Recording and reordering: essays on the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century diary and journal

248 Pages·2006·12.452 MB·English

by  Munns, Jessica;Doll, Dan

Recording
and Reordering
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TheBucknellStudiesinEighteenth-Century
LiteratureandCulture
GeneralEditor: GregClingham,BucknellUniversity
AdvisoryBoard: PaulK.Alkon,UniversityofSouthernCalifornia
ChloeChard,IndependentScholar
ClementHawes,ThePennsylvaniaStateUniversity
RobertMarkley,UniversityofIllinoisatUrbana-Champaign
JessicaMunns,UniversityofDenver
CedricD.ReverandII,UniversityofWyoming
JanetTodd,UniversityofGlasgow
TheBucknellStudiesinEighteenth-CenturyLiteratureandCultureaimstopublishchalleng-
ing,neweighteenth-centuryscholarship.Ofparticularinterestiscritical,historical,and
interdisciplinaryworkthatisinterestinglyandintelligentlytheorized,andthatbroad-
ensandrefinestheconceptionofthefield.Atthesametime,theseriesremainsopento
all theoretical perspectives and different kinds of scholarship. While the focus of the
series is the literature, history, arts, and culture (including art, architecture, music,
travel,andhistoryofscience,medicine,andlaw)ofthelongeighteenthcenturyinBrit-
ainandEurope,theseriesisalsointerestedinscholarshipthatestablishesrelationships
withothergeographies,literature,andculturesfortheperiod1660–1830.
TitlesinThisSeries
EllenBrinks,GothicMasculinity:EffeminacyandtheSupernaturalin
EnglishandGermanRomanticism
TanyaCaldwell,TimetoBeginAnew:Dryden’sGeorgicsandAeneis
JulietteCherbuliez,ThePlaceofExile:LeisureLiteratureandtheLimitsofAbsolutism
MitaChoudhury,InterculturalismandResistanceintheLondonTheatre,
1660–1800:Identity,Performance,Empire
JamesCruise,GoverningConsumption:NeedsandWants,Suspended
Characters,andthe‘‘Origins’’ofEighteenth-CenturyNovels
DanDollandJessicaMunns,eds.,RecordingandReordering:EssaysontheSeventeenth-and
Eighteenth-CenturyDiaryandJournal
ZiadElmarsafy,Freedom,Slavery,andAbsolutism:Corneille,Pascale,Racine
ReginaHewittandPatRogers,eds.,OrthodoxyandHeresyinEighteenth-CenturySociety
EdwardJacobs,AccidentalMigrations:AnArchaeologyofGothicDiscourse
CatherineJones,LiteraryMemory:Scott’sWaverleyNovelsandthePsychologyofNarrative
SarahJordan,TheAnxietiesofIdleness:IdlenessinEighteenth-Century
BritishLiteratureandCulture
DeborahKennedy,HelenMariaWilliamsandtheAgeofRevolution
ChrisMounsey,ChristopherSmart:ClownofGod
ChrisMounsey,ed.,PresentingGender:ChangingSexinEarlyModernCulture
Fre´de´ricOge´e,ed.,‘‘BetterinFrance?’’:TheCirculationofIdeasacrosstheChannelinthe
EighteenthCentury
RolandRacevskis,TimeandWaysofKnowingUnderLouisXIV:Molie`re,Se´vigne´,Lafayette
LauraRosenthalandMitaChoudhury,eds.,MonstrousDreamsofReason
KatherineWestScheil,TheTasteoftheTown:ShakespearianComedy
andtheEarlyEighteenth-CenturyTheater
PhilipSmallwood,ed.,JohnsonRe-Visioned:LookingBeforeandAfter
PeterWalmsley,Locke’sEssayandtheRhetoricofScience
LisaWood,ModesofDiscipline:Women,Conservatism,and
theNovelaftertheFrenchRevolution
http://www.bucknell.edu/universitypress/
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Recording
and Reordering
Essays
on the Seventeenth- and
Eighteenth-Century
Diary and Journal
Edited by
Dan Doll and Jessica Munns
Lewisburg
BucknellUniversityPress
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ThepaperusedinthispublicationmeetstherequirementsoftheAmerican
NationalStandardforPermanenceofPaperforPrintedLibraryMaterials.
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LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Recordingandreordering:essaysontheseventeenth-andeighteenth-centurydiary
andjournal/editedbyDanDollandJessicaMunns.
p. cm.—(TheBucknellstudiesineighteenth-centuryliteratureandculture)
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
ISBN0-8387-5630-1(alk.paper)
1. Englishproseliterature—Earlymodern,1500–1700—Historyandcriticism.
2. Englishproseliterature—18thcentury—Historyandcriticism. 3. Diaries—
Authorship—History—17thcentury. 4. Diaries—Authorship—History—18th
century. I. Doll,Dan,1954– II. Munns,Jessica,1949– III. Title. V. Series.
PR908.R43 2006
828(cid:2).40309—dc22 2005018059
PRINTEDINTHEUNITEDSTATESOFAMERICA
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Contents
Introduction 9
DANDOLLANDJESSICAMUNNS
SacredandSecularPlaces:AnAtlanticDivide 22
GLYNISRIDLEY
EarlyModernWomen’sDiariesandClosets:‘‘Chambersof
choiceMerciesandbelovedretirement,’’ 43
EFFIEBOTONAKI
Women’sDiariesofLateStuart England:AnOverview 65
AVRAKOUFFMAN
AccountingforProvidence:ContemporaryDescriptionsofthe
RestorationofCharlesII 102
JESSICAMUNNS
ArthurYoung’sTravelsinFrance: HistoricityandtheUseof
LiteraryForms 122
TERRYREILLY
TradingRoutesandEighteenth-CenturyMigrations:
ReframingJanetSchaw 137
EVETAVORBANNET
BorderingonFactinEarlyEighteenth-CenturySeaJournals 158
JAMESKELLY
‘‘NothingbutDust&the mostminuteParticles’’:Historians
andtheEvidenceofJournalsand Diaries 185
PHILIPWOODFINE
‘‘Liketryingtofita spongeintoamatchbox’’:Twentieth
CenturyEditingofEighteenthCenturyJournals 211
DANDOLL
Afterword 229
MAXIMILLIANE.NOVAK
NotesonContributors 235
Index 237
5
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Recording
and Reordering
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Introduction
Dan Doll and Jessica Munns
T
HAT DIARIES AND JOURNALS HAVE NOT RECEIVED THE LITERARY
analysis granted canonical and even many noncanonical forms (as, for
example, the eighteent-century familiar letter, which has been the sub-
ject of literary analysis throughout the eighteenth-twentieth centuries)
is certain. What Philippe Lejeune says can serve as a typical lament of
thosewhowishtoreadthediaryorjournalasotherthanmerelyawrit-
er’snotebookorahistorian’shuntingground:‘‘Thediaryisasocialout-
cast, of no fixed theoretical address. It rarely receives the charity of
carefulstudy.Itisnevertobeseenonschoolsyllabi....Itnevercomes
up as the subject for the didactic or academic exercise of the explication
de texte.’’1 Even though there has been more scholarly attention of late
to the diary, it is still mostly ‘‘appreciations’’: as Stuart Sherman ob-
serves of the relatively frequent recent anthologies of diary selections,
‘‘Such surveys depend more on a capacious, intelligent display of and
guidance through the materials than a rigorously developed thesis
about them. Initial exposure of the texts rather than close study is still
largelythepoint.’’2Butwhatislesscertainisthereasonforthisneglect:
indeed, the causes are likely to be many, including particularly the no-
tion that the practices of the production of diaries and journals make
them raw material rather than art, and the related claim that they are
notspecificallyliterary,aswellasthefrequentlynotedclaimthatdiaries
andjournalsaremarginalizedbecausetheyareperceivedasa‘‘woman’s
form.’’ Rachael Langford and Russell West argue that the diary’s ‘‘ge-
nericintractability’’hascauseditscriticalneglect:‘‘Thediaryisamisfit
formofwriting,inhabitingthefrontiersbetweenmanyneighbouringor
opposed domains, often belonging simultaneously to several genres or
species and thus being condemned to exclusion from both at once.’’3
In addition to these theoretical and formal obstacles to serious literary
analysis of diaries and journals, perhaps market forces play a role: the
practice of publishing diaries and journals, excluding travel journals,
comesmuchlaterthantheregularpublicationofcorrespondenceinthe
9
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10 DAN DOLL AND JESSICA MUNNS
eighteenth century and has always lagged far behind other canonical
and noncanonical texts, except for a brief vogue in the early twentieth
century. Where the texts are not available, criticism is unlikely to
follow.
Until recently, that criticism has not followed: outside of a few late
twentieth-centurybook-length studies,most discussionmust be sought
in introductions to and reviews of published diaries, and the over-
whelming subjects in such works are biographical or historical. Sher-
man offers a characteristic example from Walter James’s nineteenth-
century review of Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides: ‘‘Who . . .
ever talked about the style of a JOURNAL? The nature of the work
admitsofnosuchthingasfinestyle.Youmightaswelltalkofthestyle
ofanIndex.’’4Thisviewofthediaryasanartlesstranscriptionofreality
continues to the present: in a special edition of World Literature Today
devotedtodiaries,ThomasHollweckassertsthat‘‘diaries,theproducts
of occasional impulses, odd moments of personal confession or reflec-
tion, uncoordinated observations, often contain the stuff of literature
but, like the seed of literary invention in an author’s mind, need to be
tended and organized before they can acquire esthetic form,’’5 a job he
reservesforthe‘‘carefulhandofaneditor.’’
But of coursethe diarywriter alwaysserves asan editoras wellas a
composer: a diary can never offer absolutely unmediated experience.
There is always a principle of selection that filters and limits what can
be recorded on the page. Tristram Shandy spends two volumes and a
year trying to capture one single day, only to realize he has fallen 364
more days behind in recording his life and opinions. Boswell resolves
‘‘I should live no more than I can record,’’6 a resolution neither he nor
even the most sedentary diarist can fulfill because of the disparity be-
tweenlifeaslivedandthewrittenpage.Whatgrounddoesthediaryor
journalinhabit between the highselectivity ofdetail thatcharacterizes,
especially realistic, literature and the absence of selection that charac-
terizes unmediated experience? To suggest some of the polarities sche-
matically:
Unmediated Journal Literature
Experience Diary esp.Fiction
Noselection Alldetail
ofdetail tendingto
singlepurpose
Noarrangement Higharrangement
(Plot) (Plot)
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