been changed much between the two versions. When considering the lexis of the texts, it becomes clear that a little more has changed. As is apparent in all three passages below, words have on occasion been added by scribe A (e.g. of the moneth in passage 1), or left out (e.g. her after in the same passage). In another instance, the scribe omitted and added words at the same time. In passage 1 he changed the firſt herri peyto meir of the Cite of Couentre with his Counſell into the ſaid maiour and his councell, and in passage 2 he added John wellford and his felows aboue namyd at ye day to them lymyted Comyn and to the text after the wiche. Altogether, the first version, which consists of 2,792 words, has been changed to consist of 2,753 words, which equals an overall decrease of 1.4 percent in lexis. <?page no="235"?> Copying Scribes as Agents of Change 235 Passages from BA/ A/ A/ 3/ 1 version: Passage 1 FForasmyche as dyſſencions Stiryngeȝ and mocions haue ben hadde afore this tyme for certen comen the wiche hathe not ben conuerſantly knowen as for comen In eſchueng of perels that her after myght falle The xvj day of feuerer the ȝere Reynyng of kyng herri the sixt after the conqueſt the firſt herri peyto meir of the Cite of Couentre with his Counſell thus hath ordeined and prouided That ther shuld of four partieȝ of the seid Cite of Couentre that is to sey of the Eſt Weſt North and South a certen of awnſient and wiſe men be Charged to enquere of the comen of the seid Cite And whatfeldeȝ owen of old tyme and of comyn right to be comen And than to bryng hit in to the seid meir in writyng to that end that herafter hit myght be Regeſtered and so the Comyn opunly knowen Whervppon the that wern charged to enquere for the Eſt part of the seid Cite that is to sey fro the hye wey that ledith fro Couentre vnto atown that is called Bynley Vnto to a hye wey that is called Sewalpawment the whiche ledith fro Couentre to Ward leyceſter and to bryng hit in in Writyng vnto the seyd meir amonday next afore the feſt of seynt Gregori Passages from Leet Book version: fforaſmoche as dyſſencions ſtirrynges and mocions haue byn had a fore tyme and not long a gone for certen comon the wich hath not byn conuerſantly knowen as for comyn In eſcewyng of perell yat myght fall the xviten day of the moneth of february the yer of the reign of kyng henry the sixte aftur the conqueſt the firſt The ſaid maiour and his councell thus haue ordenyd and prouydyd that yer ſchall of four parties of the Cite of Couentre yat is to ſay of ye Eſt / Weſt / North and ſouthe a certen of aunceant and wiſemen be chargid for to enquere of the Comyn of the ſaid Cite and what felldys owyn as of old tyme and of comyn ryght to be comyn and than to bryng hit Inneto ye ſaid maiour in wrytyng to yat end yat heraftur hit myght be regeſted and so the comyn openly knowen wheruppon tho yat wer Chargid to enquer for the Eſt parte of the ſaid Cyte yat is to ſay from the hye way that is callyd Sewall pauement ye wich ledyth from Couentre to leyceſtre vnto a noyer hie waye yat ledyth from Couentre vnto a town yat is callyd Bynley on the other ſyde and to bryng I hit in in wrytyng vnto ye ſaid maiour on monday next a for the feſt of ſaynt Gregory <?page no="236"?> Tino Oudesluijs 236 Passage 2 The Wiche seyn that ther is afeld that is called Byſſhoppeſhey and hit lithe in brede fro Walfurlong vnto a hye wey in haſilwode ledyng fro Couentre vnto leiceſter And in lengeth fro Coteſwaſt vnto A hye Wey in haſilwode ledyng fro Couentre to Nuneton And that same Byſſhoppeſhey they seyne is comen at lammas euery ȝer and fro lammas to the feſt of the purificacion of our lady Passage 3 Alſo they seyn that Beelorchard and hulmylmedow with all the feldeȝ and crofteȝ lyeng be twene Radfordweyand Crampyfeld in brede and in lengeth fro ij Crofteȝ howſeȝ and gardenȝ longyng to seynt mari Ante in the Trinite Chirche the whiche ij Crofteȝ howſeȝ and gardenȝ arn seuerall Vnto Alane ledyng fro batemAnneſacre Arn comen At lammas vnto the purificacion except Ahowſe witha garden sumtyme of John Aſkmakerȝ of killyngworth and Abern with agarden of John Walgraue and A croft with a dufhowſe of te tenoures of the prioures of Couentre The wiche John wellford and his felows aboue namyd at ye day to them lymyted Comyn and ſeyn yat yer is a feld wich is callyd Byſchops hay and hit lyeth in brede fro wallforlong on that one partie vnto a hie way in haſillwood ledyng from Couentre to leyceſtre and in length from Cotes waſt vnto a hie way in haſillwood ledyng from Couentre to ward Nuneaton and yat feld yat is to ſay Byſchoppeſhay thay seyn is comyn at the feſt of lammas Allſo ye ſay þat Bellorchard and hullmyllmedow with all the feldys and Croftys lyeng bytwen Radford weyand crampyfeld in Brede and in lenght from ij Crofteȝ and þe houſeȝ and gardyns longyng to ſaynt mary awtur in the trinite church þe wich ij Crofteȝ houſeȝ and Gardyns ar seuerall vnto a lane ledyng from Batemannyſacre ar comyn at lammas vnto þe purificacion of our lady except a houſe with gardyne sumtyme off John aſkemare of kenelworthe and a barn with a Gardyn of John walgraueand a Crofte with a dufhous of the tenure of þe prior and Couent of Couentre ye wich ar seuerall <?page no="237"?> Copying Scribes as Agents of Change 237 5.2.2 Orthography and morphology An investigation of the spelling and morphology of the two versions reveals that more has been altered: many words are spelled either slightly differently (e.g. ben vs. byn, had vs. hadde, wich vs. wiche, hath vs. hathe, ȝere vs. yere, after vs. aftur, etc., see also the passages above) or considerably differently (e.g. eſchueng vs. eſcewyng, awnſient vs. aunceant, etc.). With regard to morphology, there is some variation regarding the third person plural indicative present and past inflections: wern vs. wer, arn vs. ar, etc., so either an -n or zero ending. The following section will examine if this variation in spelling and morphology is to some extent structured, and if so, how. 5.2.2.1 Orthography: use of thorn, yogh, and other significant forms Regarding the orthographic variation, I decided to look at two very distinct orthographic features that seem to reflect a key difference between the texts: the use of thorn, <þ> / <y>, and yogh, <ȝ>. Based on a keyword analysis it becomes clear that thorn (in this case y-like thorn, cf. Benskin) is indeed a significantly characteristic feature of the second version compared to the first one. Yat, ye, yei, yer, etc. all occur in the Leet Book, whereas the first version clearly prefers <th> in these instances: that, the, thei, ther, etc. After a more thorough analysis of the data, the following image emerges (Table 2): BA/ A/ A/ 3/ 1 Leet Book <th> 393 164 <y> 0 174 <þ> 5 31 Table 2: Use of <th>, y-like thorn, and <þ> in the two versions of the Survey of the Commons. The numbers are based on an analysis of a selection of words that came up in the key-word list as well as those containing a <þ> at some point, which are that, the, they, there, their, other and these. The reason I based this analysis on a selection of words rather than the entire text is because whereas <th> was used on many different occasions, both y-like thorn and <þ> were mostly used word-initially and occasionally wordmedially (e.g. oþer). As I intended to determine the variation between these variants, I needed to be sure that all three variants were viable <?page no="238"?> Tino Oudesluijs 238 options for the scribes to use in the words I included in the analysis. This is also the reason why I only selected words in which <þ> was used at least once in both versions of the text. As regards the use of yogh <ȝ>, it was used to indicate either the voiced or unvoiced alveolar sibilants / s/ and / z/ (e.g. gardenȝ) given its visual similarity to <z>, and sometimes the voiced palatal approximant / j/ (e.g. ȝere “year”) or the voiced velar stop / g/ (e.g. ȝeld “guild”) (cf. Lass 35-37). It occurs 78 times in the first version and 32 times in the second version. This indicates that scribe A seems to have preferred yogh <ȝ> less in favour of <s> or <z> (e.g. gardenȝ vs. gardyns), <y> (e.g. ȝere vs. yere), or <g> (e.g. ȝeld vs. guylde) compared to the scribe of the first version. In this case I was able to look at the raw frequencies and consider the entire text rather than a selection of words - as was the case with the analysis of thorn - given the binary nature of this feature. Lastly, based on another key-word analysis, it also becomes apparent that certain other spelling differences allow us to distinguish between the two versions. This seems to indicate that the scribes were relatively consistent in their writing (at least with regard to these words), and that there was little overlap in the use of these different forms (Table 3). BA/ A/ A/ 3/ 1 Leet Book comen comyn called callyd alſo allſo wey way seid ſaid fro from whiche wich Table 3: Key characteristic orthographic differences between the two versions. 5.2.2.2 Morphology: -n and zero endings for the third person plural indicative With regard to morphology, the only key difference between the two versions concerns the third person plural indicative present and past -n and zero endings. The attested forms that I include in this analysis can all be assigned to a specific third person plural subject in the text and also show variation with regard to -n vs. zero endings: say, are, were, ought, <?page no="239"?> Copying Scribes as Agents of Change 239 and lie (e.g. sey vs. seyn, ar vs. arn, owth vs. ow(e)n). The distribution of the two variants across the two texts is as follows: BA/ A/ A/ 3/ 1 Leet Book -n 87 37 Zero 5 44 Table 4: Distribution of <-n> and zero endings for the third person plural indicative present and past endings. These results seem to indicate that scribe A changed the morphology of the first version to a certain extent, going from a vast majority of -n forms to an approximate 50-50 ratio between -n forms and zero forms. 6. Interpretation and discussion of results 6.1 Lexis and syntax: manuscript context The attested differences between the two versions with regard to the lexis can be explained through the context in which the copy was created, i.e. the rest of the Coventry Leet Book. For example, in passage 1 in the Leet Book (see Section 5.2.1 above), the mayor Herri Peyto has been mentioned one paragraph earlier in another text just before the survey starts. Scribe A could therefore shorten this part of the text by using the referent the ſaid instead of repeating earlier mentioned information. In passage 2 scribe A added John wellford and his felows aboue namyd at ye day to them lymyted Comyn and to the text after the wiche. The context here is that all of the names had been written out in the previous sentence, but as scribe A had much more space to write, he was able to give the names as a list in a separate paragraph, whereas the first version had to include all of the names in the running text. Because scribe A thus started a new paragraph with passage 2, and not only a new sentence, he must have felt the need to repeat himself to a certain extent here. As regards the syntax of the text, only a few changes were made, and the ones that have been observed can be explained through the copyist’s personal preferences, but even this might not be the case. If he was copying from internal dictation he would have remembered the information and then may have copied it in a different order through mere chance. This was perhaps more likely to occur as the order of such sentences did not change the meaning or content, but only the order in which they were presented. <?page no="240"?> Tino Oudesluijs 240 6.2 Orthography and morphology: Scribes influencing texts, or texts influencing scribes? When considering the changes made in the orthography and morphology of the text, the question emerges as to whether these changes were due to changing spelling conventions in Coventry at the beginning of the sixteenth century, or due to the individual scribe, in this case scribe A. Moreover, what do the forms tell us about possible influences from the original text on the copying language of this scribe? First of all, as regards the use of yogh <ȝ>, scribe A uses this graph 32 times in his copy of the Survey of the Commons, and 18 times in his other copies. Other scribes active in Coventry and working on the Leet Book in the first half of the sixteenth century do not use this graph at all. The normalised frequencies are shown below in Table 5. Survey of the Commons (1423) Survey of the Commons (scribe A) (c. 1520) Other copies by scribe A (c. 1520) Other copies by different scribes (1500-50) Total frequency of <ȝ> 78 32 18 0 Normalised frequency per 10,000 characters 19.4 8.5 2.4 0 Table 5: Use of yogh <ȝ> in Coventry, 1423-1550. Based on this, it seems that it was most likely scribal spelling conventions that had an effect on the changes between the first and the second versions of the text, as we see a decrease in use of <ȝ> in Coventry in the course of the first half of the sixteenth century. The fact that scribe A is still using it significantly more often than his contemporaries might be explained through an influence of the first version on his language. Moreover, most of the copies scribe A was making were based on fifteenth-century material, and not - as was probably the case with most of his contemporaries - from the sixteenth century. Thus, it seems that <?page no="241"?> Copying Scribes as Agents of Change 241 scribe A’s language was influenced to some extent by the texts he was copying. Unfortunately, we do not have any copies by him that could be considered contemporary, i.e. copies of texts that were written down in the first half of the sixteenth century, in order to determine whether his frequent use of <ȝ> was a personal preference, or whether it was due to the fifteenth-century texts he was copying. Secondly, let us consider the use of thorn. For this analysis to work, I could only include the previously mentioned selection of words (that, the, they, there, their, other and these), as I know that all three possible variants (i.e. <th>, y-like thorn and <þ>) were used at least once for these words in the Survey of the Commons. The results are as follows: Survey of the Commons (1423) Survey of the Commons (scribe A) (c. 1520) Other copies by scribe A (c. 1520) Other copies by different scribes (1500-50) Total frequency of <þ> 5 [1.3%] 31 [8.4%] 0 [0%] 40 [6%] Total frequency of ylike thorn 0 [0%] 174 [47.2%] 136 [23.8%] 2 [0.3%] Total frequency of <th> 393 [98.7%] 164 [44.4%] 436 [76.2%] 624 [93.7%] Table 6: Use of <th>, y-like thorn and <þ> in Coventry, 1423-1550. This overview confirms that scribe A used y-like thorn much more than both his contemporaries and the fifteenth-century material he was copying. When considering all of his copies it becomes clear that he was still using <th> forms in most instances, but that his second choice clearly was the y-like thorn and not <þ>. However, he used <þ> much more in his copy of the Survey of the Commons. This can then not be explained by the use of <þ> in the first version, as that variant was used only in 1.3 percent of all instances. What is certain, however, is that scribe A changed some of the spellings of the first version of the text through his personal preference and not through any conventions or writing practices in his direct professional environment. Finally, let us consider the key-word analysis between the first and second versions of the Survey of the Commons, which shows that the following different forms are distributed asymmetrically across the two versions: comen ~ comyn, called ~ callyd, alſo ~ allſo, wey ~ way, seid ~ said, fro <?page no="242"?> Tino Oudesluijs 242 ~ from, whiche ~ wich (cf. Table 3). This indicates that the two scribes wrote relatively consistently with regard to spelling for at least part of their writings, which strengthens the notion that each scribe wrote on the basis of how he would have learned to write. There is of course still much orthographic variation within each of the two versions of the text (after all, scribe A did sometimes use <ȝ>, and the scribe of the first version also sometimes wrote wich), but for many words there was a clear preference in terms of how they were spelled. For example, scribe A never wrote called (only callyd), and only wrote seid instead of said once. Such seemingly small features indicate that scribes could have had clear orthographical preferences as well as be very consistent in using them. This is most likely linked to where a scribe was trained, as well as where he subsequently worked, which could then be tentatively linked to where a scribe was from, i.e. his geographical origins. In the case of scribe A, for example, it seems that, when comparing his texts to those of other scribes working in Coventry, he may have come from a place further north (in particular when scrutinising his use of y-like thorn). If we now consider these seemingly structural differences in spelling between the two versions in light of both other copies written down by scribe A and what other scribes were doing in the second half of the sixteenth century in Coventry, we get the following results: Survey of the Commons (1423) Survey of the Commons (scribe A) (c. 1520) Other copies by scribe A (c. 1520) Other copies by different scribes (1500-50) comen [comyn] 43 [2] 1 [45] 1 [3] 20 [0] called [callyd] 30 [0] 0 [28] 0 [1] 0 [0] alſo [allſo] 39 [0] 3 [31] 2 [64] 23 [18] wey [way] 29 [0] 2 [32] 0 [10] 3 [0] seid [ſaid] 20 [0] 1 [24] 1 [44] 30 [2] fro [from] 61 [1] 22 [24] 3 [3] 0 [14] Which(e) [wich(e)] 28 [16] 0 [42] 6 [0] 3 [0] Table 7: Significantly characteristic forms used in Coventry, 1423-1550. The results suggest that scribe A’s spelling conventions were for the most part different from those of his contemporary colleagues. The only time scribe A adheres to the conventions of his contemporaries is with the spelling of which [which(e) / wich(e)], and then he only does so for his other copies and not in the copy of the survey of the commons. Thus, scribe A seems to have applied a personal “style-sheet” to the <?page no="243"?> Copying Scribes as Agents of Change 243 majority of his copies compared to his contemporaries. It is therefore most likely he who was personally responsible for the changes of some of the spellings from the first version of the survey of the commons, and not any possible spelling conventions that were adhered to by the scribes in Coventry at that time. Turning now to morphology, what does the comparison reveal with regard to the third person plural indicative present and past? Earlier on I considered the following verbs: say, are, ought, were, and lie. Survey of the Commons (1423) Survey of the Commons (scribe A) (c. 1520) Other copies by scribe A (c. 1520) Other copies by different scribes (1500-50) say [-n] 1 [43] 14 [20] 0 [0] 0 [0] are [-n] 0 [24] 21 [3] 0 [0] 1 [0] ought [-n] 4 [6] 4 [6] 0 [0] 0 [0] were [-n] 0 [5] 3 [2] 5 [1] 2 [0] lie [-n] 0 [7] 1 [6] 0 [0] 0 [0] Table 8: Use of the zero form and -n ending for the third person plural indicative present and past in Coventry, 1423-1550. Unfortunately, most of the third person plural present and past indicatives attested in the Survey of the Commons are almost completely absent from the rest of the available data, keeping me from inferring anything from this comparison other than that scribe A changed a significant amount of the original morphology (moreover, in the Leet Book many verbs are conjugated to the third person singular instead of the plural as references are often made to “every man” or “no inhabitaunt” to represent the people of the city). A quick search through the other copies made by scribe A as well as the ones by the other scribes in the Leet Book from the first half of the sixteenth century, reveals that the -n ending was rarely used (except for a few instances of leden, ben, and orden [as opposed to be, come, exceed, leve, think, sell, admit, etc.]), but even then, no discernible pattern becomes apparent, only that it seems that the -n ending was declining in combination with a third person plural subject. It may therefore very well be a general diachronic development. Based on what scribe A did with the majority of the -n ending forms, however, it becomes apparent that, once again, he altered the language of the original to some extent but was also influenced by the original to a certain degree as he seems to have used more -n endings than he did in his other copies. More data are, however, needed to confirm this tendency. <?page no="244"?> Tino Oudesluijs 244 7. Conclusions Based on the findings from this case study, it seems that in local administrative documents the variation between the exemplar and the copy primarily occurred on the lexical, orthographical and morphological levels of the text. As the contents of the text were meant to be clear and as unambiguous as possible, the fact that the syntax was much less affected is not unexpected. After all, it was imperative that all of the names of the people and crofts and fields were included (although the exact order could vary), and that the language did not allow for a different interpretation than the one intended. Because of this, it was most likely also highly important for scribes to copy the text accurately in order to preserve its legally specific contents (cf. Rissanen 120-21). As stated by Wakelin (Scribal Correction 89), who briefly touches upon this topic, “accuracy mattered.” Even today, one can observe extremely consistent language use in legal and administrative registers as it tries to exclude as much vagueness and ambiguity as possible to avoid potential misinterpretations and disputes about the contents. Concerning this text type in the Late Medieval period, however, it seems that only syntax was retained rather faithfully when copying texts, as different degrees of variation can be found on other linguistic levels. This should be kept in mind when considering such texts for linguistic analyses. Regarding the attested variation, even though the differences might seem fairly random at first, many features are consistently used (or not) by the different scribes. This is most likely a direct result of their individual training (cf. Wakelin Scribal Correction 102), rather than a superimposed standard variety or the professional environment in which they were working. This highlights the importance of the individual scribe’s education in a pre-standard culture when discussing the language attested in Late Medieval English administrative writings, in particular with regard to orthography. Regarding the attested lexical variation, here it has become clear that manuscript context should also be taken into consideration when scrutinising language variation between copies. As a more external influence besides the copying scribe, this aspect can of course only be considered if one studies the actual manuscript. For many linguistic studies this is unfortunately often difficult (if not impossible) to do, but it should always be at least considered with regard to attested lexical variation in Late Middle English texts. It has furthermore become apparent that many forms attested in the second version were most likely present in this version because of their presence in the first version. Thus, the original text seems to have influ- <?page no="245"?> Copying Scribes as Agents of Change 245 enced the copying language of scribe A to some extent. This notion of possible exemplars’ influences on scribes’ language use must not be discarded nor ignored too quickly, since the majority of medieval scribes’ work consisted of copying other documents, and their “copying language” is often their most recorded use of language. It is of course impossible to determine to what extent this language reflected their speech, but as we are only dealing with written language when scrutinising language variation and change in the past, understanding what could have influenced that language becomes highly essential. On a final note, as regards whose language it is that we are looking at when considering Middle English texts such as the Survey of the Commons as copied by scribe A, it is important to remember that since this version was produced by scribe A, it has also become part of his linguistic repertoire. This does not mean, of course, that he would have written in a similar fashion when he was not copying texts, but we must also be cautious when trying to determine which parts of a text represent a particular scribe and which parts reflect the language of the exemplar, as both become part of an individual scribe’s linguistic repertoire in the end. This notion consequently emphasises the importance of the language of non-contemporary texts in a later period, especially in a prestandard written culture in which variation was well accepted, as it could influence the language of newer generations of scribes to various degrees. Language variation and change in the past may thus not only have been about the influences of individual authors and scribes next to the existing ideologies and ideas spanning a greater social and geographical area, but also of other (non-contemporary) texts. <?page no="246"?> Tino Oudesluijs 246 References Anthony, Laurence. AntConc. Computer software. Laurence Anthony’s Website.Vers. 3.4.3. Tokyo, Japan: Waseda University, 2014. www.lau renceanthony.net/ . Accessed 7 December 2017. Baker, Paul. Sociolinguistics and Corpus Linguistics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010. Benskin, Michael. “The Letters <þ> and <y> in Later Middle English, and Some Related Matters.” Journal of the Society of Archivists 7 (1982): 13-30. ――― and Margaret Laing. “Translations and Mischsprachen in Middle English Manuscripts.” So meny people longages and tonges: philological essays in Scots and mediaeval English presented to Angus McIntosh. Ed. M. Benskin and M. L. Samuels. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 1981. 55-106. Bergs, Alexander. “Middle English Sociolinguistics.” English Historical Linguistics. Ed. Alexander Bergs and Laurel Brinton. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 2012. 534-51. ―――. “Writing, Reading, Language Change - a Sociohistorical Perspective on Scribes, Readers, and Networks in Medieval Britain.” Scribes as Agents of Language Change. Studies in Language Change 10. Ed. Esther-Miriam Wagner, Ben Outhwaite and Bettina Beinhoff. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter Mouton, 2013. 241-60. Berruto, Gaetano. “Identifying Dimensions of Linguistic Variation in a Language Space.” Language and Space: An International Handbook of Linguistic Variation, Vol. 1. Theories and Methods. Ed. Peter Auer and Jürgen Erich Schmidt. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter Mouton, 2010. 226-241. Harris, Mary Dormer. The Coventry Leet Book or Mayor’s Register, Parts I- IV. Early English Text Society (Old Series) 134, 135, 138, 146. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner and Co., Ltd., 1907-1913. Horobin, Simon. “Mapping the Words.” The Production of Books in England 1350-1500. Ed. Daniel Wakelin and Alexandra Gillespie. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. 59-78. ―――. “The Nature of Material Evidence.” Imagining Medieval English: Language Structures and Theories. Ed. Tim William Machan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. 147-65. Kuhn, Sherman M., ed. “The Preface to a Fifteenth-Century Concordance.” Speculum 43 (1968): 258-73. <?page no="247"?> Copying Scribes as Agents of Change 247 Laing, Margaret, ed. LAEME. A Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English, 1150-1325. Vers. 3.2. Edinburgh: The University of Edinburgh, 2013. www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ ihd/ laeme2/ laeme2.html. Accessed 27 February 2018. ――― and Roger Lass. “Chapter 1: Preliminaries.” A Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English, 1150-1325, Part I: Introduction. Edinburgh: The University of Edinburgh, 2007. www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ ihd/ laeme2 / laeme_intro_ch1.html. Accessed 28 September 2017. Lass, Roger. “Phonology and Morphology.” The Cambridge History of the English Language, Vol. II - 1066-1476. Ed. Norman Blake. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. 23-155. McIntosh, Angus. “Word Geography in the Lexicography of Middle English.” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 211 (1973). 55-66. ―――, M. L. Samuels and Michael Benskin. “General Introduction.” A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English, Volume One. Edinburgh: The University of Edinburgh, 1986. www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ ihd/ elalme/ intros- / atlas_gen_intro.html. Accessed 26 September 2017. ―――, M. L. Samuels, and Michael Benskin, eds. LALME. A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1986. www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ ihd/ elalme/ elalme.html. Accessed 23 September 2017. Milroy, James. Linguistic Variation and Change: On the Historical Sociolinguistics of English. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992. ―――. “Middle English Dialectology.” The Cambridge History of the English Language. Ed. Norman Blake. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. 156-206. ――― and Leslie Milroy. Authority in Language: Investigating Standard English. 1985. London and New York: Routledge, 2012. Nevalainen, Terttu. “Words of Kings and Counsellors: Register Variation and Language Change in Early English Courtly Correspondence.” Scribes as Agents of Language Change. Studies in Language Change 10. Ed. Esther-Miriam Wagner, Ben Outhwaite and Bettina Beinhoff. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter Mouton, 2013. 99-120. Parkes, Malcolm Beckwith. English Cursive Book Hands: 1250-1500. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969. Peikola, Matti. “Copying Space, Length of Entries, and Textual Transmission in Middle English Tables of Lessons.” Scribes, Printers, and the Accidentals of their Texts. Ed. Jacob Thaisen and Hanna Rutkowska. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2011. 107-24. <?page no="248"?> Tino Oudesluijs 248 Rissanen, Matti. “Standardisation and the Language of Early Statutes.” The Development of Standard English, 1300-1800: Theories, Descriptions, Conflict. Ed. Laura Wright. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 117-30. Roberts, Jane. Guide to Scripts Used in English Writings up to 1500. London: British Library. Schaefer, Ursula. “Middle English: Standardization.” English Historical Linguistics. Ed. Alexander Bergs and Laurel Brinton. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 2012. 519-33. Stenroos, Merja, Martti Mäkinen, Simon Horobin and Jeremy Smith, eds. MEG-C. The Middle English Grammar Corpus. Vers. 2011.1. Stavanger: University of Stavanger, 2011. www.uis.no/ research/ historylanguages-and-literature/ the-mest-pro-gramme/ the-middle-englishgrammar-corpus-meg-c/ . Accessed 13 December 2017. ―――, Kjetil V. Thengs and Geir Bergstrøm, eds. MELD. A Corpus of Middle English Local Documents. Vers. 2017.1. Stavanger: University of Stavanger, 2017. www.uis.no/ meld. Accessed 13 December 2017. Thaisen, Jacob and Hanna Rutkowska, eds. Scribes, Printers, and the Accidentals of Their Texts. Studies in English Medieval Language and Literature 33. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2011. Wagner, Esther-Miriam, Ben Outhwaite and Bettina Beinhoff, eds. Scribes as Agents of Language Change. Studies in Language Change 10. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter Mouton, 2013. Wakelin, Daniel. “Writing the Words.” The Production of Books in England 1350-1500. Ed. Daniel Wakelin and Alexandra Gillespie. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. 34-58. ―――. Scribal Correction and Literary Craft. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Williamson, Keith. “Middle English Dialects.” English Historical Linguistics. Ed. Alexander Bergs and Laurel Brinton. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 2012. 480-505. <?page no="249"?> Afterword: “I Am Conservative and I Like Change” Felipe Fernández-Armesto “I am conservative,” said John Sparrow (fingering the velum binding he had just plucked from uniformly creamy rows of spines on his bookshelves in the Warden’s study at All Souls College, Oxford), “and I like change.” The paradox made the sentiment sound quirky, but almost everyone might say it without self-misrepresentation. Humans typically have moments of nostalgia and cling to fragments of the past; we idealise memories or supposed memories - of a golden age, or a lost youth, or a first love, or, as Peter Sellers sang to Sophia Loren, “the bangers and mash me Muvver used to make” (“Bangers and Mash”). We are the world’s most imaginative species, constantly re-picturing our environments and labouring to turn our fantasies into reality (Fuentes). Yet we find the results so unsettling that we reach for stasis, or revert to the familiar, or vote, in flight from accelerating change, for purported simplifiers of life (Fernández-Armesto). Even revolutionaries commonly want to revolve the world back to primitive equality or innocence or apostolic poverty or some other long frayed or misremembered pattern of life, and radicalism and reaction often almost touch, like the apparently opposite but tantalisingly close ends of a horseshoe. Tastes in food are notoriously hard to prise out of ruts; yet “new” cuisines and exotic food-styles are easy to market. We think of technology as one of our most madcap practices; yet new thinking regularly gets binned and exciting blueprints rarely make it into production (Edgerton). Art turns over new “isms” with bewildering rapidity, yet relishes revivals and retrospectives. Fashion is frantic for novelty and fixated on the past. While we yearn for continuity, and recognise tradition as the foundation of progress, we crave innovation. Ironically, innovations depend on mimesis to propagate (Rogers) - and imitation is a way of keeping the world the way it already is. The Challenge of Change. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 36. Ed. Margaret Tudeau-Clayton and Martin Hilpert. Tübingen: Narr, 2018. 249-254. <?page no="250"?> Felipe Fernández-Armesto 250 The paradox of change goes even deeper than these ironic inconsistencies. Because change is ineluctable, if we managed to avoid it we should have achieved a stunning innovation in the way the world works. Because nature imposes change on us, the idea of circumventing it is as attractive as any form of resistance to tyranny. Because change, as it were, is the default system of the universe, it is itself a form of stasis - inescapable and therefore frustrating. We can imagine changeless states - eternity, infinity, God - only imperfectly, because we have no experience of anything unchanging. But we wonder furiously what they might be like and every thought we have about them is itself a change from the preceding thought. Until I had the pleasure of attending a SAUTE conference, I had never considered how the principal disciplines of SAUTE members - literature and linguistics - are peculiarly suited to exploring the paradox of change. All academic disciplines study change: my own, which is history, can be defined as the study of change. All the problems historians broach can be formulated as those of why and how situation x at moment y transforms into situation y at moment z. Literary studies commonly revolve around the kind of change I call cultural divergence: why behaviours (in the case of literature, the behaviour concerned is writing) grow unalike from time to time and place to place: specifically, in literature, how norms or “canons” get established and overturned; why a writer defers to or drops a convention or tradition; what makes an element or component of writing work in one place or at one moment and not another; or why it might form part of an enduring tradition or disappear from view. Students of language also juggle with changes and the relatively unchanged states that precede and survive them. Typically linguistics scholars want to know where languages or lexicons or usages come from and go to, and nowadays they are often interested in whether, under the shifting, shimmering groundscape of sounds and symbols, there is a substratum or “deep structure” that is always the same. SAUTE is an exceptionally adventurous band of scholars, perhaps because it is liberating to study a foreign language and literature in a land as inwardly diverse linguistically as Switzerland. Sauter is a dynamic activity. SAUTE’s is not over yet. Even so, “Change” seemed a bold choice of conference theme for the 2017 get-together. Because it encompasses everything we know about, and excludes nothing except, perhaps, the perspective of the dot that thinks itself the universe (Abbott), change is hardly a theme at all: one might almost as well choose “life” or “the world”. Yet as I listened to the papers and read those selected for the <?page no="251"?> Afterword 251 present volume, I realised that many, perhaps most or all of my fellowconférenciants had a sense of the interplay of change and stasis much richer than my own. Contributors of papers on historical linguistics - exemplified in this volume by Tino Oudesluijs’s piece on the changes in orthography or usage made by Middle English copyists in Coventry - confront one of the most pervasive problems of ontology: how can something change without ceasing to be itself? How can personality outlast growth, or the continuities of history overleap revolutions, or communities survive conquest or conversion or cultural hybridisation or genetic dilution? Curiously, adaptation to new forms of speech, or translation into those of a culture different from the one in which a given text originates can make a text better fitted for survival than formerly. Change and continuity conspire. Nothing human can last without sacrificing some inessential part of itself. The argument has been wielded in recent times in favour of some risky interventions in hallowed texts: dumbing down classics, adulterating liturgies, and bowdlerising work deemed politically incorrect or sexually sensitive by fashionable standards: Cranmer’s prayers have been turned into modish gobbledegook in the Church of England; the Catholic Church has revised some of the vernacular liturgy in English backwards, as it were, to be closer to the Latin from which it began in retreat; even the pop music industry - not usually regarded as a place of purity of morals any more than of integrity of text - has been assailed, for instance, by versions of the charming Frank Loesser duet, Baby It’s Cold Outside, to eliminate references to alcohol, masculinity, and supposedly over-insistent seduction (Cashin). Cases like these make one wonder at what point textual change makes for unrecognisability or ontological extinction. It seems, on the other hand, that a good deal of English texts depended for survival on the scribal modifications that eased them through transition via and from Middle English. I recall from my boyhood how Neville Coghill’s modern-English version of The Canterbury Tales excited obloquy from fellow-scholars; but was he doing anything that scribes of Chaucer’s day would not have regarded as within the normal range of editorialisation that Oudesluijs studies? In the case of SAUTE’ s literature specialists, two features of imaginative writing account for the freedom with which they contemplate change. First, one way of defying change is by writing down the idea of the moment - embodying it for all time, casting it in a kind of written or spoken bronze, like Horace’s monumentum aere perennius, or embedding it in imperishable matter, as paleolithic artists did with images they confided to rock. Of course even literature so good as to be called “immor- <?page no="252"?> Felipe Fernández-Armesto 252 tal” is not really exempt from change, as any elementary course in literary theory now proclaims. The reader, misprinter, editor, expurgator, plagiarist and all their cognates are there, competing and conspiring with the text, constantly reinterpreting and often refashioning it. Yet writers, because their works are relatively easily reproduced and diffused, do successfully challenge sculptors, painters and architects in creating enduring work that retains, for every re-interpreter, its original state or at least something of its original spirit. Reading Margaret Tudeau-Clayton’s vivid depiction of Jane Austen’s mysterious sickness, for instance, I was struck by Austen’s hopes of an “afterlife” for her novels - a translation to a kind of bookshelf-heaven where a beatific vision, face to face with readers, can be indefinitely resumed. Ewan Fernie’s fascinating study of the appropriation of Shakespeare by radicals and Chartists shows how re-interpretation itself can sometimes freeze a feature or supposed feature of a text or group of texts and protect it from change by isolating it from challenge. Was Wilkes really anything like Shakespeare in any meaningful sense, or were Whitmore’s freemen “consciously allied to England’s Shakespeare” other than by accident or illusion, and did Kossuth really take “from Shakespeare” politics the bard would recognise as his own? Probably not, but the Shakespeare the appropriators revered has been, as Fermie shows, an enduring presence in English rhetoric. Fragments of language sometimes have a magical resistance to extinction, even though they may be recycled in highly mutable contexts. Yeats, as we see from an essay in this volume, was as convinced as Heraclitus of the ubiquity of flux, but, like those of other great wordsmiths, some of his phrases seem stuck in a kind of collective memory, ossified and applicable to everything “from the Post Office in what was then Sackville Street (now O’Connell Street), Dublin in April 1916 to Tahrir Square in Cairo and Syntagma Square in Athens, to the demonstrations in Dar’aa in March 2011, which launched the Arab Spring in Syria, the brutal repression by the Assad regime and a Civil War, which seems to be ending with the Assad regime killing or driving out half its own population.” Writers’ second way of eluding change is to create a world outside the mutable universe. Enit K. Steiner’s essay above quotes Octavia Butler’s version of the Heraclitus vision (“Truth is change. God is change”) but suggests how science fiction can create a world with its own time and, therefore, changeless with respect to ours. Simon Swift’s incisive piece on Coleridge makes the most of change as a framework of study by comparing widely separated moments in the history of literature (as do Anne-Claire Michoux and Katrin Rupp, juggling Austen with the <?page no="253"?> Afterword 253 Wife of Bath) but isolates the poet’s “interval” as “a now which is timeless.” Swift draws attention to the use of “still” to interrupt time as well as to represent continuity that transcends change. Boris Vejdovsky shows how Donald Trump’s mercuriality ironically matches the reality that the president seems to traduce; but the essay helps to convince us that truth is outside time: what is true is always true, if only of the moment it describes or reflects. The same truth applies to truths about lies: if a Cretan really did say, “All Cretans are liars,” it is and ever will be true that he said so. Pace Kant, myths are lies that ape truth by aspiring to universality and immortality. Sometimes they are nearly successful. Vejdovsky’s paper, with special force but in a way reflected throughout SAUTE’s 2017 conference, reminds me of a truth that is uncomfortable: lies drive history. Changes unfold not only or chiefly in consequence of facts that happen - which are often ignored - but of falsehoods people believe, which are at least equally often upheld, pursued and defended with passion. Truth is changeless. Lying is dynamic. So are that delusive art - literature - and that mercurial medium - language. <?page no="254"?> Felipe Fernández-Armesto 254 References Abbott, Edwin A. Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. London: Seeley, 1884. “Bangers and Mash.” 1960. International Lyrics Playground. David Lee and Herbert Kretzmer. lyricsplayground.com/ alpha/ songs/ b/ bangers andmash.html. Accessed 12 February 2018. Cashin, Declan. “Is Baby It’s Cold Outside Creepy or Empowering? ” BBC, 7 December 2017. http: / / www.bbc.co.uk/ bbcthree/ article/ 9cb7d428- 5d0e -4c70-8809-e4d07d9762eb. Accessed 12 February 2018. Edgerton, David. The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Fernández-Armesto, Felipe. A Foot in the River: How Our Lives Change - and the Limits of Evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Fuentes, Agustín. The Creative Spark: How Imagination Made Humans Exceptional. New York: Dutton, 2017. Rogers, Everett. Diffusion of Innovations. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003. <?page no="255"?> Notes on Contributors ANITA AUER is Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Lausanne. As a historical (socio)linguist with a keen interest in interdisciplinary research, particularly the correlation between language variation and change and socio-economic history, she has carried out research and published widely on language standardization, corpus compilation, variation and change of different morpho-syntactic features, and historical sociolinguistics. FELIPE FERNÁNDEZ-ARMESTO’s books include A Foot in the River (Oxford University Press, 2015), Our America (W. W. Norton, 2014), Amerigo: the Man Who Gave His Name to America (Random House, 2007). He was an undergraduate and graduate student at Oxford, where he worked as a member of the Modern History Faculty, and, from 1981 to 1990, a Fellow of St Antony’s College, before holding Chairs at the University of London (Professor of Global and Environmental History, Queen Mary College) and Tufts University (Prince of Asturias Professor of Spanish Civilisation). He now occupies the William P. Reynolds Chair for Mission in Arts and Letters at the University of Notre Dame. He won, inter alia, the World History Association Book Prize (for Pathfinders: a Global History of Exploration [Oxford University Press, 2007]), the John Carter Brown Medal for contributions to colonial history, the Caird Medal of the National Maritime Museum, London, for his work on maritime history, and Spain’s national prizes for research in geography and for food writing (for Near a Thousand Tables [Simon and Schuster, 2002]). In 2017 he received Spain’s Gran Cruz de la Orden de Alfonso X el Sabio for services to scholarship, education and the arts. EWAN FERNIE is Chair, Professor and Fellow at The Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham. His latest books are Shakespeare for Freedom: Why the Plays Matter (Cambridge University Press, 2017); Macbeth, Macbeth (with Simon Palfrey; Bloomsbury, 2016); and Thomas Mann and Shakespeare: Something Rich and Strange (edited with Tobias Döring; <?page no="256"?> 256 Notes on Contributors Bloomsbury, 2015) and New Places: Shakespeare and Creativity (edited with Paul Edmondson; The Arden Shakespeare, 2018). He is currently working on George Dawson’s nineteenth-century “Civic Gospel,” which included the foundation of the Birmingham Shakespeare Memorial Library for all the people of the city, and which, Fernie contends, represents an alternative tradition of Englishness from which we still have much to learn today. MARTIN LEER is maître d’enseignement et de recherche and Head of Contemporary Literature in the English Department of the University of Geneva. Author of over 100 articles, his most recent publications include: Other Routes: 1500 Years of African and Asian Travel Writing, coedited with Tabish Khair, Justin Edwards and Hanna Ziadeh (Signal Books/ Indiana University Press, 2006), Bodies and Voices: The Force-Field Behind Representation and Discourse, coedited with Merete Borch, Bruce Clunies Ross and Eva Rask Knudsen (Rodopi, 2007), Economies of English SPELL 35, coedited with Genoveva Puskas (Narr, 2016). He is currently preparing for publication four books on Australian literary geography. SCOTT LOREN is an instructor in Language Skills and Culture at the University of Zurich’s English Department, and an adjunct lecturer at the University of St. Gallen’s School of Humanities and Social Sciences. His current research is on multi-modal storytelling and the representation of techno-social transition. ANNE-CLAIRE MICHOUX completed an M.Litt at the University of Oxford and is currently a doctoral assistant at the University of Neuchâtel. Her thesis explores the construction of British national identity in women’s fiction of the Romantic period. Her research interests span the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with a particular focus on the novel, drama, and critical theory. Her recent publications include a contribution to Fashioning England and the English: Literature, Nation, Gender, ed. Rahel Orgis and Matthias Heim (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). TINO OUDESLUIJS currently works as a doctoral student in the field of historical sociolinguistics and as an assistant at the University of Lausanne, where he works on his Ph.D. project, “Language Variation <?page no="257"?> Notes on Contributors 257 and Change in Coventry, 1400-1700,” in the Emerging Standards Project under supervision of Professor Anita Auer. He holds an undergraduate degree in Celtic Studies (2010) and a Masters degree in Medieval Studies (2012) from the University of Utrecht, and has experience as a research assistant at the University of Amsterdam and as the editor-in-chief of the Dutch journal Kelten: Mededelingen van de Stichting A.G. van Hamel voor Keltische Studies. Besides his current research he also teaches English (historical) linguistics to undergraduate students at the University of Lausanne, and works as an editorial assistant for the Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics. Tino’s research interests include historical sociolinguistics, language variation and change, the history of the English language, manuscript studies, and corpus linguistics. KATRIN RUPP is a chargée de cours in medieval literature at the University of Neuchâtel. Her research interests are in medieval representations of the body. Her recent publications include an article on Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Miller’s Tale” and its telefilm adaptations by the BBC (Neophilologus 2014) and one on Osbern Bokenham’s St. Margaret in Fashioning England and the English. Literature, Nation, Gender (forthcoming with Palgrave Macmillan). Katrin Rupp has co-edited (with Nicole Nyffenegger) a collection of essays in Fleshly Things and Spiritual Matters (Cambridge Scholars, 2011) and in Writing on Skin in the Age of Chaucer (forthcoming with De Gruyter). ENIT KARAFILI STEINER is a lecturer at the University of Lausanne. She is author of Jane Austen’s Civilized Women: Morality, Gender and the Civilizing Process (Routledge, 2012), Northanger Abbey/ Persuasion: Readers’ Guide to Essential Criticism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). She has also edited Frances Brooke’s The History of Lady Julia Mandeville (Routledge, 2013) and a volume of essays titled Called to Civil Existence: Dialogues on Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (Rodopi/ Brill,2014). She is currently writing a book on cosmopolitan articulations in literary works of the long eighteenth century. SIMON SWIFT is Associate Professor of Modern English Literature at the University of Geneva, and specialises in poetry and visual culture. He is the author of Romanticism, Literature and Philosophy (Continuum, 2006) and Hannah Arendt (Routledge, 2008), and co-editor of the book <?page no="258"?> 258 Notes on Contributors series Futures of the Archive (Rowman & Littlefield International). His work has also appeared in journals including Studies in Romanticism, Textual Practice, New Formations and ELH. He is currently writing a book with the provisional title Wordsworth and Human Life. MARGARET TUDEAU-CLAYTON moved to Switzerland after obtaining her B.A. and Ph.D. in English Literature from King’s College, Cambridge. She taught at the Universities of Geneva, Lausanne and Zurich before being appointed Professor of early modern English literature at the University of Neuchâtel in 2006. She is author of Jonson, Shakespeare and early modern Virgil (Cambridge University Press, 1998; reprinted as paperback in 2006) as well as numerous articles on English Renaissance literature, especially on translation and on Shakespeare. She has co-edited three collections of essays: the first with Martin Warner on the work of the distinguished critic and scholar who was her thesis director, Addressing Frank Kermode (Macmillan, 1991); the second, with Philippa Berry, Textures of Renaissance Knowledge (Manchester University Press, 2003); and the third, with Willy Maley, This England, that Shakespeare (Ashgate, 2010). A monograph entitled Shakespeare’s Englishes: against Englishness is currently under review with Cambridge University Press. BORIS VEJDOVSKY, Ph.D., is a Tenured Researcher and Lecturer at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland where he teaches American literature and American studies. His main interests are in rhetoric, ethics and cultural formations. He is the author of two books, Ideas of Order: Ethics and Topos in American Literature (Gunter Narr, 2007) and Hemingway: A Life in Pictures (Andre Deutsch, 2011). He is the editor of two volumes, Body Politics (Etudes de Lettres, 2001) and The Seeming and the Seen (Peter Lang, 2006); he is also the General Editor of the Peter Lang Series Transatlantic Aesthetics and Culture that has issued eight volumes to date. He is the author of numerous articles and book chapters on American authors and on the cultural and historical emergence of the phenomenon known as “America.” Boris Vejdovsky has served as the President of the Senate of the University of Lausanne and on various professional boards, including as Chair of the International Committee of the American Studies Association. His current book project titled “Framing the American West” it is concerned with the aesthetic and <?page no="259"?> Notes on Contributors 259 political forms of Western movies and their information of American culture. <?page no="261"?> Index of Names Abbott, Edwin A., 250, 254 Aeschylus, 134, 136, 141, 222 Allen, Graham, 71-72, 100 Anthony, Laurence, 233, 246 Arendt, Hannah, 143-145, 149n3, 160, 179-180, 183- 184, 190-191, 197-198, 257 Arner, Lynn, 106n12, 119 Asquith, Lady, 50-51 al-Assad, Bashar Hafez, 45, 252 Auden, Wystan Hugh, 44, 47, 51, 66, 156 Auer, Anita, 12, 16, 204-207, 208n4, 213n8, 217, 219, 221, 254, 257 Austen, Cassandra, 117, 170, 203, 209-210, 213, 221 Austen, Jane, 12-17, 101-104, 106-108, 110-111, 113, 114n27, 115-121, 130, 142, 161-178, 201-222, 252, 257 Baker, Paul, 233, 246 Barrell, John, 152-154, 160 Barry, Sebastian, 60 Bate, Jonathan, 26, 40 Beinhoff, Bettina, 246-248 Benedict, Barbara, 119, 128, 141, 177 Benjamin, Walter, 149-150, 160, 180 Benskin, Michael, 227, 237, 246-247 Bentham, Jeremy, 72, 93 Bentley, Richard, 117, 119 Bergs, Alexander, 224-225, 227, 246, 248 Bergstrøm, Geir, 248 Berruto, Gaetano, 224, 246 Berry, Philippa, 258 Bevis, Matthew, 146, 160 Biebel, Elizabeth M., 107, 119 Bigg, Alethea, 164-165 Bixby, Scott, 199 Blake, Aaron, 182, 198 Blake, William, 156 Blank, Antje, 169, 174, 177 Bloom, Harold, 20, 40 Bokenham, Osbern, 257 Boland, Eavan, 55, 66 Booth, Wayne C., 112n25, 119 Borch, Merete, 256 Boswell, James, 28-29, 39, 40 Boulter, Amanda, 129, 141 Bowden, Betsy, 101n1, 119 Bramwich, John, 27 Bray, Joe, 202, 221 Bree, Linda, 162, 164-165, 167n6, 167n8, 169-170, 177 Briggs, Asa, 34, 40 Brittain, Lewis, 204-205, 221 Broch, Hermann, 144-145 Bromwich, David, 136, 141 Brooke, Frances, 257 Brooks, Peter, 81-82, 94, 100 Brown, Peter, 119 Buchanan, James, 204, 221 Burney, Frances, 117 Burns, Jean E., 104n4, 119 <?page no="262"?> Index of Names 262 Bush, Billy, 192 Bush, George W., 192 Bush, Jeb, 192 Butler, Marilyn, 117n30, 119 Butler, Octavia, 11-12, 15, 123- 127, 129-131, 133-142, 252 Byron, George Gordon, 94, 134, 135, 141 Caie, Graham D., 109, 119 Caines, Michael, 164n3, 177 Carruthers, Mary, 103n3, 119 Carter, Susan, 107n15, 109n19, 119 Casement, Roger, Sir, 51, 60, 62-63 Cashin, Declan, 251, 254 Chamberlain, Joseph, 34 Chapman, Robert William, 208, 209n6, 213, 221 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 12, 15, 101- 103, 104n6, 105-106, 107n14, 108-111, 115, 119- 121, 225, 251, 257 Clark, T. J., 157 Clarke, David B., 166, 177 Clegg Hyer, Maren, 104, 119 Clinton, Hillary, 186-188 Cobden, Richard, 31 Coghill, Neville, 251 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 13- 14, 143, 145-150, 152-158, 252 Connolly, James, 46-47, 50-51, 61-62 Connor, Steven, 70, 100 Conway, Kellyanne, 182, 198 Cooper, Thomas, 25-30, 32-33, 39-41 Copernicus, Nicolaus, 139 Cowper, William, 147, 150-151, 154, 160 Croker, John Wilson, 117 Crosby, Benjamin, 211 Culler, Jonathan, 156, 159-160 Danton, Georges, 46 Darwin, Charles, 72 Dawson, George, 19, 30, 33-36, 37n12, 38-41, 256 Deelman, Christian, 23, 40 Deleuze, Gilles, 100, 180, 198 Denison, David, 205, 209n6, 221 Derrida, Jacques, 180, 182-185, 190, 193, 198 Devlin, David Douglas, 203, 221 Dickens, Charles, 61, 220 Dinshaw, Carolyn, 104n6, 105, 106n11, 108, 120 Doel, Marcus A., 166, 177 Dougherty, Carol, 132, 135, 141 Douglas, Mary, 96, 100 Doyle, Roddy, 43, 60-66 Dryden, John, 101n1, 106 Eagleton, Terry, 12, 139, 141 Edgerton, David, 249, 254 Egerton, Thomas, 210-212 England, Martha Winburn, 23, 40 Fairer, David, 153n4, 160 Fanon, Frantz, 150, 160 Favret, Mary, 150-151, 155, 160 Fernandez-Armesto, Felipe, 11, 17, 249, 254, 255 Fernie, Ewan, 15, 24n4, 40, 252, 256 FitzGerald, Garret, 56 Ford, John, 187, 198 Foster, R. F., 43, 45-47, 50-52, 55-60, 66 <?page no="263"?> Index of Names 263 Foucault, Michel, 82, 95, 100, 163, 177, 179, 181, 195-196, 198-200 François, Anne-Lise, 148, 152, 160 Franklin, Benjamin, 11, 71-72, 187 Frederick, Jill, 104, 119 Fuentes, Agustín, 249, 254 Fukuyama, Francis, 84, 87, 100 Gammage, R. G., 27n7, 40 Gardner, Edith, 81n2, 94n5, 100 Garrick, David, 23-26, 28-29, 32-33, 38-40 Gaskell, Elizabeth, 220 Genette, Gérard, 116, 120 George, Lloyd, 51 Gerrard, Christine, 153n4, 160 Gilligan, Carol, 12, 124, 141 Girard, René, 12, 140-141 Godwin, William, 73, 75, 94 Goldsmith, Oliver, 153 Gonne, Maud, 46-48, 50-51, 54, 58 González-Díaz, Victorina, 209n6, 221 Gordon, Lewis R., 125, 141 Goss, Theodora, 138, 141 Gottwald, Klement, 184 Graeber, David, 43, 49-50, 52- 53, 66 Gray, Thomas, 153 Greenberg, Amy S., 194 Greenblatt, Stephen, 21n3, 40 Gregory, Augusta, Lady, 50-51 Griffiths, Lemuel Matthews, 31, 40 Grundy, Isobel, 203, 221 Gurney, Ivor, 48 Hall, Stuart, 133, 141 Halliwell, James O., 167n7, 177 Hanna III, Ralph, 104n5, 120 Haraway, Donna, 124, 130, 141 Harney, Julian George, 32-33, 40 Harris, Jocelyn, 101n1, 102-103, 107n14, 114n27, 117n31, 120 Harris, Mary Dormer, 229-232, 246 Hartman, Geoffrey, 148, 152, 160 Havel, Vaclav, 14 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 189 Hegel, Georg Friedrich, 15, 20- 22, 40, 59, 72, 83-84, 86-87, 89, 92-94, 100 Heidegger, Martin, 149n3, 160 Heraclitus, 252 Herbert McAvoy, Liz, 109, 120 Herzen, Alexander, 57 Hesiod, 136, 139 Hickman, Jared, 135, 142 Hitler, Adolf, 44, 189 Hobbes, Thomas, 88 Hobsbawm, Eric, 16, 67-69, 78, 100 Hölderlin, Friedrich, 149n3 Honan, Park, 163-165, 177 Honkapohja, Alpo, 223, 232 Horace, 251 Horobin, Simon, 224-225, 246, 248 Hunt, Tristam, 34, 40 Jackson, Andrew, 193-194, 199 Jackson, Zakiyyah Iman, 125, 142 Jacobs, Ben, 192, 199 Jacobs, Naomi, 130, 142 Jager, Colin, 150, 160 Jager, Eric, 105, 120 <?page no="264"?> Index of Names 264 Jameson, Frederic, 133 Jansen, Kees, 70, 76, 78, 95, 100 Jerrold, Douglas, 31-33 Jespersen, Otto, 205, 221 Johnson, Barbara, 74, 100 Johnson, Claudia L., 117, 120 Johnson, Samuel, 203-204, 206, 221 Jones, Ernest, 32-33, 41 Jones, Holly, 126, 142 Jones, Nicholas, 126, 142 Jordan, Neil, 53 Joseph, Peniel E., 137, 142 Joyce, James, 57, 62-63 Kafka, Franz, 144-145 Kamuf, Peggy, 193, 198 Kant, Immanuel, 46, 71-72, 93, 100, 179-180, 182, 191, 193, 195, 197-199, 253 Kaufmann, Ruta Baublyte, 166, 177 Kay, Sarah, 106n10, 120 Kean, Charles, 32 Keats, John, 147, 150-152, 160 Kemble, Charles, 32 Kempe, Margery, 109, 120 Kerby-Fulton, Kathryn, 109, 120 Kermode, Frank, 161-163, 165, 168, 173, 175, 177, 258 Kerrigan, John, 56 Kiberd, Declan, 59, 66 King, Amy M., 169, 178 King, Martin Luther, 12, 135, 137-138, 142, 182n2 Kirkham, Margaret, 117n30, 120 Knight, Fanny, 161-162, 166- 169, 174-175 Koselleck, Reinhart, 146n2 Kossuth, Louis, 19-20, 30-33, 35-39, 41, 252 Kuch, Peter, 51, 66 Kuhn, Sherman M., 227-228, 246 Kundera, Milan, 184-185, 199 Kuwahara, Kuldip Kaur, 172, 178 Laing, Margaret, 225, 226n3, 227, 246-247 Laitinen, Mikko, 204, 221 Lakoff, George, 179-180, 185- 188, 190, 199 Langer, Suzanne, 156 Langford, John Alfred, 30, 36, 40 Laqueur, Thomas, 163, 178 Lass, Roger, 225, 238, 247 Lawler, Traugott, 104n5, 120 Leer, Martin, 14, 256 Le Faye, Deirdre, 119, 177, 203, 213, 221 Leonhardt, David, 181, 199 Lincoln, Abraham, 30, 41, 182 Litz, Walton A., 112n25, 120 Loach, Ken, 53 Locke, John, 88, 203 Loesser, Frank, 251 Loren, Scott, 11, 14-16, 256 Loren, Sophia, 249 Lowth, Robert, 203-204, 222 Luther, Martin, 20 Lynch, Deidre Shauna, 103n2, 120, 163, 168, 170-1, 172n13, 178 Lyon, James K., 149, 160 Lyons, F. S. L., 52, 56, 60 MacBride, John, 46, 50 MacDonagh, Thomas, 46-47, 50, 54-55 Mäkinen, Martti, 248 <?page no="265"?> Index of Names 265 Markievicz, Constance, Countess, 51, 57 Martin, Ellen E., 106n13, 120 Martin, Priscilla, 106n11, 120 Marvell, Andrew, 148 Matthiessen, F. O., 189, 199 McIntosh, Angus, 224-225, 226n3, 227n4, 246-247 McWhorter, John, 186n3, 190 Melville, Herman, 189, 199 Michoux, Anne-Claire, 12, 15, 162n1, 163n2, 172n13, 174, 252, 256 Miller, Christopher, 130, 142 Miller, D. A., 163-165, 173-174, 178 Miller, Jim, 127, 142 Milroy, James, 224-225, 228, 247 Milroy, Leslie, 224, 247 Milton, John, 28n9, 118, 130, 142 Minnis, Alastair, 106n12, 110, 120 Mirzoeff, Nicholas, 70n1, 100 Montag, Warren, 94n5, 100 Moran, James, 53-55, 59, 63, 66 Morgan, Hollie L., 107, 120 Morris, Steven, 171, 178 Murphy, Andrew, 25, 28, 31n10, 41 Murray, John, 116, 212 Nevalainen, Terttu, 225, 247 Nigro, Jeffrey A., 170n11, 178 Nokes, David, 203, 222 Nyffenegger, Nicole, 257 Obama, Barack, 142, 182n2, 183 O’Brien, Flann, 62 O’Casey, Sean, 53 O’Faolain, Sean, 57 O’Neill, Jamie, 43, 60-61, 63-66 Oudesluijs, Tino, 16, 251, 256 Outhwaite, Ben, 246-248 Owen, Wilfred, 48 Page, Norman, 202, 222 Paine, Thomas, 93 Parkes, Malcolm Beckwith, 232, 247 Pearse, Padraig, 46-47, 51, 53, 55, 60, 62 Peikola, Matti, 225, 247 Peppers, Cathy, 129, 142 Phillipps, K. C., 201-202, 208, 215, 219, 222 Pinch, Adela, 110-111, 120, 167, 178 Plato, 135-136, 189 Polk, James K., 194 Pope, Alexander, 101n1, 118, 151 Prewitt Brown, Julia, 112n25, 121 Priestley, Joseph, 204, 222 Proust, Marcel, 144-145 Putin, Vladimir, 45 Reagan, Ronald, 39, 124 Redmond, John, 56 Reynolds, David S., 194, 200 Riquelme, John Paul, 138, 141 Rissanen, Matti, 244, 248 Roberts, Jane, 232, 248 Roberts, Stephen, 25-27, 41 Robinson, Bob, 196n5, 197n5, 200 Rogers, Everett, 249, 254 Ross, Josephine, 203, 222 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 72, 85, 88, 185 Rupp, Katrin, 12, 14, 163n2, 172n13, 174, 252, 257 <?page no="266"?> Index of Names 266 Rutkowska, Hanna, 225, 247- 248 Sachs, Jonathan, 146, 160 Samuels, M. L., 246-247 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 150, 160 Scanlon, Larry, 106n12, 121 Schaefer, Ursula, 224, 248 Sellers, Peter, 249 Serres, Michel, 179, 181, 192- 195, 200 Shakespeare, William, 15, 19- 36, 38-41, 165, 178, 252, 255-256, 258 Sharp, Anna, 165 Shelley, Mary, 11-12, 14-15, 67- 70, 72-78, 80-84, 88, 90-94, 96-100, 135-139, 141-142 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 135-136, 142 Shih, Bryan, 137, 142 Shishido, David, 93, 100 Siddiqui, Sabrina, 199 el-Sisi, Abdel Fattah, 45 Smith, Charlotte, 146 Smith, Jeremy, 248 Socrates, 196n5, 197n5 Southam, Brian, 209, 211-212, 222 Spicer, Sean, 182-183, 200 Spurr, David, 14n1 Steiner, Enit Karafili, 11-12, 15, 252, 257 Stenroos, Merja, 226n3, 248 Stewart, Garrett, 151, 157, 160 Stewart, Susan, 145, 160 Strang, Barbara, 215, 222 Sullivan Kruger, Kathryn, 103, 121 Sutherland, Kathryn, 208-209, 218n11, 221-222 Swift, Simon, 13-14, 16, 252- 253, 257 Tanner, Tony, 110, 121 Taylor, Antony, 28, 32, 41 Taylor, Martin, 60, 66 Thaisen, Jacob, 223n1, 225, 247-248 Thatcher, Margaret, 39 Thengs, Kjetil V., 248 Thompson, Stuart A., 181, 199 Thomson, James, 147, 150, 152-154, 160 Thoreau, Henry David, 191 Thweatt-Bates, Jeanine, 125, 142 Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid, 202-204, 213n8, 213n9, 218n11, 220n12, 222 Tinkle, Theresa, 109, 121 Todd, Chuck, 182-183 Todd, Janet, 162, 164-165, 167n6, 167n8, 169-170, 174, 177 Toibin, Colm, 56, 60 Tolstoy, Leo, 61 Tomalin, Claire, 203, 222 Traugott, Elisabeth Closs, 205, 222 Trump, Donald, 15, 44, 124, 179-200, 253 Tucker, Jeff, 129, 142 Tudeau-Clayton, Margaret, 12- 13, 103n2, 252, 258 Tyrwhitt, Thomas, 101n1 Valera, Eamon de, 51, 54-56, 60 Van Buren, Martin, 194 Vejdovsky, Boris, 15, 253, 258 Vellema, Sietze, 70, 76, 78, 95, 100 Vendler, Helen, 54 <?page no="267"?> Index of Names 267 Vetterli, Martin, 175, 178 Virgil, 144, 258 Wagner, Esther-Miriam, 225, 246-248 Wakelin, Daniel, 225, 226n3, 227-229, 233, 244, 246, 248 Walker Bynum, Caroline, 108n17, 121 Wallerstein, Immanuel, 43, 49 Walmsley, Joshua, Sir, 31 Watts, Richard J., 220, 222 Wesley, Charles, 27 West, Cornel, 190, 198 White, James, 204-205, 222 Whitmore, William, 26-28, 30, 32, 38, 41, 252 Wilde, Oscar, 59-60, 62-64 Wilkes, John, 23-24, 32, 38, 41 Williams, Yohuru, 137, 142 Williamson, Keith, 224, 248 Wilson, Wright, 33, 41 Wolin, Sheldon S., 190-191, 200 Wollstonecraft, Mary, 73, 115, 116n29, 121, 257 Wordsworth, William, 148, 152, 157, 258 Wright, George T., 158 Wu, Duncan, 146, 148-150, 152, 154-158, 160 Yáñez-Bouza, Nuria, 204, 222 Yeats, William Butler, 14, 43-52, 54-60, 62, 66, 156, 252 Zakharieva, Bouriana, 95, 100