Gulliveriana VII: Visual Imitations of “Gulliver’s Travels” 1726–1830 by Jeanne K. Welcher (review)

71 above the rest. Yvonne Noble, for example , traces Dryden’s use of bee imagery in Annus Mirabilis (1667), expanding on the Virgilian motif of bees, both suggesting renewal and prefiguring the building of the Roman empire from swarms of wandering Trojans. While these are familiar ideas, duly noted in the California Dryden, and while a few of Ms. Noble’s supposed allusions seem to me a bit far-fetched, she provides context and explanation, and she adds intriguing information about beekeepers and naturalists , none of whom seemed capable of writing about bees without ‘‘being overwhelmed with political consciousness.’’ Derek Hughes returns to Dryden’s heroic dramas with a fine reading of The Indian Emperour, beginning with an exploration of exchange systems in classical culture , and then studying the patterns of exchange in the play, the giving, receiving , offering, granting, denying, taking, seizing, avenging, and so on. Mr. Hughes shows how Dryden uses such patterns to distinguish between the apparently advanced European economy and ‘‘precommercial man,’’ yet also to reveal that both cultures ‘‘reach the same consummation in human sacrifice.’’ Phillip Smallwood contributes a provocative essay surveying Dryden’s place in the histories of criticism and demonstrating how, for all the appreciation awarded him, the process of historicizing Dryden brackets him off from the current literary scene. Mr. Smallwood appreciates Dryden’s ‘‘re-creative ambitions and efforts,’’ his flexible openness of mind, and his capacity for making fine distinctions, traits that are absent from ‘‘the self-universalization and cultural ego-centrism’’ of many of our presentday critical practitioners. Tom Mason addresses Dryden’s strange claim that ‘‘Palamon and Arcite’’ is an epic, then essentially proves it, by showing how Dryden refashioned the genre, moving away from inconvenient pagan machinery and brutal heroes toward a Christianized version that includes an ‘‘imitation of human life’’ and features ‘‘some representation of divine governance’’ over that life. Finally, David Hopkins, looking at the Preface to Fables (1700), argues that Dryden’s ideas on translation changed from his earlier focus on genre, method, and technique, to an interest in ‘‘the fundamental processes of inheritance , influence, transmission, and transformation .’’What Dryden endorses in his Preface, he also embodies in his translation of Ovid’s speech of Pythagoras, which Mr. Hopkins analyzes, revealing Dryden’s deep personal and imaginative involvement, whereby the act of translation becomes ‘‘a kind of spiritual selfidentification .’’ The articles by Mr. Mason and Mr. Hopkins add to our appreciation of Dryden’s expansiveness in his final years, while Mr. Smallwood, writing about his criticism, and Mr. Hughes, writing about his cultural politics , suggest that Dryden’s perspective is relevant to contemporary literary and political concerns. Whether this handful of good work redeems the rest of the volume , however, would be hard to decide. Cedric D. Reverand II University of Wyoming JEANNE K. WELCHER. Gulliveriana VII: Visual Imitations of ‘‘Gulliver’s Travels’’ 1726–1830. Delmar, New York: Scholar ’s Facsimiles and Reprints, 1999. Pp. cxxi ⫹ 882. $200. Gulliver’s Travels spawned many ‘‘visual imitations’’—book illustrations, political and social cartoon satires, paintings , and decorated objects. This latest 72 Gulliveriana documents these within the hundred years after its first publication. The nearly 300 illustrations (many from foreign editions of the Travels) testifies to its ambitious scope; the artwork varies from the skillful execution and clear allusion of Sawrey Gilpin’s skillful Houyhnhnm oils to the sketchy, tangentially Swiftian prints of ‘‘The Lilliputian Dancing School.’’ A thoughtful and wide-ranging Introduction provides background to these representations; the history of frontispiece portraiture, for instance, contextualizes the images of Gulliver that appear in early editions. Ms. Welcher notices the concerns that nag any scholarly effort involving the visual portrayal of eighteenth-century texts: the lack of a broad catalogue of visual arts in the century ; the elusive and sometimes surprising manifestations of illustrations of the texts; and, perhaps thorniest of all, establishing the degree of referentiality necessary to constitute an imitation. Her chronological organization, without overtly directing our interpretation of the visual material, suggests both transitory and recurrent thematic interests of the Travels. The reproduction of such a large amount of Gulliverian artwork in itself represents a valuable catalogue for furtherresearch,andthecarefulekphrasis practiced in their analysis is at...