Raquel Washington: Assignment 1

Assignment 1: Recent Studies in Restoration & 18^th-Century Literature

In the “Recent Studies in the Restoration and Eighteenth Century” section of the Studies in English Literature Volume 34 Issue 3, Susan Staves, addresses many recurring critical questions that have been discussed in recent scholarly books and articles for that year. Staves states that “the question of what constitutes the canon of Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Literature now seems usefully open to discussion, not only because feminist scholarship and criticism have successfully challenged the hegemony of an all-male canon for our period(659).” John Richetti believes that early women’s fiction by authors such as, Aubin, Haywood, Manley, and Barker generally lacks the complexity and density of authors such as Defoe and Richardson. Staves contends that because we are now confronted with intelligent women, such as Ros Ballaster stating that they have found those “complex and particularized textual workings” that Richetti said they lacked. Ballaster argues that they “address and subvert” simple ideological oppositions between the masculine and female object. Staves also states that many of her collegues in The Profession of Eighteenth Century Literature: Reflections on an Institution, now seem to be thinking self-consciously about literary value. Staves also discusses Robert Crawford’s Devolving English Literature as a way to review the works of authors that resided outside of England during this time period.

Robert Crawford’s Devolving English Literature, examines the literary construction of a British literary identity and not just and English identity. Crawford observes that most of the writings published in the English Language in present day have not been written by authors that reside in England. He argues that “English Literature” was created by people born in Scotland, Ireland, and the United States of America as well as England. Crawford Suggests that a “devolved” rather than “totalitarian approach to English Literature”. In his book, Crawford assesses eighteenth and nineteenth century writers, including T.S. Eliot, Tobias Smollett, Robert Burns, James Boswell, Walter Scott, and Thomas Carlyle, Robert Crawford argues that Scottish and non-metropolitan authors left a crucial legacy to American literature, anthropology, and twentieth-century Modernism.

I find Robert Crawford’s argument that there should be a devolved approach to English Literature rather than a totalitarian approach most interesting. I believe that he raised a great point in his assessment that not all of the popular English Literature of this time was written by authors that resided in England. In his book he discusses T.S. Eliot, a writer born in the United States who would later become an English subject, and how Scottish writers such as Robert Crawford had an effect on his writing, which inadvertently had an effect on many present day writers, through a domino effect of literary instruction. As an English major I can appreciate the influence that many of the authors that I have studied have impacted my writings, both consciously and subconsciously.

Susan Staves discussed religious writings, in particularly those written by women. In her review of Margaret J. M. Ezell in Writing Women’s Literary History, she dissects that statistics that Ezell presented about Quaker women writers published between 1653 and 1672. Staves states that Ezell throughout her book argues that various kinds of presentist orientation, including generic, have led us “unintentionally” to marginalized or devalue “a significant portion of female literary experience”. Staves states that Quaker women’s writings serves to challenge what Ezell regards as a number of false assumptions about early women writers do not usually write for an audience.

I believe that this work by Margaret J. M. Ezell, is important to our class because it would provide a great basis for bringing more feminine authorship to the forefront for this time period. In these novels we would get a different type of romance novel by women than those of present times. In many of these novels, there are strong women that do not require rescue by heroic male figures.