Recent Articles

1 Autumn 2006 Vol. XXXIX, No. 1 RECENT ARTICLES* ADDISON BRIGGS, PETER M. ‘‘Joseph Addison and the Art of Listening: Birdsong, Italian Opera, and the Music of the English Tongue,’’ AJ, 16 (2005), 157–176. At the heart of Mr. Briggs’s limpid and elegant essay are readings of three Spectator papers on music. Together they serve to correct the critical assumption that Addison had little musical taste or skill in music criticism. This longstanding orthodoxy was originally the verdict of eighteenth-century musicologists John Hawkins and Charles Burney. Mr. Briggs does not so much challenge their accounts as broaden their terms; his concerns are less with the technical aspects of music than with the psychological ones of listening. He follows Addison ’s large-scale shift from questions about music (and art) per se to questions about listening (and response) in the widest sense. Mr. Briggs’s readings draw attention to issues that have not been as much a part of our recent discussions of Addison as they could be. In No. 29, he argues, Addison presents the development of culture as empirical and participatory; art *Unsigned reviews are by the editors. follows the ordinary ear, and taste in music will be formed by the peculiar musicality of one’s native language and aural environment. In his readings of No. 251 and No. 235, Mr. Briggs addresses a key mode of Addison’s writing, an ironically admiring presentation that nevertheless offers occasion for serious reflection . So while the proposal of the letter writer in No. 251 to conduct the noise of the streets into harmony is clearly overstated for satiric effect, Mr. Briggs notes that it also offers Addison ‘‘a moment of odd or ambivalent elation at the aggregate power and potential harmony of ordinary voices; his ambivalence springs from their formlessness, his elation from their authenticity.’’ A similar dynamic informs what could be called the ‘‘organic critic’’of No. 235, the trunkmaker who thumps his stick to approve the play. The light bite of satire here does not preclude meaningful reflection on the work of criticism; this taste-forming trunkmaker, Mr. Briggs suggests, may offer a playful, half-ironic self-reflection of Addison’s own project of criticism. And in explicating this historical moment of critical selfconsciousness , Mr. Briggs recovers and 2 continues its project. If Addison’s questions about the relation of the critic to the public still resonate—if Addison and Steele are not quite dead—if criticism might still have effects beyond the growing walls of our professionalism, then an essay that revisits those concerns offers a way to reclaim them, perhaps halfironically , as ours too. This essay both characterizes and exemplifies criticism as the art of responding to the musicality of ordinary life, from birdsongs through language, street cries, and perhaps even to the thump of criticism itself. Scott Black University of Utah HAAN, ESTELLE. ‘‘Twin Augustans: Addison , Hannes, and the Horatian Intertexts ,’’N&Q, 52 (September 2005), 338– 346. This brief article elucidates Addison’s Latin ode to Dr. Edward Hannes, a prominent physician and member of the Christ Church poets. Repairing a lacuna in Addison studies, Ms. Haan observes the intricate pattern of references to Hannes’s use of Horace. Addison, for example, gracefully transforms Hannes’s praise of a fellow doctor’s skill into a tribute to Hannes’s poetic prowess. Addison echoes the same Horatian motifs, such as the vagaries of Fortune, that Hannes employed, giving each a moral twist. Where Hannes had claimed Dr. Thomas Sydenham’s patients might elude fate through his medical skill, Addison claims that Hannes himself will live forever through his poetry . Finally, Ms. Haan notes Addison’s allusions to other Horatian odes, such as when he echoes Horace’s plea that Maecenas escape Rome and visit his peaceful villa. She makes a strong case for Addison ’s reputation as a modern Horace. AUBIN GOLLAPUDI, APARNA. ‘‘Virtuous Voyages in Penelope Aubin’s Fiction,’’ SEL, 45 (Summer 2005), 669–690. Hoping ‘‘to reclaim our giddy Youth,’’ Aubin produced a series of formulaic fictions that offer a unique combination of amatory complications and travel to exotic, usually dangerous places: The Strange Adventures of Count de Vinevil and his Family (1721...