Ridiculous Critics

Philip Smallwood is Emeritus Professor of English at BirminghamUniversity and Honorary Visiting Fellow in the School of Humanities at Bristol University, UK. He is the author of various books and essays on the history and theory of modern and eighteenth century criticism.Min Wild’s monograph on Smart’s Midwife—Christopher Smart andSatire—was published in 2008, and she has recently co-edited an award winning volume of essays on Smart published by Bucknell. She lectures in eighteenth-century literature, philosophy, and poetry at Plymouth University, UK.

• IllustrationsPrefaceAcknowledgmentsAbbreviationsPart I: Laughing with Reason: Seriousness and Un-seriousness in English Critical HistoryClassical Origins and SourcesWriting the Laughing History of CriticismSelf-RidiculeOverdoing ItA Note on Texts and ImagesPart II: The Language and Appearance of Ridicule: A Selection“Critiques, Do Your Worst”: Buckingham’s RehearsalLord Rochester’s Disdain: “An Allusion to Horace”Jonathan Swift and my Good Lords the Critics: A Tale of a TubSwift’s Goddess Criticism: the Battle of the BooksWilliam Wycherley’s Anti-Critical RampagingsAddison and the Art of Critical Tittling and TattlingHow Not to Write Literary Criticism: the Cautions of Pope’s EssayTyrants in Wit and Pretenders to Criticism: The GuardianThe Critical Insect of Thomas Parnell: “The Bookworm”A Life in Criticism: Parnell’s Remarks on ZoilusSteele and the Big Beast of Criticism: The TheatreDamning with Faint Praise: Pope’s Epistle to ArbuthnotPope’s Big Sleep of Criticism: The DunciadHenry Fielding’s Guesswork: The ChampionSarah Fielding on Critical Cackling and Gobbling: David SimpleHenry Fielding’s Critical Reptiles and Slanderers: Tom JonesThomas Edwards’ “Airy Petulance”: The Canons of CriticismCritical Puffery and Scrapping: Smollett’s Peregrine PickleSmart’s Practical Critic: The StudentSmart’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 RamblerGeorge Stevens’ Pedasculus: Distress upon DistressCritical Fishiness: Smart, Rolt, and The Universal VisitorGarrick’s Witches’ Brew: “A Recipe for a Modern Critic”Critical Rodents and The Universal VisitorOliver Goldsmith’s Specious Idlers: Polite Learning in EuropeGoldsmith’s Critical Spiders and Blockheads: The Critical ReviewJohnson’s Critical Minim: The IdlerAlexander Mackenzie’s The Hungry Mob of Scriblers and EtchersSterne’s Bobs and Trinkets of Criticism: Tristram ShandyThe Reviewers’ CaveEvan Lloyd and the Critic’s Catacomb of Words: The Powers of the PenA Connoisseur Admiring a Dark Night PieceAn Old Macaroni Critic at a New PlayGibbon’s Critical Overcast: The Decline and FallGillray’s Critical OwlDr. PomposoThe Critics: A PoemThe Critic at HomeA Connoisseur in Brokers AlleyPart III: Legacies of Ridicule: the Close of Critical History Uncertainties Yet More UncertainBeing Serious with TheoryComedy and ContextualizationStasis and ChangeDignity, Indignity and the Function of CriticismLaughing When Reason FailsOf Dogs and Monkeys: an AfterwordBibliographyIndex

[The authors] provide a fascinating hybrid collection/anthology on the role of ridicule in criticism produced during the long 18th century. They focus on ridicule of critics/criticism rather than by critics (though sometimes the boundary blurs). In both the critical commentary it offers and the primary texts by the period's 'ridiculous critics' it includes, the volume stands as a history of a body of criticism that has been largely ignored, and which has implications for today's critical practices. In part 1, the editors consider the balance of serious and unserious in English criticism and 'suggest that a corpus of comic and satirical writings with its own genealogy' reveals 'what criticism was, and should be.' In part 2, they provide examples of such writings (and some satirical prints), beginning with Buckingham's Rehearsal and proceeding to satirical jabs by Rochester, Swift, Wycherley, Pope, Parnell, Fielding, Smart, Johnson, Goldsmith, Mackenzie, Sterne, Gibbon, et al. In part 3, the editors suggest that bringing together the 'laughter of critics [and] their own laughable vices . . . offers a way of being serious about things . . . that serious expression renders trivial, obscure, or ineffective.' All who profess themselves literary critics should take a serious look at this book. Summing Up: Essential. All readers.