Recent Articles

1 Autumn 2007–Spring 2008 Vol. XL, Nos. 1–2 RECENT ARTICLES* ADDISON DA SILVA, JORGE BASTAS. ‘‘Cato’s Ghosts: Pope, Addison, and Opposition Cultural Politics,’’ SLitI, 38 (Spring 2005), 95–115. The opening of Addison’s tragedy Cato in April of 1713 caused a political stir: Whigs and Tories rushed to embrace the principled Cato, stoic defender of ‘‘Liberty’’ against encroaching ‘‘tyranny ,’’ as one of their own. In those overcharged times, such extreme partisan reactions to the play were an embarrassment to Addison and to Pope, who wrote its prologue. If the tragedy had a political design, still it was a general design: the piece was never intended as a central document in tit-for-tat bickering. Mr. da Silva seeks to situate Cato and its prologue in a broader cultural politics. Although interpreters have generally admired Cato, Mr. da Silva points out that Addison had chosen a significantly flawed hero, one who dies not at the hands of advancing Caesar but by his own hand, not defending Liberty but rather despairing of it. He further argues *Unsigned reviews are by the editors. that many of Cato’s high-minded principles concerning citizenship and governance are politically irrelevant; they reflect mostly Cato’s idealism and his deep yearning for a simpler time. In effect , Cato practices a politics of nostalgia that never had a chance of real success. His death, proclaiming the immortality of the soul, is noble, but also a permanent withdrawal from politics . Pope’s prologue, Mr. da Silva believes , deserves more attention than it receives. For him, it marks a subtle attempt by Pope to alter the meaning of Addison’s play. It is difficult to imagine a prologue changing the overall implication of a five-act tragedy or that one ambiguous allusion to ‘‘the first fam’d Cato’’ could represent an attempt to shift attention from Addison’s hero, Cato of Utica, to that hero’s great grandfather , Cato the Censor, as the source and guardian of Roman political virtues. It is clear, however, that Pope sought to generalize the political meaning of Addison ’s play by urging all Britons of whatever party to emulate the virtues of model Romans. 2 FERRARI, ROBERTA. ‘‘In Search of a New Aesthetics: Addison, Fielding and the ‘Challenge’ of Travel Writing,’’ Textus , 18 (2005), 77–92. Ms. Ferrari’s title misleads, as this essay is much more about Addison than Fielding. The challenge of travel writing as she presents it is to find apt descriptive methods that reflect a proper appreciation of natural landscapes. She is particularly interested in unraveling the implied aesthetics of Addison ’s Remarks on Several Parts of Italy (1705), which remarks she sees as significantly transitional. When Addison looks at the Italian landscape, he views it partly through the lens of classical literature, partly through neoclassical ideas of variety and order, and partly through hints of visual and psychological involvement and responsiveness to the energies present in the scene before him. The third of these methods, Ms. Ferrari claims, is the more authentic and valuable. She essentially argues that Addison ’s Italian Remarks anticipate his Spectator essays on the Pleasures of Imagination (Nos. 411–421, 1712) and that these in their turn occasionally anticipate some of Burke’s ideas on the sublime (1757) and Gilpin’s ideas concerning the picturesque (1794). She would thus make the case that Addison in his quiet way looks forward to key tenets of romantic naturalism. KRAFT, ELIZABETH. ‘‘Wit and The Spectator ’s Ethics of Desire,’’ SEL, 45 (Summer 2005), 625–646. This essay, first, explores the deeper roots of Addison’s famous Spectator essays on true and false wit (Nos. 58–63), and, second, articulates an ethical balance between the potential exuberance of signification and the regulatory pressure of good judgment. Not surprisingly, the discussion hinges upon the divided meanings and energies of ‘‘wit,’’ which Ms. Kraft sees as a vehicle that both reflects and seeks to direct the desires of that time. Addison defined false wit mostly through a long series of negative examples of what he took to be misplaced verbal ingenuity; critics, thus, must be selective in the instances they discuss. Many examples seem more amusing...