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Forum Response of Carole Fabricant to Warren Montag's comment {EighteenthCentury Fiction 9:1, 101-2) on her review of The Unthinkable Swift: The Spontaneous Philosophy of a Church ofEngland Man {EighteenthCentury Fiction 8:3, 417-21). I feel compelled to respond to Warren Montag's criticism of my review of his book, both to correct certain serious misconstruals of my position and to clarify the basic issues of contention between us, which I fear may at this point be somewhat cloudy in the minds of many readers. Let me say at the outset that, despite the impression that may have been conveyed by Montag's Forum response (intentionally or otherwise) that my criticisms were retaliation for the fact that he "explicitly criticized [my] position in [his] book," my review was not in any sense a "settling of scores" but rather a direct, deeply felt response to the specific arguments presented in his study. Montag's one reference to my own book, while making clear his rejection of a central aspect of its thesis, actually characterized the overall study in very positive terms; it was hardly the kind of mention that would have provoked any animosity on my part! If my review of Montag's book lacked the generosity of spirit evident in his book's mention of me, the only explanation I can offer in (albeit limited) extenuation is that the depth and intensity of my disagreement with certain of Montag's contentions made me address them in an overly blunt and confrontational way that may have resulted in a harshness of tone neither necessary nor intended, and for which I am happy to take this opportunity to apologize (though I of course stand by the substance of my criticisms). I regret that Montag feels I "chose to ignore [his] critique instead of taking the opportunity to respond to [his] arguments." On the contrary, I believe that I took his critique very seriously— it clearly deserved no less—and that the bulk of my review consisted precisely EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION, Volume 9, Number 3, April 1997 338 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION 9:3 of detailed responses to the points made in it. Perhaps in the course of answering Montag's Forum comments here, I will be able to demonstrate to his satisfaction that, whatever my judgment of his views, I have in fact given them serious and sustained consideration. First I must correct a blatant misrepresentation of my critical stance. As someone who regularly begins her graduate seminars by urging the departure from the class of any student who feels compelled to place quotation marks around the word "reality," I was both astonished and amused by Montag's portrayal of me as one who holds facts and history in contempt. In truth, I can think of few statements I agree with more than that "history exists outside as well as inside texts." But, as even a critic less theoretically sophisticated than Montag surely recognizes, historical facts, however real, are necessarily mediated through acts of textual representation and interpretation. Thus Montag's characterization of the seventeenth century in England as a "prolonged bourgeois revolution" is not a fact per se, but rather the use of a particular theoretical paradigm to explain the facts of that period—more specifically, to make particular claims for their relational and ideological significance. Montag's references in his book to his characterization as a "model" and a "concept," and his acknowledgment of the "innumerable criticisms" that have been made of the idea emphasize that his arguments for a bourgeois revolution are precisely that: arguments (hence subject to debate), and not the "incontrovertible facts" of history he claims them to be in his Forum response. My placing quotation marks around the word "facts" was merely my shorthand method for indicating this, and in no way meant to question the existence of a history "out there," as was surely evident from my review's admonitions against allowing theoretical abstractions to displace historical specificity and concreteness. Indeed, it was precisely for what I deemed its insufficient attention to historical particularities, its willingness in places to sacrifice the latter to abstract argumentation, that I criticized Montag's analysis at various...

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