Pope, Print and Meaning by James McLaverty (review)

126 interesting study is forced to masquerade as a textbook. Heather King University of Redlands JAMES MCLAVERTY. Pope, Print and Meaning. Oxford: Oxford, 2001. Pp. ix ⫹ 257. $80. In his first paragraph, Mr. McLaverty states that ‘‘in reading Pope, print matters .’’For Pope, print was ‘‘both a serious vocation and an elaborate game’’; he remained as intimately committed to the physical production of his texts as he was to the composition of his poems. Mr. McLaverty distinguishes between the ‘‘Pope who loved print and the Pope who hated it.’’The second of these is the Pope we meet in the criticism of Aubrey Williams and Alvin Kernan; and Mr. McLaverty posits that thisisthePopeweprefer —the pure poet doing battle withGrub Street. He maintains, however, that there is another, lesser-known Pope, the writer fascinated with every aspect of book production and keenly aware of marketing strategies. Mr. McLaverty credits Maynard Mack and David Foxon with early studiesofPope’sinterestinthebooktrade of the early eighteenth century, but he proposes—chapter by chapter—to provide a more detailed textual and bibliographical analysis of the major printing events of Pope’s career than has thus far been done, beginning with the first editions of The Rape of the Lock and proceeding through the Works of 1717, The Dunciad Variorum, An Essay on Man, The First and Second Satires of the Second Book of Horace, To Arbuthnot and Sober Advice, concluding with the Works of 1735–1736. Were Mr. McLaverty’s sole intent to provide the printing histories and editorial decisions made by Pope and his printers for each of these titles, this book would be invaluable. Wanting to be even more useful, he adds a further layer to his thesis. In his Introduction, he maintains that he has ‘‘tried to show the relevance of bibliography to literary criticism by moving from bibliographical evidence to critical positions that are potentially refutable .’’John Searle’sIntentionalityprovides the basis for Mr. McLaverty’sclaim that Pope, through his attempt to control all aspects of his literary products, was intent not only on crafting a body of work but also on creating a public persona; a careful reading of Pope’s works in their original format yields subtle but vital insight into his biography. While the book begins with an interesting thesis—that Pope manipulated all aspects of the printing process to create the meaning in his poetry (and to create his public persona)—it devolves into more or less straight textual description. This description is certainly careful, but it makes it difficult for Mr. McLaverty to engage the reader. Resulting interpretive insights are sparse. Among his more interesting observations, however, are the ways in which Pope experimented with annotation in Works of 1717, a practice he would develop much more thoroughly in The Dunciad Variorum. Mr. McLaverty argues that Pope is conscious of, and is capitalizing on, the individualization of the author made possible by the Copyright Act of 1709. Although this developing identity of the author as sole producer awaits the Romantics for a full realization (he cites MarthaWoodmansee and Mark Rose, and alludes to Foucault’s earlier work as his main authorities), Pope anticipates this movement and uses his writings to position himself professionally . Mr. McLaverty’s chapter on The Dunciad Variorum is both particularly inter- 127 esting and disappointing. Its last sentence would seem to belie this disappointment: ‘‘Its richness, or evasiveness,isafunction of his command of typographical resources ,’’ and we would expect a painstaking textual description similar to the one on the Works of 1717. Mr. McLaverty instead focuses, unfortunately, on attempting to discern heteroglossia in the verse and notes of The Dunciad, referring to Pope’s intertextual play with other writers, such as Boileau and Le Bossu, but hardly commenting at all on the ‘‘typographical ’’ elements within the work itself, Pope’s self-referentialintertextuality . He points out the physical relationship of the notes to the text but does not apparently see their engagement with each other; rather, the dialogue occurs with voices from outside the text that are alluded to within either the notes or the verse. It would have been helpful to have exhibited more awarenessof whatissurely one of Pope’s main strengths: his capacity...