“Lisping In Numbers”: Some Canonical Statistics for the Present Age

64 is frustrating—not because it is without value, but because its genuine merits are overshadowed by strained interpretations that distract both author and reader from its sensible arguments. Stephen Karian Marquette University ‘‘LISPING IN NUMBERS’’: SOME CANONICAL STATISTICS FOR THE PRESENT AGE Melvyn New One way to characterize the Scriblerians might be to suggest that they were the first authors seriously to consider the concept of canonization; surely Mac-Flecknoe and The Dunciad are poems centrally concerned with the question of who’s in and who’s out, and why that question really does matter. Of interest to readers of The Scriblerian, one might therefore deduce, are two recent surveys about the fate of the Scriblerian or Augustan or simply eighteenth-century canon as we move into the twenty-firstcentury. W. B. Carnochan has produced a fascinating short essay, ‘‘Swift: The Canon, the Curriculum, and the Marketplace of Scholarship’’ (Reading Swift: Papers from the Fourth Münster Symposium on Jonathan Swift, 2003, 13–21), based on the MLA Subject Index Citations from 1963–1998. While fully aware of the slipperiness of numbers, and the many, many contingent factors that will influence such audits, Carnochandraws some rich conclusions concerning authors who fall within The Scriblerian’s ambit. In his first major breakdown of statistics, he divides the covered period in half, 1963– 1980 and 1981–1998, and notes that citations of Dryden fell from 665 to 494, a loss of 26% (I have taken the liberty to round off his calculations), while Pope dropped from 842 to 706, a loss of 16%. Swift, on the other hand, held his own, increasing from 962 citations in the earlier period to 1039 in the second half, an 8% gain; one suspects the entire gain, and then some, may be attributed to the Ehrenpreis Center alone. Of the novelists surveyed, Fielding dropped almost 7%, but Richardson,significantly enough, rose 52%. Of course, all of these figures take on added significance when we read that Aphra Behn was the subject of 43 citations in the first half of the period and 211 in the second half, a 390% gain. Carnochan then arranges his authors based on the percentage of change between the first and second halves of the period, and notes that Behn’s 390% increase tops his list (followed by Wollstonecraft, Woolf, Austen, and Richardson). One clearly sees the influence of feminist studies in these numbers; secondary considerations would include an increase in the number of scholars, an increase in the number of institutions demanding publication, and the notion that tilling new ground is always more productive than milking an old cow—as Behn, a master of the mixed metaphor, might have put it. What is disturbing for Scriblerian readers, however, is that Swift, Fielding, Pope, and Dryden, among the 18 authors he surveyed, occupy spots 14, 16, 17, and 18 respectively (Samuel Johnson is ranked 15th). Carnochan summarizes his findings: ‘‘I 65 think, then, that Swift’s current lagging below the trend-line is not an omen of terminal neglect, but at the same time there is no blinking the fact that something more dramatic is happening to Pope and something more dramatic still to Dryden’’(18). His attempts to explain the trend all seem valid enough, ranging from an emphasis on the novel over poetry in eighteenth-century courses, to the diminishing of the Restoration period in courses that stress the ‘‘long’’ eighteenth century, and especially its historical backgrounds , so necessary to the reading of Dryden. It is quite possible, he seems to conclude , that ‘‘Dryden is dropping out of the canon’’ (19). In the first issue of the revived Johnsonian News Letter (September 2003), the editors look at canonicity from a different direction, citing a study by the National Association of Scholars to indicate that ‘‘Johnson’s profile in American English departments has slipped over the past thirty years, partly as a result of the increasing inclusion of women writers in the canon’’ (23). This study was based on course catalogues for ‘‘prestigious English departments’’(whatever that means—the NAS is, all too often, the only literary organization in America that can make the MLA look good). In 1964–1965...