Awards

• Winner of Choice Outstanding Academic Title .
• Winner of Choice Outstanding Academic Title.

Overview

Full Product Details

Author:   Philip Smallwood ,  Min Wild
Publisher:   Bucknell University Press
Imprint:   Bucknell University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.10cm , Height: 1.90cm , Length: 22.80cm
Weight:   0.395kg
ISBN:  

9781611486162

ISBN 10:   1611486165
Pages:   244
Publication Date:   07 June 2016
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Out of stock  
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Table of Contents

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

Reviews

There are more books on Augustan satire and Augustan criticism than I can count, but no one has ever bothered to bring the two scholarly discourses together. Smallwood and Wild are the first to explore mockery as a serious critical mode, and their innovative approach brings unfamiliar text to light and lets us see familiar ones from new angles. Ridiculous Critics is essential reading for any student of eighteenth-century criticism or satire-which is to say any student of eighteenth-century literature. -- Jack Lynch, Rutgers University [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. CHOICE

Author Information

Philip Smallwood is Emeritus Professor of English at Birmingham University 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 and Satire—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.

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