The Baroque in English Neoclassical Literature (review)

The late Douglas Canfield contributed extensively to the theoretical canon for Restoration and eighteenth-century literature, mentored students and new teachers entering the field, and served important roles in the Group for Early Modern Cultural Studies, the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, and other professional societies. His research extended from Restoration drama to literature of the Southwest Borderlands, and his enthusiasm for teaching never waned. Professor Canfield's last publication, The Baroque in English Neoclassical Literature, leaves our profession a final instance of his art of critical inquiry.

In this comprehensive study, Canfield argues that remnants of the baroque persist in literature even as literature becomes more neoclassical and that this baroque "extravagance" often disrupts the new impulse toward restraint and the rational. His thorough attention to genres and genders of the period makes this study of baroque "textual surprises" a revealing work for students and teachers alike. Before Canfield delves into "reading out" specific texts by Milton, Cavendish, Etherege, Behn, Dryden, Finch, Rowe, Pope, Swift, and others, his introduction defines the contrary labels for baroque and neoclassical and emphasizes that exuberant baroque "characteristics persisted, not in some weak residue but in some of the later, neoclassical literature's most arresting moments" for drama and poetry (15).

Canfield's persistent theme, the "baroque disruption of the neoclassical means" (19), is reflected in each chapter title, three of which I discuss briefly. Beginning with "Milton: Mysteriously Meant," Canfield "reads out" Paradise Lost, neoclassical in form but baroque in its mysterious passages. Discussing numerous examples in the text, he concludes with a discussion of the Promise, "baroquely cryptic" to Adam and to readers as well. For Adam and Eve, the key to salvation from despair, and for a relationship with God, is "absolute trust" (32). But, argues Canfield, the Promise is judged "best" to be given in baroquely "mysterious terms" so that Adam and Eve can "do what Satan can never do: to be merciful to one another so that they can then comprehend God's mercy" (32–33). This opportunity is a new trial but allows them to come to a full understanding of the Promise, "obscurely then foretold," so that they may regain paradise "within" (33). Milton's meaning is not immediately apparent, writes Canfield, but when discovered illuminates his text.

After discussing texts by Cavendish, Philips, Waller, Etherege, Dorset, and others, Canfield addresses the complexity of Aphra Behn in "Paradoxically Meant." While Behn has made her mark as dramatist and novelist, her poetry remains largely unnoticed. Canfield examines two neoclassical poems that include baroque paradoxes: The Golden Age: A Paraphrase on a Translation out of French and A Congratulatory Poem to Her Sacred Majesty Queen Mary. I will focus on The Golden Age, which Canfield attributes to L'Aminte du Tasse, Tasso's declaration that the world of trade destroys the pastoral world, and lovers must make the most of a time that is golden. Behn's is a poem about seduction, "an elaborate rhetorical strategy to convince the virgin Sylvia to make much of time," hinting of Marvell's To His Coy Mistress (79). Behn's language of possession and conquest, argues Canfield, "complicates the problem: one usually conquers in order to possess" (82). But Behn refers to Golden Age vows as the sign of present desire and nothing more "legal"— "And sexual conquest is the sign of mutual desire" for Behn (82). She transforms Tasso's last lines into a stunning baroque image: "the sun and the spring receive the light generated by the life of the lovers"—light is dependent on their hedonistic love (84). Behn's image also echoes Donne.

In a chapter devoted to another undervalued poet, Canfield turns to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, often studied only in relationship to Pope and Swift, in "Surrogately Meant." While Montagu attacks Pope and Swift through ventriloquism, her best creations are "surrogates who stand in for her and for women (in general?) in order to expose their vanity and...