Swift The Enigmatic Dean: Festschrift for Hermann Josef Real ed. by Rudolf Freiburg, Arno Löffler, and Wolfgang Zach (review)

44 shift from Shandean satire toward the sentiment of A Sentimental Journey, Ms. Bowden detects a movement away from anti-Catholicism toward inclusiveness. The final chapter, ‘‘The Shandean Liturgy,’’ brings the full array of church history satisfyingly home. There is a case to be made here—which Ms. Bowden does not—for Sterne as master of an Anglican realism, for his fictions, as this study demonstrates, are steeped in the daily routines of the church. There are explicit moments of contact with the liturgy in Tristram Shandy (such as Yorick ’s sermon, Trim’s catechism, Uncle Toby’s reasons for proposing marriage which are ‘‘written . . . in the Common Prayer Book’’), but this chapter’s point is that the liturgical is present in the quotidian rituals of life in the parish. Every character’s language and actions take their cues from the parish church and the framework of its common assumptions . Walter Shandy, in his idiosyncratic accumulation of arcane learning , is the odd man out in this world— the exception that proves the rule. Christopher Fanning Queen’s University Kingston Swift: The Enigmatic Dean: Festschrift for Hermann Josef Real, ed. Rudolf Freiburg, Arno Löffler, and Wolfgang Zach. Tübingen: Stauffenberg Verlag, 1998. Pp. xv ⫹ 324. ⫽ C65.80. This Festschrift for Hermann Real, known for reconstructing Swift’s library , fittingly expands those shelves by exploring his readings, adding to Swift’s manuscripts, and discussing writers influenced by Swift. We encounter essays on unpublished lines of verse (John Fischer), a new Anglo-Latin letter (Clive Probyn), and responses to Swift by writers as known as Burns and as obscure as an anonymous, admiring Ulster-Scots pastoral elegist (Andrew Carpenter) and a Westminster schoolmaster (Oliver Pickering). The collection is free of any one theoretical or political center of gravity. Contributions vary greatly in length and quality, from two-page sketches of topics to robust and complete arguments. Formal close readings (Frank Ellis, Jürgen Klein, and Gerhild Riemann), contextual historical studies (Rudolf Freiburg, Alan Downie), and philosophical and theoretical investigations (Brean Hammond, Hans-Peter Wagner) comprise a volume in which bibliography and Bergson, historicisms and Huxley all contribute. The order, unfortunately, appears random, since Paul-Gabriel Boucé’s opening philosophical reading of death in Gulliver’s third voyage via ideas derived from Heidegger and Sartre is hardly typical of the empiricism and historicism that dominate the rest. The volume would benefit most from a prefatory essay to sort contributions by topics or methods. Contributors established (Claude Rawson , Mr. Hammond) and newer from nine countries and in multiple languages (Edgar Mertner’s essay on Gulliver’s Travels is in German) celebrate the international scope of Swift scholarship Real has fostered, yet the collection is not limited to his tastes—Hans-Peter Wagner even proudly notes that Real would not like his essay. Collectively the twenty-six essays put the full scope of Swift’s genres into play, including: Gulliver’s Travels (six essays), A Tale of a Tub (three), political prose (three), poetry (two), and letters (two). Best in class are Hugh OrmsbyLennon ’s (grown into a forthcoming Delaware book) and Rudolf Freiburg’s, both on the Tub. In ‘‘Classis? Under the 45 Stage Itinerant,’’ Mr. Ormsby-Lennon expatiates with wit and impressive primary textual details on Swift’s mad modern’s claim that his tale is best filed under the classis of the stage itinerant. After demonstrating via contemporary texts by mountebanks and charlatans how well Swift had mastered the late Restoration’s ‘‘therapeutic palaver of the medicine show,’’ Mr. Ormsby-Lennon moves well beyond the limits of lesser New Historicist studies by both adducing evidence from texts worthy of being called a discourse (Royal Society reports , Rosicrucian tracts, freemason guild rules, coffee house chat) and, most importantly, by distilling all into a pithy point that the masters of discursive manipulation and their communities of readers are frequently charlatans. This move underwrites a deft and wry turn to some current masters of discourse most likely to be feared as charlatans— professional literary theoreticians—as when Mr. Ormsby-Lennon emulates his subject so well: ‘‘Restoration écriture, whether inside or outside the Tub, must be re-imbricated as a kerfuffle between quacks.’’ Despite the...