Ridiculous Critics is an anthology of eighteenth-century writings on the figure of the literary critic, and on the critic's mixed and complex role. The collection assembles critical texts and satirical images chronologically to suggest a vision of the history of eighteenth-century literary criticism. Including comic, vicious, heartfelt and absurd passages from critics, poets, novelists and literary commentators celebrated and obscure, the writings range through poetry, fiction, drama, and periodical writing. The anthology also includes two original essays discussing and illustrating the irrepressible spirit of critical ridicule in the period, and commending its value and effect. The first offers an evaluation of the merciless and sometimes shockingly venomous satirical attacks on critical habits and personalities of the eighteenth century. The editors argue that such attacks are reflexive, in the sense that criticism becomes increasingly supple and able to observe and examine its own irresponsible ingenuities from within. The volume's concluding essay supplies an analysis of modern modes of criticism and critical history, and suggests applications across time. We propose that humor's vital force was once an important part of living criticism. The eighteenth-century mockery of critics casts light on a neglected common thread in the history of criticism and its recent manifestations; it prompts questions about the relative absence of comedy from the stories we presently tell about critics dead or alive. The passages invite laughter, both with the critics and at their expense, and suggest the place that ridicule might have had since the eighteenth century in the making of judgments, and in the pricking of critical pretension. For this reason, they indicate the role that laughter may still have in criticism today and provide an encouraging precedent for its future.
Contents Illustrations Preface Acknowledgments Abbreviations Part I: Laughing with Reason: Seriousness and Un-seriousness in English Critical History Classical Origins and Sources Writing the Laughing History of Criticism Self-Ridicule Overdoing It A Note on Texts and Images Part II: The Language and Appearance of Ridicule: A Selection "Critiques, Do Your Worst": Buckingham's Rehearsal Lord Rochester's Disdain: "An Allusion to Horace" Jonathan Swift and my Good Lords the Critics: A Tale of a Tub Swift's Goddess Criticism: the Battle of the Books William Wycherley's Anti-Critical Rampagings Addison and the Art of Critical Tittling and Tattling How Not to Write Literary Criticism: the Cautions of Pope's Essay Tyrants in Wit and Pretenders to Criticism: The Guardian The Critical Insect of Thomas Parnell: "The Bookworm" A Life in Criticism: Parnell's Remarks on Zoilus Steele and the Big Beast of Criticism: The Theatre Damning with Faint Praise: Pope's Epistle to Arbuthnot Pope's Big Sleep of Criticism: The Dunciad Henry Fielding's Guesswork: The Champion Sarah Fielding on Critical Cackling and Gobbling: David Simple Henry Fielding's Critical Reptiles and Slanderers: Tom Jones Thomas Edwards's "Airy Petulance": The Canons of Criticism Critical Puffery and Scrapping: Smollett's Peregrine Pickle Smart's Practical Critic: The Student Smart's Semicolonic Ramblings: The Midwife (I) Mrs. Midnight's Art of Close Reading: The Midwife (II) Smart's Critical Dogs and Spiders: The Midwife (III) Microscopic and Telescopic Critics: Johnson's Rambler George Stevens' Pedasculus: Distress upon Distress Critical Fishiness: Smart, Rolt, and The Universal Visiter Garrick's Witches' Brew: "A Recipe for a Modern Critic" Critical Rodents and The Universal Visiter Oliver Goldsmith's Specious Idlers: Polite Learning in Europe Goldsmith's Critical Spiders and Blockheads: The Critical Review Johnson's Critical Minim: The Idler Alexander Mackenzie's The Hungry Mob of Scriblers and Etchers Sterne's Bobs and Trinkets of Criticism: Tristram Shandy The Reviewers' Cave Evan Lloyd and the Critic's Catacomb of Words: The Powers of the Pen A Connoisseur Admiring a Dark Night Piece An Old Macaroni Critic at a New Play Gibbon's Critical Overcast: The Decline and Fall Gillray's Critical Owl Dr. Pomposo The Critics: A Poem The Critic at Home A Connoisseur in Brokers Alley Part III: Legacies of Ridicule: the Close of Critical History Uncertainties Yet More Uncertain Being Serious with Theory Comedy and Contextualization Stasis and Change Dignity, Indignity and the Function of Criticism Laughing When Reason Fails Of Dogs and Monkeys: an Afterword Bibliography Index
