The New Romanticisms: Theory and Critical Practice ed. by David L. Clark, Donald C. Goellnicht (review)

192 LETTERS IN CANADA 1994 eighteenth-century reading practices in Burney's detailing of her readers' responses to Evelina (often, for instance, readers would improvise upon their favourite character, as Mrs Cholmondeley does Madame Duval and Samuel Johnson does Mr Smith) which should make it of interest to those studying reception. It also acts as a counterpoint to such works as Hester Thrale's Thraliana and Boswell's account of Johnson, and gives wonderful descriptions of the famous and not-so-famous, along with accessible social-historical materiaL Furthermore, since bio-criticism is the most common mode of addressing Burney, the text recovered by Troide and Cooke is especially useful to literary scholars. Tracing the things the author later found inappropriate should be provocative (for instance, she obliterates passages in which others give her advice on revisions for the second edition of Evelina). On a wider levee however, the genesis and suppression of Burney's The Witlings can now receive a much more detailed analysis than it has previously, especially since the play has recently been separately edited and published by Clayton Delery and Katherine M. Rogers, and will be included in Peter Sabor's upcoming edition of Burney's complete plays. Because much of this volume was originally written by Burney as entertaining letter-journals recounting her new life, and was meant to be circulated among select members of her family and friends, it is in general more readable and less fragmentary than editions of letters or personal journals tend to be. This volume should be of considerable interest to biographers and literary or social historians alike. (SUSAN LAMB) David L. Clark and Donald C. Goellnicht, editors. The New Romanticisms: Theory and Critical Practice University of Toronto Press. xii, 315 $45.00 cloth New Romanticisms is all right, but one wonders about the 'new.' 'Crossdressing ' and 'masturbation' appear in the index - important 'new' Romantic topics, apparently; at any rate, such 'old' Romantic topics as 'imagination,' 'life,' 'nature' do not rate entries in the index. 'New' priorities? A collection of essays by different people is tricky. Does the reviewer do mini-reviews of individual essays? Or treat the volume as a unit? Since this is self-consciously a study in pluralism ('The New Romanticisms'), any overarching thesis is unlikely - or contradictory; the collection even invokes the fragmenting A.a. Lovejoy as patron saint. Yet despite this logical expectation, the collection (eight essays plus introduction and conclusion) is intended as a unit; a lengthy introductory essay expounds unity of purpose - and summarizes each paper. There is also a concluding 'Coda' by Asha Varadharajan: a 'retrospective account,' which goes HUMANITIES 193 over (again) each 'of the essays in this volume,' like a 'respondent' at a conference. This not being enough organization, it seems, headings are supplied that group the essays by twos into familiar-sounding categories ('Gender, Language, Power'). Clearly, this is a highly self-conscious, even self-reflexive, effort. Romanticism has generated a great deal of pretension and nonsense, more perhaps than any other literary area, except possibly Theory (itself an outgrowth of Romantic studies). This collection is in a prestigious 'TheoryICulture' series. One approaches it with the hope that it really does offer something genuinely new, something to make one think new thoughts, see new things, have new insights - and that it is not, so to speak, just more of the same. What, then, is the unity of purpose here? What is the 'new' thesis? In a word, 'difference.' This word is almost talismanic (repeat when in doubt). The 'organizing theoretical agenda ... is vigorously to return the terms of critical discussion to a renewed sense of that original difference [Lovejoy's 1923 discrimination of 'romanticisms'], although admittedly in ways that Lovejoy probably could not have foreseen.' Probably not. 'Difference' is the gift of Paul d.e Man, who advocated a "'shift from historical definition to the problems of reading,'" which the editors declare 'crucial to understanding how a specifically post-structuralist discourse of Romanticism was set, even if Romantic studies today - of which this volume is intended to be a selected cross-section - can proceed in quite different ways.' De Man may not do, after all. 'The criteria for distinguishing...