True Light, True Method: Science, Newtonianism, and the Editing of Shakespeare in Eighteenth-Century England (2007)
Bar-On, Gefen (Author)
McGill University (Canada)
Physical Details: 235 pp.
Language: English
The promotion of Shakespeare to the centre of the English literary canon was largely facilitated by ten major eighteenth-century editions of his plays: by Nicholas Rowe (1709), Alexander Pope (1723-25), Lewis Theobald (1733), Thomas Hanmer (1744), William Warburton (1747), Samuel Johnson (1765), George Steevens (1766), Edward Capell (1767-68), Johnson and Steevens (1773) and Edmond Malone (1790). The popularity of Newtonian science in eighteenth-century England helps to explain the mentality that impelled this energetic enterprise. In their Prefaces, the editors describe Shakespeare as a Newton-like genius who understood the underlying principles of human nature and expressed them through his characters. Shakespeare, however, unlike Newton, was not a systematic thinker, and the editors are critical of his language and of his tendency to cater to the low tastes of the Elizabethan theatre. They view him as a genius who understood fundamental truths about human nature and, at the same time, metaphorically, as nature itself--a site of heterogeneity and confusion where the editor must find hidden knowledge. They figure themselves as, scientists charged with the task of altering, restoring and annotating Shakespeare's writings. In the editions leading to and including that of Johnson, the editors' focus is on the universality of Shakespeare's discoveries. The early editors promote a transcendental image of Shakespeare as a timeless genius who rose above the relatively barbaric age in which he lived. The two editors following Johnson, however, place an increasing emphasis on Shakespeare's Englishness. While the idea of Shakespeare as a universal genius persists, Steevens and Capell also view him as a specifically English figure whose writings are to a large extent a product of his society. This nationalist emphasis goes hand in hand with an increasingly historical approach to the annotation and textual restoration of Shakespeare. The development of editing as a professional scientific vocation culminates with Malone, who augmented the editorial apparatus with thoroughly researched accounts of Shakespeare's life and theatre. The persistent emphasis on knowledge in the editors' work helps to account for the rise of Shakespeare's canonicity in relation to the Newtonian truth-seeking project of the eighteenth century.
...MoreDescription Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 68/10 (2008). Pub. no. AAT NR32144.
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