Circulation: Defoe, Dickens, and the Economies of the Novel, and: Daniel Defoe (review)

REVIEWS 175 David Trotter. Circulation: Defoe, Dickens, and the Economies of the Novel. London: Macmillan Press (Language, Discourse, Society Series), 1988. vii + 148pp. John J. Richetti. Daniel Defoe. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1987. ? + 154pp. US$17.95. Circulation belongs to our new metaphysical criticism: studies designed to reveal what Johnson called occult resemblances in dungs apparently unlike. The most brilliant example to date is John Bender's Imagining the Penitentiary: Fiction and the Architecture of Mind in Eighteenth-Century England (1987). Novels and prisons are die apparently unlike things which Bender yokes togetiier in ways diat genuinely advance understanding of each and of much else besides. This approach depends for its success upon finding items sufficiently different for their juxtaposition to arouse interest and sufficiently parallel in structure for the comparison to bring out surprising similarities widi significant but hitiierto unrecognized implications for some wider literary or social sphere. David Trotter is handicapped by comparing the fiction of Defoe and Dickens, whose general affinities are obvious. Surely few now will be surprised to hear tiiat each novelist takes up problems encountered by individuals trying to cope widi die alienation induced by economic practices ("circulation" of goods and services) in a commercial society through whose urban jungles or world-wide trade routes and byways we follow die struggles of outsiders like Moll Flanders, Colonel Jack, Captain Singleton, Robinson Crusoe, Pip, Magwitch, Little Nell, and Oliver Twist. Trotter's book is also handicapped by an organization that blurs comparisons it seems intended to remark. He provides three chapters on Defoe followed by a hinge chapter on "Medical Police" (defined on p. 68 as a nineteenth-century "programme of social action for the improvement of public healtii") and dien tíiree chapters on Dickens. Aldiough of some relevance to die world portrayed by Dickens, die idea of medical police adds little to an understanding of Defoe. Widiin each chapter mere is a very scattered roster of subtopics that for the most part further diffuse die book's argument. Despite occasional glances ahead to Dickens in the Defoe chapters, die two main parts of Circulation do little to augment one another. Each could as well stand alone, although neither has sufficient substance to warrant a separate book. Perhaps, however, their juxtaposition will advance the cause of eighteendi-century fiction by persuading any remaining doubters that Defoe deserves equal billing with Dickens. If so, dien Circulation will prove useful. The structural parallels for which Trotter argues depend upon one metaphor: "The subject of this book is the imagining of subjectivity and social process empowered by the metaphor of circulation, both inside and outside die novels of Defoe and Dickens" (p. 8). Finally, however, Trotter's examples of allusions to circulation seem more incidental than empowering. Trotter assiduously shows that it was a widespread metaphor applied variously to economic and social activities. Less persuasive is die case he makes for its causal role in sustaining literary or social structures. He asserts but hardly demonstrates mat it was necessary. "Not much" appears to be the answer supplied by die sum of his evidence to die question he poses about die metaphor of circulation: "What did it enable them to say mat tiiey would not otiierwise have said?" (p. 6). Typical is his statement mat "Semantic stoppage engrossed Dickens. The metaphor of circulation which had catalysed his imagining of social process made unintelligibility (or mystery) an object of compelling horror" (p. 109). Why must there only be one dung—and diat a metaphor— making Dickens afraid of unintelligibility and fascinated by mystery? What is mainly unconvincing in this and similar remarks is Trotter's reiteration mat metaphors of circulation were indispensable catalysts widiout which neidier Defoe nor Dickens could have 176 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION 3:2 written as he did. Trotter seems carried away into unsupported and unsupportable assertions by his own metaphor of imagery as chemical catalyst. What results is a reductive reading of both Defoe and Dickens. Their allusions to circulation as described by Trotter hardly seem adequate to account for either die astonishing range or die enduring power of dieir fiction. John J. Richetti's Daniel Defoe avoids die temptation of falling into reductive readings...