Proceedings / Anglistentag 1995 Greifswald 9783111714141, 9783484401402

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Anglistentag 1995 Greifswald

Anglistentag 1995 Greifswald Proceedings edited by Jiirgen Klein and Dirk Vanderbeke

MAX NIEMEYER VERLAG TÜBINGEN 1996

Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-Einheitsaufnahme Anglistentag : Proceedings / Anglistentag 1995 Greifswald / ed. by Jürgen Klein and Dirk Vanderbeke. - Tübingen : Niemeyer, 1996 (Proceedings of the conference of the German Association of University Teachers of English ; Vol. 17) NE: Klein, Jürgen [Hrsg.] ISBN 3-484-40140-0 © Max Niemeyer Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, Tübingen 1996 Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. Printed in Germany. Gedruckt auf alterungsbeständigem Papier. Druck und Einband: Weihert-Druck GmbH, Darmstadt

Proceedings of the Conference of the German Association of University Teachers of English Volume XVII

Preface This volume presents the papers given at the annual conference of the German Association of University Teachers of English (Deutscher Anglistentag), which was held in Greifswald in September 1995. As usual, the conference included five sections: I. Literature and Culture in 18th-Century England; II. Functional Grammar; HI. Society, Genre and Language in Medieval England; IV. South Africa; and V. Workshop "Teaching Utopian Fiction - A Contribution to Cultural Studies" as well as Varia. The Sections I - IV were introduced by plenary lectures. Ampie Coetzee and Mbulelo V. Mzamane spoke about the black and white perspectives in South African literary history. The second plenary lecture was given by John Sinclair on functional linguistics in Britain. This was followed by Matti Rissanen's paper on genres, texts and corpora in the study of Middle English. This series of lectures ended with John Barrell's investigations into polite and popular culture in the 1790s. Unfortunately, we were not able to obtain the papers of all participants; some were already due to be published elsewhere, some are part of larger works in progress. In most cases the authors provided us with abstracts to be presented here in place of the original papers. Many institutions and persons helped to ensure that the Greifswald Anglistentag was a success. First of all we are grateful to Dr. Bemd Seite, the Minister President of the State of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, under whose aegis the conference took place. We are also indebted to the Ministry of Culture and to the State Chancellery in Schwerin for subsidizing our project. Without the aid of the German Research Society (DFG) and the British Council it would not have been possible to invite scholars from all over the world to attend the conference to read papers in Greifswald. Furthermore we are grateful to sponsors from trade and industry: Tchibo Kaffee, Hamburg; Glashager Brunnen, Bad Doberan; Rostocker Bier; Druckerei Panzig, Greifswald; Uhle-Sekt SchloBkellerei, Schwerin. Our thanks are also extended to the chairpersons, to all colleagues who presented papers in Greifswald and contributed to this volume, and to Dr. J. Fanning and Dr. U. Kenj who helped us in our work as editors. Many of our staff and students at the Institute of English and American Studies worked hard to make the conference possible: we are especially grateful to E. Schulz, Dr. H. Enter, Dr. M. Kuty, Dr. G. Mackenthun, Dr. J. Fanning, Dr. C. Romer, Dr. S. Khalik and H. Gericke. Special mention must be made of Dr. A. Zander and the Greifswald Drama Group for their splendid presentation of A Tragedy Rehearsed, or What you Will, and also of the Berlin Drama Group under Dr. Zenzinger, which enriched the conference with Kopit's play Chamber Music. Last, but not least, we would like to thank Prof. Jochen ModeC and the University Symphony Orchestra for providing a resounding finale to the conference with Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks. Jürgen Klein Dirk Vandeibeke

Contents Section I: Literature and Culture in 18th-Century England ULRICH BROICH (München) Introduction

3

ULRICH SUERBAUM (Bochum) Eighteenth-Century Culture: Questions of Textuality

7

JOHN BARRELL (York) Popular Political Culture in the Mid 1790s

15

IAN A. BELL (Swansea) Hogarth's 'Industry and Idleness': Representing the Criminal

29

ELFI BETTINGER (Berlin) A Woman Under the Influence. Women, Crime, and Punishment in 18th-Century England

31

ECKHART HELLMUTH (München) To Make Sense of the Senseless. The Representation of Crime and Punishment in 18th-Century England

45

HERMANN WELLENREUTHER (Göttingen) Pamphlets in the Seven Years' War: More Change Than Continuity?

59

WERNER WOLF (Graz) "The Wilderness Pleases" - But Why Not in the Novel? Literary and Cultural Aspects of the Fascination with Savage Landscapes and Its Belated Appearance in British Pre-Romantic Fiction

73

WALTER GÖBEL (Stuttgart) Conflicting Definitions of the Culture of Sensibility

93

GERD STRATMANN (Bochum) City Vice: New Urban Myths in 18th-Century England

105

X

Section II: Functional Grammar ERICH STEINER (Saarbrücken) GÜNTER WEISE (Greifswald) Introduction

119

UWE CARLS (Berlin) The Function of Role Types in Unmarked Theme-Rheme Structures

121

PETER ERDMANN (Berlin) Supplementive Adjective Clauses in English

133

J. LACHLAN MACKENZIE (Amsterdam) Functional Grammar and the Analysis of English

135

ANNE-MARIE SIMON-VANDENBERGEN (Gent) A Functional Approach to Modality

149

ERICH STEINER (Saarbrücken) Systemic Functional Linguistics - A Chomsky-Theory or a Mead-Theory? .... 169 EIJA (Halle-Wittenberg/Helsinki) ThemeVENTOLA in Translation: Some Considerations

193

GÜNTER WEISE (Greifswald) Functional-Semantic Fields

211

XI

Section III: Society, Genre, and Language in Medieval England HANS-JÜRGEN DILLER (Bochum) Introduction

227

MATTIRISSANEN (Helsinki) Genres, Texts, and Corpora in the Study of Medieval English

229

WERNER HÜLLEN (Essen) William Caxton's Dialogues in French cmd English as a Source of Information About Social Reality

243

ANDREAS FISCHER (Zürich) Dream Theory and Dream Lexis in the Middle Ages

245

MANFRED MARKUS (Innsbruck) Chaucer's Prose in the Canterbury Tales as Parody

259

DIETER KASTOVSKY (Wien) Morphological Reclassification. The Morphological and Morphophonemic Restructuring of the Weak Verbs in Old and Middle English

273

WILHELM G. BUSSE (Düsseldorf) Bishop's Courts as Cultural Centres. The Case of the Harley Lyrics

285

SABINE VOLK-BIRKE (Bamberg) The Wycliffite Sermons: A Critical Commentary on Late 14th-Century England

297

URSULA SCHAEFER (Berlin) The Late Middle English Paston Letters: A Grammatical Case in Point for Reconsidering Philological Methodologies

313

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Section IV: South Africa ERHARD RECKWITZ (Essen) Introduction

327

AMPIE COETZEE (Western Cape) South African Literary History - The Black and the White Perspective

333

MBULELO VIZKHUNGO MZAMANE (Fort Hare) Literature for a National Culture in South Africa: Perspectives of Oppressed Groups

343

ZBIGNIEW BIALAS (Katowice/Essen) From Vasco da Gama's Astrolabe to John Barrows Artificial Horizon: The Cape Colony and Cartographical Momentum

361

MARTINA GHOSH-SCHELLHORN (Essen) Transitional Identity: Autobiography in South Africa

369

BERND SCHULTE (Siegen) Cultural Politics in Es'kia Mphahlele's Works

381

FRANK SCHULZE-ENGLER (Frankfurt) Literature and Civil Society in South Africa

391

PAUL GOETSCH (Freiburg) Spatial Symbolism in Nadine Gordimer's None to Accompany Me

407

MANFRED GÖRLACH (Köln) English - The Language of a New Nation: The Present-Day Linguistic Situation of South Africa

419

XIII

Section V: Varia JOCHEN ACHILLES (Mainz), UWE BÖKER (Dresden) RAIMUND BORGMEIER (Gießen) JOSEF PESCH (Freiburg) HERMANN JOSEF SCHNACKERTZ (Bielefeld) Workshop: Teaching Utopian Fiction - A Contribution to Cultural Studies ... 437 WILLIS EDMONDSON (Hamburg) Subjective Theories of Second Language Acquisition

453

ANGELIKA BERGIEN (Leipzig) A Text-Based Approach to the Study of English Punctuation

465

INGRID VON ROSENBERG (Duisburg) English Literature in Germany - German Literature in England: An Analysis of a Lopsided Bicultural Exchange

481

BIANCA ROSS (Marburg/Lahn) Food in English Literature

483

HANS-JÜRGEN WECKERMANN (Münster) Being True to the Story: Myth, Identity, and Art in Momaday's The Ancient Child

501

SECTION I: LITERATURE AND CULTURE IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND

Ulrich Broich (München)

Introduction

There was a regrettable decline in German studies of eighteenth-century England in the 1970s and 1980s. Hardly any book was published by a German anglicist during this period which shed new light on eighteenth-century England and which won international acclaim. Very few dissertations and habilitation theses by German anglicists were devoted to this period, and during the conferences of the Deutsche Gesellschaft zur Erforschung des 18. Jahrhunderts there were hardly any papers read by German anglicists. This tide seems, however, to have turned within the last few years, and an increasing number of German scholars and students are again finding the British eighteenth century exciting and worth investigating. This change seems to be owing to at least four new trends: 1. Anglicists have realised more clearly than before that the 'canonical' literature of the eighteenth century is only the top of an iceberg and that there is a multitude of previously neglected literary texts of all kinds in this period which would be of interest to us and which await investigation. The criminal biographies of this period may serve as an example: though between 2000 and 3000 texts of this kind are extant they have so far hardly become an object of research. At the same time, scholars have also become more strongly aware of the fact that the 'literary text' in the eighteenth century was not yet seen as segregated from other texts and as having a textuality of its own, but as sharing a common textuality with other texts. Thus literary texts are now more and more often interpreted along with legal, theological, philosophical, medical and journalistic texts of the period. 2. By interpreting literary texts in their contexts with other texts scholars have been obtaining deeper insights into eighteenth-century thought and culture. The literary history of this period is thus turning into cultural history. 3. As anglicists normally do not have expert knowledge on texts which belong to other fields, they have increasingly realised that a close co-operation with experts from other disciplines is necessary. Eighteenth-century studies is thus becoming more and more interdisciplinary. 4. Eighteenth-century studies - in Germany as well as in Britain or in the United States - used to be more strongly resistant to new approaches than the study of other centuries. But in the last few years an increasing number of scholars have become convinced that the application of new theories and approaches to the

4

Ulrich Broich eighteenth century is not always merely trendy and nothing but a nuisance but can also give new insights. This applies particularly to gender studies and the New Historicism.

The section on "Literature and Culture in Eighteenth-Century England" of the Anglistentag 1995 greatly profited from this new interest in the period. The number of participants was unusually large, and the discussions were intensive and substantial. At the same time, the new trends characterised above were well represented in the subjects and in the papers read in the section. 1. Therefore, the following papers are not only concerned with 'canonical' and literary texts but also with non-canonical and non-literary ones. Ulrich Suerbaum in his paper discusses Defoe's The Storm and Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain along with paintings by Hogarth and the work of landscape architects. In fact, his paper is based on the assumption that all these works share a common textuality which is characterised by its linear and narrative nature. The paper by Ian Bell is entirely devoted to Hogarth. Elfi Bettinger discusses criminal biographies and legal writing. Eckhart Hellmuth's paper is based on research on The Malfactor's Register, or New Newgate Calendar, and Hermann Wellenreuther's paper on research on political pamphlets from the time of the Seven Years' War. 2. Without exception the following papers see literature as part of the cultural history of the period. Two of the papers - those by Elfi Bettinger and Eckhart Hellmuth - discuss the relation between literature and crime in eighteenthcentury England, and this applies also to the paper which was read by Ian Bell. As this paper has already been published,1 it is here represented by an abstract. Werner Wolf investigates the concept of 'wildness' as a phenomenon not only of eighteenth-century literature but also of the culture of the period. This also applies to Walter Gobel's paper on eighteenth-century sensibility and even more to Gerd Stratmann's paper on images of the city of London, which is the last of the following papers and which in the section of the Anglistentag served as the concluding highlight. Moreover, the keynote lecture on "Polite and Popular Culture in the 1790s" given by John Barrell was also devoted to cultural history. This lecture, which is based on extensive research, is published in this volume along with the papers read in the section. 3. The section was also characterised by a close co-operation between anglicists and historians. Accordingly, two of the following papers, those by Eckhart Hellmuth and by Hermann Wellenreuther, are written by historians. They show that the approaches of historians to texts from the English eighteenth century are much less different from those of anglicists than it is sometimes supposed. 1

Ian A. Bell, Literature and Crime in Augustan England (London, 1991).

Introduction

5

4. The application of new theories to the eighteenth century may perhaps be underrepresented in the following papers, a fact which will be deplored by some and welcomed by other readers. The paper by Elfi Bettinger, however, is based on a gender-studies approach.

Ulrich Suerbaum (Bochum)

Eighteenth-Century Culture: Questions of Textuality

I Studies in eighteenth-century culture constitute one of the busiest fields of interdisciplinary research and criticism. This is perhaps not quite so clearly to be seen in Germany as in Great Britain or the USA, where the manifold activities of the Societies for Eighteenth-Century Studies combine the efforts of literary historians - the largest group - , art historians and specialists in political, economic and social history. This is fine; interdisciplinarity - to most of us, at least - is a good thing per se. Yet questions remain. Is the interdisciplinarity of eighteenth-century studies more than skin-deep? Does the wealth of phenomena studied have any common denominator beyond the basic fact that they all had their place in time between 1700 and 1800 or between 1660 and 1837, the usual dates for the beginning and end of the so-called 'long eighteenth century? Does Eighteenth-Century Culture really exist as a coherent whole or is the term only a courtesy title for a disconnected mass of materials? If it does exist, can it be adequately explored by textual studies, the predominant mode of modern studies in eighteenth-century culture? I am aware that there is a tendency, especially within the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, to rule out questions like these and to plead for an unlimited pluralism of approaches, methods and directions. The greater the diversity, the better it is. Looking for common ground or for links between phenomena is frowned upon; even the concept of the eighteenth century, singular, is questioned. We ought to think of a number of eighteenth centuries, Paul Alkon suggested some years ago in his Presidential Address to the annual conference of ASECS, different, though partly overlapping periods, different streams of events. "Our province," he concluded, "is all the eighteenth centuries, and our most challenging task now is to find them." 1 This attitude of 'The more the merrier' may be appealing and refreshing, but it is also, I think, naive and old-fashioned in its methodology. If the eighteenth century consisted of heaps of facts to be unearthed it might be all right. If, however, history "Did Minnesota Have an Eighteenth Century, and If So, When?", in Patricia B. Craddock & Carla H. Hay, eds., Studies in Eighteenth Century Culture 21 (East Lansing, Mich., 1991), 286. - For an analysis of recent developments and trends in eighteenth century studies see Gerd Stratmann, "Einführung: Abschied von einem allzu vertrauten Jahrhundert", in Gerd Stratmann & Manfred Buschmeier, eds., Neue Lesarten, neue Wirklichkeiten. Zur Wiederentdeckung des 18. Jahrhunderts durch die Anglistik (Trier, 1992) 9-19.

Ulrich Suerbaum

8

is considered as a text made by modern historians who in their turn reconstruct, reorder and evaluate historical texts or text-like constructs made by contemporaries of the period under study, then the question of the general semantics of the period cannot be evaded. Was there a common idiom underlying the various cultural productions of the eighteenth century? How did the time go about its self-fashioning and self-textualising? I cannot give comprehensive answers to these questions, of course. All I want to do is to sketch out, tentatively, an interpretation of the concept and practice of textuality in the eighteenth century. I will start with a generalized proposition; I will then try to exemplify and confirm this by looking at some of the (so-called) non-fictional works of Daniel Defoe, and I will end with a brief glance at other examples. II I suggest that in the eighteenth century there is a concept of textuality shared by many authors and artists of the period, a concept which establishes affinities between a great number of texts and perhaps also other products of eighteenthcentury culture. The concept is based on the conviction that the world is universally readable, so that it is possible to convert even the most complex phenomena into texts that can be read, both for entertainment and for instruction, by everybody. It is the task imposed on the authors of the present age to turn larger and larger parts of the world, of the physical and moral universe, into texts. The improvement of mankind, the ultimate aim, depends largely on the success of their efforts to realize the potential textuality and readability of the world. Textualizing the world is not a task that can be done once and for all. The old concept of the world as reading matter, which had been operative until well into the seventeenth century, had assumed that the book of nature, just one definite volume, had been complete since the creation of the world, though parts of it were secret or difficult to decipher. The new concept is not a book but a library which is continually in flux, because the universe of knowledge is expanding, because new areas of life become objects of interest and discussion and because the world is continually changing, improving or deteriorating. Authorship becomes a neverending business, involving continuations, revision and up-dating. Texts are linear by nature. Anyone who wants to make the world universally readable has to reshape those parts of the world which he wants to describe in the form of linear accounts. The favourite structural devices of eighteenth-century authors are devices for getting things into line, narrative first of all - not only in novels and stories but also in non-fictional texts and in the visual arts - , and lists, journals, itineraries. The relationship between author and reader is modelled after the conventions of polite conversation, the normative type of social intercourse. Texts make use of the forms of oral and written conversation, reported real or imaginary conversations and familiar letters, conversation with distant friends.

Eighteenth-Century Culture: Questions of Textuality

9

These devices - reported conversation and familiar letters - are also used to authenticate texts. Authenticity is considered an essential criterion of all published texts. Authenticity can no longer be conveyed by recourse to a higher authority. Instead, texts are authenticated by what we may call social corroboration. Trustworthy persons of good standing in their social environment are called upon as witnesses for facts or statements. Their texts - conversation, letters, memoirs, diaries - are not used as submerged source material, but quoted extensively or incorporated in full. This kind of authenticating intertextuality - texts in the text is a distinguishing mark of many eighteenth-century texts. Ill Daniel Defoe was not only a most prolific but also a most innovating writer, bringing in new subjects for public discussion, developing new ways of presentation and finding new roles for himself as author. One of his most ambitious undertakings was a book which came out in 1704, The Storm: Or, A Collection Of the most Remarkable Casualties And Disasters Which Happen'd in the Late Dreadful Tempest, Both By Sea and Land2 Natural disasters like the great storm which devastated large parts of England in November 1703 had always given occasion to calamity pamphlets which consisted mostly of endless snippets of information about damage done, steeples toppled, trees uprooted, a tragic casualty here and a miraculous deliverance there. Defoe wanted to put disaster reporting on a new footing. "The late Dreadful Tempest" was to be committed to memory and to history by an "exact and faithful" account written as a collective effort of the responsible and educated classes of the country and collected and presented by an editor who projected himself as a person of unimpeachable authority and integrity.3 Less than two weeks after the storm, Defoe and his publisher, John Nutt, announced their project in the advertisement column of the London Gazette, appealing [...] to all Gentlemen of the Clergy, or others, who have made any Observations of this Calamity, that they would transmit as distinct an Account as possible, of what they have observed, to the Undertakers [...].4

Letters began to come in. Though it took longer than expected, in the end Defoe had several hundred letters and reports from all parts of the country as raw material for his book. In a long preface, Defoe constructs a conceptual framework designed to make the novelty and validity of his account stand out clearly. He relates his book to two 2

3

4

London, 1704. Apart from a reissue in 1713, this is the only edition; see John Robert Moore, A Checklist of the Writings of Daniel Defoe (Bloomington, 1960), 32f. Quotations from Defoe's announcement of the project in The London Gazette; see following footnote. The London Gazette, No. 3971, Nov. 29 to Dec. 2

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Ulrich Suerbäum

established and highly respected types of text, sermons and histories, and he argues that his work meets the most exacting standards of both, being a superior history book and a superior sermon. Defoe bases his arguments on one of his favourite ideas, the power of the printed book and the responsibility and even sanctity of authorship: Preaching of Sermons is Speaking to a few of Mankind: Printing of Books is Talking to the whole World. [...] Tho' he that Preaches from the Pulpit ought to be careful of his Words, that nothing pass from him but with an especial Sanction of Truth; yet he that Prints and Publishes to all the World, has a tenfold Obligation (sig. Alt).

A sermon is ephemeral, books are forever. He who lies in print, "abuses Mankind, and imposes upon the whole world" (ibid.), now and in ages to come. The present book is a history, and in historical writing there is more lying and falsehood than in any other branch of literature. Most historians want to write history as story, and "The Fondness of telling a strange Story, has dwindled a great many valuable Pieces of [...] History into meer Romance" (sig. A4r). The author of The Storm firmly promises "better Conduct in the ensuing History [...] Posterity shall not have Equal Occasion to distrust the Verity of the Relation" (sig. A5r). He does not, however, promise to tell the truth and nothing but the truth. The improvement of history is not so much a matter of the historian's veracity, but rather of his willingness and ability to give an assessment of the authenticity of every piece of evidence and of the degree of reliability of the 'relater' who is the historian's source. The supreme duty of the historian is to "set every thing in its own Light, and to convey matter of fact upon its legitimate Authority, and no other [...]" (sig. A3v). This means, in effect, that the historian ceases to be the teller of a continuous and unified story which he has forged out of diverse source materials. Instead, he functions as an editor and commentator. He collects sources, selects the ones he considers worth handing on, prints them verbatim or as an edited text, and adds his own considered opinion on the authenticity of the evidence. The final decision as to acceptance or rejection is up to the reader. The materials Defoe had collected from his correspondents formed the most complete documentation of any event in British history, but not the makings of a readable book. Defoe's main instrument to make the text readable and to bind the different components together is his own persona. This focal figure is an elusive and many-sided personality, calling himself variously "The Ages Humble Servant", "The Collector of these Sheets", "The Author of this Relation" and "an Eyewitness and Sharer of the Particulars".5 His presence in the book is unseen - he has no name and furnishes almost no information about himself - , but continually and strongly felt. He is always present in his function as mediator. He is the middleman between the witnesses and the reader, evaluating and endorsing the evidence he "The Ages Humble Servant" is his identification as the author of the book (which was published anonymously), "Preface", sig. A4v; "Collector", 25; "Author", 32; "Eyewitness and Sharer", 83.

Eighteenth-Century Culture: Questions of Textuality

11

prints, explaining editorial procedures, reconciling conflicting interpretations of events, correcting the accounts printed by others. He is also the book's most important eyewitness and narrator. The main part of the book has three divisions, dealing with the effect of the storm in London, in the country and at sea. The author-persona appears as an eyewitness in all three parts. He was in London during the worst hours of the storm, he inspected the damage in the Pool and in the upper reaches of the Thames the morning after, and he rode "In a Circuit [...] over most part of Kent" (70) about a month later. His accounts are the backbone of the book and contain most of the memorable details and scenes.6 Throughout his long career as a writer, Defoe retained the basic concept of text first realized in The Storm, devising variations as he took up new themes. The crowning achievement of his efforts to textualize the world is his Tour Through The Whole Island of Great Britain, which appeared in three volumes between 1724 and 1726.7 Defoe converts the country into a linear text by describing a tour of England, Scotland and Wales, consisting of a number of "circuits or separate journeys" (12) which he claims to have undertaken recently for the purposes of writing the book. This tour is a textual device; as far as we know, it did not take place.8 For his material, Defoe drew upon observations made during many years of travelling and upon printed sources. The author emphasizes that it is not his intention to provide a complete and impartial survey, but "to describe a country by way of journey, in a private capacity", writing down in a series of "familiar letters" to an unnamed person "what may be learned from due enquiry and from conversation" (84). While the use of printed material is hardly ever acknowledged, conversation with local gentlemen is often mentioned as a source of information about a place or region. The Tour is a historical account in a sense different from The Storm. It is momentary history, "memoirs of the present state of things" (Ibid.). "The situation of things is given not as they have been, but as they are" (12). The country is not static; it changes from year to year. Ideally, you would need annual descriptions, for "as long as England is a trading, improving nation, no perfect description [...] can be given" (84). The author announces "supplemental accounts"; posterity "will be continually adding" (12). Defoe's major works of fiction - Robinson Crusoe and The Farther Adventures (1719), Moll Flanders and A Journal of the Plague Year (1722) - come between The Storm and the Tour, both chronologically and structurally. In the so-called fictional as in the so-called non-fictional texts we have the persona of the editor as mediator and commentator of a text written by somebody else; we have the main 6

7

8

On the narrative structure of The Storm see U. Sueibaum, "Storm into Story: The Development of Daniel Defoe's Theory and Technique of Narrative", in R.M. Nischik & B. Korte, eds., Modes of Narrative. Approaches to American, Canadian and British Fiction. Presented to Helmut Bonheim (Wiirzburg, 1990), 265-277. Edition quoted: Daniel Defoe, A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain, ed. Pat Rogers, (Exeter, 1989). On the questions of authenticity and use of sources see Rogers' introduction to his edition, 9.

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text incorporating other texts different in origin and type; we have the refusal to submit to the rules of regular storytelling and to give priority to plot construction and character drawing. The closeness of the similarity varies, but they are all written within the same concept of textualizing real-life subjects. The Storm and A Journal of the Plague Year are so similar in composition and narrative technique that they seem to have been written as companion pieces. In the modern view, A Journal is a work of fiction and literature and it is treated accordingly - with editions, commentaries and interpretations - while The Storm is non-fiction and is given no attention at all - there is no modern edition, for instance. To Defoe, his longer texts constitute just one group, not two, and there is no dividing line between fiction or falsehood and non-fiction or truth. Making texts cannot be done by means of literal transcriptions of things as they are; it always involves textual devices like the persona of the author/editor, the journey or tour or sea voyage, edited or invented embedded texts, letters, conversations, documents. In a text of this type, the sincerity, good faith and good intentions of the editor are more important criteria of worth and seriousness than the literal truth of source texts and components. What really counts, Defoe argues in The Family Instructor (1715), is the author's "sincere design" to direct his readers, and this purpose may be served equally well by material which is "historical, and might be made to appear to be true, in fact" or by invented stories, which Defoe calls "parable(s)".9

IV Looking from our observation point in the early decades of the century at the whole expanse of eighteenth-century texts, we see, of course, a wide range of concepts of text and of textual practices, but we also see an amazing degree of convergence and of general agreement on basic positions. What is most striking, to me at least, is the unswerving faith, even among sceptics, in the universal potential of texts. Nothing, no field of science, no philosophy, no social problem, is considered to be too difficult or complex to be apprehended by means of readable and straightforward texts. Most matters are even thought capable of narrative modes and of communication as stories. That the period was text-dominated and even text-obsessed is demonstrated where text structures and textual techniques advance into areas which are not textrelated by nature, such as the visual arts. Hogarth is an obvious example. His serial works, the Progresses, Industry and Idleness, Marriage a la Mode and and The Election, are text-like in that they tell stories, taken together and individually. In every plate or painting the viewer has to rearrange the pictorial elements in his mind so that they form a narrative unit and explain what is going on. Furthermore, there are embedded texts - real texts which the viewer has to read - in most plates or paintings. In the first plate of Industry and Idleness™, for example, the two g The Novels and Miscellaneous Writings of Daniel De Foe (Oxford, 1840/41), vol. 15, 4. "The Fellow 'Prentices at their Looms" (Sean Shesgreen, ed., Engravings by Hogarth (New

Eighteenth-Century Culture: Questions of Textuality

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prentices are surrounded by books and sheets which characterize them. (Tom Idle, you can see, is no good because he reads Defoe's Moll Flanders, and his copy of The Prentices Guide is torn and soiled.) On yet another level, the whole scene is presented as an illustration of two biblical texts quoted in cartouches in the margin. In the Progresses, the relationship between picture and text is so close that Lichtenberg in his Ausführliche Erklärung der Hogarthischen Kupferstiche casts his explication of a series of pictures in the form of a continuous story. Hogarth is no singular case. Towards the end of the century the proliferation of textual elements in the arts leads - for instance - to political caricatures overloaded with texts in balloons and captions and to landscape gardens like Stourhead designed to be read as a sequence of vistas and historical panoramas by driving or walking along a prescribed path. Almost as pervasive as the faith in what texts can do is the belief in the potential literacy of mankind. Man is capable of language and conversation; everybody can understand and compose texts. The two nations, the nation of authors and the nation of readers, - Swift's distinction - are essentially one. Everybody can and should participate in authorship by writing letters. The enormous importance of letter writing is due mainly to this concept of universal authorship. Writing letters, the Reverend Thomas Cook says in his popular Universal Letter Writer or The Art of Polite Correspondence11, was the beginning of culture in ancient times , and "at present [...] the English [...] are so convinced of the advantages attending this method of conveying their sentiments, that it seems to have triumphed over almost every other species of composition" (x), - and, he says, it is easy enough: "As letters are the copies of conversation, just consider what you would say to your friend if he was present, and write down the very words you would speak" (18). Where does all this leave us and our eighteenth-century studies? Justified and reaffirmed and sitting pretty, it would seem. A generation of scholars and critics trained to analyse texts studying an age preoccupied with texts and producing them in huge quantities. A perfect fit. Really perfect? As a corpus of texts, our eighteenth century is essentially different from the world of texts as the contemporaries saw it. We - that is the literary historians among us - have selected from the totality of texts extant only what we consider the works of literature - poetry (which the age itself separated from the rest) and works of fiction, especially the novel. What was in its own time an integrated part of a larger whole has been isolated and rearranged in a canonized hierarchy. If a text is fictional, it is in, if it is not, it is out. The epistolary novel commands our interest, letter-writing does not, and we do not see any connection between the two. Perhaps we ought to realign our view of eighteenthcentury texts in such a way that the links between them and the concepts behind them come into view.

York, 1973), plate 60.). London, no date (circa 1795).

John Barrell (York)

Popular Political Culture in the Mid 1790s* This paper, despite the ambition of its title, is intended as a tentative contribution to a very specific debate, one of the most active and interesting debates to have developed in Britain in recent years at the meeting-point of literary and historical studies. It concerns the question of whether, or to what degree, there developed at the end of the eighteenth century in Britain a radical political culture that can plausibly be described as a popular culture. All commentators on the history of the 1790s agree that in that decade a new kind of political movement emerged, an organised radical, arguably a revolutionary political movement, which drew its support from among the classes of artisans, of small shopkeepers, their apprentices, and to a lesser extent among day labourers. Such men had been fitfully active in politics, especially in the politics of London, at various periods earlier in the century; but various aspects of the popular radical movement in the 1790s seem to mark it off from what had occurred in previous decades. To begin with, it was concerned with national rather than local political issues, in particular with the reform of the House of Commons - it was dedicated to achieving universal manhood suffrage - and with opposition to the war against the French republic. Secondly, it was organised, to some degree at least, on a nationwide basis, through the medium of provincial societies which attempted to coordinate their actions by corresponding with each other and with the largest and most influential popular radical group, the London Corresponding Society. Thirdly, this movement encouraged - and was encouraged by - the appearance, especially in London, of publications setting out the beliefs of the popular radical societies, and of a large number of small booksellers producing short pamphlets, periodicals, broadsides, song-sheets and so on, the character and price of which make it clear that they were aimed at this emergent radical and popular market. It is this last phenomenon, in the context of course of the other two, which is the focus of the debate I have in mind. The key questions in that debate run something like this: to what extent can the emergence of this new reading public be taken as evidence of the emergence of a radical literary culture which is also a distinctively popular culture, in the sense that it sets out to challenge the hegemony of the polite culture of political discussion? To what degree do the publications of the popular radical societies and booksellers seek to extend not simply the limits which the polite culture imposed on the discussion of political change, but also the language, the forms, the conventions which governed the production of polite political writing? This is a working paper rather than a finished essay; some of the assertions it makes require more extensive annotation than would be appropriate to the piece in its present state, and this will have to await a later publication.

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If questions like these became especially important in scholarly works that were being researched in Britain in the last ten years or so, this was perhaps partly due to the importance accorded to Gramsci, rather belatedly accorded to him, in British left-wing political thought during the Margaret Thatcher years. It is only in this period that the notion of cultural hegemony became a routine part of the conceptual equipment of cultural historians and cultural critics. In the 1980s it became clear that the conservative government was kept in power by working class voters - though the notion of the working class was itself increasingly understood as inadequate, so let us say by voters who identified with key aspects of conservative ideology apparently against their immediate economic interests. In response to this fact, political commentators on the left became increasingly convinced that the Labour Party in particular and the left in general had failed to grasp the idea that political conflict must be understood in terms of cultural struggle and cultural imperatives; that it had failed in particular to offer any account of national identity which could compete with conservative notions of what it was to be British. The coincidence of this analysis and the anticipated bicentenary of the Fall of the Bastille focused attention on the similarities between the 1980s and the 1790s, when the oppressive and repressive regime of William Pitt was able to continue in power with considerable popular support at the same time as it refused to respond to demands for universal manhood suffrage and imposed repeated increases in taxation to pay for the war with France, even during the near-famine conditions of 1795. The history of the 1790s, and in particular the failure of the popular radical movement in that decade to attract widespread support, let alone to achieve its political ends, was increasingly understood as the result of its failure to make the governed intellectually independent of the governors, to destroy one hegemony and create another. This argument was first developed by Olivia Smith in a book published in 1984 and entitled The Politics of Language 1791-1819. Smith began by arguing that the polite culture of late eighteenth-century England acknowledged only two varieties, styles, registers of English, the polite and the vulgar, the educated and the uneducated, the correct and the incorrect. The task of popular radical writers, she argued, was to break this binary; to challenge the ideology of politeness by developing a new language of politics, based on a vernacular and colloquial English which could speak directly to a radical artisan public. According to Smith, the only writer to succeed in doing this in the revolutionary decade was Thomas Paine; other popular radical writers made the mistake of writing in a language which, by instantiating the notion of vulgarity as it was characterised by polite writers, reinforced rather than challenged the hegemony of the polite culture. It was not until the second decade of the nineteenth century, in the writings of William Hone and William Cobbett, that a popular radical literary language forceful enough to challenge the ideology of politeness was re-invented.1 More recent works on radical political culture in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries - by Jonathan Mee, David Worrall, Marcus Wood, and by 1

Olivia Smith, The Politics of Language 1791-1819, Oxford (Clarendon Press) 1984.

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E.P. Thompson in his book on William Blake - have on the whole confirmed Smith's argument.2 Most have suggested that popular radicalism in the 1790s was rather more successful in creating a popular radical culture than Smith believed, and have added a few names to Thomas Paine's: Daniel Isaac Eaton, for example, the editor of the radical periodical Hog's Wash, or Politics for the People; Thomas Spence, the revolutionary proponent of land nationalisation and language reform, and editor of another popular radical periodical Pig's Meat, Richard Brothers, the millennial prophet; and of course Blake himself. The scholars I have mentioned may disagree with each other on whether, for example, there was a significant number of the radical writers and booksellers in the 1790s who were attempting to create a popular literary culture, defined more or less in Smith's terms; or on the question of when it can be claimed that a popular radical literary culture emerged of a kind that could function as an effective challenge to the hegemony of the polite culture. They all implicitly agree, however, in believing, that if the popular radical movement was to achieve its aims, it was necessary for it to invent a popular literary culture which could not simply be dismissed as confirming the polite characterisation of vulgarity. My focus in this paper, like that of the scholars I have so far mentioned, will be on popular radicalism in London. The movement, as I have already pointed out, was one which spread far beyond London: it was particularly strong in Sheffield and Edinburgh, but there were popular radical societies all over Britain. But for obvious reasons only London could provide a reading public large enough to support a range of popular radical periodicals and booksellers. The scholars I have mentioned would probably agree with the first contention in my paper, that the leaders of the organised popular radical movement were not primarily concerned with creating a radical political culture which was distinctively popular in the terms suggested by Smith. They would probably disagree with the second, that, if the movement in the 1790s failed to attract wider support, this should probably not be understood in terms of the failure of what was or should have been its cultural objective. But the popular radical movement did have definite cultural objectives. In all its affiliated clubs and societies it always saw itself as an educational movement, and its leaders always believed that it could achieve its political objectives only if it enabled its members to contribute to political debate on the basis of an understanding of the theory and practice of government. In attempting to secure this cultural objective, however, it proceeded largely by attempting to make available to its members selections from what it treated as classic texts of political writing which belonged securely within the realm of polite letters. The LCS in particular certainly thought of itself as seeking to create a popular radical culture, 2

Jon Mee, Dangerous Enthusiasm: William Blake and the Culture of Radicalism in the 1790s, Oxford (Clarendon Press) 1992; David Worrall, Radical Culture: Discourse, Resistance and Surveillance, 1790-1820, Hemel Hempstead (Harvester Wheatsheaf) 1992; Marcus Wood, Radical Satire and Print Culture 1790-1822, Oxford (Clarendon Press) 1994; E.P. Thompson, Witness against the Beast: William Blake and the Moral Law, Cambridge (Cambridge University Press) 1993.

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in the limited sense of providing its members with an education in politics; but it seems to have believed it could create such a culture out of polite cultural materials. Indeed, this attempt to produce a radical popular culture from canonical works of the polite culture was one of the most important aims of the Society. The main business at the meetings of LCS cells was the reading and discussion of extracts from books - usually again of canonical works of history and political theory. When members of the LCS were interrogated by the Privy Council or examined as witnesses at political trials, they frequently gave the desire to 'improve' themselves as the most important reason for their joining the society.3 When in 1796 the LCS began to publish a monthly periodical, the Moral and Political Magazine, John Thelwall, one of the most influential members of the society through most of the middle years of the decade, wrote to suggest what kind of material it might contain. He suggested that many important political truths lay hidden from the impecunious because available only in expensive and rare folios and quartos in which many classic writers of history and political theory were published. These truths, he suggested, could be extracted from writers such as Bacon and Sir Thomas More, and presented in short passages in the magazine. They were perhaps truths that the members of the LCS had already discovered for themselves; but the advantage to the members of encountering them as they had originally been formulated by great writers of the past, was that they would discover that their own political beliefs were not, as ministerial propagandists asserted, novel, untried, 'the crude conceits of a few ignorant enthusiasts of the present day', but 'the echo of the wisdom and experience of all ages'.4 Thelwall was lecturing in Norwich when he wrote this letter, and in Norwich, he wrote, there were many excellent citizens of both sexes, whose leisure and literary accomplishments will enable them to be most valuable correspondents ... and who ... will not disdain to stoop occasionally from the higher regions of curious learning and abstract science, to furnish the less cultivated minds of their fellow-citizens with hints that may lead to the better understanding of their rights, and the restoration of those privileges and comforts of which they have been so unhappily deprived by the usurping tyranny of corruption.

Thelwall's model of political education is one by which those who can afford expensive editions of classic authors, stoop, condescend to make their contents available to the radical poor, and provide the politics of popular radicalism with a history, a tradition, and thus with an alternative account of the political destiny of the English nation. If the essential character of a popular culture as envisaged by Smith was that it would be also a vernacular culture, then for better or worse Thelwall had no 3

4

See the evidence of various witnesses in the trial of Thomas Hardy in 1794, in A Complete Collection of State Trials, 30 vols, eds. William Cobbett and T.B. Howells, London (Longman etal.) 1816-22, vol. 24. The Moral and Political Magazine of the London Corresponding Society, 2 vols, London (John Ashley) 1796, 1: 59 (July 1796). Moral and Political Magazine 1: 57-8.

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interest in such a thing. Writing of the high degree of intelligence and learning to be found among 'the manufacturing and working classes', he regretted that the 'superior education and attainment' of such men rarely secured to them the concomitant privileges, of exterior deportment, or of phraseology; and that tho they might display the shrewdness and fluency of remark that result from reading and information, the language of the most erudite was nearly as vulgar and ungrammatical as those of the most informed. ... So comparative a nullity is individual attainment, without the quickening influence of intelligent, and polished society.

These are strong words, and this is Thelwall at his most extreme: the intellectual attainments of the working class, he is saying, are effectively worthless to the cause of the reform movement if they cannot express their ideas in grammatical and polished English; and they can acquire such elegance only by intercourse with polite society. His more usual position is exemplified in a speech addressed to his regular London lecture audience; Thelwall made his living as a political lecturer, and to do so he charged an admission fee high enough to ensure that the majority of the members of the LCS could not afford to attend them. Addressing this audience late in 1795, he warned them: Do not suppose, that because you are of the middling order, and a large majority of the LCS are of the industrious poor, that it is any indignity for you to associate with them. You shall hear the man in their greasy coats and working aprons deliver sentiments so just, so firm, and so decided, as will make many of those who wear more gay apparel blush at their inferior information. You shall hear men, perhaps, who murder grammar occasionally, and interlard their English with rude vulgarisms, who are all true, pure English at heart, and cherish the vital energies of liberty.7

True, pure English is here to be valued as highly when it resides in the heart as when it trips off the tongue; but it remains true for Thelwall that political writing is to be valued only when it expresses the innate disposition of the English heart towards liberty in an English language which is 'true' and 'pure'. On this showing it is evident that for Thelwall a radical culture would not, should not be a popular culture in the sense of a vernacular culture which, in distancing itself from the generally reactionary politics of the polite middle class, also distances itself from their politeness. We could choose to see Thelwall as a special case, and to an extent he was: he was probably always embarrassed by the fact that his family, once securely of the middling order, had moved down the social scale, to a point where, in his youth, he had had to submit to the indignity of being apprenticed to a tailor; and as an author he was probably more anxious to be numbered among the polite than any other intellectual involved in the LCS. But in believing that the primary educational materials of the popular reform movement were to be looked for in the polite culture, he was not at all exceptional. Thomas Spence, after Thomas Paine probably the best candidate for the honour of having attempted in the mid 1790s to 6 7

John Thelwall, Poems chiefly written in Retirement, Hereford (W.H. Parker) 1801, xi. Moral and Political Magazine 1: 290 (December 1796).

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initiate a vernacular radical culture, filled up most of his own periodical Pig's Meat with extracts from the canon of polite English classical republicanism by writers such as Akenside, Churchill, Harington, Lyttelton, Sidney, Thomson, Trenchard, as well as from more modern writers like Barlow, Price and Volney. Spence, like Thelwall, seems to have thought one of the most important intellectual contributions he could make to the popular reform movement was to provide it with a history, a tradition, a canon - or rather to demonstrate that tradition, and in the process to assert that the movement was as much part of the struggle to maintain the principles of the English revolution as were the polite writers whose works he anthologised. I want to be careful here not to minimise the differences between what I take to be the official belief of the LCS, as advanced or exemplified by men like Thelwall, John Richter, Maurice Margarot, Robert Thompson, that radical culture is one and indivisible, and knows no class distinctions, and writers and booksellers such as Spence, Eaton and the methodist poet and publisher Richard Lee, who were certainly more interested in creating something more like the vernacular radicalism Smith described. But it nevertheless seems clear to me that the difference, though real, has been made too much of by recent scholars. For example, many of the anonymous texts published by Eaton and others, which have been assumed to be the work of 'popular' writers, will turn out on investigation to be texts reprinted from newspapers like the Morning Chronicle which assume a largely liberal middle-class readership, and were probably written by middle-class radicals. This suggests, first, that we may not yet be very good at identifying the marks of the vernacular radical culture we are looking for; and secondly - because most of the texts in question are satirical - it suggests that we may be too willing to regard a certain attitude of disrespect, of irreverence to the personalities of the high political culture as an infallible mark of the plebeian. To return to the use made by the popular radical movement of texts from the polite culture: one way of thinking about this tactic might be as one of cultural appropriation - with all the risk that implies, of course, that those who believe they are doing the appropriating will themselves be appropriated, that what is conceived as a project of intellectual liberation will become, or will confirm, a condition of intellectual dependence. To what degree the cultural programme of the popular reform movement involved such a risk I will discuss later; but for the moment I want to investigate the degree to which it might make sense to describe that programme by the term 'appropriation'. There are a few instances where that description of what is going on looks just right. A good example would be the frequent parodies of the National Anthem, 'God save the King', which reappeared in radical publications as 'God save - 'THE RIGHTS OF MAN!", as 'God save great Jolter-Head', as a hymn to the guillotine, as a hymn to the French Revolution, as a prediction of the execution of George III and Pitt, as a satire on the extravagance of the Prince of Wales, and as a celebration of the failure of the Duke of York's campaign against the French. A more intriguing example is to be found in the history of Thomas Otway's tragedy Venice Preserv'd, from 1793 and 1795. In 1793 extracts from this play appeared as

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epigraphs on the title-pages of two publications by Eaton, a small but significant act of cultural appropriation in that, as Thelwall later put it, Otway had written the play 'with the view of paying his court to Charles II, and for the purpose of bringing detestation upon the patriots of those times, by representing all reformers as conspirators'.8 A play with such a provenance might seem an ideal loyalist propaganda weapon during the alarm created by Pitt's ministry over the plots and conspiracies allegedly being hatched by the popular radical societies; and it may have been with this partly in mind that the play was staged at the Covent Garden Theatre in February 1794. Thelwall, however, like Eaton's authors, regarded it as a play which, whatever its official political tendency, contained dialogues and speeches, spoken by the conspirators, which could be read as a critique of the corruption of government, and were expressed in the language of classical republican virtue which the English radicals were claiming as their own. At one of his regular lectures the night before the play opened, Thelwall expressed his surprise that the Government had allowed the play to be staged. He invited the audience at the lecture to meet him the next night at the theatre. He would, he said, bring a copy of the text with him; and if, as he suspected, the republican passages were altered or omitted, he would insist on their being recited. If the play was performed as usual, he and his adherents would encore the republican speeches. In the event the play was performed uncut, and Thelwall and his friends duly applauded and encored their favourite passages. After one more performance, the play was regarded as too politically embarrassing and was taken off. But what is especially remarkable about this incident is that it was elaborately recounted as evidence against Thelwall in his trial for High Treason the following December; that is, it was regarded by the lawyers for the Crown as evidence of a treasonable disposition.9 The play however would not go away. The most obviously Jacobin dialogue was reprinted as a handbill.10 In October 1795 the dramatist and reforming Member of Parliament Richard Sheridan provocatively staged an elaborate new production of Venice Preserv'd at Drury Lane. The third night of this production fell on the day when the king's coach was attacked by a crowd of reformers as he was on his way to open the new session of Parliament; a missile of some kind had nearly hit the king, and the king himself, and the newspapers funded by the Government, treated this as a full-blown assassination attempt. The Government used the incident as a pretext to introduce new laws designed finally to silence the movement for reform. At Drury Lane the speeches of Otway's conspirators were 8

10

The Life of John Thelwall. By his Widow, 2 vols, London (John Macrone) 1837, 285-6. See Charles Pigott, Persecution. The Case of Charles Pigott: containing the Defence he had prepared and which would have been delivered by him on his Trial, if the Grand Jury had not thrown out the Bill preferred against him, London (D.I. Eaton) 1793; Extermination, or an Appeal to the People of England, on the Present War, with France, London (D.I. Eaton) [1793], State Trials for High Treason. Embellished with Portraits, 3 vols, London (B. Crosby) n.d. [late 1794 or early 1795], 35-6. The Speeches of Pierre and Jeffeir, extracted from Venice Preserved, no publication details.

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greeted in the same manner as in the previous year, and the following day, much to the satisfaction of the government press, the play was withdrawn. Loyalist newspapers had at first represented the production merely as ill-judged and illtimed, but a few days after the attack on the coach they began to represent it as an essential part of a republican plot. The aim of the production, it was now decided, had been to prepare the minds of those who had attempted to kill the king by inflaming their passions and inspiring them with a 'thirst for blood'.11 The story of these two productions of Venice Preserv'd provides an intriguing validation of the technique of attempting to appropriate the texts of the loyalist culture to the culture of radicalism. The success of the undertaking can be measured by the fact that in February 1794, the time of Thelwall's first attempt to claim the play for radicalism, the play was still widely regarded as a loyalist play, and Thelwall's appropriation of it as a misappropriation. When the attempt was repeated, however, in October 1795, the ministerial press turned on the play itself, as if it genuinely was the dangerous work that Thelwall had tried to make it. One ministerial newspaper spoke of its 'obscene and objectionable passages, so disgusting to a modest, so unpleasant to a loyal ear', as 'passages which make all honest men shudder!'12 Thelwall summed up the story by remarking that 'the play, ... notwithstanding its original intention, was ... converted into a provocative, not an antidote to jacobinism', by the tactic of loudly applauding and calling attention to what he described as its 'popular sentences'.13 For Thelwall and his friends the attraction of appropriating Venice Preserv'd for a radical culture may have been not simply that it involved perverting the original political tendency of the text, but also that the play was written by a then canonical poet of the polite culture; it spoke its 'popular sentences' in sentences which were palpably polite. More generally, however, to describe the use made by the popular radical movement of political texts from the polite culture as an 'appropriation' of that culture is misleading, at least insofar as it misrepresents their own sense of what they were about. The whole point of that tactic, as I have suggested, was to deny that radical culture was divisible between the polite and the popular. This was not, however, how it seems to have been understood by loyalists. In August 1792, the LCS published its third address to the nation, entitled An Address from the LCS to the Inhabitants of Great Britain on the Subject of a Parliamentary Reform. It was written by the then Chairman, Maurice Margarot, who in 1794 was transported to Australia following a conviction for sedition. It began with an epigraph from James Thomson's poem Liberty (Book V, lines 99109), a text which was later to be quoted in extract in both Pig's Meat and the Moral and Political Magazine. It read:

11

A Narrative of the Insults offered to the King, on his Way to and from the House of Lords ... By an Eye-Witness, London (J. Owen) 1795, 11-12. See also The True Briton October 30, November 2, 1795; Times October 31. 12 The True Briton October 30, 1795. 13 Life of John Thelwall 1: 286.

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Unblest by Virtue, Government a League Becomes, a circling Junto of the Great, To rob by Law: Religion mild, a Yoke To tame the stooping Soul, a trick of State To mask their Rapine, and to share the Prey. What are without it Senates, but a Face Of Consultation deep and Reason free, While the determin'd Voice and Heart are sold? What boasted Freedom but a sounding Name? And what election but a Market vile, Of Slaves self-bartered?

These lines, written to describe the corruption systematised by Sir Robert Walpole in the 1720s and 1730s, were no less apt to describe the no less systematic corruption of government in the 1790s, and that very aptness must have indicated to Margarot that it was not fortuitous, that he was not opportunistically appropriating Thomson's lines to describe a novel political situation, but attacking the same Old Corruption in the same classical republican language that Thomson had used. This address, signed by Maurice Margarot and Thomas Hardy, secretary of the LCS, was produced as evidence for the prosecution in the trial of Hardy, two years later, for High Treason. When the address was read in court, the epigraph from Thomson was omitted, and Thomas Erskine, Hardy's counsel, demanded that it too should be read aloud. Wasn't it absurd, Erskine asked the jury, that to quote these lines, which Thomson wrote under the protection of, in the very house of, the then Prince of Wales, should be regarded as evidence of a conspiracy to kill the king? Was it really to be assumed, he asked the jury, that 'the unfortunate prisoner before you was plotting treason and rebellion, because, with a taste and feeling beyond his humble station, his first proceeding was ushered into view, under the hallowed sanction of this admirable person, the friend and defender of the British constitution,' the greatest and most benevolent of eighteenth-century poets? 14 For Erskine it was a mark of Hardy's humility, his desire to improve himself, his deference to the canon of the polite culture, that he should borrow the authority of Thomson to sanction his own political opinions. For the prosecution, however, the quotation was an act of appropriation, a theft; it was a mark of Hardy's insolence, indeed his perversity. 'Who will dispute any one principle which it contains?' asked the Solicitor General, replying for the Crown - an odd question from him, perhaps, in that he owed his seat in Parliament to the same corrupt system of election that Thomson was attacking. 'And yet', continued the Solicitor General, 'if passages are to be taken from books, and applied to such purposes, the best books may be perverted to the worst of purposes'. 15 The worst of purposes meant, for the Solicitor General, the attempt to establish a system of universal manhood suffrage in Britain; for I should explain that though Hardy was tried for a conspiracy to kill the king, the prosecution never pretended 14 15

State Trials 24: 387, 928. State Trials 24: 1238

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that he had any actual design on the king's life; its argument was that the likely effect of establishing universal manhood suffrage would be the deposition and consequent death of George III. The perversity, the act of theft that Hardy had performed, was thus the appropriation of the words of a canonical poet of the polite culture to the culture of popular radicalism. The same point was made, in a more complex way, by the anonymous author of one of the leading loyalist pamphlets commenting on Hardy's trial. Thomson's talk of virtue, it suggested, referred simply to private virtue, to a need for the reformation of manners. The perversion was to appropriate his words to suggest they referred to public virtue, a concept which, for this author, belonged only within the now entirely popular and Jacobinical discourse of classical republicanism.16 There is no reason to assume that ministerial and loyalist opinion did not feel the same about the quotation, in the publications of the popular radical movement, of passages from any polite and canonical writer. The fact that in loyalist circles such quotations were regarded as perverse, as appropriations, may perhaps have provoked radical writers to employ them more often; but they certainly did not begin to employ them with that aim. The most thorough-going critique of the educational and political programme of the LCS has been made by the German historian Giinther Lottes. His critique is too detailed for me to be able to summarise it adequately, but it goes something like this. The emphasis placed on education and improvement by the society's leaders derived from a 'craving for political respectability' on the part of its leaders, who failed to mobilise more popular support for the Society by insisting upon the importance of the task of 'political socialisation', and by converting the political meetings of the society's divisions 'into political classrooms from which all plebeian sociability was banned'. The 'attachment' of the LCS, argues Lottes, 'to the established constitutional language' has to be understood in terms of their inability 'to break free from the political language ... in which their political consciousness had been formed'. This attachment 'worked as a means of secondary integration', and made the demand for universal suffrage 'susceptible ... to being bought off by piecemeal political reform', as it began to be in 1832, in the first of the long series of reform acts by which universal manhood suffrage was slowly conceded. 17 In short, the problem with the Society's tactic of appropriating to itself the polite cultural tradition of classical republicanism, and of attempting to combine this with an arguably more dangerous discourse of rights, was precisely that it appropriated them. There was, Lottes claims, an undercurrent of sans-culottism in the Society, by which he means, I assume, that there were members who advocated insurrectionary politics and questioned the sanctity of property, but these were never able to achieve the same degree of influence as the Society's more conservative leaders, who insisted on a notion of equality limited by a respect for

16

17

Treason Triumphant over Law and Constitution! Addressed to both Houses of Parliament, London (J. Downes) 1795, 30. Günther Lottes, 'Radicalism, revolution and political culture: an Anglo-French comparison,' in Mark Philp (ed.), The French Revolution and Popular Politics, Cambridge (Cambridge University Press) 1991, 78-98.

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private property, on the reform rather than the reinvention of political institutions, and on achieving reform by the force of popular opinion and not by violence. I am by no means sure that I think this critique is mistaken, but at the same time I am temperamentally suspicious of this kind of charge of false consciousness, and it seems worth attempting to put an alternative case. One could start by arguing that the popular reform movement's attempt to create a radical political public was entirely dependent upon the circulation of texts; and that such was the power and influence of the official and unofficial system of surveillance that texts which advocated a more extreme political programme than the official programme of the LCS - texts, for example, which were overtly republican - were (except for a period in 1795) routinely suppressed. The polite language of classical republicanism was probably the only language which, by virtue of its authority and prestige, could be made to carry a demand for large-scale political reform without facing automatic prosecution for seditious libel. And in fact, as we have seen, even the addresses published by the LCS which do employ that language were cited at the trials of the leaders of the Society as providing evidence of a treasonable intent, on the grounds that universal manhood suffrage was itself inimical to the principles of the constitution, and if achieved would so change the constitutional position of the monarch as to involve the risk that he would be deposed. In fact there is plenty of evidence to suggest that in spite of their (qualified) adherence to the language of English classical republicanism, and the limits that language imposed on the political imagination, the leaders of the LCS were republicans in the stronger sense of desiring the extinction of the monarchy. It seems likely that they believed that if universal manhood suffrage could be achieved, a crisis of sovereignty would ensue, which could be won only by those who claimed sovereignty for the people. With the power of the Crown and Aristocracy weakened by the loss of the patronage and corruption on which they largely depended, it would be an easy matter to abolish by law the hereditary element in the constitution. That they were wrong in believing that this would happen, at least in anything but the very long run, is only too evident; but the defenders of the monarchy made the same analysis and the same error. And the Society calculated, almost certainly correctly in view of the relative smallness of the popular radical movement, that there was no possibility of achieving reform by insurrection, still less if reform was overtly linked to the demand for the fully republican, fully democratic constitution that, even now, Britain is a long way from achieving. More importantly, in believing that it could secure reform only by the force of popular opinion, the Society probably believed it necessary to seek a kind of arm'slength entente with the Opposition to Pitt's government in Parliament, and at the least not to alienate it. It was aware, of course, that the parliamentary Opposition, though more or less of one mind with the popular radicals in their hostility to the war and to Pitt's progressive curtailment of established civil rights, was interested in achieving only a thoroughly limited degree of reform, well short of universal manhood suffrage. But it was also aware that the Opposition was in a better position than the Society to represent the popular resentment against corruption,

26

John BarrelI

and hoped that this resentment would become so overwhelming as to oblige the Opposition to support the demand for universal manhood suffrage as affording the only chance that, following a reform, they could become the party of Government. This belief however required the Society to speak - at least as one of its languages - the same language the Opposition had now embraced, of classical republicanism; at the same time as the Society evidently believed that this language could be used to prepare the people for a more thoroughgoing constitutional reform than merely the reform of the House of Commons. Whatever degree of wishful thinking, sentimental optimism, even self-deception there may have been in this programme, it was at the least no less likely to succeed than a more sans-culottiste programme would have been. Lottes's critique depends upon assuming the actual or potential existence of a powerful sans-culotte consciousness among the London plebs, capable of at least rudimentary political organisation along the lines of plebeian sociability rather than of formal political and cultural education. But even he can find only traces of this: Thomas Spence, the nearest thing to a sans-culotte the decade has to show, was at this time a figure of relatively small influence. The LCS was attempting to build a popular radical movement not out of a more or less homogeneous urban industrial lower class, but out of a society which in class terms was minutely stratified into class fractions and sub-fractions. The language of classical republicanism, offered as a means to selfimprovement, was probably the only political language which could function as a lingua franca by which these fractions could define a common political programme. Most importantly, it was the political language which had most currency among the independent artisans and small shopkeepers who formed the backbone of the Society, and who found in that language an endorsement of their own belief in the value of economic and intellectual independence.18 These men too had adopted a version of the language of classical republicanism as their own; but few of them could have been persuaded that it was in their interest or in the general interest of their trades to adopt a more sans-culottiste political language or political programme. Many of the leaders of the LCS, of course, were drawn from, or aspired to become, independent tradesmen, and had every reason to adhere to this established language of reform; but because it was in their interest to do so does not mean that the interest of political reconstruction would have been better served by employing another, more plebeian language and by adopting a more adventurous notion of political transformation. It was not until the end of the decade, following the suppression of the LCS, and the effective withdrawal of the Old Whigs from the movement for reform, that the strategy of the LCS could evidently be seen to have failed. At this point the popular radical movement became in effect a subterranean movement, unable to build any kind of mass following, unable to build political alliances across class divisions, and more or less unconstrained therefore in the political languages it could employ or invent. As the popular radical movement became less influential, 18

See J.G.A. Pocock, 'The varieties of Whiggism from Exclusion to Reform', in his Virtue Commerce, and History: Essays on Political Thought and History, Chiefly in the Eighteenth Century, Cambridge (Cambridge University Press) 1985, 215-310.

Popular Political Culture in the Mid 1790s

21

the sans-culottiste language of Thomas Spence became more so; but the two developments were inextricably linked.19 And as in the second decade of the century something much more like the vernacular language of radical politics described by Olivia Smith begins to be heard, it is not clear that it was as successful as the language employed by the LCS in mobilising and fostering an organised political radical movement. If it was arguably a more effective language of plebeian resistance than the language of the LCS, it was invented in a more favourable political climate, and in relation to a reading public which had changed considerably since the 1790s. It makes little sense to tell the story of radical popular culture between 1790 and 1820 in terms of simple failure and success, or of mistakes recognised and corrected. It is a story of changing class formations, political constituencies and alliances, and cultural objectives, played out in the context of an increase in political literacy among the unrepresented which the organised popular radical movement of the 1790s had done more than anything else to encourage.

19

See especially Iain McCalman, Radical Underworld: Prophets, Revolutionaries Pornographers in London, 1795-1840, Cambridge (Cambridge University Press) 1988.

and

Ian A. Bell (Swansea)

Hogarth's 'Industry and Idleness': Representing the Criminal

William Hogarth's series of engravings entitled 'Industry and Idleness', appeared in 1747. On first reading, they appear to confirm the common belief in links between idleness and crime, industry and lawfulness. The idle apprentice pays little attention to his task, gambles, runs off to sea, falls in with prostitutes and criminals, and ends his days at Tyburn. His industrious counterpart, on the other hand, steadily works his way up mercantile society until his triumphal appearance as Lord Mayor of London. Taken as a didactic sequence, Hogarth's prints seem to be warning the idle and encouraging the industrious, endorsing a simple moral distinction often expressed by magistrates and law-makers. But are Hogarth's prints so simple? And is their representation of criminality really so stark? Closer inspection of the sequence reveals a complex network of ironies and confusions, problematising that very message which the prints seem so readily to offer. In place of an endorsement of the prevailing ideology, Hogarth insinuates a critique of its assumptions, and his sequence reveals the bathetic nature of legislation rather than its triumph. The overall aim of the paper is to facilitate discussion of the ways in which creative writing or illustration mediates and ironises ideology. Hogarth's prints do not contain a simple moral homily, but a complicated and interrogative dialectic about the law, the economy, and the fates of individuals.

Elfi Bettinger (Berlin)

A Woman Under the Influence. Women, Crime and Punishment in 18th-Century England In his treatise "An Inquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers", Henry Fielding proposed specific alterations in penal policy affecting criminal procedure as well as criminal law.1 Among the causes of crime and lawlessness which this deeply conservative tract identified were the inadequate control of the movement of the dangerous strata of society, the virtual impunity of receivers, the laxity with which suspects were apprehended and the unjustified frequency of pardons. But what Fielding identified as the most immediate threats to law and order were the love of expensive amusement, gaming and drunkenness among the lower classes. Fielding's treatise was published in January 1751. From the point of view of the author's career, its publication was timely, since it appeared just before the House of Commons appointed a Committee to consider, in the words of the contemporary Horace Walpole, "amending the laws enacted against the vices of the lower people, which were increased to a degree of robbery and murder beyond example." What commentators, almost hysterically, perceived to be a crime-wave of unprecedented dimensions was less based on increasing numbers of capital offences, as the historian J.A. Sharpe indicates.3 Rather, "the state was anxious to control its subjects more effectively, hence new offences were created and old ones were prosecuted more vigorously."4 In a self-perpetuating process fuelled by several diverse factors such as demographic growth, vagrancy legislation, crime reporting, an ever increasing number of new laws responded to and produced new offences at the same time. Drunkenness, formerly considered as sinful within a religious framework, began to appear in the context of criminal behaviour as "the root and foundation of many

2

4

Henry Fielding, "An Inquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers, etc.", in: The Complete Works of Henry Fielding, ed. William Ernest Henley, vol. XIII, Legal Writings (New York, 1967). For an account of the importance of Fielding's legal activities see Leon Radzinowicz, A History of English Criminal Law and its Administration from 1750, vol. I: The Movement for Reform (London, 1948), 399-422. Horace Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Second, quoted in Radzinowicz, 402-3. Sharpe writes: "Those attempting to relate changing patterns of serious crime with some preconceived notion of economic change must, therefore, confront the problem that the patterns of serious crime do not seem to have changed much between the fourteenth century and 1800." J.A. Sharpe, Crime in Early Modem England 1550-1750 (London, 1984), 171. Sharpe, Crime, 172.

32

Elfi Bettinger

other sins, as murder, etc."5 Whereas crimes were sins, sinning was also considered to be universal. However, the rapid process of modernisation produced a new mentality - "the law had come to replace religion as the main ideological cement of society."6 Fielding was speaking from a position of authority as a Magistrate and Justice of Peace when he condemned drunkenness: the intoxicating draught itself disqualifies them [i.e. the poorer sort] from using any honest means to acquire it, at the same time that it removes all sense of fear and shame, and emboldens them to commit every wicked and desperate enterprise. Many instances of this I see daily; wretches are often brought before me, charged with theft and robbery, whom I am forced to confine before they are in a condition to be examined; and when they have afterwards become sober, I have plainer perceived, from the state of the case, that Gin alone was the cause of the transgression [...].

And indeed, there is ample evidence (of which Hogarth's engraving Gin Lane (1751) is amongst the most impressive) that London did have an alcohol abuse problem. Sidney and Beatrice Webb's The History of Liquor Licensing in England (1903) provides some figures: "[TJhere was one public-house to every fifteen houses in the City of London, one to every eight in Westminster, one to every five in Holborn, and over one to every four in St. Giles."8 Furthermore, "in 1750, 7,000 out of 12,000 quarters of wheat sold weekly in the London markets were converted into alcohol."9 While the locally-brewed beer was cherished for its nourishing and uplifting quality, the stronger spirits were seen to destroy health and morals, especially amongst the lower classes. In the legal tracts of the time it was taken for granted that the consumption of spirits greatly encouraged criminal behaviour in both men and in women. However, different standards seem to have been applied when women under the influence were brought before the courts. In 1734, Elizabeth Armstrong and Mary Price were indicted "for the murder of one Patrick Darling by giving him with a Knife one mortal wound in the Calf of the right Leg". The incident occurred in a brandy shop, where the deceased, "a mighty joking man" passed an unwanted comment on Mary's legs: "it is like an Irish leg, as thick at the bottom as it is at the top". What followed was a rough pub brawl, with mutual verbal provocation, hitting, kicking and beating. Then Mary's cousin Elizabeth Armstrong became involved, and stabbed the man in the calf with her oyster-knife. Although this act would normally be regarded as a case of assault or, at most, manslaughter, Armstrong was sentenced to death.10 5

Fielding, "An Inquiry", 31. Sharpe, Crime, 145. Fielding, "An Inquiry", 34. Quoted in Radzinowicz, A History, 400. See also Radzinowicz, A History, 400. The case is taken from Margaret Ann Doody, '"Those Eyes Are Made So Killing'. EighteenthCentuiy Murderesses and the Law", Princeton University Library Chronicle 46 (1984), 49-80, here 62-63.

A woman under the influence

33

In his history of English criminal law, the 19th-century legal historian Sir James Fitzjames Stephen analysed most fittingly for our purposes the concepts of provocation and manslaughter, quoting the 17th century Pleas of the Crown by Sir Matthew Hale: Insulting language is not such a provocation as will reduce murder to manslaughter, but 'if A. gives indecent language to B. and B. thereupon strikes A. but not mortally; and then A. strikes B. and then B. kills A., that this is but again manslaughter, for the second stroke made a new provocation' in the opinion of Hale himself and some others. (Lord Morley's case, A.D. 1666.)

If manslaughter was not considered the appropriate verdict for Elizabeth Armstrong, neither had the alcohol a mitigating effect. It did however influence the verdict in another case which is also taken from Hale: There was a special verdict found at Newgate, viz., A. sitting drinking in an alehouse, B., a woman, called him a son of a whore. A. takes up a broomstaff and at a distance throws it at her, which, hitting her upon the head, killed her. Whether this were murder or manslaughter was the question in P.26, Car.2. (Easter term, 1675) 12

In this case of the killing of an offensive woman it was advised that the king should be moved to pardon the man involved, which was accordingly done. But there is yet another sort of 'influence' which I want to look at. It is the notion of influence that appears whenever legal texts and criminal accounts deal with women and female offenders. If, as Teresa de Lauretis claims, gender is constructed by being represented, we should be able to trace how these texts participate in the production of sexual difference. In talking about women, whenever their legal position as daughters, wives or offenders is defined, 'influence' appears variously as a synonym for: 'under compulsion', 'at the request of, 'under the sway of, 'under the thrall of, 'being a mere tool', 'through constraint of. While the detailed reconstruction of the historical situation of women matters for historians, cultural critics ask how women were represented and how femininity was constructed in literary and legal discourse. In civil law, a wife could not make a contract and could not sue or be sued in court. Even in rape-cases, it was the fathers or the husbands who had to sue on the woman's behalf. In his Commentaries on the Laws of England (1758) William Blackstone explains: "If the wife be injured in her person or her property, she can bring no action for redress without her husband's concurrence, and in his name, as well as her own; neither can she be sued without making the husband a defendant."13 Blackstone provides an impressive list of negated terms which effectively constructs the 'covered' woman as legally helpless being. In contrast, the power of the husband is given in exclusively positive terms: 11

12

James Fitzjames Stephen, A History of the Criminal Law of England, vol. III. (London, 1883), 62. Stephen, A History, III, 66. William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, vol. I (Oxford, 1765), 443.

34

Elfi Bettinger The husband also (by the old law) might give his wife moderate correction. For, as he is to answer for her misbehaviour, the law thought it reasonable to intrust him with this power of restraining her, by domestic chastisement, in the same moderation that a man is allowed to correct his apprentices or children; for whom the master or parent is also liable in some cases to answer. 14

This sort of 'coverture' also had remarkable effects in criminal law. As Roger Thompson explains women's legal position: "If a wife committed a crime in the presence of her husband, it was normally presumed that she was 'under compulsion' and that the husband was therefore responsible for her actions."15 Even where a wife had committed a crime on her own, her husband might be required to give bond for her good behaviour: "If a Feme Covert commit an Act which in another would be Felony, it is not so in her because she is sub postetate viri."16 In the words of Blackstone: But, though our law in general considers man and wife one person, yet there are some instances in which she is separately considered; as inferior to him, and acting by his compulsion. And therefore all deeds executed, and acts done, by her, during her coverture, are void; except it be a fine, or the like matter of record, in which case she must be solely and secretly examined, to learn if her act be voluntary [...] she is supposed to be under his coercion. And in some felonies, and other inferior crimes, committed by her, through constraint of her husband, the law excuses her: but this extends not to treason or murder.

So it was as felons, albeit only as murderesses and traitoresses, that women finally achieved the status of legal beings. Women, when accused, had to be given a voice in court. In the huge corpus of texts that bears witness to the eighteenth century's obsession with criminality we find a considerable number of case histories involving female offenders. Pamphlets and broadsheets containing the accounts of the lives of notorious criminals before, during and after their trials were produced to satisfy a growing market.18 An important source for the dissemination of knowledge about the workings of the legal system was the publication of the Old Bailey Session Papers. Appearing eight times a year from the 1730s onwards, they offer full detail of trials for lay readers. Taken down in shorthand, they offer the dramatic verbatim report of the

14

16

18

Blackstone, Commentaries, I, 444. See also Roger Thompson, Women in Stuart England and America. A Comparative Study (London, 1974), esp. 163. A Complete Collection of State Trials, ed. T.B. Howell, vol. 34 (London, 1816-28), see entry: husband and wife. Blackstone, Commentaries, I, 444. Among the book length studies that consider this material see especially Christof K. Arnold, Wicked Lives. Funktion und Wandel der Verbrecherbiographie im England des 17. und frühen 18. Jahrhunderts (Heidelberg, 1985); Lincoln B. Faller, Turned to Account. The Forms and Functions of Criminal Biography in Late Seventeenth- and Early Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1987); and Ian A. Bell, Crime and Literature in Augustan England (London, 1991).

A woman under the influence

35

questions and answers.19 The cases were then recycled in collections like The Tyburn Chronicle, The Newgate Calendar and The Malefactor's Register. Their obvious appropriations and creative rewritings according to the specific requirements of the time draw attention to their textual and intertextual quality as well as to the way they variously negotiate positions of subversion, resistance and confirmation. These galleries of unhappy lives seem forever different and always the same. Furthermore, case law itself is highly intertextual. It achieves a distinctly narrative quality with its need to recapitulate how former verdicts argued in similar circumstances. Almost like literary texts they quite openly select and arrange, foreground or suppress details. Every attempt to penetrate "beyond" the records to an inaccessible "real event" is inevitably frustrated. Accordingly, this paper cannot offer an "authoritative" interpretation of the crimes but only a glimpse at the constant efforts of representation. With the emergence of the nuclear family and a new ideal of womanhood, murderesses whose killings were done mostly within a family context, excited exactly that interest in sex, crime and taboo, which is still with us today. Catherine Hayes "who with others fouly murdered her husband" in 1726, is invested with doubtful morals in The Newgate Calendar's account of this crime.20 One of her accomplices, Billings, is "either her lover or her illegitimate son." "Perhaps the most revolting murder ever perpetrated, not excepting those of later date", Griffiths wrote over a century and a half later, calling her husband "an unoffending, industrious man, whose life she made miserable, boasting once indeed that she would think it no more sin to murder him than to kill a dog."21 The Newgate Calendar offers little by way of a motive, merely "her restless disposition". The text concentrates instead on a minute description how the deed was planned, done, and covered up - albeit unsuccessfully. Hayes was slain by the two men. With the assistance of Catherine the head was severed from the body and both were ditched in different parts of town. The head was found and identified. The wife was arrested under suspicion. Catherine's conduct when brought into the presence of her murdered husband's head almost passes belief. Taking the glass in which it had been preserved into her arms, she cried, 'it's my dear husband's head,' and shed tears as she embraced it. [...] The surgeon having taken the head out of the case, she kissed it rapturously, and begged to be indulged with a lock of his hair. When the surgeon answered she had had too much of his blood already, she fell into a fit.22

The body was found and both her accomplices confessed. All three were sentenced to death: she made a plea not to be burned alive since she was not guilty of striking the fatal blow. At her execution, the fire reached the hangman's hands; he let go the rope by which she was to have been strangled, with the result that she was indeed 19 20 21

See A Complete Collection of State Trials, ed. T.B. Howell, 34 vols (London 1816-28). The Complete Newgate Calendar, ed. G.T. Crook, vol. Ill (London, 1926), 30-40. Arthur Griffiths, The Chronicles of Newgate (London, 1884), 218. The Complete Newgate Calendar, 38.

36

Elfi Bettìnger

burned alive. Her last painful moments were well remembered throughout the century. All accounts of Catherine Hayes concur in the representation of her as an epitome of female greed and lawlessness. All the niggling details which might throw a more complex light upon the husband, such as his avarice or dubious money-lending practices, are mentioned only to be immediately dropped again. All potentially disturbing or contradictory circumstances are successfully banished to the margins of the text.23 Unlike the contemporary popular accounts, Thackeray's Catherine - A Story (1840), which is based on this case, tells a tale of thwarted romantic and social aspirations. In his typically ironic mode, the novelist picks up the indeterminacies of the case and redefines the parameters in which this crime can be perceived and talked about. Half a century later, under the sway of the Victorian ideal of womanhood based on passivity, chastity and piety, Griffiths felt obliged to call her an "unsexed desparado" insinuating that it is femininity itself which is problematic.24 In this murder case, all three perpetrators were sentenced to death: men and women felons had the same rights and shared the same verdict. But all of them faced an all-male jury. Furthermore, they were all treated somewhat differently: for the woman the penalty for petit treason was burning at the stake. Petty treason was defined analogous to high treason since, as Radzinowicz explains: "both have one fundamental feature in common - the violation of the confidence which the king presupposes in his subjects, the husband in his wife, and the master in his servant."25 In its original intent, the burning of women was conceived as "a mitigation of the elaborate procedure, including disembowelling and quartering, to which men convicted of these crimes were then subjected."26 Yet the aggravated form of the death penalty for this offence applied only to women. For when a husband murdered his wife, hanging was considered punishment enough.27 In time, the punishment for male petty treason was mitigated, but that for women was retained - following a sense of tradition which Blackstone nicely offers: The punishment of petit treason, in a man, is to be drawn and hanged, and, in a woman, to be drawn and burned: the idea of which latter punishment seems to have been handed down to us from the laws of the antient Druids, which condemned a woman to be burned for murdering her husband; and it is now the usual punishment for all sorts of treasons committed by those of the female sex.28

23

24

25

For a similar fascinating murder case in which the different texts work through conflicting representations see the chapter on Alice Arden of Faversham in Catherine Belsey, The Subject of Tragedy. Identity and Difference in Renaissance Drama (London, 1985), 129-148. Griffiths, The Chronicles, 222. Radzinowicz, A History, 210. Radzinowicz, A History, 209. See the title of a famous anonymous pamphlet called: Hanging Not Punishment Enough for Murtherers, High-way Men, and Housebreakers [...] (London, 1701). Blackstone, Commentaries, IV, 204.

A woman under the influence

37

Blackstone is quite open about the fact that "in the case of coining, which is a treason of a different complexion from the rest, the punishment is milder for male offenders". But he points out the importance of treating the female body with 'respect': But in treason of every kind the punishment of women is the same, and different from that of men. For, as the natural modesty of the sex forbids the exposing and publicly mangling their bodies, their sentence (which is to the full as terrible to sense as the other) is to be drawn to the gallows, and there to be burned alive.

Modesty notwithstanding, public feeling against this form of death penalty was growing. The bill introduced by Sir Benjamin Hammet in 1790 (30 Geo. 3, c.48) argued for its abolition and in favour of modernisation rather than tradition. He "described the law as it then stood as a savage remnant of Norman policy"30 maybe with a little side glance to revolutionary France. Petit treason continued to exist as a separate offence till the year 1828, when it was decreed by 9 Geo. 4, c. 31, s.2, that every offence which before the passing of that act would have amounted to petit treason should now be regarded simply as murder only and no greater offence. 31 When women killed without male assistance, they mostly used poison. Poison was considered the "woman's weapon" - with a derogatory undertone for the masculinity of male poisoners. The fear and horror of poisoning which are expressed in the earlier penal code, were provoked by one particular case. During the reign of Henry VIII, the Bishop of Rochester's cook put some poison into a vessel of yeast, thereby causing the deaths of several persons. "So great was the indignation occasioned by this crime that in 1530 an Act was passed (22 Henry 8, c.9) which declared poisoning to be high treason to be punished by boiling to death (put into operation in the case of Margaret Davy, a young woman, and in some other cases in Smithfield in 1541)."32 Though poisoning was held in low esteem, England did have its notorious cases like the Overbury murder. 33 But it always had something 'un-English', something Catholic about it, as Griffiths' statement makes clear: "The crime of poisoning has always been viewed with peculiar loathing and terror in this country. [...] secret poisoning on a wholesale scale such as was practised in Italy and France was happily never popularized in England."34 29 30 31 32 33

34

Blackstone, Commentaries, IV, 93. Radzinowicz, A History, 213. Stephen, A History, III, 35. Radzinowicz, A History, 629. See the superb study by David Lindley, The Trials of Frances Howard. Fact and Fiction at the Court of King James (London, 1993). Griffiths, The Chronicles, 534. For how vicious murderers like "assassins came to be regarded as simply un-English" see Martin Wiggins, Journeymen in Murder. The Assassin in English Renaissance Drama (Oxford, 1991), 208.

38

Elfi Bettinger

And Griffiths continues: "The cases are rare. It is quite possible that Catherine (sic!) Blandy, who poisoned her father at the instigation of her lover, was ignorant of the destructive character of the powders, probably arsenic, which she administered."35 Griffiths' conflation of Catherine Hayes and Mary Blandy - all women are more or less the same - seems to support Cesare Lombroso's later statement in his The Female Offender (1893): "It is incontestable that female offenders seem almost normal when compared to the male criminal with his wealth of anomalous features. "36Yet at the same time, the female offender could be constructed as the enigma that can never be solved - the riddle of femininity. Such was the fascination that Mary Blandy evoked that her case was one of the most widely written-about and turned her almost into a cult figure.37 A play, The Fair Parricide, was based on her case in 1752; there were numerous pamphlets, one by herself, Miss Mary Blandy's Own Account [...] Published at her dying Request. The daughter of a wealthy attorney, well-educated and attractive, who was to inherit 10,000 pounds at his death, fell in love with Captain Cranstoun, a Scot twenty years her senior with connections to high aristocracy. When it emerged that he already had a wife in Scotland, Blandy's father cooled to him. To procure his renewed affection, Cranstoun sent a white powder which Mary dutifully administered to her father who eventually died of it. She was arrested, and Cranstoun escaped to the continent. Tried for the murder of her father, she freely admitted feeding him the powder, but claimed she was innocent in intention, having acted 'under the sway of Cranstoun'. Sentenced to death, she was hanged in Oxford for the wilful murder of her father. "It is singular", Stephen writes in his history, "that there never was any special punishment for parricide in English law. Petty treason, which was the nearest approach to it, did not include the murder of a parent by a child."38 Over a century earlier, Blackstone had already remarked upon this lack in contrast to other cultures and countries: [The] Persians, according to Herodotus, entertained the same notion, when they adjudged all persons who killed their reputed parents to be bastards. And, upon some such reason as this, must we account for the omission of an exemplary punishment for this crime in our English laws; which treat it no otherwise than as simple murder, unless the child was also the servant of his parent.39

That the lack of such legislation could be a source of national pride is indicated by Stephen's remarks: "In France a person convicted of parricide is 'conduit sur le lieu d'exécution en chemise, nu-pieds, et la tête couverte d'un voile noir.' [...] The

35 36

38

Griffiths, The Chronicles, 533. Cesare Lombroso, The Female Offender, quoted in Lynda Hart, Fatal Women. Lesbian Sexuality and the Mark of Aggression (London, 1994), 12. A considerable collection of Blandyana can be found in Trial of Mary Blandy, ed. William Roughead, Notable Trials Series (Glasgow, 1914). Stephen, A History, III, 95. Blackstone, Commentaries, IV, 202.

A woman under the influence

39

retention of the black veil and the rest seems to our English taste puerile."40 the conclusion of his comparison of the laws of England and France concerning parricide is almost a lesson in comparative law under chauvinist conditions: There are some curious refinements in the French law. Parricide is never excusable [...] This provision seems to imply that even if a son's life is in actual danger from his father's violence he, the son, is not "excusable" if he intentionally kills his father unless, indeed, his act is found to be legitimate self-defence. He must, in other words, be punished with death unless the jury find extenuating circuOmstances. To our English notions this appears extremely hard.

Focussing on the oedipal father-son constellation, Stephen never considers the case of parricide committed by a daughter as in the Blandy case. But Seijeant Hayward made a case for the double consternation when opening the case for the prosecution, he declared: Of all kinds of murders, that by poisoning is the most dreadful, as it takes a man unguarded, and gives him no opportunity to defend himself; much more so when administered by the hand of a child, whom one could least suspect, and from whom one might naturally look for assistance and comfort.

As Alexander Welsh has shown in his study on circumstantial evidence, Blandy's trial is characteristic of new developments.43 The proceedings (published in full in the State Trials) show that the jurors had become passive adjudicators, solely reviewing the evidence before them and reaching a verdict.44 The prosecution and defence was conducted by professional lawyers. Mary had two barristers but they could not help her to establish a case of unintentional killing or manslaughter. An autopsy was performed by two doctors who duly listed all the physical signs of poisoning. Poisoning trials, as Welsh demonstrates, are bound to depend on the evidence of things not seen. Witnesses for the defence and the prosecution testified either to Mary's good character and innocence, or to her plotting and malice aforethought. In his summing up, the judge, Baron Legge, reminded the jury once again: "Poison, in particular, is in its nature so secret, and withal so deliberate, that wherever that is knowingly given, and death ensues, the so putting to death can be no other than wilful and malicious."45 Hayward's opening address to the jury had already begun with a remarkable piece of rhetoric: "My own inclination would lead me to cast a veil over the guilty scene: a scene, so black, and so horrid, that if my duty did not call me to it, I could rather wish it might be for ever concealed from human eyes." Even though poisoning is done in secret and alone Hayward, for the Counsel for the Crown, 40 41 42 43

44 45

Stephen, A History, III, 95. Stephen, A History, HI, 97. State Trials, 18, 1130. Alexander Welsh, Strong Representations. Narrative and Circumstantial England (Baltimore, 1992). State Trials, 18, 1118-1194. State Trials, 18, 1186.

Evidence in

Elfi Bettinger

40

added, "experience has taught us, that [...] a train of circumstances cannot be invented. [...] Because circumstances that tally one with another are above human contrivance.1,46 The trial which lasted for thirteen hours is according to Ainsworth Mitchell's Science and the Criminal, "remarkable as being the first one of which there is any detailed record, in which convincing scientific proof of poisoning was given."47 The prosecution spoke to the jury by addressing Mary: "One should have thought your own sense, your education and even the natural softness of your sex might have secured you from an attempt so barbarous and so wicked." In response to her complaints about the publication of the witnesses' examination before her trial, the jury was advised only to pass judgment in regard of what had been said in court and to decide: Did she knowingly or ignorantly administer the poison? Circumstantial evidence overrode the prisoner's word. It did not take the jury more than five minutes to decide upon wilful murder. The juridical narrative's commitment to circumstances and probability, to comprehensiveness and closure, is impressively documented in the trial proceedings. But popular accounts reveal even more about the cultural assumptions at work in the representations of the case. A Genuine and Impartial Account of the Life of Miss Mary Blandy suggests "that the father had postponed marrying his daughter off as he did not want to pay her dowry or reveal that his fortune was not nearly as great as he said it was."48 And indeed, the opening speech for the prosecution refers to the matter: "[Her father's] thoughts were bent to settle her advantageously in the world. In order to do that he made use of a pious fraud (if I may be allowed the expression), pretending he could give her 10,000 pounds for her fortune."49 The popular account does not ignore this clue, thereby supplying the longed for motive for the criminal act. Another pamphlet finely tunes into another problem - that of age. Mary Blandy, 32 years old, is considered to be an old maid, "anxious to be married to a gentleman and to be styled the Honourable Mrs Cranstoun." And indeed, the testimony of the servant Elizabeth Binfield reported Mary's remarks on the question of age: "Who would grudge to send an old father to hell for 10,000 pounds? [...] She was speaking of young girls being kept out of their fortunes."50 Another hostile account reports that returning from her trial and sentence, she did neither faint nor weep but ordered a chicken for supper." The account cited by Roughead, however, insists on "Mutton Chops and an Apple Pie".52 In her defence, Mary claimed she was framed, a fool for love, under the thrall of Cranstoun, and that she had believed his lies about the love powder. She also complained bitterly about the reports spread about her behaviour in prison: that she 46 47

49 50 51 52

State Trials, 18, 1130. Quoted in Trial of Mary Blandy, 35. Doody, "Those Eyes", 67. State Trials, 18, 1121. State Trials, 18, 1154. Quoted in Doody, "Those Eyes", 74. Trial ofMary Blandy, 42.

A woman under the influence

41

was drunk, attempted escape, tried suicide, never attended chapel: "they represent me as the most abandoned of my sex. [...] But I am as innocent as the child unborn of the death of my father." Yet there is one telling sentence which has escaped attention so far. When put in heavy iron fetters, a measure quite unnecessary in prison, Mary describes her own state of mind: "I submitted, as I always do to the higher powers."53 The fact that the trial ended without a confession turned it into a mystery. It seems, in Margaret Ann Doody's words, to have struck a nerve in her society, stimulating conflicting representations: "She is the submissive lover, the aggressive wit, the superstitious girl, the philosophe." The Newgate Calendar version testifies to the very first identity, the submissive lover, to be most popular, according to which Mary Blandy was an embodiment of the new true womanhood. The spectacular quality, the question of feminine style, started to infiltrate the representation, even in the serious State Trials which note: "Miss Blandy suffered in a black bombazine short sack and petticoat, with a clean white handkerchief drawn over her face. Her hands were tied together with a strong black ribband".54 She begged her executioners not to hang her high, "for the sake of decency". Sobs and cries came from the huge crowd, largely made up of Oxford students - a collective exercise in feeling. As a Lady Murderess she is presented in a comparative account: The Case of Miss Blandy and Miss Jeffreys Fairly Stated and Compared [...], Addressed immediately to the Fair Sex: It is very seldom that we find amongst the tender Sex, any who have so far degenerated from Humanity, as to embrue their Hands in Blood; for being of Natures less ferocious than Men, their Passions more easily subside, and are overcome by their Tendernesss and Credulity to a settled Forgiveness of the Injuries they have received.

Mary Blandy's fate called for "a Tear Shed for Delicacy in Distress", because "Love was the spring, Love the only cause of her ruin, but as there is something in Love, more generous and disinterested, than a grovelling Desire of Money, the Motives of her Perpetration (even supposing her guilty) are not so mean, and we are more disposed to feel for her"55 - in contrast to Elizabeth Jeffries. The Newgate Calendar states. "Deprived of her Uncle's valuable Estate, the Woman and an Accomplice shot him dead after paying another Man to commit the Crime. Executed in March 1752.1,57 It did not help her at all that the victim - her uncle had in defiance of the law of God and the tables of consanguity made her his mistress for which she was promised to inherit his fortune. When he threatened to change his mind, she and her accomplice John Swan decided to kill him. Both were hanged, and he, being the servant, was hung in chains for petty treason. The psychological complexities of her case were easily resolved: The 1752 pamphlet 53 54 55 56

State Trials, 18, 1164. State Trials, 18, 1192. Quoted in Doody, "Those Eyes", 71. Quoted in Doody, "Those Eyes", 73. For Elizabeth Jeffries see: The Complete Newgate Calendar, III, 215-17.

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remarked without the least sympathy that the uncle got what he deserved for the sexual abuse of the girl, and so did she, being the instrument of vengeance.58 The Newgate Calendar keeps totally silent on that issue and laments instead that "she returned her uncle's kindness with ingratitude". Enforced marriages seem to have led to a number of murders, among them the case of Mary Channel (1703) and the case of Amy Hutchinson (1750), who both poisoned their husbands shortly after their wedding. It is remarkable that all the accounts fully endorse the free choice of marriage-partners. Parents are openingly blamed for forcing their daughters into unwanted matches. But that did not alter the penal practice. The verdict of petit treason was still acknowledged to be just and lawful.59 Griffiths' statement: "Women were as capable of fiendish cruelty as men" sounds like an early plea for equal opportunity criminals.60 But there are a few strikingly similar cases of sadistic murder by women around mid-century which prove him right: Elizabeth and Mary Branch, Mother and Daughter, executed May 1740 for murdering a Girl, Elizabeth Brownrigg, executed September 1767 for torturing her female Apprentice to Death "and Sarah Metyard and Sarah Morgan Metyard, her daughter, executed in July 1768 for the Cruel Murders of Parish Apprentices".61 All three cases seem to support the misogynist view that: "women displayed a greater and more diabolical ingenuity in devising torments for their victims." 2 The torture and murdering of parish orphans lent out for work are described with astonishing detail and without the least criticism of this type of slavery practice. In all the reports of these cases, there is no attempt at an explanation or search for a motive in what seemed to be crimes motivated solely by sadism. Rather, we find a fascination with unexplained cruelty which seems even to be fostered by the contemporaneous emergence of a notion of ideal womanhood that was to embody 'natural' morality, goodness and chastity. Despite their obviously unsophisticated simple form, these popular accounts do not just tell a simple truth. Their hidden agenda has to be teased out by an examination of their textual strategies. The texts do not present a unified whole; on the contrary, they are ruptured by contradictions that cannot be accommodated within a homogenous narrative flow. They offer glimpses of what could be termed subjectivity but still in a fragmented form. These texts do not give us access to the unconscious of the criminal rather they bring along their own cultural unconscious. They can be made to speak of the history of ideas and attitudes, of representation and its problems, of changes in mentality and the social fabric, probably more than of the criminals themselves.

58

61 62

Quoted in Doody, "Those Eyes", 72. For Mary Channel see The Complete Newgate Calendar, II, 148-152, for Amy Hutchinson see The Complete Newgate Calendar, III, 184-186. Griffiths, The Chronicles, 224. For a brief introduction to the debate see Ann Jones, "Equalopportunity criminals?" The Women's Review of Books, 11/12, Sept. 1994, 12. See The Complete Newgate Calendar, III, 108-110; IV, 46-50; 59-63. Griffiths, The Chronicles, 224.

A woman under the influence

43

These popular texts are, of course, still situated within a pre-psychological framework, but their silence, especially on motivation, leaves a gap which the contemporary novel was eager to explore. In working through the threat which murderesses posed to the social order, their transgressive acts are seen to challenge and redefine the boundaries. Constructed by the law as being without a will of their own and as being under the influence, the penal practice at least afforded women full access to the gallows. It was only at the end of the century, in 1795, that Miss Broadric who had killed her unfaithful lover was declared not guilty - but mad. The psychological turn of the 19th century opened up new, different and again problematic conceptualizations of what is culturally still perceived to be a paradox: the aggressive woman. Investigating the gender divide in contemporary sentencing in Britain, where the number of women in jail has risen by 40 per cent, Natasha Narayan asked in September 1995: "If the law is an ass, is it one that kicks women harder?"63 Addressing the question to the eighteenth century, Frank McLynn concludes: It is difficult to form a final judgement on the impact of the Bloody Code on women. The net advantage that females enjoyed over males in the area of formal indictments has to be balanced against the cultural toll imposed on women by patriarchal attitudes and rigid views on gender roles. Yet even patriarchy cuts both ways: it is seldom a one-way process; arguably the greater burden of instinctual renunciation demanded by civilization is borne by men.

This is not so far a cry from Blackstone: "Even the disabilities, which the wife lies under, are for the most part intended for her protection and benefit. So great a favourite is the female sex of the laws of England."65 This construction of gender difference produced different reactions: some of the favourites responded with a vengeance.

63

Natasha Narayan, "Jail Birds", The Guardian, September 14, 1995. Frank McLynn, Crime and Punishment in Eighteenth-century England (London, 1989). Blackstone, Commentaries, I, 445.

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References Arnold, Christof K., Wicked Lives. Funktion und Wandel der Verbrecherbiographie im England des 17. und frühen 18. Jahrhunderts (Heidelberg, 1985). Bell, Ian A., Crime and Literature in Augustan England (London, 1991). Belsey, Catherine, The Subject of Tragedy. Identity and Difference in Renaissance Drama (London, 1985). Blackstone, William, Commentaries on the Laws of England, vol. I-IV, (Oxford, 1765). - The Complete Newgate Calendar, ed. G.T. Crook, vol. I-V, (London, 1926), - A Complete Collection of State Trials, ed. T.B. Howell, vol. 34 (London, 1816-28). Doody, Margaret Ann, '"Those Eyes Are Made So Killing'. Eighteenth-Century Murderesses and the Law", Princeton University Library Chronicle, 46 (1984), 49-80. Faller, Lincoln B., Turned to Account. The Forms and Functions of Criminal Biography in Late Seventeenth- and Early Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1987). Fielding, Henry, "An Inquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers, etc.", in: The Complete Works of Henry Fielding, ed. William Ernest Henley, vol. XIII, Legal Writings (New York, 1967). Griffiths, Arthur, The Chronicles of Newgate, (London, 1884). - Hanging Not Punishment Enough for Murtherers, High-way Men, and Housebreakers ... (London, 1701). Hart, Lynda, Fatal Women. Lesbian Sexuality and the Mark of Aggression (London, 1994). Jones, Ann, "Equal-opportunity criminals?" The Women's Review of Books, 11/12, Sept. 1994, 12. Lindley, David, The Trials of Frances Howard. Fact and Fiction at the Court of King James (London, 1993). McLynn, Frank, Crime and Punishment in Eighteenth-century England (London, 1989). Radzinowicz, Leon, A History of English Criminal Law and its Administration from 1750, vol. I: The Movement for Reform (London, 1948). Sharpe, J.A., Crime in Early Modern England 1550-1750 (London, 1984). Stephen, James Fitzjames, A History of the Criminal Law of England, vol. I- III, (London, 1883). Thompson, Roger, Women in Stuart England and America. A Comparative Study (London, 1974). - Trial of Mary Blandy, ed. William Roughead, Notable Trials Series (Glasgow, 1914). Welsh, Alexander, Strong Representations. Narrative and Circumstantial Evidence in England (Baltimore, 1992). Wiggins, Martin, Journeymen in Murder: The Assassin in English Renaissance Drama (Oxford, 1991).

Eckhart Hellmuth (München)

To Make Sense of the Senseless The Representation of Crime and Punishment in Eighteenth-Century England "The eighteenth century was in fact surely (like most other centuries, no doubt) both an exciting, and often bewildering and frightening era in English history."1 This sentence, written by the Oxford historian Joanna Innes, seems banal, but it is none the less correct. For in the eighteenth century contemporaries were confronted with phenomena that must surely have been profoundly unsettling.2 This was a period in which social life was becoming increasingly commercialized. New opportunities for consumption arose, and new habits of consumption became established. Increasingly, and this applies particularly to the second half of the century, the monopoly on politics enjoyed by the old parliamentary élites was challenged by the rise of non-parliamentary organizations, radical political ideas, and more subtle mechanisms for manipulating public opinion. Stimulated by the contemporary press and journalism, the political debate expanded: new groups, especially the middling classes, became adept in the art of taking part in the political process. The political theory and language of this period was controversial and diverse in form. "Surprisingly unsettled state of opinion", "confusion, uncertainty and disagreement" - this is how the contemporary political discourse has been described.3 And the eighteenth century was a period when the problem of criminality became an obsession. Contemporaries were convinced that they were living in particularly violent times, and that they were surrounded by a world of crime. We do not know whether the eighteenth century was, in fact, more violent than the preceding one, or whether the rate of crime was higher. But what we do know is that the representation of crime reached unprecedented levels in the eighteenth century.4 This was related to the fact that the non-renewal of the Licensing Act towards the end of the seventeenth century produced a journalistic culture that was *

2

3

I would like to thank Angela Davies for her invaluable help with the translation of this article. Joanna Innes, "Jonathan Clark: Social History and England's 'Ancien Regime'", Past & Present 115 (1985), 165-200, 200. The best surveys are at present Paul Langford, A Polite and Commercial People. England 1727-1783 (Oxford, 1989) and id., Public Life and the Propertied Englishman, 1698-1798 (Oxford, 1991). Jock A.W. Gunn, Beyond Liberty and Property (Montreal, 1983), 189. Ian Bell, Literature and Crime in Augustan England (London, 1991), 17 writes: "What we seem to be confronted with, then, is a sustained chorus of anxiety about crime, about the changes of living in the metropolis, and about the threat to personal safety, which seems to exist more or less independently of any facts which can be identified."

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unique in the Europe of its time. A relatively free and strongly market-orientated press, based mainly in London but also active in the provinces, conveyed the impression that murder, theft, highway robbery, arson, and other crimes had reached epidemic proportions in England. It is easy to overlook the fact that newspapers played a key role in creating this image. It was primarily newspapers which put the idea into people's heads that crime was an integral part of English society. In the eighteenth century newspapers were a mass medium. This becomes clear if we look at their circulation figures. In 1750, 7.3 million tax stamps were issued for newspapers. By 1760 this figure had risen to 9.4 million, and in 1775 it had reached 12.6 million.5 London was at the centre of this boom. In 1760 the metropolis had four daily papers, and four or five evening papers which came out three times each week.6 Thus during the eighteenth century London was well supplied with newspapers. Outside the metropolis the picture was not very different. Between 1735 and 1760, towns such as Coventry, Birmingham, Cambridge, Oxford, Leicester, Hull, Liverpool, Halifax, Exeter, and Sheffield all founded their own newspapers.7 And if we look at the century as a whole, we see how provincial newspapers flourished during the eighteenth century. In 1723 there were 24 newspapers outside London. In 1753 there were 32, in 1760, 35, in 1782 about 50, and shortly after the turn of the century, more than 100.8 Most of these newspapers, which did so well in the eighteenth century, reported news about crime. In almost every issue we can find something about criminals and their deeds. Some of what was printed is undoubtedly reminiscent of the sensational journalism of our own day. Especially in cases of domestic murder the killing of siblings, a spouse, a sister or a brother - and rape, the stories were presented in a way that was intended to send shivers down the reader's spine. Thus, for example, a report published in the London Evening Post, describes the bloody scene at which the murder victim is found: Upon breaking open the outward Door of the House, the neighbours found the Deceased upon the Ground in his Shirt, murthered in a Manner as cruel as can be expressed, his Throat was cut through, as is usual to kill Sheep or Calves, and a bloody Knife lying by him, his Forehead was fractur'd , his Skull cleft in two places, and his Brains beat out, supposed to be done with a long Carpenter's felling Axe, which was found bloodily lying across the Body.

Horror, it seems, sold well. In any case, even the Craftsman, which had been the platform of the country opposition in the 1730s and had stimulated the political

6

Michael Harris, "The Structure, Ownership and control of the Press 1620-1780", in George Boyce, J.Curran and P.Wingate (eds.), Newspaper History. From the 17th Century to the Present Day (London, 1978), 82-97, 88. See Ian R. Christie, "British Newspapers in the Later Georgian Age", in Ian R. Christie, Myth and Reality in Late-Eighteenth-Century British Politics (London, 1970), 311-333,314. Geoffrey A. Cranfield, The Development of the Provincial Newspaper 1700-1760 (Oxford, 1962), 21. Jeremy Black, The English Press in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1987), 304. London Evening Post, April 10, 1731.

The Representation of Crime and Punishment in 18th-Century England

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discourse more than any other organ of its time, could not, apparently, do without horror stories in the 1750s.10 When sales figures started dropping, the editor of the Craftsman tried some shock therapy. "Last Monday night, about ten o'clock", we read in one of the paper's crime reports, a poor servant maid was seiz'd by an infamous villain in St. Thomas's street, who, after insulting her, forc'd a stick up her private parts, stuck with nails transversely; so that by extracting the stick, the nails tore out parts of the body of the womb, and the pudendum hanging by a filament only, was cut off. The mouths of the vessels being open, a considerable effusion of blood ensued ... Dr. Dowman, and Mr. Buras, surgeon, have the care of this poor creature.... The destructive instrument may be seen at the doctor's home in the Haymarket.11

Considerable numbers of such articles can be found. None the less, they are rather untypical. 'Normal' newspaper reports of crimes are rather different. I shall quote two examples. "Yesterday Thomas Baylis was committed to the New-Gaol in Southwark, on the Oath of Henry Smith and his own Confession, for breaking open his Chest, and stealing a large Quantity of Money."12 "Robbed. On Thursday Night Mr. George Lane, a Farmer at Stockwell, was robbed near Packham-Gap, of 17s., his hat and Great Coat, by two Footpads, who told him they were only upon a Frolick." 13 Eighteenth-century newspapers reported other crimes in a similarly dispassionate manner - murders, smuggling, forgery, or whatever. The reporters limited themselves to describing what had happened, the weapons or instruments used, and the stolen goods. Victims, and where possible, perpetrators, were named. There was something automatic, calculating, and statistical about this sort of crime reporting. It is certainly no coincidence that the Whitehall Evening Post reports which I have just quoted from come between the bankruptcies and death notices. Crime thus begins to look like something inevitable, almost natural. Like insolvency and death, it is an integral part of contemporary life. The cumulative effect of all these crime reports is to signal that a world without criminality is unthinkable and impossible. The information and debate about crime that the newspapers withheld from their readers is found in a different medium - criminal biographies.14 About 2,000 to 3,000 of these were published during the eighteenth century. This genre included the Accounts of the Ordinary of Newgate, the clergyman who talked and prayed with condemned prisoners in Newgate before their deaths. These pamphlets could be up to 40 or 50 pages long, and followed a set pattern. First, the most important information about the trial was given, followed by references to the Bible passages from which the Ordinary preached to the prisoner before his or her execution. After this came a biographical report about the condemned person, 10

On the histoiy of the Craftsman see e.g. the introduction in Simon Varey (ed.), Lord Bolingbroke. Contributions to the Craftsman (Oxford, 1982). Country Journal, or the Craftsman, Saturday, June 16, 1750. The Whitehall Evening Post. From Thursday January 1, to Saturday January 3, 1756. The Whitehall Evening Post. From Thursday January 29, to Saturday January 31, 1756. A very valuable introduction in this genre is Philip Rawlings, Drunks, Whores and Idle Apprentices. Criminal Biographies of the Eighteenth Century (London, 1992).

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which could contain letters and confessions. Besides the Accounts of the Ordinary of Newgate, there were numerous criminal biographies with colourful titles such as

The Life, Travel, Exploits, Frauds and Robberies of Charles Spreckman (1763).15

In addition: Compendia of Crimes appeared, as Lincoln B. Faller has pointed out. It was during the second decade of the eighteenth century,... that the first great collections of criminals' lives began to appear. The forerunners of the later Newgate Calendars, these are gatherings, often rewritings, of previously published materials interspersed with commentaries and narratives of their compilers' own invention. In editions of two, three, even four volumes, at prices of as much as ten shillings the set, they mark not only the full arrival of criminal biography as an English cultural institution, but also the money that could be made of it.

These compendia of crime also include the Malefactor's Register, which was published in 1779, and which I shall discuss in more detail later in this paper. Criminal biographies are among the few types of sources which are of interest to historians and literary critics alike. However, they ask very different questions of these texts. For literary critics the problem of the origins of the novella has long been at the forefront of interest. In the past literary critics argued that the [criminal] biographies facilitated an understanding of the genesis of certain literary techniques ... which were regarded as influential in the formation of the novel. In this way criminal biographies were regarded as having value only because of their supposed relationship to the novel.

More recently however, literary critics have changed tack. Lincoln B. Faller and Ian Bell, in particular, have distanced themselves from this hierarchical view which gives criminal biographies a purely secondary role. Instead, they take criminal biographies seriously as an independent genre. For Bell the dialectic between the law and the text is crucial. "Law" writes Bell, echoing Gramsci, is the central mechanism used by political society to impose its meanings on civil society. By extension, Literature [here he means writing on crime] intermittently projects and stabilises these meanings, while also having the capacity intermittently to disrupt and problematise them.18

And in his book, Turned to Account, Faller discusses the different narrative modes in criminal biographies and their function. 19 Moreover, his work has changed the co-ordinates of the heuristic horizons within which we locate criminal biography. He describes his approach as follows: Criminal biographies

15 16

19

Reprinted in ibid., 185-214. Lincoln B. Faller, Crime and Defoe. A New Kind of Writing (Cambridge, 1993), 5. Rawlings, Drunks, Whores and Idle Apprentices, 10. Ian Bell, Literature and Crime in Augustan England, 229. Lincoln B. Faller, Turned to Account. The Forms and Functions of Criminal Biography in Late Seventeenth- and Early Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1987).

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are best seen and understood ... as a kind of cultural practice, as socially determined and socially sanctioned discourses which, in one way or another, 'glossed' or made tolerable sense of criminals, their crimes, and the punishments they had to suffer.

It is clear that historians have read these criminal biographies differently from literary scholars. At present, it seems to me that two quite distinct attitudes predominate among historians who are interested in this material. The names Peter Linebaugh and James Sharpe stand for these two approaches. For Linebaugh, criminal biographies provide access to the world of the lower orders. Believing that historians can distinguish fact from fiction, he sees criminal biographies as rich sources of data for a 'modern' social history. "It is possible", he writes refering to the Accounts of the Ordinary of Newgate, to read the Accounts... in a 'Satanic light1 and to reconstruct the worlds of London crime from them without the moral reference points that the Ordinary posted on all Sides. ... It is even possible to examine statistically much of the information contained in them, finding out about the mobility, ages, family structure, apprenticeship and work histories of a significant portion of the eightccnth-century working class. We need read them neither as 'awful examples' nor as 'merry adventures' in order to learn from them.

Sharpe's work on criminal biographies, however, points in a different direction. He sees criminal biographies as the propaganda of the ruling classes, which was used to hammer the difference between right and wrong into the minds of the lower orders. "This type of literature," writes Sharpe, "must have played a vital role in spreading official ideas about crime and punishment, and about the whole nature of authority and disorder down to the lower orders." "The popular literature which discussed these ceremonies so avidly constituted an important point of contact between official ideas of law and order and the culture of the masses."22 The way in which historians have used criminal biographies has attracted considerable criticism - for example, in Philip Rawling's Drunks, Whores and Idle Apprentices,23 Whether this criticism is justified, cannot be decided here. Instead I 20 21

22

23

Lincoln B. Faller, Crime and Defoe. A New Kind of Writing (Cambridge, 1993), 6. Peter Linebaugh, "The Ordinary Of Newgate and His Account", in J. S. Cockburn (ed.), Crime in England 1550-1800 (Princeton, 1977), 246-269, 268. See as well id., The London Hanged. Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1990), 90 ff.. James A. Sharpe, '"Last Dying Speeches': Religion, Ideology and Public Execution in Seventeenth-Century England", Past & Present 107 (1985), 144-167,162. Rawlings, Drunks, Whores and Idle Apprentices, 13 writes: "Not far distant from those who believe that criminal biographies present reflections of reality are the social historians whose interest is, primarily, in the labouring poor and for the study of whom these biographies represent a rare source. Wary of the problem of accepting the biographies at face value and yet unwilling to reject them totally, they have subjected them to testing against other sources, typically manuscript court records. Without question the resulting work is of great value and has provided a fresh view of the literature. However, the problems of using the literature have not been fully addressed. The verification process is open to obvious criticisms, placing, as it does, such faith in the sources which are used as verifiers. Moreover, the historian's need to employ this process before feeling able to use the literature as an historical source reinforces

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will try to demonstrate that historians and literary critics need not be as far apart as they often appear to be. By looking at a limited body of sources, the Malefactor's Register, I want to show that there can very well be points of contact between the two disciplines. First, some general information about the Malefactor's Register, subtitled: New Newgate Calendar Containing The Authentic Lives, Trials, Accounts of Executions, Dying Speeches, and Other Curious Particulars Relating to All the most notorious Violaters Of the Laws of Their Country. This five-volume work, published in London in 1779, was dedicated to John Fielding, half-brother of Henry Fielding. It presented for debate not 'normal', run-of-the mill criminal cases, but unusual or spectacular cases that contemporaries found exciting or upsetting. Among the celebrities that figured in the Malefactor's Register were Jonathan Wild, the Jacobite lords executed for high treason, Captain Kid, who ended on the gallows for piracy, and the Duchess of Kingston, who was brought to trial by the House of Lords for bigamy. What was the intended audience for these compendia in which murder, forgery, peijury, coining, treason, horse-stealing, bigamy, larceny, petit treason, and piracy, among other crimes, were depicted on a broad canvas? If we take the frontispiece of the Malefactor's Register as indicating the target readership, it becomes clear that it was not a case of inculcating the morals of the ruling classes into the lower orders. The frontispiece depicts a luxuriously furnished room decorated with statues of the virtues Justice, Wisdom, Temperance, and Fortitude. In the centre of the room sits a concerned mother giving her little son a copy of the Newgate Calendar, while pointing to a hanged man outside. Obviously the Malefactor's Register formed part of the internal discourse of the genteel classes. "Guarding the minds of youth against the approaches of vice"24 was one of the declared aims of the editors of the Malefactor's Register. Consequently, each criminal biography in this compendium ended by articulating the moral of the story. Gaming, duelling, idleness, vanity, extravagance, drunkenness, and keeping bad company were among the vices which, it was claimed, brought people to the gallows. Among the things this moral discourse presented as desirable was moderating the passions. Thus we read in one of the criminal biographies: "The lesson to be learnt from the fate of this man is to moderate our passions of every kind; and to live by the rules of temperance and sobriety."25 The morality that was unfolded here was, on the whole, simple. Thus, for example, an episode about patricide and matricide ends with a reference to the Fifth Commandment and the following poem:

24 25

the traditional view that the act of distinguishing between absolutes of fact and fiction is not barely possible, but is fundamental to historiography." The Malefactor's Register, Preface, Vol. 1, V-V1II, VIII. "Circumstances respecting the Trial and Execution of John Price, otherwise Jack Ketch, who was hanged for Murder, with some particulars of his life", The Malefactor's Register, Vol. 1, 239-242, 242.

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Let children that would fear the Lord Hear what their teachers say; With rev'rence meet their parents word; And with delight obey. For those who worship God, and give Their parents honour due, Here on this earth thejjJong shall live, and live hereafter too.

Now it could be argued that this morality developed in the Malefactor's Register is a typical product of the disciplining drive of the middling classes. This would, in a way, take us back to the old game of "spot the bourgeoisie". But it seems to me that this moral programme can be contextualized differently. When the Malefactor's Register was published, England was in crisis.27 The American War of Independence was not just a military event taking place on a battlefield across the Atlantic. It shattered the political confidence of large sections of the mother country's political and social élites. In this situation, a sentence such as "Upon the whole, the fate of these malefactors ought to teach us obedience to our superiors, love to our neighbours and duty to our God"28 was not merely another stock sentiment. It also contained a political programme. The moral wisdom to be found in the Malefactor's Register coincides with other contemporary attempts by the political and social élite to impose a new order on a world that was disintegrating before their eyes by taking recourse to traditional formulae. The best example of this is perhaps provided by the Anglican clergy.29 The main message that clerics put across in sermons, hymns, and tracts during the American War of Independence was the importance of obeying authority, leading a moral life, and doing one's duty at home and at work. Similarly, the Anglican clergy used the pulpit to preach obedience, loyalty, and non-resistance. Especially towards the end of the war against the American colonies, the clergy's propaganda campaign against the rebels was often combined with a plea for the moral renewal of English society. The objective of the Malefactor's Register, however, was not simply to fix certain positions in the political-moral discourse of the 1770s and 1780s. At a time of growing uncertainty, the Malefactor's Register also represented an attempt to make sense out of a criminal justice system that was highly irrational - not by means of legal arguments such as are found in contemporary tracts, but in the language of criminal biography. And this, in a way, brings us to the problem that Faller addresses in the definition already quoted: Criminal biographies "are best 26

28

29

"Narrative of the Case of Barbara Spencer, who was hanged for High-Treason", The Malefactor's Register, Vol. 1, 258-260, 260. See e.g. James E. Bradley, Popular Politics and the American Revolution (Macon, Georgia, 1986). "Narrative of the Cases of Daniel Damaree, George Purchase, and Francis Willis, who were tried for High-Treason", The Malefactor's Register, Vol. 1, 125-131, 131. See Paul Langford, "The English Clergy and the American Revolution", in Eckhart Hellmuth (ed.), The Transformation of Political Culture. England and Germany in the Late Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1990), 275-309.

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seen and understood ... as a kind of cultural practice, as socially determined and socially sanctioned discourses which, in one way or another, 'glossed' or made tolerable sense of criminals, their crimes, and the punishment they had to suffer."30 Before I analyse two criminal biographies in more detail, I shall briefly describe the irrational nature of the English criminal justice system.31 The English criminal justice system of the eighteenth century was incoherent and inconsistent. One problem was that punishments were not meted out according to a varied scale. The repertoire of punishments in addition to hanging that was available to English justice in the eighteenth century was, in theory, relatively broad. It ranged from fines and public ritual punishments such as whipping, branding, and pillorying, to transportation and imprisonment. This "penal pluralism"32 which was theoretically available had little effect on actual sentencing practice in the eighteenth century, however, as individual punishments were limited to strictly defined areas. Thus, for example, less serious offences tended to be punished by imprisonment. Judges at the assizes or at the Old Bailey gave relatively few prison sentences. As late as 1770-74, for example, only 2.3 per cent of all sentences given at the Old Bailey involved imprisonment, and they were limited to certain less serious offences, or cases with mitigating circumstances.33 Prison sentences were most frequently given for summary offences, that is, for crimes which, unlike indictable offences, did not come before the assizes or quarter sessions, but were decided summarily by Justices of the Peace, without a bill of indictment, and without a jury.34 Capital offences were not considered summary offences; they were indictable. Under summary procedures, neither death nor deportation were permitted sentences. Until well into the eighteenth century, therefore, imprisonment was an alternative not to execution, but to the fines or corporal punishments which could be imposed for summary offences. Thus the death sentence automatically became more significant. Originally, few offences were punishable by death in the English legal system. The Capital Code then gradually grew until by the end of the Restoration period it included about 50 offences. However, it was not known as the Bloody Code until later. In the period 1688 to 1765 the number of capital crimes more than tripled to 160, and by 1815 it comprised 225 offences.35 30

Faller, Crime and Defoe, 6. On the general development of criminal law and the penal system see Leon Radzinowicz, A History of English Criminal Law and its Administration from 1750, Vol. I-IV (London, 19481968); John Beattie, Crime and the Courts in England. 1660-1800 (Princeton, 1986); W.R. Cornish, G. D. N. Clark, Law and Society in England, 1750-1950 (London, 1989). Joanna Innes, John Styles, "The Crime Wave: Recent Writing on Crime and Criminal Justice in Eighteenth Century England", Journal of British Studies 25 (1986), 380-435, 414. Michael Ignatieff, A Just Measure of Pain. The Penitentiary in the Industrial Revolution 1750-1850 (London, 1978), 15. On the difference between summary and indictable offenses see David Philips, Crime and Authority in Victorian England. The Black Country 1835-1860 (London, 1977), 298 ff. Michael Ignatieff, A Just Measure of Pain, 16; see also Douglas Hay, "Property, Authority and the Criminal Law", in Douglas Hay, Peter Linebaugh, John G. Rule, E. P. Thompson, Cal Winslow, Albion's Fatal Tree. Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England (London, 1975), 17-63, 18.

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This astonishing fact should not lead us to jump to conclusions. The inflation of capital offences as a result of parliamentary legislation was not matched by a corresponding increase in the number of death sentences or executions. There were three main factors which worked against this. (1) British criminal law, on paper the most draconian in Europe, was in practice extremely flexible. It was open to manipulation on a large scale, and gave the judge, and especially the jury, 36 a great deal of discretion. They obviously made full use of this leeway, often in the defendant's favour. Thus it was not unusual for a jury to acquit the defendant in the face of contrary evidence, or, more frequently, to give a "partial verdict". This could include, for example, the common practice of pious peijury. In less serious crimes against property, the jury would deliberately undervalue the booty so that the crime could be reduced to petty larceny and the punishment reduced. ( 2) The expanded Capital Code was by no means a systematic and comprehensive work of legislation. Like British criminal law in general, it was inherently reactive. Consequently, many of the laws which were part of the Capital Code were closely tailored to extremely limited specific cases and were relatively rarely applied. (3) There was a subtle system of granting pardons after the death sentence had been imposed. 37 The Transportation Act of 1718 opened the possibility of pardoning those condemned to death and transporting them to America for fourteen years. 38 Pardons were granted according to relatively fixed and widely known criteria. In crimes against property, for example, such factors as the offender's youth, lack of previous convictions, and poverty all counted as mitigating circumstances. As John Beattie has put it, it was a "roundabout but effective way of creating a secondary punishment where none existed, a way of severely punishing some offenders without hanging them. It was clearly legal; but it also involved the manipulation of some longstanding rules and practices". 9 Thus there was a clear discrepancy between the draconian punishments laid down in Law, and actual sentencing practice which displayed a remarkable degree of flexibility, and which could, in individual cases, show clemency. However, the fact remains that English legal culture of the eighteenth century, more than any other contemporary European one, centred on the death sentence. "The number of criminals put to death in England", we read in a tract of 1778, "is much greater than in any other part of Europe." 40 Similarly, there is no doubt that the English criminal justice system of the eighteenth century lacked internal logic. The principle that punishments should fit the crime was of limited validity. Thus, for example, the

36

37

38

On this topic see Thomas Andrew Green, Verdict According to Conscience. Perspectives on the English Criminal Trial Jury 1200-1800 (Chicago/London, 1985), 150 ff. and 279 ff.. On the pardoning process see above all Peter King, "Decision-Makers and Decision-Making in the English Criminal Law, 1750-1800", Historical Journal 27 (1984), 25-58. On the problem of transportation see Roger A. Ekirch, Bound for America. The Transportation of British Convicts to the Colonies 1718-1775 (Oxford, 1987). Beattie, Crime and the Courts in England, 475. William Smith, Mild Punishments Sound Policy: Or Observations on the Laws Relative to Debtors and Felons (London, 2 1778).

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Waltham Black Act41 prescribed the same punishment for stealing wood, fish or fruit as for murder or arson. Against this background it is not surprising that a debate about criminal law and sentencing practice continued throughout the whole of the eighteenth century. Occasionally, bizarre tones were struck in this debate. Thus 1725 saw the publication of a reforming pamphlet entitled Some Reasons humbly offer 1i why the Castration of Persons found guilty of Robbery and Theft may be the best Method of Punishment of those Crimes. But in our context something else is more important. During the final decades of the century there was increasing criticism both of the inflation of capital offences as a result of parliamentary legislation, and at the frequency with which the death sentence was actually carried out.42 Criticism was made on humanitarian as well as on utilitarian grounds. Although hardly anybody actually advocated abolishing the death sentence, more voices were raised in favour of giving imprisonment greater weight within the criminal justice system. Thus Jonas Hanway's pamphlet, Solitude in Imprisonment. With proper profitable Labour And a spare Diet, the most human and effectual means of bringing Malefactors who have forfeited their Lives, or are subject to Transportation, To a right Sense of their Condition, was published in 1776, three years before the Malefactor's Register, But those who were looking for alternatives to the death sentence were not the only contributors to the contemporary debate. Voices were also raised in fierce defence of the status quo, and these people were often convinced of the deterrent effect of the death sentence. "If there be anything that shakes the soul of a confirmed villain, it is the expectation of approaching death," wrote the philosopher and clergyman William Paley in 1785. And in the same year, in his Thoughts on Executive Justice, Martin Madan described with great pathos the indelible impression made in the court-room by the pronouncement of the death sentence. The dreadful sentence is now pronounced - every heart shakes with terror - the almost fainting criminals are taken from the bar - the crowd retires - each to his several home and carries the mournful story to his friends and neighbours; the day of the execution arrives; the wretches are led forth to suffer and exhibit a spectacle to the beholders, too aweful and solemn for description.

What is happening here is obvious. Authors such as Madan and Paley defend the death sentence because they believe in its deterrent effect. They are convinced that the horror of the execution morally purifies the soul of others. This argument justified the existing system of punishment by reference to its impact on others, on 41

42 43

On the Waltham Black Act see especially Edward P. Thompson, Whigs and Hunters (London, 1 9 7 5 )

'

See e.g. Frank McLynn, Crime and Punishment in Eighteenth-Century England (Oxford, 1992), 251 ff.. William Paley, Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy (London, 1785), 544. Martin Madan, Thoughts on Executive Justice with Respect to our Criminal Laws, particularly on the Circuit (London, 1785), 30.

The Representation of Crime and Punishment in 18th-Century England

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the masses. But a completely different argument could also be put in order to justify the status quo - an individualistic argument that centred on the fate of the criminal. This type of argument is found in the criminal biographies, and it is much more subtle than the one already outlined. For in the criminal biographies sense is made out of the senseless with the aid of the sublime. I shall attempt to demonstrate this with reference to two examples, both from the Malefactor's Register. Unlike so many other criminal biographies which deal with murder, arson, highway robbery, or forgery, these concern something which today would be described as white-collar crime. The offence was forging bonds - a crime typical of an increasingly commercialized society. The two cases I shall present display a number of parallels: both defendants were respectable members of the middling classes; both ended on the gallows. And in both cases the punishment was out of all proportion to the crime. Let us turn to the first case and look at the facts. This case involved twin brothers, Daniel and Robert Perreau. Robert Perreau was a respected London apothecary. Daniel was, it seems, a man of not inconsiderable private means. The third person in this legal drama was Margaret Catherine Rudd, who lived with Daniel as his common law wife. From the evidence given at the trial, there is every reason to believe that Margaret Catherine Rudd forged a bond for £5,000, which Daniel then gave to Robert. Robert presented it to a London banker, who spotted that it was a forgery. The Perreau brothers and Margaret Catherine Rudd were apprehended for forgery. At their trial, the brothers insisted on their innocence, and claimed that they had not been aware that the bond in question had been forged. In the case of Robert Perreau, in particular, this seemed highly plausible. None the less, the trial ended in both brothers being found guilty. Although almost 100 London bankers and merchants signed a petition to the monarch asking him to pardon the brothers, Robert and Daniel Perreau were hanged at Tyburn on 17 January 1776. Margaret Catherine Rudd was tried separately, and acquitted. This case, as it is presented in the Malefactor's Register,45 becomes the tragedy of Robert Perreau. Witnesses appear, giving statements to illuminate this dark and complicated case. The person who appears in the worst light is Margaret Catherine Rudd. Daniel Perreau hardly makes an appearance. Robert Perreau stands in the limelight, presenting himself in a long monologue as the epitome of bourgeois virtue. Among other things, he says: In truth, my Lords, I am bold to say that few men, in my line of life, have carried on their business with a fairer character, not many with better success. I have followed no pleasures, nor launched into any expences: there is not a man living who can charge me with neglect or dissipation. The honest profits of my trade have afforded me a comfortable support and furnished me with the means of maintaining, in a decent sort, a worthy wife, and three promising children, upon whom I was labouring to bestow the properest education in my 46 power.

45

46

"Account of the Trials and Convictions of Robert Perreau, and Daniel Perreau, for Forgery, attended with very extraordinary Circumstances", The Malefactor's Register, Vol. 5, 161-180. Ibid., 168/169.

Eckhart Hellmuth

56

This man, who had lived according precisely to those morals upheld so strongly by the Malefactor's Register, and whose guilt was doubtful, ended up on the gallows. None the less, the account in the Malefactor's Register does not mention bitterness or anger. On the contrary - Robert Perreau meets his death in the same civilized way in which he had lived his life. In the Malefactor's Register the execution of the brothers Perreau becomes a sentimental, almost intimate affair. After conviction the behaviour of the brothers was in every respect, proper for their unhappy situation.... On the day of execution the brothers were favoured with a mourning coach, and it was thought that 30,000 people attended. They were both dressed in mourning, and behaved with the most christian resolution. When they quitted the coach and got into the cart, they bowed respectfully to the sheriffs, who waved their hands as a final adieu. After the customary devotions, they crossed their hands, joining the four together, and in this manner were launched into eternity.

By allowing the Perreaus to die in this way, the Malefactor's Register ignores the issue of the point and appropriateness of the sentence. The wretched end which they come to on the scaffold is stylized into a transition into another world. The criminal is presented as reconciled with God and the world. A similar line is taken in the second criminal biography which I want to discuss here - the bizarre case of a minister, Dr Dodd.48 Again, let us start with the facts. Dr Dodd was well-known and highly respected in London. He was Prebendary of Brecon, Chaplain-in-Ordinary to his Majesty, and Minister to the Magdalen Hospital. He was also the founder of various charities, including the Magdalen Hospital for reclaiming Young Women who had swerved from the Path of Virtue and the Relief of Poor Debtors. Dr Dodd forged a bond for a considerable sum of money to get him through temporary financial difficulties. When the matter was detected, he immediately did everything possible to make up for the harm caused by the forgery. None the less, he was taken to court and condemned to death. The execution took place on 27 June 1777, although the jury, who had found him guilty, recommended that he be pardoned. There was also a petition in his favour. It was ironic that a few years before his execution, Dodd had published a pamphlet denouncing the excessive use of the death sentence in England (The Frequency of Capital Punishment inconsistent with Justice, Sound Policy and Religion). In the Malefactor's Register Dr Dodd's death is as civilized as that of the brothers Perreau.49 Up to the last minute of his life he exercises his calling as a priest by preparing a fellow prisoner, who is to be hanged with him, for the next life. Thereafter he devotes himself to prayer. But according the Malefactor's Register, Dr Dodd does even more. He leaves the world a letter addressed to his fellow prisoners and containing information about the ars moriendi. This letter, which brings to an end the criminal biography of Dr Dodd, is indeed a remarkable 47

48

Ibid., 178/179. On the Case of Dr. Dodd see V.A.C. Gatrell, The Hanging Tree. Execution and the English People 1770-1868 (Oxford, 1994), 292 ff. "The extraordinary Case, Trial, Conviction and Execution, of Dr. William Dodd, For Forgery", The Malefactor's Register, Vol. 5, 207-227.

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attempt to make sense out of the senseless. Dodd encourages his fellow prisoners, who, like he himself, will soon be hanged, not to harbour any feelings of revenge against those who have worked towards their conviction. And he spells out exactly the sort of attitude which they should have in the last hours of their lives: What we can do is commonly nothing more than to leave the world an example of contrition. On the dreadful day, when the sentence of the law has its full force, some will be found to have affected a shameless bravery. Such is not the proper behaviour of a convicted criminal. To rejoice in tortures is the privilege of a martyr; to meet death with intrepidity is the right only of innocence, if any human being with innocence could be found. Of him whose life is shortened by his crimes, The last duties are humility and self-abasement. We owe to God sincere repentance; We owe to man the appearance of repentance.

Condemned prisoners are also to display this sort of attitude because it secures social peace. Dodd accused those who do not want to accept their fate of having very little considered the nature of society. One of the principal parts of national felicity arises from a wise and impartial administration of justice. Every man reposes upon the tribunals of his country the stability of possession, and the serenity of life. He therefore who unjustly exposes the courts of judicature to suspicion, either of partiality or error, not only does an injury to those who dispense the laws, but diminishes the public confidence in the laws themselves, and shakes the foundation of public tranquillity.

Against the background of these views, Dodd can do nothing but accept his own violent death. "For my own part, I confess, with deepest compunction, the crime which has brought me to this place; and admit the justice of my sentence, while I am sinking under its severity." 2 It seems to me that this is the sort of reasoning that makes criminal biographies interesting for historians. It goes some way towards explaining why such a problematic institution as the English criminal justice system was, to a large degree, accepted during the eighteenth century. As the newspaper articles quoted at the beginning of this paper show, representations of crime could be unsettling. But they could also have a stabilizing effect. Criminal biographies such as those found in the Malefactor's Register seem to belong into the latter category. By offering certain patterns of interpretation, with whose help contemporaries could read the act of punishment 'correctly', they became part of the ideological cement that held eighteenth-century English society together.

50 51 52

Ibid., 226-227. Ibid., 227. Ibid., 227.

Hermann Wellenreuther (Gottingen)

Pamphlets in the Seven Years' War: More Change Than Continuity ?

A number o f recent studies have focused on the nature o f public debate during the Seven Years' War. Some have analysed the controversy between William Pitt and Lord Bute 1 , one monograph has sought to describe the nature o f Pitt's popularity, 2 another the dialogue about Prussia, 3 while the important work o f John Brewer has dissected the debate at the accession o f George III. 4 However, none o f these studies has attempted an overall analysis o f the public debate during the Seven Years' War. 5 While research has concentrated on the political contents and intentions o f pamphlets and other forms o f publications, no author has hitherto tried to integrate the various types of publications into a larger setting, nor have the texts themselves been the subject o f intense analysis. The purpose o f this presentation is to attempt an over all assessment o f the nature o f the debate o n the basis o f a systematic analysis o f all the publications issued between 1756 and 1763. 6 The results presented are preliminary, however, because my analysis is not yet complete. 1

2

3

4 5

6

John Brewer, "The Misfortunes of Lord Bute: A Case Study in Eighteenth-Century political Argument and Public Opinion", Historical Journal 16, No. 1 (1973), 3-43; Idem, Party Ideology and Popular Politics at the Accession of George III (Cambridge 1976), chaps. 6, 11; Karl W. Schweizer, "Lord Bute and William Pitt's Resignation", Canadian Journal of History 7 (Sept. 1973), 111-125; Idem, "Lord Bute and the Press: The Origins of the Press War of 1762 Reconsidered", Idem, ed., Lord Bute. Essays in Re-interpretation (Leicester 1988), 8398. I am grateful to Ms. Nicole Dannhus for help in revising this paper. Marie Peters, Pitt and Popularity: The Patriot Minister and London Opinion During the Seven Years' War (Oxford 1980). Manfred Schlenke, England und das Friderizianische Preußen, 1740-1763, Orbis Academicus, ed. Fritz Wagner (Freiburg, München 1963). Brewer, Party Ideology (cf. n. 1). This likewise holds true for L. W. Hanson, Government and the Press 1695-1763 (Oxford, 1936); Robert Rea, The English Press in Politics, 1760-1774 (Lincoln, Neb., 1963); Lucy Sutherland, "The City of London in 18th Century Politics", in: R. Pares, A. J. P. Taylor, eds., Essays Presented to Sir Lewis B. Namier (London 1956, repr. Freeport, NY 1971), 49-74; and especially for Robert Spector, English Literary Periodicals and the Climate of Opinion During the Seven Years' War (The Hague 1966). These contributions shed, however, valuable light on aspects of the public debate during the Seven Years' War, as do the numerous articles and the small number of monographs on particular journals or newspapers of this period. This essay is based on material assembled in the context of a larger research project on the function of rhetoric in the first half of eighteenth-century England, in which my colleague Heinz-Joachim Müllenbrock will focus on the period 1710-1714, while I will analyse the public debate during the Seven Years' War. I have thus far found about 1650 titles relevant for the second period. In analysing the public debate I have not only looked at pamphlets

60

Hermann

Wellenreuther

The subject can be approached from various angles: Who participated in these debates, what were the themes, which were the points of reference, who were the addressees, and most importantly, which structural elements stand out? Participants, themes, and addressees reflect the nature of the war: While in earlier debates authors were mostly recruited from the larger London area or the English political elite, during the war an increasing number of authors hailed from other parts of the British Empire. Benjamin Franklin, Lewis Evans, and the Rev. William Smith from Pennsylvania, Archibald Kennedy from New York, and John Rutherford from North Carolina, are but a few examples of American authors.7 Surprisingly the number of Irish8 and Scottish 9 authors is no larger than of those living in North America or in the West Indies, or of those associated with the East India Company. 10 Authors now reflect the diversity of the Empire more closely than at any earlier period. This holds true not only for the debate over Guadeloupe versus Canada11 during the last three years of the war, but for the earlier years of the war as well.

7

8 9 10 11

published, but on poems, prints, ballads, broadsides, larger monographic publications as well as magazines and newspapers. This article will report some of the preliminary results. It is of course to be understood, that all data on authors suffer from the fact that four fifths of the pamphlets and other writings of this period were published anonymously. Thus the figures reflect only those writings, which were published with the authors name attached to it, or where the author became known to contemporaries or were found by historians. The following authors hailed from an English colony in North America during this period: Rev. Amos Adams (Roxbury, MA), sermon; Rev. Francis Alison (Maryland), sermon; Rev. Joseph Bellamy (Woodbury, CT), sermon; Samuel Blodget (Boston, MA), pamphlet; Willam Bollan (Boston, MA), pamphlet, during the Seven Years' War Agent of Massachusetts in London; Rev. Richard Clarke (Cheshunt, S.C.), religious tracts; George Cookings (Boston, MA), poems; Rev. Samuel Cooper (Boston, MA), sermon; Rev. Samuel Davies (Virginia), sermon; William Douglass (Boston, MA), monograph; Lewis Evans (Pennsylvania), map; Ellis Huske (Boston, MA), pamphlet; John Frederick Koffler (Pennsylvania), pamphlet; Otis Little (Boston, MA), pamphlet; William Livingston (New York), pamphlet; Christian Friedrich Post (Bethlehem, PA), diary; Benjamin Youngs Prime (Huntingdon, NY), poems; John Rutherford (North Carolina), pamphlet; Rev. William Smith (Philadelphia, PA), sermons, pamphlets; William Smith Jr. (New York), monograph; Charles Thomson (Philadelphia), pamphlet; Benjamin Franklin (Philadelphia, PA), pamphlet. Except for Bollan and Franklin, all these authors lived in North America during the Seven Years' War; I have not included in this list William Shirley, Governor of Massachusetts at this time, or Sir William Johnson, superindendant of Indian Affairs at this time. Most of the sermons were originally published in North America and republished in London. They do, like the pamphlets, address religious as well as political issues related to the war and are therefore included here. I have found 18 authors who were born in Ireland, four of which left Ireland for the American colonies; of the rest two thirds settled in England and only one third remained in Ireland. Of the 24 authors born in Scotland 11 eventually settled in England and three moved to North America. I am thinking of Luke Scrafton, Robert Orme, and Richard Owen Cambridge. For a preliminary analysis of this debate cf. William L. Grant, "Canada versus Guadeloupe: An Episode of the Seven Years' War, American Historical Review 17 (1911-12), 735-743; Frank Wesley Pitman, The Development of the British West Indies, 1700-1763, Yale Historical Publications IV (New Haven, CT 1917, repr.: Hamden, CT 1967), 344-354.

Pamphlets

in the Seven Years'

War

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The nature o f the war shaped the debate in other ways, too. This is evident when one l o o k s at the themes. There are t w o divergent, yet complementary trends: On the one hand a number o f themes enjoyed remarkable longevity: Should England pursue only her imperial interest? 12 H o w does moral decline - or, as others maintained, British virtue - affect England's ability to survive in the deadly struggle against her archenemy? 13 What were England's war aims - to secure her colonies in North America or to establish global commercial dominance? 14 S o m e o f these problems are o f course old and were recast only to fit the m o o d o f particular times 15 - for example the g l o o m o f 1756 and 1757 or the joy o f the next t w o years. Against these themes others should be set, which had their origins in particular events: In the winter of 1755/56 the earthquake o f Lisbon w a s the occasion for numerous and searching analyses o f the causes o f England's moral decline 16 , o f the 12

13

14

15

16

A preliminary analysis indicates that the problem of "continental versus maritime interest" figured before November 1757 in 20 publications, between November 1757 and the end of 1760 in 16 and between 1761 and 1763 in 15 publications. It was a prominent theme in [John Shebbeare:] A Fourth Letter to the People of England (London: M. Collyer, 1756), published August 4, 1756, for which cf. below, and in [Israel Mauduit:] Considerations on the Present German War (London: J. Wilkie, 1760), published November 14, 1760, for which cf. below. This was the most important subject of the sermons published in 1756, especially those held on the fast day proclaimed for Friday, February 6, 1756; I found 27 sermons held on this fast day which were published within weeks. The subject of moral decline figured likewise prominently in the Rev. John Brown, An Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times (London 1757); Idem, An Explanatory Defense of the Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times. Being an Appendix to that Work, occasioned by the Clamours lately raised among certain Ranks of Men (London: L. Davis, C. Reymers, 1758), and the critiques (e. g. The Prosperity of Britain, Proved from the Degeneracy of its People. A Letter to The Rev. John Brown, on his Estimate of Manners. With Some Thoughts on his ANSWER in the REAL CHARACTER [London: R. Baldwin, 1757], published October 11, 1757) written against this pamphlet. In general the authors of pamphlets published before 1758 were satisfied with a clear and unequivocal definition of the border lines between the English and the French colonies in North America as a war aim; as far as I can see, the first who advocated basically the total destruction of French trade and thus English dominance of the world market was Malachy Postlethwayt, In Honour of the Administration. The Importance of the African Expedition Considered (London: C. Saa, M. Cooper, 1758), published September 1, 1758. English dominance of world trade was a key issue during the debate about the war aims and the peace settlement between the end of 1759 and 1763. That of course is true for the lamentation about moral decline, about the problem of the interest of England in foreign affairs (cf. Richard M. Pares, "American versus Continental Warfare", English Historical Review 51 [1936], 429-465, and Gottfried Niedhart, Handel und Krieg in der Britischen Weltpolitik 1738-1763, Veröffentlichungen des Historischen Instituts der Universität Mannheim, 7 [München 1979]), and about the cant about "corruption" (cf. Hermann Wellenreuther, "Korruption und das Wesen der Englischen Verfassung im 18. Jahrhundert", Historische Zeitschrift 234 [1981], 33-62). I have found 41 publications, the major part of them sermons, dealing with the Lisbon earthquake and linking it to the moral decline of England. Some few of these publications, however, interpreted the earthquake as well-deserved punishment for Catholicism, cf. esp. A Letter from a Clergyman in London to the Remaining Disconsolate Inhabitants of Lisbon. Occasioned by the Late Dreadful Earthquake, and Conflagration [...] To which is added, a

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possibility that God had forsaken his own country, of the depravity of the "frenchified" aristocracy in particular17, and of the irreligiousness of the land; the loss of Minorca in May of 1756 started a debate18 on the meaning of professional efficiency and military bravery19 on the one hand, and on the corruption and inefficiency of the ministry on the other20; the expeditions against Rochefort21 in the late autumn of 1757, and against St. Malo, Cherbourg and again St. Malo in the following summer and autumn22 triggered discussions about larger strategic problems23 and extended the debate on military bravery and expertise. The

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Faithful Account of Mr. Archibald Bfowejr's Motives for quitting his Office (London: R. Griffiths, 1756), and An Authentic Account of the late Dreadful Earthquake and Fire which Destroyed the City of Lisbon. In a Letter from a Merchant Resident there to his Friend in London (London: J. Payne, 1756), published May 5, 1756; the largest part of the English clergy, however, shared the Lichfield's Canon's scepticism about this interpretation, cf. Thomas Seward, The Late Dreadful Earthquake no Proof of God's Particular Worth Against the Portuguese: A Sermon Preached at Litchfield, on Sunday, December 5, 1755 (London: J. + R. Tonson, 1756), published ca. January 2nd, 1756. Cf. esp. An Address to the Great. Recommending Better Ways and Means of Raising the Necessary Supplies than Lotteries and Taxes. With a Word or Two concerning an Invasion (London: R. Baldwin, 1756), published March 17, 1756; The Patriot, or A Call to Glory. A Poem. In two Books (Edinburgh: Robert Fleming, 1757); Gentle Reflections upon the Short but Serious Reasons for a National Militia (London: J. Scott 1757), and the play The Frenchified Lady never in Paris (London: S. Crowder 1757), published March 9, 1757. Minorca and its loss figured in 117 publications issued in 1756 and 1757 and thus represented the single most important theme of these two years. That was especially prominent in one of the last and most important publications on the loss of Minorca and Admiral Byng's share therein, ascribed to David Mallet, Observations on the Twelfth Article of War: Wherein the Nature of Negligence, Cowardice, and Disaffection, is Discussed; The respective Guilt of each Ascertained on Principles of Natural Equity (London: W. Owen 1757), published May 1, 1757. That was the key note struck by Shebbeare in his Fourth Letter to the People (cf. n. 12); after Byng's execution it was continued by The Monitor, cf. An Account of the Facts which Appeared on the late Enquiry into the Loss of Minorca, from Authentic Papers. By the MONITOR (London,: J. Scott, 1757), published July 6, 1757; interestingly enough this argument was not taken up by the defenders of Byng. Their line was that the government had systematically misrepresented Byng's actions by falsifying the records, cf. especially [Robert, Lord Bertie:] An Appeal to the People: Containing The Genuine and Entire Letter of Admiral Byng to the Seer, of the Ad—y: Observations on those Parts of it which were Omitted by the Writers of the 'Gazette': And what might be the Reasons for such Omissions (London: J. Morgan 1756) published October 8, 1756; Further Address to the Publick. Containing Genuine Copies of All the Letters which Passed Between A—I B—g and the S—ry of the A— -ty; From the time of his Suspension (London: J. Lacy 1757), published January 10, 1757. All in all 33 publications focused exclusively or to a large extent on the Rochefort expedition of late 1757. 14 of these publications appeared before the end of November 1757, 13 were published thereafter until the end of 1758, and six after that. In 1758 17 publications discussed the expedition against St. Malo. Cf. esp. [Thomas Potter] The Expedition against Rochefort Fully Stated and Considered, In a Letter to the Right Honourable, the Author of the Candid Reflections on the Report of the General Officers, etc. By a Country Gentleman (London: S. Hooper, A. Morley, 1758), published January 16, 1758.

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triumphs in North America, in the West Indies, and in India24 revived the debate about costs as well as the longterm benefits and burdens arising from connections with continental Europe and particularly with Prussia 25 , while rekindling the argument about the kind o f peace England should seek which would best serve its economy and secure its predominance in Europe as well as in the rest o f the world. 26 With victory secured concern for peace began to extend t o anticipated dangers to the constitution in time o f peace: Domestic political problems again slowly inched towards center stage. 27 Xenophobia, which had so largely figured in 24

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An analysis of the publications according to their geographical emphasis mirrors the shift of attention as well as the focus of English attention: 56 Geogr. Area 54 55 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 16 26 13 25 19 0 2 21 18 28 America West Ind. 1 2 2 1 4 2 2 2 2 3 India 2 3 2 The publications focusing particularly on Prussia mirror this development: While those publications appearing in 1756 (6), 1757 (16), 1758 (20) and 1759 (8) largely praised the treaty with Prussia and especially reacted with enthusiasm to Frederic's the Great military exploits, those publications discussing Prussia in 1760 (13), 1761 (22), 1762 (3) and 1763 (1) largely reflected Mauduits negative attitude to English-Prussian relations. The figures in parentheses are the number of publications per year dealing exclusively or to a large part with English-Prussian relations. Only two pamphlets discussed the problem of peace in 1759, while six focused on the peace settlement in 1760 and 21 pamphlets discussed this problem in 1761. The debate was not started, as is usually stated, with [John Douglas:] A Letter addressed To Two Great Men, On the Prospect of Peace; And on the Terms necessary to be insisted upon in the Négociation (London: 1759), published in December 18,1759, but with [Alexander Carlyle:] Plain Reasons for Removing a Certain Great Man from His M—y's Presence and Councils for ever. Addressed to the People of England. By O. M. Haberdasher (London: M. Cooper 1759), published on March 2, 1759, one of the earliest violent anti-Pitt and pro-peace pamphlets. On the same day, Douglas's pamphlet, which, as Peters rightly points out, received numerous replies, was published, another pamphlet appeared which, too, addressed the problem of peace: Motives for a Peace with England. Addressed to the French Ministry in 1757 (London: T. Hope, 1759). The next day Timothy Brecknock, A Plan for Establishing the General Peace of Europe Upon Honourable Terms to Great Britain (London: R. Baldwin, 1759), was published which advocated the enlargement of Hannover, joining Saxony to Prussia and Canada to England but returning the Sugar Islands to France; on December 20, John Duncombe's sermon held on November 29, 1759 was published under the title A Sermon Preached in the Parish-Church of St. Anne, Westminster, on Thursday 29, 1759 (London, 1759), which expressed a general yearning for peace. And the day after, the publisher G. Kearney offered the public Reasons for a General Peace. Addressed to the Legislature (London: G. Kearney, 1759); in short, exactly two months after the first pamphlet on the victory of Quebec [An Accurate and Authentic Journal of the Siege of Quebec, Containing many curious and interesting Facts (London: J. Robinson, 1759), published October 19, 1759] had been published, between December 18 and 21 five pamphlets discussing the peace arrangements were printed. Again one of the earliest - aside from those dealing with the tax problem and economic issues - was [Owen Ruffhead:] Reasons Why The Approaching Treaty of Peace Should Be Debated in Parliament: As A Method most Expedient and Constitutional. In a Letter addressed to a Great Man. And Occasioned by the Perusal of a Letter addressed to Two Great Men

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the pamphlets on German mercenaries in 1756 and 1757 2 8 , n o w re-emerged with furor and a n e w focus: the Germans o f old in 1762 were replaced by the Scots. 2 9 M u c h has been said about this part o f the debate; yet these contributions have overlooked the larger constitutional issues involving the role o f the crown, the function o f a favourite, and the problem o f ministerial responsibility 30 as well as the much more important general structural changes which took place in these years changes which were tied to the problem o f the addressees o f the pamphlets. These debates had their o w n internal dynamics and structure, followed their o w n rhythms as well as logic. Indeed each sub-debate should be seen as a particular sequence in a larger symphony with its o w n leitmotiv, its o w n beat, its particular cadenza: From the initially rather blurred voices o f newspaper articles the leitmotiv w a s developed by a particular pamphlet which provided the terms o f the debate and set the tune. Then suddenly others did chime in: Poems 3 1 as w o o d instruments, broadsides 3 2 like the petition o f Admiral John Byng's sister in March 1757 and ballads as trumpets and shrill piccolos: all these joined in a dramatic disharmonious medley, which suddenly dominated public attention 33 , then faded

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(London: R. Griffiths, 1760), published on January 8, 1760, a pamphlet he defended a bit later in his Ministerial Usurpation Displayed, And The Prerogatives of the Crown, with the Rights of Parliament and of the Privy Council, considered. In An Appeal to the People (London: R. Griffiths, 1760). Reflections on the Domestic Policy Proper to be Observed on the Conclusion of Peace (London: Printed for A. Millar, 1761, published 07/15/61). Cf. Herman van Weissel, England's Warning: or, The Copy of a Letter, from a Hanoverian Officer, in England, to his Brother, in Hanover. Found near Canterbury - and faithfully translated from the German (London, 1756), a five pages broadside published August 20, 1756; German Cruelty: A fair Warning to the People of Great-Britain (London: J. Scott, 1759), published September 6, 1759 likewise under the title German Mercy: A fair Warning to the People of Great-Britain (London: J. Scott, 1759). An Impartial Account of the Invasion under William Duke of Normandy, and the Consequences of it: With proper Remarks. Humbly offered to the Consideration of the Nobility, Gentry, Clergy and Commonalty of Great Britain, particularly to those of the County of Norfolk. By Charles Parkin, A. M. Rector of Oxburgh in Norfolk (London: Printed for E. Owen, near Chancery-Lane; for Thomas Tiye, near Gray's Inn Gate, Holborn, 1756), published May 12, 1756. Cf. Karl Schweizer, "Lord Bute and anti-Scottish feeling in 18th-century English political propaganda", A. Peters, ed., Scottish Colloqium Proceedings (Guelph, Ont., 1974), 23-33. This problem is now discussed in Marie Peters, "Pitt as a foil to Bute: the public debate over ministerial responsibility and the powers of the Crown", in: Schweizer, ed., Bute (cf. n. 1), 99-115, and Brewer, "Misfortunes of Bute" (cf. n. 1). Poems formed an integral part of the public discussion. As an expression of political critique odes in imitation of Horaz were especially popular. Odes, too, were most often the form for the celebration of particular events. All in all I have thus far located 151 poems as independent publications. Obviously this number would be much larger if the occasional poems published in magazines and newspapers would be included. Broadsides are particularly difficult to trace. Thus far I have located 43 mostly in collections of the British Library. The bulk of these were published in connection with the Byng controversy. These rhythmic bursts characterized the controversy over Admiral John Byng. Between September 1-15 six, between October 1-15 nine, between October 16-31 eight, in 1757 between February 16-31 seven, between March 1-15 six, between March 16-31 twelve

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away in the face of new events, the order for a court martial34 (Byng, Sackville), a new costly military non-event (Rochefort, St. Malo), the execution of a death sentence or dismissal from military service (Byng, Sackville again), the nonrenewal of the Prussian subsidy,35 and the announcement of war with Spain, which ended the debate over Pitt's dismissal.36 These events provided occasions for new

34

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36

pamphlets, poems, prints and broadsides were published. In each period except for the second half of October these clustered around certain days. Thus in the first half of September three publications appeared on September 6 and 7; six publications appeared between October 12 and 15 with four being published alone on the latter day; in the second half of February 1757 three publications appeared on February 17 and one the following day, while in the second half of March three publications appeared on March 20, and four on March 25 with the other five spaced between these days. Two were published on March 30, 1757. Then the flow ceased as abruptly as it had begun. Only two publications appeared in the first half of April and another three were published in the second half of that month. The expectation of a court martial accounts for the fact that only a few writings appeared on Byng in December and January. In the first half of December two, in the second half three, in the first half of January three and in the second half no publication focusing on Byng were published. Similarly the burst of publication in the second half of March was of course triggered by the execution of the death sentence on Byng. This was the occasion of Israel Mauduit's Considerations on the Present German War, for which cf. below. I list the pamphlets published between December 30, 1761 and April 10, 1762 in chronological order: The Conduct of Spain, and the political and military Transactions of that Power (London: Printed for J. Wilkie, 1761, published 12/30/61); Reasons for an immediate Declaration of War against [...] Dedicated to William Pitt (London: Printed for I. Pottinger, 1761, published 12/31/61); Arguments against a Spanish War (London: Printed for E. Cabe 1762, published 01/02/62); Motives for Pursuing a Spanish War with Vigour (London: Printed for E. Cabe, 1762, published 01/08/62); [William Guthrie:] A Third Letter to the Right Hon. the Earl of B*** [Bute] in which the Causes and Consequences of the War between Great Britain and Spain, are fully considered; AND the Conduct of a Certain Right Honourable Gentleman further examined (London: Printed for J. Coote, 1762, published 01/11/62); A New Account of the Inhabitants, Trade, and Government of Spain (London: printed for J. Hinxman 1762, published 01/12/62); The proper Object of the present War with Spain and France considered (London: Printed for W. Johnston 1762, published 01/13/62); Constitutional Queries. Humbly addressed to the Admirers of a late Minister (London: Printed for R. Davis, 1762, published 01/13/62); A Consolatory Epistle To the Members of the Old Faction; Occasioned by the Spanish War. By the Author of The Consolatory Letter to the Noble Lord Dismissed from the Military Service (London: Printed for S. Williams, 1762, published 01/20/62); The Parallel: Being the Substance of two Speeches, supposed to have been made in the Closet, by two different Ministers (London: Printed for W. Nicoll, 1762, published 01/21/62); until the publication of the Papers Relative to the Rupture the public discussion was largely preoccupied with the reform of the Militia; Papers Relative to the Rupture with Spain. In French and English (London: Printed for W. Owen, 1762, published 03/16/62); [John Wilkes:] Observations on the Papers Relative to the Rupture with Spain, laid before both Houses of Parliament, On Friday the Twentieth Day of Januar 1762, By his Majesty's Command. In a Letter from a Member of Parliament to a Friend in the Country (London: Printed for W. Nicoll 1762, published 03/19/62); An Answer to the Observations on the Papers Relative to the Rupture with Spain (London: Printed for J. Hinxman, 1762, published 03/31/62); The Causes of the War Between Great Britain and Spain (London: Printed for Ralph Griffiths 1762, published 04/05/62); A Letter from an Independent Man to his Friend

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debates, formed the beginnings o f new serenadas, symphonies or simple arias, which w o u l d - and this is indeed important - incorporate some earlier arguments and leitmotifs. T h e beginning prefigured the end: the powerful Jeremiad about England's moral and military decline dominated the sermons, pamphlets, ballads, and p o e m s in 1756 and 1757; yet with victory in 1758 the music lost its thematic unity: The violins briskly talked strategy 37 , the flutes began their lyrical praise o f Prussia's hero 38 , the trumpets proclaimed Sackville's sagacity and honour 3 9 against deep-felt dissent expressed by the contrabasses 40 , while in the background the celli began their

31 38

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40

in the Country, upon a late Pamphlet, intituled Observations on the Papers Relative to the Rupture with Spain (London: Printed for J. Cooke, 1762, published 04/10/62). This debate was largely related to the expeditions to the French coast. A Translation of an Ode written by the King of Prussia the Day after his Glorious Victory at Rosbach (London: Printed for J. Staples, 1758, published 01/08/58); Verses to Mon. de Voltaire by the King of Prussia (London: Printed for R. and J. Dodsley, 1758, published 02/25/58); An Ode to the King of Prussia (London: Printed for J. Woodgate, 1758, published 03/15/58); William Dobson, The Prussian Campaign. A Poem Celebrating the Achievements of Frederick the Great, in the Years 1756-57 (London: Printed for R. Manby, 1758, published 06/16/58); Alexander Gordon, The Prussiad. A Heroick Poem (London: Printed for J. Burd 1759, published 11/13/59). I have ignored the numerous poems published in magazines and papers celebrating the Prussian king. At least seventeen pamphlets vindicating Sackville were published. The more important were An Address to the People of England; in which the Conduct of Lieut. Gen. Lord George Sackville is properly considered; At once to silence, by the Voice of Truth, the Cries of Falsehood, Scurrility, and Dulness (London: Printed for J. Burd, 1759, published 09/13/59); Yet one Vindication More of L*** **** **** (London: printed for J. Wilkie 1759, published 09/13/59); The Sentiments of an Englishman, On Lord George Sackville's Address to the Public, Some other Publications, and on the Talk of the Town (London: Printed for M. Cooper 1759, published 09/29/59); An Answer to a Letter to a late Noble Commander of the British Forces (London: Printed for W. Owen, 1759, published 10/18/59); The Conduct of a late Noble Commander candidly considered with a View to expose the Misrepresentations of an Anonymous Author of the Two Letters Addressed to his Lordship (London: Printed for R. Baldwin, 1759, published 12/15/59); Truth Develop'd, and Innocence Protected: or, The Merits and Demerits of the Late Commander in Chief of the British Forces in Germany set forth, and proved from undoubted Facts; and his Character cleared [...] Addressed to Both Houses of Parliament (London: Printed for J. Scott, 1760, published 01/25/60). I have thus far counted 15 publications against Sackville. The more important ones include The Proceedings of a Court Martial, Appointed to Enquire into the Conduct of a certain Great Man. Together with Their remarkable Sentence. Inscribed to the President of the Said Court (London: Printed for S. Hall, 1759, published ca September 1759); A Letter to a late Noble Commander of the British Forces in Germany (London: Printed for Ralph Griffiths 1759, published 08/14/59); The Conduct of a Noble Lord Scrutinized. By a Volunteer, who was near his Person from the 28th of July, to the Td of August, 1759 (London: printed for J. Fuller, 1759, published 08/22/59); The true Case of a certain G—l Officer's Conduct on the First of August: In which all former Explanations are explained away (London: Printed for R. Stevens, 1759, published 09/13/59); A Reply to Lord George Sackville's Vindication with some Remarks on his Lordship's short Address to the Public (London: Printed for G. Kearsley, 1759, published 09/22/59); A Second Letter to a late Noble Commander of the British Forces in Germany. In which the Noble Commander's Address to the Public, His

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argument about the nature of Empire in general and the role and use of Canada and Guadeloupe in an expanding commercial Empire in particular41 Towards the end of 1760 these different tunes got joined together again: The debate over peace merged with that over the Prussian subsidy and the supposedly tottering imperial interests of the nation. After Pitt's dismal dismissal some saw the Empire doomed because it now fell into the hands of "the favourite", whose followers in turn now hailed a nation secured in a "safe and honourable peace". Was. Lord Bute sage counsellor of the king or depraved Scottish favourite? Suddenly distinct and separate themes collapsed into one: The demand for Bute's dismissal, for the saving of the glorious British constitution, for the true British liberty, for the greatness of England's destiny, for a glorious peace, for a true patriot king. The discordant voices settled into a gigantic dialogue about the role and function of Lord Bute. This dialogue had two faces: The smear campaign against Bute and the political debate. In late November 1760 Lord Egmont noted "strange talk of Bute and the Princess, verses and indecent prints published, even in the avenues to the Play house the mob crying out No Scotch Government, No Petticoat Government, in the very hearing of the King".42 In the political debate old enemies as well as old names like "Tory" and "Whig" were revived, yet were filled with new meaning43, and provided the parameters for new interpretations of past

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Letter to Colonel Fitzroy, Together with the Colonel's Answer, and Captain Smith's Declaration, are candidly and impartially considered (London: Printed for R. Griffiths, 1759, published 09/20/59); Farther Animadversions on the Conduct of a Late Noble Commander at the Battle of Thornhausen. In Reply to a Pamphlet, intituled, An Answer to a Letter to a Late Noble Commander [...] To which is annexed [...] an Answer to Colonel Fitzroy's Letter Considered (London: Printed for R. Griffiths, 1759, published 10/01/59). Particularly influential were [John Douglas:] A Letter to Two Great Men, on the Prospect of a Peace; And on the Terms necessary to be insisted upon in the Negotiation (London: Printed for A. Millar, 1759, published 12/18/59); A Letter to the People of England, on the Necessity ofputting an Immediate End to the War; and the Means of obtaining an Advantageous Peace (London: Printed for R. Griffiths 1760, published 02/12/60); [Benjamin Franklin:] The Interest of Great Britain considered. With Regard to her Colonies And the Acquisitions of Canada and Guadeloupe. To which are added, Observations concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries etc. (London: Printed for T. Becket, 1760, 2nd ed. published 09/30/60); [William Burke:] Reasons for Keeping Guadeloupe at a Peace, Preferable to Canada. Explained in Five Letters from a Gentleman in Guadeloupe to His Friend in London (London: Printed for M. Cooper, 1761, published 05/06/61). "Leicester House Politics, 1750-70, From the Papers of John, Second Earl of Egmont", ed. Aubrey N. Newman, Camden Miscellany, XXIII (1969), 85-228, citation on p.227. Of particular importance are the "Cocoa Tree" pamphlets 1762/63, cf. [Philip Francis:] A Letter from the Cocoa Tree, to the Country Gentleman (London: Printed for W. Nicoll, 1762, published 11/20/62); A Letter from Arthur's to the Cocoa-Tree, In Answer to the Letter from thence to the Country-Gentlemen (London: Printed for W. Morgan, 1762, published 12/04/62); An Address to the Cocoa-Tree from a Whig (London: Printed for R. and J. Dodsley, 1762, published 12/06/62); A Derbyshire Gentleman's Answer to the Letter from a Cocoa-Tree (London: Printed for E. Moore, 1762, published 12/22/62); A True Whig Displayed. Comprehending cursory Remarks on the Address to the Cocoa-Tree. By a Tory (London: Printed for W. Nicoll 1762, published 12/27/62); A Letter from the Cocoa-Tree to the Chiefs of the Opposition. Signed "A penitent Tory" (London: Printed for F. Blyth 1763,

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events, for example for Pitt's glorious or inglorious deeds. But more than that: Pamphlets, poems, songs and graphic prints acquired a new relevance: Earlier they had talked about the past, had been projecting in carefully chosen conjectural terms concrete political notions either into the past or into some unknown future. N o w they mouthed, too, concrete political demands: What should the terms o f peace be, should w e retain Canada, should France receive the right to fish in Newfoundland, should Hannover remain joined with England, should England continue the Prussian subsidy, should the King retain Lord Bute as his "favourite" and counsellor? 4 4 This n e w f o c u s o f pamphlets and magazine articles on specific issues to be decided in the immediate future rested o n one important factor: On the large expectations associated with the young king, which put George III into the center o f the political decision-making process. Thus it w a s inevitable that sooner or later the public debate had to zero in, as Smollett warned early o n in The Briton45, o n the King himself: The confiscation of John Wilkes' North Briton Number FortyFive w a s not an accident, w a s not only proof o f ministerial incompetence or a

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published 01/20/63); the emergence of the terms "Whig" and "Tories" can be traced, too, in Devonshire's Diaiy, cf. particularly the entries for December 1761, The Devonshire Diary. William Cavendish, Fourth Duke of Devonshire, Memoranda on State of Affairs, 1759-1762, ed. Peter D. Brown, Karl W. Schweizer, Camden Fourth Series, vol. 27 (London 1982), 6369. The pamphlets on the Minorca disaster and on the expeditions to the coast of France represent an intermediary position between the two: They focus on the expeditions as such, shun on the whole speculation and usually end with voicing concrete expectations or demands like a courtmartial for generals, parliamentary enquiries into the supposed miscarriage etc. The following examples represent the new category: In these pamphlets concrete and particular demands are made, programs are outlined with the expectation to see them immediately implemented. This is true for John Rutherfurd, The Importance of the Colonies to Britain. With Some Hints towards making Improvements to their mutual Advantage: And upon Trade in General (London: Printed for J. Millan, 1761, published 07/28/61), which especially emphasizes the need for the cultivation of hemp in the colonies; Considerations on the Expediency of a Spanish War: Containing Reflections on the Late Demands of Spain; And on the Négociations of Mons. Bussy (London: Printed for R. Griffiths, 1761, published 10/09/61) critisized Mauduits Considerations, strongly argued for the beginning of a war with Spain and against precipitate peace talks; the author of A Letter to His Grace the Duke of at******* [Newcastle], on the Present Crisis in the Affairs of Great Britain. Containing Reflections on a late Great Resignation (London: Printed for R. Griffiths, [1761], published 10/16/62) considered it reasonable that England retain in a future peace all French colonies in North America, in the West Indies, in Africa and in Asia, as well as "as much of the Sugar Trade as possible" (p. 44-46), but demanded the return of all British troops from the European continent. To give one final example: "Ignotus" in his Thoughts on Trade in General, our West-Indian in Particular, our Continental Colonies, Canada, Guadeloupe, and the Preliminary Articles of Peace. Addressed to the Community (London: Printed for John Wilkie 1763, published 01/22/63), considered the preliminaries on the whole favourable for England, demanded energetic measures to reap the benefits of the treaty, especially by putting the poor to work (a very old idea indeed), building workhouses, advised immediate deduction of the national debts and advocated a larger peace-time navy than in former times. The Briton, No. 1 (May 29, 1761), 2-3.

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scribbler's calculated effrontery intended for the masses and the increase of circulation, but was, too, the logical result of a larger argument, which can be traced via John Douglas' Seasonable Hints from an Honest Man to Bolingbroke's notions of kingly rule above and without political groups which Douglas cited with so much approval.46 From hereon the public debate would never again lose this new element: its focus on specific as well as fundamental political issues and problems. Political issues had been debated before. But these debates had always retained their theoretical quality: They were fights in Liliput, dialogues between Chinese philosophers47, visions about corruption, similes set into ancient times,48 disquisitions about Roman history49, all of them ending with the wish that England's fate should never end in such catastrophies. These visionary projections into the past and into the future remained, of course. And yet, a comparison between John Shebbeare's Fourth Letter to the People with Israel Mauduit's Considerations on the Present German War50 reveals the extent of change: Shebbeare laments the mismanagement and corruption and demands reforms, while Mauduit insists that the Prussian subsidy be forthwith cancelled. Of equal importance, however, are the structural differences between the two pamphlets: While Shebbeare structures his stories with well known key terms, Mauduit thrives on the monotonous repetition of a message. While the one appeals 46

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48 49

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[John Douglas:] Seasonable Hints From an Honest Man On the Present Important Crisis of a new Reign and a new Parliament (London: Printed for A. Millar 1761, published 03/14/61). [Horace Walpole:] A Letter from Xo Ho, a Chinese Philosopher at London, to his Friend Lien Chi at Peking (London: Printed for J. Graham 1757, published 05/17/57); An Answer from Lien Chi, in Peking, to Xo Ho, the Chinese Philosopher in London, To which is annexed a Letter from Philo-Briton to Lien-Chi (London: Printed for M. Cooper 1757, published 06/11/57). Charles Parkin, An Impartial (cf. note 28); German Cruelty (cf. note 28). Edward Wortley Montagu, Reflections on the Rise and Fall of the Antient Republicks. Adapted to the Present State of Great Britain (London: Printed for A. Millar 1759, published 02/15/59). The defenders of the militia usually discussed the Roman example at great length. [John Shebbeare:] A Fourth Letter to the People of England. On the Conduct of the M—rs in Alliances, Fleets, and Armies, since the first Differences on the Ohio, to the taking of Minorca by the French (London: Printed for M. Collyer 1756, published 08/04/56); most general political pamphlets published in the following months discussed at length Shebbeare's pamphlet. Particular answers were A Full and Particular Answer to all the Calumnies, Misrepresentations, and Falsehoods, Contained in a Pamphlet, called A Fourth Letter to the People of England (London: Printed for T. Harris 1756, published 10/06/56); The Conduct of the Ministry Impartially Examined. In A Letter to the Merchants of London (London: Printed for S. Bladon 1756, published 10/26/56). Shebbeare published an answer to the second pamphlet under the title An Answer to a Pamphlet call'd The Conduct of the Ministry Impartially Examined. In which it is proved, That neither Imbecility nor Ignorance in the M— -r have been the Causes of the present unhappy Siuatation of this Nation (London: Printed for M. Cooper 1756, published 11/06/56). [Israel Mauduit:] Considerations on the Present German War (London: Printed for J. Wilkie, 1760, publish«! 11/14/60) saw five editions until 07/07/61. It elicited many replies. Almost from the beginning Mauduit was linked to Bute and George III which heightened the importance of his pamphlet.

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to mind and passions, the other presents cold-blooded logical analysis. Shebbeare "proves" ministerial mismanagement and corruption in five stories, each carefully crafted according to classical rules of rhetoric. Mauduit retains the basic rhetorical structure for the whole, but anatomizes what he wants to say into 160 paragraphs. Each paragraph begins with an italicized proposition followed by suggestive questions. Their studiously detached answers prompt as conclusions new suggestive questions which really are as many tears shed for British money wasted for Prussian interests. While Shebbeare captures the reader's imagination with narrative sequences, retains some notion of rhetoric flourish, and uses at least some rhetorical devices (alliteration, disposition, triades) to generate tension, Mauduit relies on thousands of facts, substitutes mercantile terminology for old rhetoric, and talks about millions of pounds and balance sheets. While the former, to give one concrete example, uses the word "interest" to denote "influence" and "power", Mauduit's "interest" is that of the banker. Finally: while ancient history, Latin citations, and similes are important to the one, the other stays in the present and hardly ventures even into the immediate past (but no further than to William Ill's glorious times). And yet, after Mauduit, in the winter of 1760, this changed again: Similes were rediscovered, John Shebbeare published his huge simile on the History of the Sumatrans51 alias that of the greedy and corrupt Whigs, pamphlets were once again structured according to the golden rules of rhetoric (at least to some extent)52 and appealed unashamedly to reason and passion: Let me just look at one example, John Wilkes' Observations on the Papers Relative to the Rupture with Spain. In this pamphlet, written in the form of "a Letter from a Member of Parliament to a Friend in the Country" and dated "March 9, 1762", Wilkes adopts a three-fold strategy. His close and of course selective reading of the Papers Relative to the Rupture with Spain firstly demonstrates the unreliability of the government's white book on English-Spanish relations, secondly proves the correctness of Pitt's 51

52

[John Shebbeare:] A History of the Excellence and Decline of the Constitution, Religion, and Laws, Manners, and Genius of the Sumatrans. And the Restoration thereof in the Reign of Amurath the Third, 2 vols. (London: Printed for G. Kearsley, 1760-1763). That is particularly true for sermons, cf. Thomas Ashton, A Sermon Preached before the Honourable the House of Commons, in St. Margaret's Church, Westminster, on Friday, January 30, 1761. Being the Day appointed to be observed as the Day of the Martyrdom of King Charles I (London: Printed for J. Whiston, B. White, 1761, published 03/01/61); Philip Yonge, Bishop of Bristol: A Sermon Preached before the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in the Abby-Church, Westminster, on Friday, February 13, 1761. Being the Day appointed by his Majesty's Proclamation for a General Fast and Humiliation (London: Printed for J. Whiston, B. White, 1761, published 03/15/61); Thomas Cole: Discourses on Luxury, Infidelity, and Enthusiasm (London: Printed for R. and J. Dodsley, 1761, published 05/14/61). As an example for political pamphlets I cite A Letter To the Right Honourable The Earl of B***[Bute], On a late important Resignation, and its probable Consequences (London: Printed for J. Coote, 1761, published 10/20/61), and Letter to Her R—l H—s the P—s D-w-gr of W— [Royal Highness the Princess Dowager of Wales] on the Approaching Peace. With a few Words concerning the Right Honourable the Earl of B— [Bute], and the General Talk of the World (London: Printed for S. Williams, 1762, published 09/18/62).

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assessment of Spanish intentions, thirdly attempts to demonstrate that Bute and Egremont, the two Secretaries of State, wilfully deceived themselves of Spanish belligerent intentions. Lastly, Wilkes hopes that the delay in declaring war on Spain may not prove too costly and detrimental to true English interests. He concludes with a number of wishes designed to improve on his aim of discrediting Bute as the real culprit of Pitt's resignation. Wilkes justifies his close textual analysis of the Papers with his "desire of informing", not of "entertaining you".53 He fails to mention that he clearly wants to convince not only by a rational analysis but by a forceful style, which uses metaphors, symbols, figures of speech as well as terms clearly designed to evoke negative emotions as part of his strategy to discredit the Bute administration and destroy its credibility.54 This of course was his concrete political aim. His pamphlet thus combined both: It looked backward with a view to defend and forward with a view to attain a political purpose. In attempting to attain his ends, he appealed to emotions and passions as well as to reason and mind: He cited copiously from documents, he quoted Horace and appealed to the "impartial Public", he used footnotes as well as typographic notations. And lastly, without slavishly sticking to the classical rules of rhetoric, he nevertheless clearly obeyed the dictum of artful composition, more than once helped the reader with directions what he meant to discuss next and finally not only neatly summarized his argument but finished with a peroratio in the classical style. Pamphlet authors like Wilkes not only recreated their own Liliput, their own past as well as future, but retained their focus on the reality of the time - and that is what made the writings of Wilkes and other henchmen of Pitt and Temple so dangerous to the crown and her ministers. The confiscation of The North Briton Number Forty-Five thus was the result of the cumulative effect of this new/old development: New because the debate was now about reality, old because it used the forms, terms and rules of old. Yet there is a deeper side to this: The pamphlets betray a fundamental insecurity about the course of the Empire, a deep-seated anxiety about the nation's future, a 53

54

[John Wilkes:] Observations on the Papers Relative to the Rupture with Spain, Laid before Both Houses of Parliament, On Friday the Twenty-ninth Day of January, 1762, By his Majesty's Command. In a Letter from a Member of Parliament, to a Friend in the Country (London: Printed for W. Nicoll, 1762, published 03/19/62), 51. Examples for metaphors: "dissipate every Cloud of Obscurity", 6; "we must sink in Amazement at our Supineness and Neglect [of the Bute administration] of so critical a Period", 29; for figures of speech: "A Retrospect carries no Terrors but to the Guilty - to an upright Minister it must give the truest Satisfaction - to the Public that Conviction, it has in many Cases a Right to expect", 12; "Whoever can now pride himself in the procrastinating Advice [which contemporaries believed Bute had given in the decisive cabinet meeting which lead to Pitt's resignation] he gave to his Sovereign, may he enjoy in full Lustre that eminent Glory of his Life! If such are the Glories, what must the Disgraces be! I mean not to draw any uncandid Picture of the present Administration [which he continues then to draw]", 31; for emotive terms as part of his overall strategy of a) defending Pitt: "[Pitt] pressed with honest Zeal", 10; "strongest Language of conscious Integrity", 11; and b) discrediting Bute: "atrocious Calumnies so industriously circulated", 11; [the Papers are a] "garbled Collection", 15; "Weakness, Indecision or a delusive Hope", 31. This is of course but a small selection.

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profound concern about England's values and social fabric. These insecurities were mirrored in the compositions of the pamphlets which fluctuated between strict adherence to classical rules and their total abandonment, were mirrored, too, in wavering attitudes to established authorities: While some packed their argument with references to history and ancient philosophers, others relied totally on their own power of reasoning and their expertise. Is it a coincidence that the Irish professor John Lawson in his treatise on rhetoric belittled antiquity and stated flatly: "[T]here is a Pride in Man which makes him unwilling to be governed by any Thing, but his own Reason; he disdains to bow his Neck to the Yoke of Authority."55 Is it a coincidence that four years later Lord Kames put forward the same, but more radical notion. "Men now assert their native privilege of thinking for themselves, and disdain to be ranked in any sect, whatever be the science."56 And finally: Is it a coincidence that precisely at the same time the term "passion" was redefined as something "highly useful, or rather necessary to Man, by prompting him to act, being a Spur within the Mind incessantly rouzing it from Sloth, and urging it to pursue or avoid with Earnestness. Without it, Life would lie as a dull dead Lake, stagnating in muddy Tranquillity."57 I do not as yet know for sure; but it seems to me that the careful analysis of pamphlets within their broad cultural and political setting suggests that the Seven Years' War was more than Lawrence Henry Gipson's "War for Empire": that it also was the time where the ground work was laid for a radically different perception of men and their relationship to reality.

55

56

57

John Lawson, Lectures Concerning Oratory, Delivered in Trinity College, Dublin (Dublin: George Faulkner, 1758), 143. Herny Home, Lord Kames, Elements of Criticism. In Three Volumes (Edinburgh: A. Millar, London; A. Kincaid & J. Bell, Edinburgh, 1762),I, 15. Lawson, Lectures Concerning Oratory, 157-158.

Werner Wolf (Graz)

"The wilderness pleases" - But why not in the novel? Literary and Cultural Aspects of the Fascination with Savage Landscapes and Its Belated Appearance in British Pre-Romantic Fiction1

1. From "warts [...] in the face / Of th'earth" to "scenes of sublimity" the pre-romantic revolution in mentalities concerning wild nature In 1858 U.S. army lieutenant Joseph Christmas Ives, exploring one of America's most admired natural wonders, is reported to have made a memorable comment: "Ours has been the first, and will doubtless be the last, party of whites to visit this profitless locality." This dry, utilitarian statement is noteworthy (and therefore often quoted in tourist guides2) not only because it has turned out to be a blatant error - for it refers to the Grand Canyon - but also because it is so strikingly at odds with today's enthusiasm for this grand precipice and similar scenic landscapes. In fact, a reaction betraying such a lack of appreciation of wild nature was already outdated in the lieutenant's days, witness Ann Radcliffe's novel The Mysteries of Udolpho of 1794, and the following positive response of her heroine Emily to one of Europe's "scenes of sublimity" (1794; 1980: 163), the Alps near Mont Cenis (a then famous pass most travellers had to cross on their tour to Italy): As she descended on the Italian side, the precipices became [...] tremendous, and the prospects [...] wild and majestic, over which the shifting lights threw all the pomp of colouring. Emily delighted to observe the snowy tops of the mountains under the passing influence of the day [...] (Radcliffe 1794; 1980: 164)

And even for this late eighteenth-century valorization of a savage landscape a precedent can be found dating back more than a hundred years: John Dennis's report of his "transporting Pleasures following] the sight of the Alps", which he crossed via Mont Cenis in 1688 (Dennis 1688; 1967: 381). One could add early eighteenth-century instances from other genres such as lyrical poetry or philosophical essays: In Shaftesbury's dialogue The Moralists of 1709 Theocles, in a "Meditation" (1709; 1987: 246flf.)on the "sublime" (312) parts of "the Map of Nature" (298), comments on "vast Desarts" in these terms: All ghastly and hideous as they appear, they want not their particular Beautys. The Wildness pleases. We seem to live alone with Nature. We view her in her inmost Recesses, and 1 2

Parts of this essay are a revised version of a paper read at the XlVth Congress of the ICLA in Edmonton, August 1994. Quotation taken from: Krell 1965; 1980:11; cf. also Yandell 1977: 3.

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Werner Wolf contemplate her with more Delight in these original Wilds, than in the artificial Labyrinths and feign'd Wildernesses of the Palace. (Shaftesbury 1709; 1987: 308)

If we compare these statements with still older texts, for instance with John Donne's description of mountains and the sea as "warts, and pock-holes in the face / Of th'earth" in his First Anniversary (1611; 1991. 339), with Charles Cotton's similar comparison of the Derbyshire High Peak with "Natures pudenda" and "Warts and Wens" in his Wonders of the Peake (1681; 1958: 52) or with Evelyn's account of the "horrid prospect of the Alps", which he saw, according to his Diary, in May 1646 (1818; 1959: 256), it is clear that a decisive change had taken place in cultural history since the late seventeenth century: the pre-romantic transformation of wild nature from a threat and a repellent symptom of the world's deformed, fallen state to an attraction of increasing appeal to artists, writers, travellers and tourists. Obviously, this revolution in mentalities presents an ideal subject for today's 'cultural studies' since it transcends the canon of fictional literature and includes travelogue, philosophy, theology, aesthetic theory, painting and garden architecture. Nevertheless I would like to approach it from a more traditional 'literary' point of view, not only because as a literary scholar I am obviously most interested in literature but also because I think that there is a danger in a certain cultural approach to the literary side of this subject: the danger of considering the valorization of wild nature in literature simply as a phenomenon parallel to, and ultimately redundant in comparison with, other cultural discourses. The aim of this essay is rather to point out that this valorization is a cultural phenomenon for which literature cannot be simply adduced as yet another symptom of a wider change in mentalities. This is at least true for what I intend to concentrate on here: the British eighteenth-century novel. Its 'eccentric' position is all the more striking since the genre 'novel', as opposed to 'romance', has always been acclaimed as particularly 'progressive' and in touch with contemporary life and mentalities.3 It will be my second and main aim to ask for possible reasons for the eccentricity of the British novel. The whole issue may also, I hope, shed some light on the relationship between literary and cultural studies. One could illustrate my line of argument by citing responses to any kind of 'savage', that is primeval, uncivilized and hence potentially dangerous landscape: the "desarts" mentioned by Shaftesbury would in this context be as helpful as the sea and the seashore, which have lately been considered from the point of view of "l'histoire des mentalités" by Alain Corbin (1988; 1990). I have selected high mountains as an example since it is with reference to this type of 'wilderness' that both the change in mentalities and the specific role of the novel can perhaps be best documented. Witness for instance already Samuel Johnson, who, in 1750, described the novel as "exhibiting] life in its true state" and as being "influenced by passions and qualities which are really to be found in conversing with mankind" (from: The Rambler, no. 4, March 31, 1750, quoted from Greiner 1970: 64); cf. also Allen's comment (1937; 1958: II, 206 f.) on the growing interest in the Lake District: "Fiction, always a mirror of passing tastes, also reflected the new attraction of the remoter parts of England" (italics mine).

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2. The belatedness of the British novel in celebrating wild nature compared with other cultural discourses It would be superfluous to go into great detail in retracing the transformation of Mountain Gloom into Mountain Glory, for a considerable amount of research has already been done in this field since Maijorie Hope Nicolson's pioneer book of 1959.4 Thanks to this research it is now a well-known fact that the appreciation of 'pleasing wildness' has a prehistory going back to at least the late seventeenth century and that it was brought about by a plurality of cultural factors5 such as the influence of 'physico-theology', the decline of the fear of nature due to enlightenment rationalism and the progress of civilization, the concomitant increase of distance between man and nature as a precondition of landscape becoming an object of 'sentimental' (in Schiller's terms) attraction, and the development of the aesthetics of the sublime. But what is less well known is the role of the novel within this change. Especially if one considers the novel to be a genre particularly apt to reflect, if not to create, new mentalities, one would expect the new fascination with wild nature to be expressed in the novel at a very early stage in the form of extended, enthusiastic descriptions of primeval landscapes (for the description of setting as a special kind of discourse has been at the disposal of the novel since its beginnings)6. Yet, if we look at cultural documents indicating the emergence of an appreciation of such landscapes and particularly of mountains, this expectation is not fulfilled. Apart from Petrarch's epistle on the ascent of Mont Ventoux (dated 1336), a letter whose value as a document of an appreciation of mountains is controversial,7 the earliest reliable traces in European history of a fascination with savage landscapes including mountains are to be found not in literature8 but in an art in 4

5

Cf., to name but a few books and articles, van Tieghem 1960, Stanzel 1964, Malins 1966, Nicolson 1973, Begemann 1987: chaps. 3 and 4, Corbin 1988; 1990, Andrews 1989, Kullmann 1995. Cf. Nicolson 1959 (esp. "Introduction"); Ritter 1963; Alewyn 1965 and 1974, Zelle 1987, Begemann 1987, Corbin 1988; 1990. A well-known case in English literature is Defoe's 'circumstantialism' (for instance to be seen in the detailed description of Robinson's fort in Robinson Crusoe); but the tradition of descriptions of setting may of course be traced back to the very beginnings of (written) narrative fiction in the Western world: to Homer's epics (see for example the passage on Alcinoos' garden as the prototype of the classical locus amoenus [Odyssey VII, 112-132]). The time-honoured tradition stemming from Burckhardt 1860; 1976: 278 f. and continued by Ritter 1963, according to which Petrarch is the first to experience high mountains in aesthetic terms, has been criticized by Pochat 1973: 183 and others (e.g. Bode 1992: 95-109). In fact, the enjoyment of mountain nature in Petrarch's letter (an enjoyment restricted to the appreciation of a grand view) is weakened by an allegorical meaning of the ascent informed by Saint Augustine's criticism of worldly pleasures. This traditional Christian scepticism about mundane pleasures is still to be found with respect to wild nature in Grimmelshausen's Simplicissimus (1669) (VI/1). At first glance what Garber 1974 called the 'locus terribilis' seems to be an exception (for the

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which the very term 'landscape' was coined in its modern sense: in painting9. Especially important in this context are the Dutch landscape paintings created since the 1640s 10 and, some decades later, the works of an Italian who, in England, became a veritable synonym for wild, sublime nature: Salvator Rosa. 11 In the history of verbal documents illustrating the change in mentalities under discussion Thomas Burnet's Sacred Theory of the Earth of 1684 (Latin version: Telluris theoria sacra, 1681) is among the oldest texts. On the one hand his 'geogonical' theory of the genesis of the geological appearance of the world still shows elements of the older theological depreciation of high mountains as ruinous, barren, chaotic and "frightful" vestiges of God's wrath in the Great Flood (1681; 1965: 113). Yet, on the other hand The Sacred Theory also contains passages in which mountains are praised as a fascinating "inchanted Country" (111) reminding man of God's sublimity (cf. pp. 110, 113, 109), and Burnet can also be seen to acknowledge the aesthetic beauty of a landscape "pleasing to behold" and creating "a pleasing kind of stupor and admiration" (109 f.). Thus it is with perfect justification that Burnet, with all his ambivalence, has been hailed as the "discoverfer] [of] the Sublime in external nature" (Nicolson 1973: 258) and indeed as one of the fathers of the new appreciation of savage landscapes. 12 Since the late history of this topos since antiquity, esp. in descriptions of the Greek valley of Tempe, cf. Curtius 1942; 1975: 98 f. and Curtius 1948; 1993: 205-209). Yet, since the locus terribilis is characterized by predominantly negative evaluations of wild nature (which is only accepted as a contrast to a locus amoenus), it cannot be adduced as an example of an early literary fascination with savage landscapes. A further finding of Garber's (1974: 274-276) merits mentioning: the novels of the German Johann Beers, who is said to be among the first novelists to show signs of a positive view of the mountains as early as in the late 17th century. Garber, however, also points out the limitations of this positive view: it only applies to wild mountains as a scenic backdrop and not as an actual place of experience. At any rate it seems desirable for future research in our field to complement intra-cultural comparisons by extracultural ones including several national literatures. However, at present it does not seem likely that the general outlines of the history of mentalities with reference to wild nature and the place of the novel in it would be substantially different from what I have said here. For a history of the term 'LandschaftVlandscape' cf. Gruenter 1953; 1975; for an introduction into the history of landscape painting cf. Steingr&ber 1983 and, much more detailed though excluding the development after the Renaissance, Pochat 1973. Apart from Diirer's Alpine landscapes, which were painted only in the 'low' genre of a watercolour sketch, early representations of high mountains as a central motif of painting on wood or canvas are Roelandt Savery's Schwaz Seen from the South (1609) and Allart van Everdingen's Mountain Landscape (1647); later works include numerous paintings by Salomon and especially Jacob Ruisdael. For a highly informative illustrated history of the representation of mountains in European painting see Rasmo et al., 1981. One has to acknowledge, however, that Rosa's fame was derived from only a small portion of his oeuvre and that not all of the eighteenth-century commonplaces about him can really be traced down to his works (see Sunderland 1973). Yet, even if the history of the reception of Rosa has not been free of misrepresentations, his fame is nevertheless symptomatic of the fact that a considerable part of the new, aesthetic appreciation of savage landscapes in the eighteenth century was influenced by painting. Cf. Nicolson 1959: chap. 5; Stanzel 1964: 126 f. For Burnet's ambivalence see also Zelle 1987: 87fif.or Andrews 1989: 200.

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seventeenth century equally important documents of this appreciation are to be found in other discourses: in the influential 'physico-theology' (in which Burnet's partial scepticism towards wild nature was further reduced by the insistence on its beauty as a product of God's benevolence13) and in travelogue, especially in travel writings in the form of letters. A pioneer in this latter field is John Dennis with his famous letter of 1688 containing a detailed description of his crossing the Alps, an experience which triggered off feelings foreshadowing the eighteenth-century terminology of the sublime: "a delightful horror" and "a terrible Joy" (1688; 1967: 380). Other descriptive letters like Horace Walpole's epistle to Richard West of Sept. 1739, or Dr. John Brown's letter of 1753 on the "tempestuous sea of mountains" around Derwent Water in the English Lake District (Eddy 1976: S81)14 continue the same praise of wild mountains in travelogue to which Shaftesbury had already testified in the domain of philosophy by his admiration of "the peculiar Beautys" and "the horrid Graces of the Wilderness" (1707: 308, 316). A further early appearance of the appreciation of wild nature may be observed in the history of aesthetic theory, namely in Addison's Spectator essays on the pleasures of the imagination (nos. 411-421, June/July 1712). According to Addison, these pleasures owe a lot to "the actual View and Survey of [great] outward Objects" like "a vast uncultivated Desart, [...] huge Heaps of Mountains, high Rocks and Precipices, or a wide Expanse of Waters" (1711-12: 594, from no. 412).15 And it did not take long until poetic practice - in the form of poetry - joined theory in the new interest in nature. The most important early eighteenth-century British poet in this context is James Thomson, whom Nicolson called "the finest English mountain poet before Wordsworth" (1959: 352 f.).16 In his vast poem The Seasons (first version 1726), traditional scepticism towards high mountains occurs alongside several other passages in which "the Works of nature" generally appear to create "a pleasing Dread" (1726-30; 1981, "Winter", 1. 109) and mountains are praised as "Great [...] Scenes, with dreadful Beauty crown'd" ("Summer", 1. 643) or as "horrid, vast, sublime" landscapes ("Autumn", 1. 711). Landscape painting, geogony, theology, philosophy, travelogue, aesthetic theory and lyrical poetry - all these cultural discourses had contributed to, or 13

14

16

Important examples are John Ray's The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of Creation (1691) and William Derham's Physico-Theology, or a Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God from His Works of Creation (1713); cf. Nicolson 1959: chap. 6, esp. pp. 259 ff., Zelle 1987: 81 ff., and Coibin 1988; 1990: 41 ff. This letter, in which Brown praises the Lake District as an "accumulation of beauty and immensity" and "the grandest earthly temple of the Creator" is reprinted in Eddy 1976 (quotation on p. S82). Cf. also no. 414, on the works of nature as superior objects of the imagination compared to works of art, or, outside the series on the imagination, no. 489, with a celebration of the "agreeable Horrour" of a sea storm creating "foaming Billows and floating Mountains" (p. 6 9 9 )

As far as non-British poetry is concerned, one must, of course, mention Haller's celebrated poem Die Alpen (1729). For other British eighteenth-century lyrical texts which document the period's fascination with mountains (e.g. by Richard Savage, David Mallet, John Dalton) see Nicolson 1959: chap. 8, "A New Descriptive Poetry".

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mirrored, the increasing interest in savage landscapes and wild mountains by the mid-eighteenth century. But, for quite a long time, the novel did not join this development. Descriptions of natural scenery are either absent in it altogether as in Congreve's Incognita (1692) or in Thomas Dangerfield's picaresque novel Don Tomazo (1680), in which the hero "travel[s] almost through the whole" of Scotland and "meet[s] nothing worthy oberservation" (!) (1680; 1991: 367),17 or the affirmative evocation of nature is confined to the classical tradition of the locus amoenus18 and the pastoral 'retreat', taken up in Aphra Behn's Oroonoko (1688) 19 and in Johnson's Rasselas (1759). 20 Another sort of'confinement' of nature in the novel is its restriction to the description of gardens as in Fielding's famous chapter on Squire Allworthy's estate in Tom Jones. 1 And if wild nature does figure in the novels of the first half of the century, its appearance is still informed by the old, 'pre-revolutionary' distrust. A typical case is Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719), in which the sea appears mostly as a place of dangers and terrors and the hero's hilly 'Island of Despair1 is termed quite unromantically "a horrible desolate island' (1719; 1965: 83), whose best and only pleasure-inspiring parts are those where wild nature denies its own self and "look[s] like a planted garden" (113). 22 Thus we can say, in Shaftesbury's words, that "the wildness" had indeed begun "to please" but not in the novel. Compared to other discourses it is in fact with a remarkable delay - which only few scholars like van Tieghem have pointed out23 and even fewer have tried to explain24 - that the. novel shows symptoms of the change in mentalities. French 17

A similar absence of interest in nature is still to be found in Sterne's Tristram Shandy (175967) and A Sentimental Journey (1768), though both texts contain accounts of journeys to mountainous regions. For the tradition of the locus amoenus see Curtius 1942; 1975 and Curtius 1948; 1993: chap.

19

Cf. the description of Surinam, Behn 1688; 1967: 178 f. Cf. chap. 1, "Description of a palace in a valley" (Johnson 1759; 1988, 1-3). Tom Jones (1749; 1966: 58 f.). This is a thinly veiled description of Ralph Allen's Prior Park (cf. Malins 1966: 43 f ). Further examples include the description of Mr Wilson's garden in Fielding's Joseph Andrews (1742; 1973: 174 f.) and, in Richardson's Sir Charles Grandison, Lucy Selby's "description of [a] house, and the park, gardens, orchards etc." in vol. vii, letter 5 (1754: III, 272-273, quotation on p. 272). For a more detailed history of early garden descriptions seeKadish 1987: 16-24. Cf. also in Roxana the heroine's account of the "honours" of a sea storm and her mentioning "those frightful Mountains, the Alps" (Defoe 1724; 1964: 123-128, 101). We still feel a similar distance from the genuine wilderness in Fielding's Tom Jones in the description of Squire Allworthy's country seat and its "fine park" set off by "a ridge of wild mountains, the tops of which [are] above the clouds" (1749; 1966: 1/4, 58 f.). The same holds true for Richardson's Sir Charles Grandison, where, in IV/39, a crossing of Mont Cenis is described. This passage, which deals with the very landscape praised in previous travelogues, contains only negative comments on the mountains and does not show any awareness of their beauty. Van Tieghem 1960: 92; cf. also Reynolds 1895; 1966: 208, Stanzel 1964: 128 and Kullmann 1995:471. This aspect of Funktionsgeschichte has indeed been neglected in most works dealing with our subject, even in those rare works which mention the novel's belated joining the general

10.

23

24

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literature boasts the most famous early example of this change in European fiction: Rousseau's celebration of the Alps in La Nouvelle Heloise (1761).25 In the British novel the belated beginnings of a positive evaluation of wild or relatively uncivilized nature are generally hesitant and restricted to isolated passages, which generally do not develop into genuine descriptions.26 There is a Salvator-Rosa like scenery "not unlike that painter's backgrounds" in Mackenzie's Man of Feeling (1771; 1970: 85), and there are some short mentionings of Scottish scenery, and especially of the 'Ossianic' Highlands, "a most stupendous appearance of savage nature", in Humphry Clinker (1771; 1983: 234) by Smollett,27 who has been hailed (somewhat too enthusiastically) as "perhaps the most noteworthy" English novelist introducing "unfamiliar" landscapes in the novel (Kadish 1987: 23). One should, however, at least mention Thomas Amory, the first part of whose novel The Life and Opinions of John Buncle, Esqu. had appeared in 1756 and already contained abundant enthusiastic descriptions of the mountains of Westmoreland. 8 Yet John Buncle remained relatively unknown and uninfluential, und it is only from the 1790s onwards, with the rise of the Gothic and the historical novel, with Radcliffe's fiction,29 Lewis's The Monk (1794), Scott's Waverley (1814) or Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818), that extended descriptions of savage landscapes appeared in fiction on a major scale. Though, especially in Gothic fiction, wild nature is not always exclusively positive, it is generally characterized by an at least partial positivity typical of the sublime. Thus, it is indeed only since the 1790s that the

25

29

appreciation of wild nature. A notable exception is van Tieghem 1960: 92-100, who - as I saw after the completion of the first version of this essay - anticipates some of my arguments. Cf. letter 1/23 (the mountains of Le Valois), or IV/17 ("la retraite isolée"; Rousseau 1761; 1960: 500 f.). A noteworthy instance of Rousseau's contribution to narrative descriptions of high mountains as an ideal of "un beau pays" is also to be found in Les Confessions (1782-89; 1964: 195). Kadish (1987: 18), referring to Robinson Crusoe as "the first major novel set in a concrete and specific physical environment" and mentioning numerous garden descriptions in English novels, makes the English novel appear more 'progressive', since it allegedly shows "a decisive break with the stereotyped treatment of nature handed down from past centuries". But she disregards my criterion: the fascination with savage landscapes. She herself acknowledges that it is only "[i]n the decades following Richardson and Fielding" that "nature description in the English novel gradually moves beyond the narrow confines of the garden to certain less artificially delimited spaces" (p. 22). For a reference to Ossian, cf. Smollett 1771; 1983: 223: "I feel an enthusiastic pleasure when I survey the brown heath that Ossian wont to tread; and hear the wind whistle through the bending grass [...]." Amory is mentioned by Reynolds 1895; 1966: 208 f. and van Tieghem 1960: 155, who also includes Charlotte Smith among the pioneer novelists "qui fasse[nt] avant Radcliffe une place importante â la grande nature" (p. 172). For further early English authors cf. the positivistic collection of evidence in Reynolds 1895; 1966: chap. HI ("Fiction"), which confirms the lack of an appreciation of wild nature in the novel before the mid-century, as does Kullmann 1995: 471. While Radcliffe's masterworks The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) and The Italian (1797) are well known for their descriptions of wild (Alpine, Apennine and Pyrenean) landscapes, Kullmann (1995: 184-199) has pointed out that Radcliffe's less popular earlier works The Castles ofAthlin and Dunbayne (1789) a n d S i c i l i a n Romance (1790) are also noteworthy in this respect.

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novel finally began to clearly reflect the revolutionary fascination with the 'pleasing wildness' other discourses had manifested much earlier on. It remains to be asked why the British novel was so slow in following this revolution.

3. Intra- and extra-literary factors responsible for the excentricity of the eighteenth-century novel with respect to the appreciation of wild nature It would certainly be too easy to account for this belatedness by merely referring to British geography or to the biographies of British novelists. With north Wales, the Lakes and the Scottish Highlands, Britain did have vast regions which were regarded as near-wildernesses by eighteenth-century travellers in search of the sublime and the picturesque in nature.30 As to the argument of (the lack of) biographical experience as a possible explanation for the exclusion of wild nature from literary works, its weight is also rather restricted: on the one hand there were novelists like Defoe and Sterne who, during their journeys to Scotland or France and Italy, did come into contact with wild mountain scenery, but did not write about it in their novels, while on the other hand there is Ann RadclifFe, a pioneer in mountain descriptions, who drew her material not from personal experience but mostly from travelogues and paintings. What has certainly more explanatory value are two general generic and hence intra-aesthetic problems which are caused by extended descriptions in fiction: first, they interrupt the narration, a fact which is especially awkward as long as generic expectations favour characters and events in the novel31 and disfavour lengthy accounts of the setting. Such accounts are more acceptable in poetry, which is not necessarily narrative in the first place, and also in travelogues, in which the 'plot', the journey itself, tends to become a pretext for stringing together anecdotes or descriptions anyway. The second general obstacle to descriptions in a narrative or indeed verbal discourse is a fact frequently discussed in eighteenth-century comparative aesthetics and perhaps formulated most clearly in Lessing's Laokoon. unlike painting, verbal art, due to its temporal dimension, always has difficulties in the representation of spatial objects.32 30

31

Cf. Andrews 1989; an important document for the 18th-century appreciation of the Lakes is West 1778; 1989, who expressedly parallels the Lake District's "Alpine scenery" to the Alps (pp. 1 and 5). Cf. already van Tieghem 1960: 93 Cf. Lessing 1766: xvii, p. 630: [...] das Vermögen, ein körperliches Ganzes nach seinen Teilen zu schildern [...] spreche [ich] der Rede als dem Mittel der Poesie ab, weil dergleichen wörtliche Schilderungen der Körper das Täuschende gebricht, worauf die Poesie vornehmlich geht; [...] weil das Koexistierende des Körpers mit dem Konsekutiven der Rede dabei in Kollision kommt [...] Cf. also Spectator no. 416, in which Addison constructs a hierarchy of the arts as far as their ability to represent visible objects is concerned, a hierarchy, in which sculpture and painting precede verbal description. The difficulty of rendering landscapes and their emotional effects in prose narrative is repeatedly mentioned in meta-textual comments from Dennis's descriptive letter (1688; 1967: 381) to Radcliffe's The Italian (1797; 1968: 63).

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Apart from these general problems of the novel three specific historical factors have to be taken into consideration: first, the influence of classicist aesthetics, second, the 'realistic' poetics of the novel as distinguished from 'romance' and third, some considerations concerning the extra-aesthetic context of social history. As to the impact of classicist aesthetics,33 it should not be underrated, even though the novel is, of course, not a classicist genre; but classicism, in the eighteenth century, was for instance influential enough to shape Fielding's theory of the novel. Classicism is hostile to extensive descriptions of wild, sublime settings in the novel in several respects: it requires that fictitious literature be morally useful. This demand did not restrict descriptions in travelogue, since it does not apply to this genre, but it did indirectly restrict landscape descriptions in the novel: in spite of the physico-theological moralization of nature, morality can generally be connected more easily with action and characters than with settings. Classicist aesthetics furthermore requires the 'imitation of nature'. "Nature' here, of course, does not mean 'green' nature, let alone specific landscapes, but the generalities of human nature34 often in combination with an imitation of the ancients, where the description of setting did not play a major role - hence again the privileged position of characters and their actions over setting. But most important are the classicist connotations of the very term which appears most often in connection with wild landscapes and especially mountain scenery: 'the sublime'. Long before 'sublime' became a current epithet of natural phenomena it had been a rhetorical term, denoting the loftiest style, the genus sublime. According to the classicist doctrine of the aptum, the correspondence between style, subject and literary genre, a serious subject such as the sublime in nature35 was not to be connected with such a low genre as the novel, and even less so with the most common contemporary form, the comic novel, but with a more elevated and more serious genre. Given the afore-mentioned problems of descriptions in narratives (including the epic) and given the difficulty of representing the natural sublime convincingly on the tragic stage, to a writer influenced by classicism this 'serious genre' meant lyrical poetry. It is indeed significant in this context that eighteenthcentury evocations of sublime nature often tend to find an expression in poetry, and even in prose there is a persistent connection with this genre (be it in 33

Cf. for classicism as a retarding factor also van Tieghem 1960: 101 f. Cf. Fielding, Tom Jones (1749; 1966: 52), or the narrator's programme of his "history of the world in general" in Joseph Andrews (1742; 1973: 144): "I describe not men, but manners, not an individual, but a species." His "copfying] from the book of nature" hence refers exclusively to "character" and "action", not to setting (cf. p. vi); it is also noteworthy that the term 'description', in 18th-century aesthetics, was for a long time connected not with inanimate spatial objects but with 'character' (cf. e.g. Mary de la Riviere Manley's comment on the delineation of "The Heroes of the Modern Romances": "[...] all the world will find themselves represented in these descriptions [...]" [from: Preface to The Secret History of Queen Zarah, 1705] quoted from Greiner 1970: 8 f.). In the eighteenth century this high rank particularly applies to Alpine landscapes, cf. Meyer 1978: 19: "Der alpinen Landschaft wurde in der zeitgenössischen Diskussion über die Hierarchisierung der natural views der höchste Rang zugebilligt." For the relation between the rhetorical sublime and the natural sublime see Zelle 1987: 86 f.

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comparisons with, or in actual insertions of, poetry). Thus, Addison has a reader of the Spectator illustrate his idea of the sublime sea in a poem, not in prose (no. 489), and in an essay on gardening (no. 477) another reader compares "Composition [...] [which] runfs] into the beautiful Wildness of Nature" with one of the highest forms of poetry, "the Pindarick Ode" (Addison 1711-12: 683). 37 Another case in point is what Reynolds says about landscape paintings modélled on Rosa or Claude Lorrain in the thirteenth of his Discourses'. a landscape thus conducted, under the influence of a poetical mind, will have the same superiority over the more ordinary and common views, as Milton's Allegro and Penseroso have over a cold prosaick narration or description. (Reynolds 1769-90; 1992: 292)38

For Reynolds only Milton's poetry seems fit to serve as an equivalent for the natural sublime, while "prosaick narration" merely corresponds to commonplace paintings. This classicist attitude may certainly help to explain why wild, sublime nature found a place in poetry much earlier than in the novel.39 The classicist disregard of "prosaic" fiction can be related to an element of the aesthetics of the novel which others considered as its strength (especially in comparison with 'romance') but which nevertheless constitutes another retarding factor for descriptions of nature in the novel: unlike the derelict genre 'romance' with its notorious emphasis on exotic settings and uncommon, improbable events, the new genre 'novel' had developed proto-realistic aesthetics centred on the mimesis of common life. This realism also privileged common settings - to the detriment of savage landscapes. Typical of this is the following conclusion of an anonymous panegyric of Fielding's 'new species of writing' of 1751: [...] [if] Romances [...] were a kind of extravagant Landskape, in which the Painter had represented purling Streams and shady Groves; or brazen Towers, and Mountains of Adamant, just as they were uppermost in his wild Imagination; so this [i.e. Fielding's] Kind of Writing is the Work of a more regular Pencil, and the exact Picture of human Life [.. .]40 37

39

40

Cf. also Emily in Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho, who, in her highest elevation brought about by the sublime scenery of the Alps, feels herself induced to compose a "storied sonnet" (1794; 1980: 165). In a similar way Brown, in his prose Description of the Lake at Keswick, switches genres after a significant meta-comment on the deficiencies of narrative language ("a walk by still moonlight [...] among these inchanting dales, opens a scene of such delicate beauty, repose and solemnity, as exceeds all description") and finishes with a hymnal lyrical poem (Eddy 1976: S81). The close relationship between natural description and the genre 'lyrical poetry' continued up to the turn of the century and is also acknowledged by Scott when he praises Radcliffe for her "tone of fanciful description and impressive narrative, which had hitherto been exclusively applied to poetry" and as "first poetess of romantic fiction" ("Prefatory Memoir to Mrs. Ann Radcliffe", in Radcliffe, The Novels, reprint Hildesheim 1974, p. iv; quoted from Kullmann 1995: 188). Thus van Tieghem is historically right to claim that "le sentiment de la nature" was "un sentiment essentiellement poétique" (1960: 92). One may even suspect that this impact of classicist aesthetics led to a virtual monopolization of literary representation of savage landscapes by poetry. Quoted in Greiner 1970: 79. For the parallels which seem to have generally been drawn

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As to the third retarding factor, social history and especially the social history of the novel, one has to remember that part of the new love of nature was - and indeed still is - motivated by a desire for escape from ever more 'civilized' surroundings. In the eighteenth century its most important symptom was the beginning tourism of nature, the 'scenic tour', which gradually transformed the traditional 'grand tour' with its formerly mainly educational aims.41 This new form of tourism, documented in contemporary travelogue and - from the 1770s onwards - also in painting,42 continued, till the last decades of the century, to be a pastime primarily of male members of the upper class. However, it did not coincide with the experience of the dominant group of novel readers: with the far less travelled female members of the middle class.43 Thus, the neglect of savage nature in the early novel may also find an explanation in the fact that the representation of common experience was a need the novel catered for in its predominantly female readers. But even if we stress evasion or emotional entertainment as important functions of the contemporary novel, savage nature is again underprivileged during most of the eighteenth century: such needs, as far as the predominant female readership was concerned, found their answer in the highly popular sentimental novel, which, however, conventionally focussed on moral love stories set in a civilized 'silver spoon' milieu rather than in wild landscapes.

4. Intra- and extra-literary factors responsible appreciation of savage landscapes in the novel

for the

belated

As we have seen, the conspicuous absence of the appreciation of wild nature in the novel can be attributed to a number of factors which formed a strong barrier against the novel's opening up to the new mentality. A number of factors were also needed to overcome this barrier, factors which emerged in the second half of the eighteenth century. And in both cases intra- as well as extra-literary contexts have to be taken into consideration. One influential extra-literary factor was the beginning of the Industrial Revolution with its growth of urbanization and parallel retreat of wild nature, a

41

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43

between, on the one hand, exotic settings (including wild nature) and 'romance' and, on the other hand, common settings and the 'novel' (parallels confirmed by Reynolds 1895; 1966: 222, though this does not mean that early romances contained detailed descriptions of wild nature!) see also Dr. Johnson's description of a valley of the Scottish Highlands in his Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland: I sat down on a bank, such as a writer of Romance might have delighted to feign. I had indeed no trees to whisper over my head, but a clear rivulet streamed at my feet. [...] all was rudeness, silence, and solitude. Before me, and on either side, were high hills [...] (Johnson 1775; 1985: 31) Cf. for the 'grand tour' White 1979, Brilli 1987; 1989, and Pfister 1991, esp. pp. 80 fif. For the developing tourism of nature cf. Andrews 1989. Outstanding English painters of high (Alpine) mountains were William Pars (1742-1782) and John Robert Cozens (1752-1797). However, female travellers became somewhat more frequent in the eighteenth century (cf. Brilli 1987; 1989: 41 f.).

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change which led to an increasing longing for an escape into unspoilt landscapes44 - also among the female novel-readers of the middle class. Living in an age before the advent of mass tourism, this group was not typically among those who could satisfy such a longing physically, and hence novels providing vicarious experience in this field must have been regarded as increasingly attractive. At any rate the valorization of savage landscapes, earlier on mainly an upper-class phenomenon, became more and more popular towards the end of the eighteenth century,45 and hence it was only natural that the novel as the most popular genre of the period could not but start to mirror this development. Yet it is not certain whether those extra-literary factors would have sufficed in themselves to bring about the remarkable opening up of fiction to wild nature. But what is certain is that it was favoured by some intra-literary changes. Prominent among these is the renaissance of 'romance' and 'romantic exotism' challenging the primacy of realism and paving the way for the introduction of wild, exotic landscapes. As already mentioned, it was in fact in Gothic and historical romances that they made their first appearance in the English novel. Another change in the field of aesthetics equally promoted this appearance: the decline of classicism.46 In its wake the gulf between the non-sublime novel and wild nature as a sublime subject lost its importance and the literary monopoly of poetry in representing sublime landscapes disappeared (though romantic poetry continued to play an important role in the history of verbal representations of landscapes). Parallel to the decline of classicist aesthetics a further relevant factor emerged, the demise of classical anthropology. With the transformation of what Foucault called the 'classical episteme' into the modern episteme, 'human nature' lost its ahistorical stability and was increasingly felt to be deeply influenced by three factors: history, milieu and psychological mechanisms. The relevance of the factor 'history' for the appreciation of wild nature is immediately recognizable if we 44 45

Cf. West 1778; 1989: 4, who, in his guide, addresses especially "such as spend their lives in cities and their time in crouds". See Bohls 1995: 13 and 89 if.; for the growing general appreciation of wild nature compare Shaftesbury 1709; 1987: 316 with West 1778; 1989: 1. In Shaftesbury, at the beginning of the 18th century, admirers of the "horrid Graces of the Wildemefl" are restricted to a minority of "LOVERS", "POETS" and "Students in NATURE, and the Arts which copy after her"; it furthermore becomes clear that the "Romantick way" of these admirers is interpreted as a symptom of excessive melancholy and exaggerated 'enthusiasm' if not of mental derangement ("are plainly out of their wits"). In strong contrast to this West writes in the introduction to his Guide to the Lakes, one of the last stretches of relatively wild landscapes in England: SINCE persons of genius, taste, and observation began to make the tour of their own country, and to give such pleasing accounts of the natural history, and improving state of the northern part of the kingdom, the spirit of visiting them has diflused itself among the curious of all ranks. (1778; 1989: 1) A first relevant stage in this decline was the literature of pre-romantic sensibility and its shift from the classicist emphasis on mimesis to an emphasis on the expression and feeling of emotions. In the British novel (including Richardson) this emotionalism was for a long time restricted to the interrelation of characters, but the later development prepared by Rousseau, namely the use of wild nature as an emotional stimulus for virtuous characters, can be seen as a logical extension of the anti-classicist tendency of sensibility.

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consider that nature in its earliest, uncivilized state has, since Rousseau, been an obvious place to satisfy the pre-romantic yearning for the Primeval and the Original. But the other elements, the new importance attached to the milieu and the psyche, were also powerful motivations for the insertion of detailed descriptions of wild landscapes into novels, since they allowed, in the wake of Rousseau, the creation of fictional models of the relation between nature and the psyche47 resulting in those recurring correspondences between the inner, psychic state of a protagonist and outer nature so often encountered in romantic and later novels.48 A good illustration of the importance of the new psychology for the emergence of wild nature in the novel is gothic fiction, as written by authors like RadclifFe, Lewis, Maturin, Mary Shelley or E. A. Poe: in this genre a parallel can again and again be observed between a deepened interest in the workings of the psyche and the prominence of unusual and at times 'extreme' natural scenery. In some instances this relation between the psyche and natural settings leads to the evocation of a 'wildness' that is certainly not entirely 'pleasing' (e.g. the gloomy Sierra Morena with its streams swollen by a thunderstorm as a setting for the desperation and death of the villain at the end of Lewis' The Monk), but even then this type of wilderness is still invested with a fascination it did not have in earlier novels. In the context of the new, pre-romantic aesthetics and the modern episteme it became not only important to express the characters' responses to landscapes49 but 47

48

49

In this context it is also interesting to notice that the change in the evaluation of wild nature is linked with a change in the attitude taken towards mountain inhabitants. While they appeared as "troublesome" and "barbarous people" in Evelyn's account of a travel across the Alps (made in 1646) in his Diary (1818; 1959: 260, 258), to name but the example of travelogue, they advanced to paragons of rural "simplicity and modesty" with RadclifFe (1795; 1975: 357), and were now considered as morally superior to the inhabitants of the cities (a change visibly influenced by Rousseau's celebrations of unspoilt mountaineers such as can be found in the description of the inhabitants of Le Haut Valais in La Nouvelle Heloise (1/23). Cf. Kullmann 1995. Responses to landscape increasingly became an indicator of psychic states and moral dispositions of central characters (cf. Hagstrum 1984 and Kullmann 1995). In The Mysteries of Udolpho there is for instance a repeated contrast between Emily, whose sensibility is not restricted to morality alone but also includes aesthetic and natural beauty, and indifferent or negative characters such as Mme Montoni, who remains unimpressed by the Alps (cf. Radcliffe 1794; 1980: 166), and the villain Montoni, who does not say a word of admiration while crossing the splendid Apennines even though even his wife utters "a note of admiration" (p. 225). The moral connotations of being able to appreciate wild nature is also prominent in the reaction of Emily's lover Valancourt, a 'man of feeling', who says while looking at "the wildness of [a] surrounding scene": These scenes [...] soften the heart [...] They waken our best and purest feelings, disposing us to benevolence, pity, friendship. Those whom I love - I always seem to love more in such an hour as this [...]' (p. 46) Another example is Frankenstein's reaction to the "imperial nature" of the valley of Chamounix: These sublime and magnificent scenes afforded me the greatest consolation that I was capable of receiving. They elevated me from all littleness of feeling. [...] the sight of the tremendous and ever-moving glacier [...] filled me with a sublime ecstacy that gave wings to the soul and allowed it to soar from the obscure world to light and joy. The sight of the

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also to impress the reader with them so that he or she could participate in the characters' experience. What was therefore needed was the creation of a convincing illusion of spatial presence in the reader - in spite of the problems presented by the linguistic medium. To achieve this illusion a descriptive repertoire was necessary, only parts of which were at the authors' disposal before the late eighteenth century.50 A good illustration of this repertoire is to be found in a passage from Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho, in which the heroine Emily rides to the castle of Udolpho as a quasi prisoner of the villain Montoni: [...] the travellers began to ascend the Apennines. The immense pine-forests, which, at that period, overhung these mountains, and between which the road wound, excluded all view but of the cliffs aspiring above, except that, now and then, an opening through the dark woods allowed the eve a momentary glimpse of the country below. The gloom of these shades, their solitary silence [...], the tremendous precipices of the mountains, that came partially to the eye. each assisted to raise the solemnity of Emily's feelings into awe; she saw only images of gloomy grandeur, or of dreadful sublimity [...] From this sublime scene the travellers continued to ascend among the pines, till they entered a narrow pass of the mountains, which shut out every feature of the distant country, and in its stead, exhibited only tremendous crags, impending over the road, where no vestige of humanity, or even of vegetation, appeared [. . .] This pass, which led into the heart of the Apennine, at length opened to day, and a scene of mountains stretched in long perspective, as wild as any the travellers had yet passed. Still vast pine-forests hung upon their base, and crowned the ridgy precipice, that rose perpendicularly from the vale, while, above, the rolling mists caught the sun-beams, and touched their cliffs with all the magical colouring of light and shade. The scene seemed perpetually changing, and its features to assume new forms, as the winding road brought them to the eye [...]; while the shifting vapours, now partially concealing their minuter beauties and now illuminating them with splendid tints, assisted the illusions of the sight. [. ..] Wild and romantic as were these scenes, their character had far less of the sublime, than had those of the Alps, which guard the entrance of Italy. (Radclifife 1794; 1980: 224-26; italics, underlining and bold types mine) This is only a part of a much longer description. Although the Apennines here still retain something of the fear-inspiring quality formerly connected with high mountains and though they are also related to a negative psychological state of the heroine (her apprehensions of Montoni), they appear nevertheless mainly as positive aesthetic and emotional stimuli - not only to the protagonist, to whom awful and majestic in nature had indeed always the effect of solemnizing my mind [...] (Shelley 1818; 1968: 360) These passages clearly reflect the influence of 18th-century sensibility and physico-theology. The extension of an originally moral and religious sensibility to a sensibility of nature, which we see here, had indeed been prepared both by Rousseau's and the moral and theological view of nature which is typical of physico-theology, but which may also be seen in Shaftesbury (e.g. 1709; 1987: 308, 310) or Addison (cf. Spectator nos. 412 and 489), and later on found its expression in the secularized morality and religion of (Gothic) novels since the 1790s. Cf. van Tieghem's comment (I960: 103) on the poorness of classicist vocabulary at the disposal for landscape descriptions as opposed to "les progrés qui s'accomplissaient à ce moment [la seconde moitié du siècle] dans l'art de peindre avec les mots le monde extérieur" (p. 159).

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nature always has a consolatory and quasi religious function, but also to the reader's imagination. The remarkably evocative quality of this description relies on two techniques: on the heavy use of culturally well-established concepts suggestive of the sublime or the picturesque and on the introduction of a dynamicized spatial perspective into narrative fiction.51 What is striking in this passage from the point of view of cultural history is the amount of key-words derived from the aesthetics of the sublime, which had evolved outside the novel since Addison's Spectator essays on the imagination and Burke's Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (see the terms in bold type): "immense", "vast", "tremendous" and "dreadful",52 "grandeur", "sublime" and "sublimity", and the culminating phrase "wild and romantic". True, these key words had existed before, but they only amalgamated into a wide-spread discourse of sublime and picturesque description of nature in the course of the second half of the eighteenth century.5 And it is only from that period onwards that they could be used as a shorthand which made sense even to the average reader and which hence could trigger off the intended emotional and illusionist reactions in a large reading public. Another shorthand, equally established outside the novel before being used in it, was the allusion to descriptive models in painting, above all to the 'sublime' Salvator Rosa. Radcliffe resorts to this associative technique in her first description of a Pyrenean wilderness in The Mysteries of Udolpho: "this was such a scene as Salvator would have chosen, had he then existed, for his canvas." (1794; 1980: 30) However, the use of the current vocabulary of the sublime and the allusions to painters did certainly not suffice to create the intended illusion of a spatial presence of landscapes. Radcliffe herself was well aware of the problem when she complained in her 1795 account of her visit to the scenic landscapes of the Lake District: It is difficult to spread varied pictures of such scenes before the imagination. A repetition of the same images of rock, wood and water, and the same epithets of grand, vast and sublime, which necessarily occur, must appear tautologous, on paper, though their archetypes in nature, ever varying in outline, or arrangement, exhibit new visions to the eye, and produce new shades of effect on the mind. (Radcliffe 1795; 1975: 419)

An important means to compensate for the deficiencies of the verbal code consisted in the adaptation of an eminently illusionist technique of painting to narrative fiction, namely in the emphatic use of dynamicized spatial perspective. Unlike most earlier descriptions of spatial settings, in which isolated items were simply enumerated from an omniscient, abstract and static point of view, the reader of Radcliffe's description is enabled to follow an ever-changing scenery from the 51

52 53

According to Andrews (1989: 178-180) basic elements of these techniques are already to be found - outside fiction - in the trend-setting "descriptive tactic[s]" (p. 179) used by John Brown in his letter of 1753 on Derwent Water. "Dreadful" is here used as a synonym for the frequent term 'horrible' or 'terrible'. Cf. Bohls 1995: 13, who considers the 1780s/90s to be the period when "descriptive conventions coalesced".

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concrete point of view, and in the perspective, of the heroine on horseback. Together with Emily we are allowed to catch partial glimpses of picturesque cliffs towering above the road, of a distant countryside below, or of a "perspective" of mountains stretching before her. This introduction of a dynamic spatial perspective - dynamic in the double sense of following the moving gaze of the heroine, who herself moves through the landscape and hence constitutes a dynamic point of view (see words and phrases in italics) - is an ideal solution for the fundamental problem of how to combine the detailed representation of static objects with a narrative, which by its very nature is dynamic.54 Apart from the repeated mentionings of the changes in the scenery according to the movement of the beholder Emily, the insistence on the partiality of the views (underlined phrases) is the most obvious indication of the attempted imitation of real-life perspective. With some rare exceptions55 such a suggestion of real-life perspectivity, in painting a discovery of the early Renaissance, was not used consistently in literature before the second half of the eighteenth century. This is no coincidence: spatial perspective with its limitations of view according to the respective standpoint of the observer is an extension of, or a parallel to, the subjective moral perspective of central characters already introduced by authors of sentimental novels such as Richardson and Sterne, and this extension of 'perspectivity' in fiction is at the same time a perfect correlative of the growing emphasis on subjectivity in the history of ideas of the period.

5. Conclusion: On the relationship between Literary and Cultural Studies Together with the other factors mentioned earlier on, the relatively late development of spatial perspective in prose descriptions may thus help to solve a type of problem which is not usually dealt with in literary history: the problem of accounting for the absence rather than for the presence of a literary phenomenon in comparison which non-literary discourses.56 Such absences can only be noticed if literary studies open up towards cultural phenomena beyond fictional literature. And it is owing to this very approach that I hope I have been able to shed some light on the question why the British novel, in contrast to cultural discourses 54

Another solution, already praised by Lessing with respect to Homer, but evidently unfit for the description of landscapes, was to narrativize description - from a static standpoint - by following the process of the making of an object (as in the famous case of Achilles's shield [Iliad XVIII, 478-607]). The use of a dynamic standpoint is, if I am not mistaken, a new development in 18th century prose. Except for the remarkably early case of Dennis's letter of 1688, it seems to have become a standard device since the mid-eighteenth century (with examples to be found in Brown's letter of 1753, Rousseau's descriptions in La Nouvelle Hèlo&e and Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire or Amory's John Buncle). Apart from Dennis's letter one may mention Shakespeare's King Lear IV/6, where Edgar describes, albeit from a static point of view, a non-existing landscape, the cliffs at Dover, to blind Gloucester, inciting him to jump off the 'cliff in order to cure his desperation. This neglect of a "Geschichte der versäumten Literatur" was pointed out by Stanzel as early as in 1964 (138) - though without much effect.

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outside fiction, was so slow in paying its tribute to the new appreciation of savage landscapes and why towards the end of the eighteenth century we can say at long last that the wildness pleases in the novel, too. What my reflections should also have made clear is an important fact often overlooked in cultural studies: even though the novel can at times be adduced as an important fund of documents for changes in mentalities, it can by no means be reduced to a mere symptom of changes outside literature. Sometimes fictional literature resists cultural trends: it may at times be ahead of such trends, at other times it may lag behind - for reasons connected with both the linguistic or generic medium and the aesthetic tradition. My subject, the slowness of the novel in joining the new appreciation of savage landscapes, is only one instance of such a literary 'eccentricity' with respect to the cultural context. Other instances could be added such as the belated reaction to the Industrial Revolution in the so-called 'industrial novel' some seventy years after the beginnings of this revolution. To become aware of this special position of literature in the cultural context may have noteworthy consequences for our ideas on the presently much-discussed relationship between literary and cultural studies. On the one hand it shows the necessity to resist a tendency inherent in the construction of cultural models of a period, namely to neglect the medial and historical particularities, divergencies and relative autonomy of the different discourses or, in Bourdieu's terminology, 'fields' under analysis. On the other hand the very particularity of the novel in the revolution in mentalities discussed in my paper would not have come into focus in the first place if the traditional realm of literary history had not been transcended in favour of a comparison between literature and other cultural discourses as different responses to similar issues. Furthermore, any attempt to deal with the intricate question of literary Funktionsgeschichte would be futile if it disregarded extraliterary factors and discourses, since it is also, if not primarily, with respect to these that the functions of literature have to be described inside a given society. All these considerations point to the conclusion that cultural and literary studies should not be considered as antagonistic approaches fighting for hegemony57 but as mutually enriching approaches. Indeed, literary studies may profit as much from the current 'cultural turn' as cultural studies58 could profit from respecting specifically literary approaches and the particularities of literature as a cultural discourse.59 57

58

59

An outstanding example of such a 'hegemonial' thinking is to be found in Easthope 1991, who advocates the substitution of literary by cultural studies (cf. his programmatic title Literary into Cultural Studies); for the general antagonisms between literary and cultural studies see Broich 1994: 21 f. Even though, for a literary scholar, such a crossing of borders will, of course, never cover the whole range of culture and ought to be ultimately literature-centred (for it is only in this field that he or she is an expert), it is partly due to an insufficient scholarly interest in comparisons between literature and other discourses (or other media and arts) that the issues discussed in this essay have been widely neglected so far. However, such a synthesis should not blur the fact that from the point of view of literary criticism cultural studies in their most radical form (exemplified by Easthope and others) have some highly questionable aspects. For various reasons I personally am sceptical about the decentering of the traditional main subject of literary studies, namely verbal art and its

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References Addison, Joseph (and Steele, Richard) ('1711-12), The Spectator, ed. by Henry Morley, London [n.d.]: Routledge. Alewyn, Richard (1965), "Die Literarische Angst", in Hoimar v. Ditfurth, ed., Aspekte der Angst. Starnberger Gespräche 1964, Stuttgart: Thieme, 24-43. - (1974), "Die Lust an der Angst", in Alewyn, Probleme und Gestalten. Essays, Frankfurt a. M.: Insel, 307-330. Allen, B. Sprague (1937; 1958), Tides in English Taste, 1619-1800. A Background for the Study of English Literature, New York: Pageant Books. Andrews, Malcolm (1989), The Search for the Picturesque. Landscape Aesthetics and Tourism in Britain, 1760-1800, Aldershot: Scolar Press. Begemann, Christian (1987), Furcht und Angst im Prozeß der Aufklärung. Zu Literatur und Bewußtseinsgeschichte des 18. Jahrhunderts, Frankfurt a. M.: Athenäum. Behn, Aphra (1688; 1967), Oronooko or The Royal Slave, in Behn, The Works, ed. by Montague Summers, 6 vols., New York: Phaeton Press, vol. 5, 127-208. Bode, Christoph (1992), "And what were thou ...?". Essay über Shelley und das Erhabene (Studien zur englischen Romantik 6), Essen: Blaue Eule. Böhls, Elizabeth A. (1995), Women Travel Writers and the Language of Aesthetics, 1716-1818 (Cambridge Studies in Romanticism 1), Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Brilli, Attilo (1987), II viaggio in Italia, Milano; German transl.: Reisen in Italien. Zur Kulturgeschichte der klassischen Italienreise vom 16. bis 19. Jahrhundert, Köln 1989: DuMont. Broich, Ulrich (1994), "British Cultural Studies as a Challenge to Eng. Lit.", Journal for the Study of British Cultures 1, 21-34. Burckhardt, Jacob (1860; 1976), Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien. Ein Versuch, ed. by Walter Goetz, Stuttgart: Kröner. Burnet, Thomas (1681; 1965), The Sacred Theory of the Earth, ed. by Basil Willey, London: Centaur, 19-25, 109-118. Corbin, Alain (1988; 1990), Le Territoire du vide. L'Occident et le plaisir du rivage 1750-1840, Paris; German transl.: Meereslust. Das Abendland und die Entdeckung der Küste, transl. by Grete Osterwald, Berlin: Wagenbach. Cotton, Charles (1681; 1958), "The Wonders of the Peake", in Cotton, The Poems, ed. by John Buxton, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 52-94. Curtius, Ernst Robert (1942; 1975), "Rhetorische Naturschilderungen im Mittelalter", in Alexander Ritter, ed., Landschaft und Raum in der Erzählkunst (Wege der Forschung 418), Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 69-111. - (1948; 1993), Europäische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter, Tübingen-Basel: Francke. Dangerfield, Thomas (1680; 1991), Don Tomazo, in An Anthology of Seventeenth-Century Fiction, ed. by Paul Salzman, Oxford-New York: Oxford UP, 349-445. Defoe, Daniel (1719; 1965), Robinson Crusoe, ed. by Angus Ross, Harmondsworth: Penguin. - (1724; 1964), Roxana, ed. by Jane Jack, Oxford-New York: Oxford UP. Dennis, John (1688; 1967), "Letter describing [a] crossing the Alps, dated from Turin, Oct. 25, 1688", in Dennis, The Critical Works, ed. by Edward Niles Hooker, 2 vols., vol. 2, Baltimore: history, by the indiscriminate inclusion of all signifying practices of a given, mostly contemporary society: partly because such a 'dethroning of King Lear by King Kong1 would ultimately lead to a deplorable loss of aesthetic and historical awareness; additionally, such a shift in paradigms would encourage the institutionalization of dilettantism; and last, but not least I am particularly sceptical about the ideological implications of an approach which interprets cultural exchange mainly as an eternal power struggle in the fashionable fields of class, race and gender - to the detriment of other aspects of culture which are, in my view, at least equally important.

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Johns Hopkins Press, 380-382. Donne, John (1611; 1991), The Complete English Poems (Everyman's Library), ed. by C. A. Patricks, London: Campbell, 327-349. Easthope, Anthony (1991), Literary into Cultural Studies, London-New York: Routledge. Eddy, Donald D. (1976), "John Brown: 'The Columbus of Keswick'", Modern Philology 73, S74S84. Evelyn, John (1818; 1959), The Diary, ed. by E. S. de Beer, London-New York-Toronto: Oxford UP. Fielding, Henry (1742; 1973), Joseph Andrews, in Fielding, Joseph Andrews and Shamela, ed. by A. R. Humphreys, London: Dent-Dutton. - (1749; 1966), The History of Tom Jones, ed. by R. P. C. Mutter, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Foucault, Michel (1966), Les Mots et les choses. Une archéologie des sciences humaines (Bibliothèque des sciences humaines), Paris: Gallimard. Garber, Klaus (1974), Der locus amoenus und der locus terribilis. Bild und Funktion der Natur in der deutschen Schäfer- und Landlebendichtung des 17. Jahrhunderts (Literatur und Leben, N.F. 16), Köln-Wien: Böhlau. Greiner, Walter F., ed. (1970), English Theories of the Novel II. Eighteenth Century (English Texts 7), Tübingen: Niemeyer. Gruenter, Rainer (1953; 1975), "'Landschaft'. Bemerkungen zur Wortund Bedeutungsgeschichte", in Alexander Ritter, ed., Landschaft und Raum in der Erzählkunst (Wege der Forschung 418), Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 192-207. Hagstrum, Jean H. (1984), "Pictures of the Heart. The Psychological Picturesque in Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho", in Paul J. Korshin, Robert R. Allen, eds., Greene Centennial Studies. Essays Presented to Donald Greene in the Centennial Year of the University of Southern California, Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 434-441. Johnson, Samuel (1759; 1988), The History of Rasselas Prince of Abissinia, ed. by J. P. Hardy, Oxford-New York: Oxford UP. - (1775; 1985), A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, ed. by J. D. Fleeman, Oxford: Clarendon. Kadish, Doris Y., (1987), The Literature of Images. Narrative Landscapes from 'Julie' to 'Jane Eyre', New Brunswick-London: Rutgers UP. Kullmann, Thomas (1995), Vermenschlichte Natur. Zur Bedeutung von Tages- und Jahreszeit, Landschaft und Wetter im englischen Roman von Ann Radcliffe bis Thomas Hardy, Tübingen: Niemeyer. Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim (1766), Laokoon, in Lessing, Werke, Salzburg [n.d.]: Bergland-Buch, 581-663. Mackenzie, Henry (1771; 1970), The Man of Feeling, ed. by Brian Vickers, London-Oxford-New York: Oxford UP. Malins, Edward (1966), English Landscaping and Literature. 1660-1840, London-New YorkToronto: Oxford UP. Meyer, Horst (1978), "The wildness pleases: Shaftesbury und die Folgen", in Park und Garten im 18. Jahrhundert. Colloquium der Arbeitsstelle 18. Jahrhundert (Beiträge zur Geschichte der Literatur und Kunst des 18. Jahrhunderts 2), Heidelberg: Winter, 16-21. Nicolson, Maijorie Hope (1959), Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory. The Development of the Aesthetics of the Infinite, Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell UP. - (1973), "Literary Attitudes toward Mountains", in Philip R Wiener, ed., Dictionary of the History of Ideas, New York: Scribner's, 4 vols., vol. 3, 253-260. Pfister, Manfred (1991), '"The Fatal Gift of Beauty': Das Italien britischer Reisender", in Hermann H. Wetzel, ed., Reisen in den Mittelmeerraum: eine Vortragsreihe im Wintersemester 1990/91 (Passauer Mittelmeerstudien 3), Passau: Passavia, 55-101. Pochat, Götz (1973), Figur und Landschaft. Eine historische Interpretation der Landschaftsmalerei von der Antike bis zur Renaissance, Berlin-New York: de Gruyter. Radcliffe, Ann (1794; 1980), The Mysteries of Udolpho, ed. by Bonamy Dobrée, Oxford-New York-Toronto-Melbourne: Oxford UP.

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- (1795; 1975), A Journey Made in the Summer of 1794 through Holland and the Western Frontier of Germany with a return down the Rhine; to which are added, Observations during a Tour to the Lakes of Lancashire, reprint Hildesheim-New York: Olms. - (1797; 1968), The Italian, ed. by Frederick Garter, Oxford: Oxford UP. Rasmo, Nicolo; Roethlisberger, Marcel; Ruhmer, Eberhard; Weber, Bruno; Wied, Alexander (1981), Die Alpen in der Malerei, Rosenheim: Rosenheimer. Reynolds, Myra (1895; 1966), The Treatment of Nature in English Poetry Between Pope and Wordsworth, New York, reprint of the second ed. 1909: Gordian Press. Reynolds, Sir Joshua (1769-90; 1992), Discourses, ed. by Pat Rogers, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Richardson, Samuel (1754; 1972), The History of Sir Charles Grandison, ed. by Jocelyn Harris, London-New York-Toronto: Oxford UP. Ritter, Joachim (1963), Landschaft. Zur Funktion des Ästhetischen in der modernen Gesellschaft, Münster: Aschendorf. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1761; 1960), La Nouvelle Hélo'Ée, ed. by R. Pomeau, Paris: Garnier. - (1782-89; 1964), Les Confessions, ed. by Jacques Voisine, Paris: Garnier. Shaftesbury, third Earl of (Anthony Ashley Cooper) (1709; 1987), The Moralists, in Shaftesbury, Standard Edition. Complete Works, selected Letters and posthumous Writings. In English with German Translation, Wolfram Benda et al., eds., Stuttgart-Bad Cannstadt: FrommannHolzboog, vol. II/l (Moral and Political Philosophy). Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft (1818; 1968), Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus, in Peter Fairclough, ed., Three Gothic Novels, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 257-497. Smollett, Tobias (1771; 1983), Humphry Clinker, ed. by James L. Thorson, New York-London: Norton. Stanzel, Franz K. (1964), "Das Bild der Alpen in der englischen Literatur des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts", Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift n.s. 14, 121-138. Steingräber, Erich (1983), "Natur - Landschaft - Landschaftsmalerei", in Marcel Röthlisberger, ed., Im Licht von Claude Lorrain. Landschaftsmalerei aus drei Jahrhunderten, München: Hirmer-Haus der Kunst, 13-30. Sunderland, John (1973), "The legend and influence of Salvator Rosa in England in the eighteenth century", The Burlington Magazine 115, 785-789. Thomson, James (1726-30; 1981), The Seasons, ed. by James Sambrook, Oxford: Clarendon. Tieghem, Paul van (1960), Le Sentiment de la nature dans le préromantisme européen, Paris: Nizet. West, Thomas (1778; 1989), A Guide to the Lakes in Cumberland, Westmoreland and Lancashire, reprint of the 1784 edition, Oxford: Woodstock Books. White, Christopher (1979), "Die 'Grand Tour'", in Zwei Jahrhunderte Englische Malerei. Britische Kunst und Europa 1680 bis 1880, München: Haus der Kunst, 163-171. Yandell, Michael D., ed. (1977), Grand Canyon National Park (National Parkways), Casper, Wyoming: World-Wide Research and Publishing Co. Zelle, Carsten (1987), Angenehmes Grauen'. Literaturhistorische Beiträge zur Ästhetik des Schrecklichen im 18. Jahrhundert (Studien zum 18. Jahrhundert 10), Hamburg: Meiner.

Walter Gobel (Stuttgart)

Conflicting Definitions of the Culture of Sensibility

In a well-known letter to Samuel Richardson, Anna Laetitia Barbauld asks the author in 1749: What, in your opinion, is the meaning of the word sentimental, so much in vogue among the polite? Everything clever and agreeable is comprehended in that word; but I am convinced a wrong interpretation is given, because it is impossible everything clever and agreeable can be so common as this word.1

The question I would like to ask is whether today the concepts of sentiment and sensibility, terms which are often regarded as synonymous,2 have with historical distance gained in clarity of definition. It seems to me that there have been and are many quite distinct approaches to the culture of sensibility which, if not mutually exclusive, offer but partial interpretations of the cultural phenomena concerned. There seem today to be different microhistories of the culture of sensibility, proving Thomas Kuhn's view that the paradigm often determines the shape of the object interpreted. 3 1 would like to mention four approaches, which usually appear in some blended form: (1) the history of ideas approach, (2) the socio-political, (3) the physiological and (4) the poststructural historiographical approach, and make a few observations on the relation of blindness and insight in each case (for the specific kinds of literature covered by each approach and for the periods mainly investigated, see diagram). I shall then conclude with a plea, not so much for pluralism than for methodical differentiation within a general concept of historical cultural studies.

2

3

The Correspondence of Samuel Richardson, Vol.IV, ed. Anna Laetitia Barbauld (London, 1804), 282. See, for example, Chris Jones, Radical Sensibility. Literature and Ideas in the 1790s (London-New York, 1993), 5: "I have used the two terms interchangeably, as much from a conviction of their continuity as from the inconvenient absences of an adjectival form of 'sensibility'." Others have, however, distinguished early forms of sentimentalism from later forms of sensibility, e.g. Ernest A. Baker, The History of the English Novel, 10 Vols., V(1929), repr. New York 1969, p.120 or Herbert Ross Brown, The Sentimental Novel in America 1789-1860 (1940), repr. New York 1975, 74. These promising early attempts have been glossed over in modern criticism, esp. under the influence of the semiotic turn and a trend towards terminologies of containment. Thomas S. Kuhn, Die Struktur wissenschaftlicher Revolutionen , trans. K. Simon, 10th ed. (Frankfurt, 1989).

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1696- 1720s 1710

30s

40s

50s

60s

70s

80s

90s

Genre Poetry

Drama

( —> romantic poetry)

his. of ideas approach1 (novel)

pol./ sociol. appr.

Novel physiol. appr.3

Med. Lit.2 Rei. Lit.

neoy hist, appr.

/

Conversation Letters etc. Notes: 1.) The history of ideas approach, partly a product of latitudinarian and platonist ideas ( -> Rel. Lit.), also strongly influences the moralist tradition of essay-writing, a genre not shown here. 2.) Medical literature. The double line devides the traditional genre from a wider (Bakhtinian) concept of genre. 3.) mainly novels with heroines.

I Since the beginning of our century the third Earl of Shaftesbury has been regarded as the philosophical father of sentimental literature and of the man of feeling. Like God and Satan Shaftesbury and Hobbes have presided over 18th-century literature, the one inspiring deism and nature poetry and the age of sensibility with his concept of an inborn moral sense, the other inspiring the Augustan pessimists or what Louis I. Bredvold has called the "gloom of the T O I J satirists".4 In the poetry of James Thomson, Mark Akenside or Henry Baker, in Fielding's moralism and the 4

Louis I. Bredvold, "The Gloom of the Tory Satirists", in James Clifford (ed.), EighteenthCentury English Literature. Modern Essays in Criticism, ed. (London, 1959), 1-28.

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moral weeklies Shaftesbury's influence was pervasive, as C. A. Moore and Erwin Wolff have demonstrated.5 Such studies of influence can, however, not suppress the fact that moral sense and enthusiasm, prevalent in the moralistic essay and in poetry respectively, are much less important for the novel of sentiment, in which a repressive Puritan morality often dominates or in the sentimental drama, which predates Shaftesbury's influence.6 Both genres were little noticed in the early 20th century, allowing thus for the inflationary use of the philosophical paradigm as a kind of substitute religion in the explanation of literary phenomena. For Arthur Sherbo sentimental drama is - even in 1957 - simply "a debased literary genre, incapable of producing literature of any marked degree of excellence".7 It is in the drama, however, for example in Nicholas Rowe's "melancholy tale of private woes" The Fair Penitent (1703), that sympathy, compassion and the type of the man of feeling are modelled long before Shaftesbury's essays became influential.8 The hero Altamont exhibits „goodness innate" in a most uncompromising form, is "kind as the softest virgin of our sex", and frequently demonstrates his tender passions on the stage, so after a misunderstanding with his best friend Horatio: But, O, had I been wronged by thee, Horatio, There is a yielding softness in my heart Could ne'er have stood it out, but I had ran With streaming eyes and open arms upon thee.9

Esteeming his heart more than common law or common sense, Altamont is even willing to forgive his dishonoured bride Calista, a most extreme form of compassion and of illegal sacrifice not to be found in later sentimental literature. Here we have anything but the possessive gaze of a more or less detached male observer often found in later sentimental literature and generally attacked as a stereotypical trait of the man of feeling. Here we have quite uncompromising selfabasement and an altruistic model of compassion which is centered upon the extended family unit (which includes friends10) surrounding Sciolto and endangered by the rake Lothario. The revolution of dramatic production at the turn of the century requires, besides an intertextual explanation, the application of the socio-political paradigm, not only that of the history of ideas. It can be no coincidence that Cibber's Love's Last Shift (1696), which caused floods of tears when staged, follows upon the 5

6

8

9

C.A.Moore, "Shaftesbury and the Ethical Poets in England, 1700-1760", PULA XXXI (1916), 264-325; Erwin Wolff, Shaftesbury und seine Bedeutung für die englische Literatur des 18. Jahrhunderts. Der Moralist und die literarische Form (Tübingen, 1960). Cf. Walter Göbel, "Der Shaftesbury-Mythos. Zum Verhältnis von Philosophie und Empfindsamkeit in England", Anglia 110 (1992), 100-118. Arthur Sherbo, English Sentimental Drama (Michigan, 1957), VII. Nicholas Rowe, The Fair Penitent, ed. Malcolm Goldstein. Regents Restoration Drama Series (London, 1969), Prologue, v. 16, p.5. Nicholas Rowe, The Fair Penitent, IV, w . 374-78, p.59. SCIOLTO: "Thou art my son, ev'n near me as Calista./ Horatio and Lavinia too are mine;/All are my children, and shall share my heart." Rowe, Fair Penitent I, 86-88.

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political end of the Restoration as an antidote to the moral dissoluteness which Jeremy Collier was two years later to expose. Sentimental drama opposed acerbic wit by choked sobs, by gestures and even by complete and moving silences, fought egoistic epicureanism by the demonstration of compassion and benevolence, met erotic pursuit with suffering endurance. The new ethics of feeling, presented first in the drama, has often (e.g. by Gerhard Sauder, Peter Szondi or John Loftis) been interpreted as a basically Puritan and early bourgeois code of behaviour centered upon the marketable commodity of chastity and the model of the nuclear family unit and opposed to aristocratic license and libertinism.11 The socio-political paradigm, which has also been applied to the novel of sentiment, for example to Richardson's Pamela, is less efficient as a key to the later literature of sensibility in post-revolutionary England, however, than in France or Germany, where sentiment is, as Gerhard Sauder has shown, definitely associated with the ascendancy of the bourgeoisie.12 In England, where sentimental drama is born, it soon becomes moderate in tone, mediating between man of feeling and gentleman, for example in Richard Steele's Conscious Lovers.13 In the novel the socio-political paradigm loses in strength as the century advances and the ethics of feeling is gradually replaced by an aesthetics of feeling as the physiological discourse comes to dominate the political - at least in the novel. However, there is a short rebirth of this paradigm towards the end of the century, in the wake of the French Revolution. As Chris Jones has shown, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft seek to articulate a progressive tendency of the social affections, which, peculiarly enough, Jones follows back to the gentle ideals of the Earl of Shaftesbury, to whom he ascribes a tendency towards "moral egalitarianism" and individual freedom.14 Whether such a comprehensive link between early enlightened and genteel humanism and later anti-aristocratic and anti-patriarchal voices is valid, seems doubtful in the face of Shaftesbury's exclusiveness in matters of taste15 and more recent discussions of the enlightenment in England, which have led to a use of the term in the plural rather than in the singular and even to a total rejection of the term.16

11

13

15

As shown, for example, by John Loftis, Comedy and Society from Congreve to Fielding (Stanford, Calif., 1959). Cf. also Gerhard Sauder, Empfindsamkeit. Band I: Voraussetzungen und Elemente (Stuttgart, 1974). Gerhard Sauder, Empfindsamkeit. Band I, esp. p. XIII. Cf. Dieter Schulz, "Richard Steele: The Conscious Lovers", in Heinz Kosok (ed.), Das Englische Drama im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1976), 74-86. Chris Jones, Radical Sensibility, 6 and IX. Jones finds a natural apprehension of social justice despite Shaftesbury's "restricted social milieu" (59). A similar revival of the socio-political approach is to be found in Margaret Kilgour's recent interpretation of the gothic novel, which focusses upon the revolutionary possibilities of the form, regarding Godwin's Caleb Williams as a key representative (The Rise of the Gothic Novel, London-New York, 1995). See Walter Göbel "Der Shaftesbury-Mythos". Cf. instead of many R.R.Palmer, "Turgot: Paragon of the Continental Enlightenment", Journal of Law and Economics 19 (1976), 607-619, 608: "The term 'English Enlightenment' would be jarring and incongruous if it were ever heard."

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The third approach to the culture of sensibility, the physiological one, links sensibility to medicine and psychology. John Mullan's study of Sentiment and Sociability is situated half-way between the sociological and the physiological approach. The failure of the dream of an ideal society and the conflict between ideas, projections and social reality lead, according to Mullan, to the association of sensibility with illness and discontent, illness becoming the "last retreat of the morally pure" as exhibited in the death of the man of feeling Harley or in Clarissa's death. 7 Mullan sees a general development from idealistic forms of socialized sensibility, which, however, he doesn't find in literature but in circles of friends, towards melancholia, hypochondria and spleen, accompanied by a withdrawal from the external social world. The female body is inscribed as a compensation for the lack of social interaction and sensibilities: "In the myth of feminine sensibility are concentrated a culture's anxieties about its capacity for sociability."18 Mullan finally comes to the conclusion that "there is no social space for sensibility. Illness is its appropriate metaphor."19 He describes the anamnesis of sensibility as female: it is the woman's body that becomes a vessel of feelings and illnesses as the social Utopia collapses. A unity between sensibility and enlightenment, as suggested by the socio-political paradigm, is finally denied, as is a reading of Clarissa which looks for "an innovating critique of sexual politics".20 In the novel of sentiment "sensibility turns in on itself to illness because it seems almost too good for the world" or sensibility becomes a very "singular capacity" of an exceptional hero - as in Sterne's Yorick, no longer the basis of a general sociability.21 The focus of sensibility is generally the female body, which is constructed as the seat of delicate feelings and nervous disorders, of hysteria or of the vapours in medical treatises and sentimental novels. The feminization of the culture of sensibility goes hand in hand with the physiological approach not only in Mullan's investigation. Ann Jessie Van Sant sees a direct relation between physiological experiments, public presentations of fallen women in houses of correction (Magdalen House) and the vicarious enjoyment of novels of sentiment.22 Clarissa's sensible body is subjected to "sexual cruelty and investigation": "There is an underlying similarity between this novel and experiments on internal responses of animals."23 Literature, while producing a medical discourse, is here in danger of merely becoming an extension of medical science and empiricism. The limits of what Van Sant calls her "tactile model" of interpretation become clear when she approaches McKenzie's hero Harley: the man of feeling "hardly has a body", is placed in a 17

18

21 22

John Mullan, Sentiment and Sociability. The Language of Feeling in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1988), 16. John Mullan, Sentiment and Sociability, 224. John Mullan, Sentiment and Sociability, 240. John Mullan, Sentiment and Sociability, 224. John Mullan, Sentiment and Sociability, 193. A. J. Van Sant, Eighteenth-Century Sensibility and the Novel. The Senses in Social Context (Cambridge, 1993), 32,33. A. J. Van Sant, Eighteenth-Century Sensibility, 65 and xii.

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brothel without becoming in any way animated and appears to be, even as a "man of feeling [...] a reduced figure".24 By limiting sensibility to the physical and bodily sphere, Van Sant finally comes to the conclusion that "Without a body, Harley is nobody." 25 Harley, explicitly identified as a man of feeling by his author, is excluded from the category because he doesn't fit into the physiological paradigm and because he doesn't exhibit a body of sensibility "defined by reference to a nervous system conceived as feminine".26 Harley's neglect is supported by the exclusion of the moral appeal and the didactic aim from the definition of sensibility. While acknowledging that many authors conflate morality, imagination and the body, Van Sant distinguishes didactic literature from the actual literature of sensibility, which will aim at the stimulation of immediate feelings and must defy didaxis by means of imitation, as this would lead to affectation: "A narrative of sensibility initiates experience that can only be called original because it occurs in individual, organic structures, thus eroding the ethical value of imitation."27 Early literature of moral sensibility is thus excluded as are later manifestations of benevolence and sympathy which are not triggered by the female body. At the centre of attention are Clarissa and Yorick, the voyeuristic and experimental exploration of the body and the subtle play between benevolence and erotic titillation. The medico-physiological paradigm is definitely productive for many novels of the later eighteenth century, but it tends to background earlier forms of sensibility by the use of what Van Sant calls the "tactile model". The influence of medical treatises on the nerves, on hysteria and melancholia is doubtful before Richardson's correspondence with Dr. Cheyne, which began in 1733 - thus again the insight into a new paradigm causes some amount of blindness. If Margaret Ann Doody apodictically declares: "Nowadays I look in the index of books on either sensibility or sentiment, and if there is no reference to David Hartley I close the volume", 28 she merely proves how successful, but also how exclusivist, the medical paradigm is today. The fourth approach to the culture of sensibility and perhaps the most comprehensive that I would like to mention is the historiographies one, inspired partly by poststructuralism and by the New Historicism in the attempt to observe various kinds of literary and historical texts side by side. My example is G.J. Barker-Benfield's The Culture of Sensibility. While acknowledging the importance of the medical paradigm, his main interest is a social one, centered upon the reformation of male manners. Barker-Benfield sees the cult of sensibility as a shortlived phenomenon within a general culture of sensibility, and in the investigation of manners turns toward the longue duree-perspective of the historian and the anthropologist, inspired by the works of Norbert Elias. In the 18th century he finds an acceleration of a general process towards the refinement of manners and a 24

27

A. J. Van Sant, Eighteenth-Century A. J. Van Sant, Eighteenth-Century A. J. Van Sant, Eighteenth-Century A. J. Van Sant, Eighteenth-Century M. A. Doody, "Vibrations", London

Sensibility, 110, 112. Sensibility, 112. Sensibility, 113. Sensibility, 123. Review of Books, 5 August 1993, 11.

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gendering of the field. Refinement comes to mean feminization and thus, for example in the banning of duelling (Steele) or the cultivation of forms of politeness in public spaces such as amusement centers, shopping parades, ballrooms, the definition of social roles by women who influence "the enjoyment and cultivation of new heterosocial manners", while targeting the gross male behaviour of rakes and libertines.29 Here we have a marked contrast to Van Sant's model: Van Sant excludes women from the experience of sensibility, they merely stimulate male emotions with their sentient bodies, but the exploration of the physical and the bodily is denied to them. They could not, as Yorick does, feel their way across France.30 Barker-Benfield, however, sees women as the active centre of the culture of sensibility: "The culture of sensibility provided dramatic evidence of women's wish for the individual pursuit of self-expression and heterosocial pleasure in a wider world".31 Contrary to numerous interpretations of the victimization of women and of the female body, exposed as it is to male gazes, even to touch and aggression,32 Barker-Benfield tells the story of the feminization of public spheres and of manners, in short, of the emergence of a policed and polite female world and a female leisure class which can enjoy subtle sexual stimulation and even cultivate autoeroticism in sexual fantasizing. 3 Both the tamed man of feeling and the unbridled rake are convincingly presented as part of a feminine world of wishful imagining and erotic fantasy. Thus a sexual discourse is produced at the intersection between imaginative license and polite repression.34 A difficulty in Barker-Benfield's analysis is the sublation and containment of social strife in the wake of neo-historicist thinking (a tendency which is pervasive in cultural studies today quite generally), and this leads to a simplification of complex social negotiations. The refinement of culture, more often than not, followed aristocratic models and generally meant the imitation of the gentry (a dialectics Norbert Elias has insisted upon), while the vogue of sentiment and sociability aimed to some extent, especially in the drama and early novels, at the formation of a new, anti-aristocratic habitus, articulated against epicurean and libertine ideals.35 Refinement as a historical process can thus not be decoded from the vantage point of gender only. It has also meant aspiration to a leisure culture of gentility as well as, paradoxically, the reinterpretation and subversion of that culture - and this at the same time.36 29

30

32

33 34 35

36

G. J. Barker-Benfield, The Culture of Sensibility. Sex and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Chicago, 1992), xxvi. A. J. Van Sant, Eighteenth-Century Sensibility, 124. Barker-Benfield, The Culture of Sensibility, xxvii. See especially Elisabeth Bronfen, Over My Dead Body. Death, Femininity and the Aesthetic (Manchester, 1992). Barker-Benfield, The Culture of Sensibility, 329 and 344. These dialectical mechanisms clearly show Foucault's influence. The term habitus is taken from Pierre Bourdieu's Distinctions. A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. R. Nice (London, 1986), Part II, Ch.3. For the articulation of such a dialectics see also John Barrell's investigation of the interplay between popular and polite cultural codes after the French Revolution in this volume.

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More important is the second difficulty or rather impasse in Barker-Benfield's analysis: While diagnosing a general refinement of culture which goes far beyond the eighteenth century but accelerates and is gendered then, he must also acknowledge that there is a marked reaction against the culture of sensibility towards the end of the century, exemplified in the works of Wollstonecraft, in the reaction against Werther and the gothic craze or in novels like Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, a movement which focusses upon a new rationalization of the image of woman. This, however, can hardly mark the end of the culture of refinement, which presumably extends into our modern age in some form. This impasse is due to the fact that Barker-Benfield vacillates between socio-historical and literary paradigms. Starting out from long-term changes within general culture, he later focusses upon more short-lived developments in the arts, which react against a literary fashion of sensibility more than against the general cultural refinement. The tension between these two modes of change points to the limitations of a neo-historical homogenization of cultural phenomena with reference to such blanket terms as politeness, civility or refinement. In this specific case there is a tendency to contain literature within long-term cultural developments and to marginalize intertextual and intergeneric influences and changes within the art-form itself in its evolution. Barker-Benfield is thus not finally able to answer the question why Wollstonecraft should oppose the general refinement and feminization of culture, which is not the whole story: she mainly opposes stereotyping and attempts .o marginalize women as too fragile, uncontrollable, wilful or over-refined, in short, she opposes androcentric definitions of sensibility which were also pervasive in the 18th century in spite of the general feminization of culture observed. Barker-Benfield is just as little able to explain the dialectics of automatization and innovation in the evolution of art-forms and genres, which the Russian Formalists have exposed and which in the late 18th century must lead to a rejection of stereotypical forms of the stimulation of feelings within the gothic and sentimental traditions. II I would like to sum up the most obvious paradoxes and limitations contained in the different approaches to the culture of sensibility, some of which are shown in the diagram above. The first is one of temporal extension: When does the culture of sensibility begin? Though it is generally accepted that in the drama the age of sentiment began with Cibber's Love's Last Shift in 1696, it is only the sociopolitical and Barker-Benfield's neo-historical approach that take account of such an early beginning. The physiological approach begins with Richardson, focussing on Clarissa, the history of ideas approach begins somewhat earlier with the moral weeklies and sentimental poetry of the 20s and branches out towards the novel later. A second paradox concerns the interpretation of the feminine within the culture of sensibility. While for Barker-Benfield we have a general feminization of culture and women thus determine the transformation of 18th century culture and the

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articulation of sensibilities, most interpreters following the physiological approach focus upon the instrumentalization of the female body, which is vicariously exploited either as an object for the male gaze, for experimental exploration and analysis or for sensual enjoyment. Women in distress or mad and hysterical women allow for exquisite aesthetic, erotic and psychological experiences not only for the male reader, allow for the exploration of sensibility and simultaneously for the policing of excessive sensibility. What we observe here seems to be a dialectics of emancipation and victimization within the same cultural paradigm: Are women finally more the agents or the patients within the culture of sensibility? A third paradox concerns the relationship between exemplary moral sensibility and the exploration of the abnormal, the ill, the mad. Both aspects can be presented within a single character: Emily St.Aubert in The Mysteries of Udolpho develops from a hysterical, fanciful person, who will exhibit signs of madness in extreme psychological situations, to a sensible being governed by compassion and benevolence (much the same as Marianne in Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility). The physiological approach, however, concentrates merely on the extremes of a sensibility which is reduced to sensitivity, while the history of ideas approach, on the other hand, focusses upon the moral sentiments as set forth within the Shaftesbury-Hutcheson tradition. For John Mullan there is no social space for sensibility. Illness is its appropriate metaphor, while for Barker-Benfield the reformation of manners and the moderation of gross male behaviour, that is cultural and moral refinement, are at the very heart of the social revolution brought about by sensibility and the feminization of culture. Some of these paradoxes are surely due to the complexity and vagueness of the terms sentiment and sensibility mentioned by Barbauld in her letter to Richardson and have hardly been resolved today. Sensibility was obviously a fashionable word, which was applied to a number of phenomena and many aspects of human nature in philosophical, literary and everyday discourse. As the eighteenth century is the age in which human nature is freed from traditional schematic views (such as the body/mind dichotomy, the theory of humours, character-writing), the semantic explosion of key terms like sentiment or sensibility signifies a basic insecurity concerning definitions and inscriptions of human nature and of gender roles in the enlightenment. As the human being is explored along medical, psychological, social, and philosophical lines, definitions of his decentered nature proliferate and he becomes a plastic being, subject to anthropological speculation and redefinition. His sensibility can be interpreted as (1) an inborn moral propensity (and used as a political weapon), (2) as an attribute of the female to be denounced or cherished and perhaps extended to the male, (3) as a general cultural achievement used to distinguish a superior habitus, (4) as a link with the divine or (5) as a devilish weakness subject to the traditional body/mind dichotomy (Sterne/Johnson), which must be curbed in an age of reason. There is, thus, a historical anthropological network of significations and ascriptions which to some extent accounts for the various manifestations of and the various approaches to the phenomenon of sensibility. These approaches are not simply, as Thomas Kuhn suggests, products of modern scholarly strife and rivalry.

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Some of the paradoxes enumerated are, however, due to the dialectics of the enlightenment. Refinement and new forms of stereotyping - for example in the exploitation of the femme fragile, her exposure to the reader's gaze or the villain's touch - can go hand in hand as can the marginalizing of madness and hysteria and the exhibition of these phenomena. Such dialectics have been explored by Foucault in the development of sexual discourse or in investigations of madness and civilization. However, the approaches mentioned above often foreground one aspect of such complex dialectical or even rhizomatic cultural developments. What we need is a mediation of the various approaches to the culture of sensibility within a general concept of historical cultural studies. Such a concept would have to take into account that the political, the philosophical or the medical discourses (etc.) may dominate in different stages (and genres) of the culture of sensibility and demand methodical flexibility.37 One question, however, does not offer such an easy solution by means of methodical flexibility or syncretism. Various articulations of the concept of sensibility affect society, the arts, the image of man, even politics, medicine and, of course, religion, the latter forgotten by most modern interpreters.38 Within such a complex field methods concerning the arts and the social sciences will inevitably come into contact as in Barker-Benfield's case. And here the main problem is one of duration and change.39 While in the historical and social field modes of change tend to privilege a longue duree-pattern,40 in the arts shorter periods of change seem to dominate. The mediation of such different modes of duration will be one of the most difficult questions in the investigation of the culture of sensibility. What we need is a deep respect for the internal logics of periodization and intertextual development within each discipline and each cultural mode of articulation as well as for the interlacing of different cultural phenomena. Only then will we be able to explain why, for example, Pamela Andrews, the object of voyeuristic male appropriation, has at the same time a marked moralizing and socializing influence 37

For such a concept of the interplay of discourses within various works of art and of dominant discourses see Jan Mukarovsky, Schriften zur Ästhetik, Kumttheorie und Poetik, Hg. H. Siegel (Tübingen, 1986), p.35. Mukarovsky speaks, however, not of discourses, but of genres (in a very broad sense) and of canonized norms and values. Within such a play of norms and values, however, the aesthetic evaluation remains primary in works of art, thus the work of art itself will be able to direct the attention of the interpreter to the layering of systems of norms and values comprehended in a dynamic aesthetic unity (cf. Mukarovsky, Kapitel aus der Ästhetik (Frankfurt, 1970), 106-111.). See the investigation of Hoxie Neale Fairchild, Religious Trends in English Poetry, 4 vols. (New York, 1939-1962) or Donald Greene's "Latitudinarianism and Sensibility: The Genealogy of the Man of Feeling Reconsidered", Modern Philology 75 (1977/78), 159-183. Cf. Claudio Guillén, "Literary Change and Multiple Duration", Comparative Literature StudiesXIV(1977), 100-118, esp.112. Fernand Braudel's differentiation of historical modes of change (longue durée, conjoncture, temps court) is modified here, as the prevalence of longer and shorter modes of change is used to distinguish different discourses from one another, not only to legitimate a stratification of approaches within one, in his case the historical, discipline. Cf. Fernand Braudel, Ecrits sur l'Histoire (Paris, 1969), p.11-13.

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and can transform Mr.B. into a gentle man of feeling or why Clarissa, a target for medical and psychological experiments, also allows the female reader to enjoy vicarious erotic phantasies with the attractive figure of the rake Lovelace. Victimization and the exploration of feelings and phantasies can go hand in hand as can stereotyping and the feminization of culture.41 And long-term developments toward refinement and polite discourse can go hand in hand with a reaction against androcentric definitions of sensibility or the exploitation of the literary stereotypes of sensibility in early forms of popular literature. What must finally not be forgotten in the recent medico-physiological vogue, a late triumph of the Hobbesian mechanistic view of man over the Shaftesburyan perhaps, is the importance of moral sentiments for the entire age of sensibility. Benevolence, compassion and social idealism must have their place beside the voyeurism, experimental investigation and vicarious titillation of the senses stressed by the recent feminization of sensibility. The man of feeling belongs to the culture of sensibility as does the moralizing voice of Oliver Goldsmith in The Vicar of Wakefield, a novel little mentioned in recent investigations of the culture of sensibility. The homogenization of the field in the vague term culture of sensibility (esp. in the neo-historical and poststructural approaches) seems to follow contemporary developments in cultural studies towards the absorption of the arts within the general field of cultural practices. Following the decline of the so-called great narratives (some of which, as shown above, were able to highlight an important aspect or a key genre within the complex culture of sensibility), and following the semiotic turn, the distinction between discursive and non-discursive practices is abolished and guidelines for the analysis of different forms of cultural practice are lost in a homogenized world of significations and within monologic systems of containment, in which blanket terms like politeness, civility or refinement seem to sublate all differences of cultural and generic articulation, leading finally to a spatialization of temporal models of change. Thus I end with a plea for microhistories of various cultures of sensibility or at least for microhistories of various genres of sentimental literature within a general culture of sensibility.42 This 41

42

Barker-Benfield has seen this: "The culture of sensibility itself, in its moralizing efforts to shape women and repress their wishes, testifies to the existence of an opposite impulse in the lives of women; indeed, fruitfully torn, the culture incorporated the wishes of assertive, pleasure-seeking women." (304). One way out may be a general distinction between early moral sentiment and later amoroso sensibility, as made in William Hill Brown's novel The Power of Sympathy, ed. William S. Kable (Ohio, 1969), p.7. Does this mean that the culture of sensibility must disintegrate? This question can be approached from (a) a historical and (b) a methodological point of view, (a) It does seem that the age of sensibility in post-revolutionary England, where it extends over a very long period of time with quite different cultural articulations, is a more heterogeneous age than, for example, in Germany, where it concentrates on a short period of about two decades and influences the three main literary genres at the same time, (b) The predominance of difference over similarity, of analysis over synthesis, is mainly a methodical and heuristic principle, in order to defy rash generalizations or the containment of differences. Common denominators must be the residue of unceasing efforts to distinguish. Nevertheless the

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is a plea against the priority o f semiotics in cultural studies and for interdisciplinary methods o f interpretation, while taking into account the specific limitations o f each method. W e cannot escape the dialectics o f blindness and insight, least o f all by sublating and containing all differences in hegemonic semiotic terms.

coexistence of longue durée phenomena (as stored within what Jan and Aleida Assmann have described as the - partly inaccessible - cultural memory) with conjoncture and temps court phenomena allows for generalizations. However, some discourses (e.g. anthropology, historiography) may have easier access to the longue durée than others. Poetry and especially fiction, which in the modern age can become mediums of play, subversion and experiment, may more often than not be in the role of the jester to longue durée phenomena, though surely not uninfluenced by them.

Gerd Stratmann (Bochum)

City Vice: New Urban Myths in Eighteenth-Century England

The most disturbing symptom of what some critics have called the petrification of Eighteenth-Century Studies is perhaps the obsessive protection of the well-known canon. In spite of the marvellous on-line or CD-ROM versions of the relevant bibliographies (which must be regarded as practically complete) and in spite of the easy access to the vast unexplored stretches of eighteenth-century culture, the overwhelming majority of books and articles in the field seem to cling to the comparatively few canonical authors. The editors of the controversial The New Eighteenth Century had a point when they attacked the academic establishment: Thus, the eighteenth century has fostered a criticism whose ultimate concern is the preservation and elucidation of canonical masterpieces of cultural stability.1

This attack appears to be radical because Felicity Nussbaum and Laura Brown obviously implied a curious form of complicity spanning more than two hundred years: the collusion between the "dominant" culture of the eighteenth century and the influential scholars of the twentieth - with the intention to keep the "subversive" voices of that age and the respective counter-mythologies as mute and inaudible as possible. The accusation is less absurd than it sounds. To prove the point, one could do worse than take a fresh look at the images and myths of the city in eighteenth-century England. The topic seems to have been extremely well covered by research. In 1978 Max Byrd, a reputed scholar in the field, made it the subject of an entire book2. Byrd, in his introduction, considered the various authors, among them, of course, Ned Ward, who had presented the first detailed account of the new (i.e. the post-Fire) city of London (in his London Spy) at the turn of the century; but then Byrd decided Ward was artistically and above all morally not worthy of inclusion: But if we want to discover the enduring moral pattern behind this [city] life, we must turn to an entirely different kind of author.3

One will easily guess which kind of author: Pope and Swift and Fielding and Dr. Johnson, all of whom defined the city mainly ex negativo, that is in pastoral or 1

Felicity Nussbaum and Laura Braun, "Revising Critical Practices: An Introductory Essay", in F. Nussbaum and L. Braun (eds.), The New Eighteenth Century. Theory, Politics, English Literature (New York and London, 1987), 5. Max Byrd, London Transformed. Images of the City in the Eighteenth Century (New Haven and London, 1978). Byrd, London Transformed, 6.

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mock-pastoral terms, sometimes even defined it by its pointed absence in the moral cosmos they constructed. There is, unavoidably, also a chapter on Defoe, represented above all with his Journal of the Plague Year and, perhaps unexpectedly, one on Boswell, whose immoderate love of London Byrd describes as a very personal idiosyncrasy. Otherwise, however, Byrd seems to see himself under the obligation to hand on, as a kind of sacred heritage, the pastoral denunciation of the city. He sees the conservative city imagery as part of a "permanent repository of figures for our attempts to civilise ourselves".4 Far from being a singular case, Byrd turns out to be comparatively moderate. The final summary of an article called "EighteenthCentury London: Urban Paradise or Fallen City?" (1975) may illustrate one of the extreme voices: After a century of growth and civil improvement, London no longer had any appeal to the imagination. The city was a dead ideal - a Babylon to Blake, a carnival to Wordsworth, a sink of impiety to Cowper, a town without soul and heart to Pope and Swift, a disorderly medley without meaning. It is this void that we in the twentieth century inherited.5

Examples of this type could be multiplied. Is it then surprising that the American "revisionists" (as they call themselves) see the Eighteenth-Century Studies establishment dominated by old men who have their own problems with the subversion, anarchy and fluidity of modern city culture? And can one criticise those PhD students who may be slightly intrigued by the strange enthusiasm of foreign visitors to eighteenth-century London, but then frequently turn to other fields because of the much less exciting versions they find in the critical standard works? Thus, in spite of articles and books on the topic (including Maynard Mack's impressive study on Pope's later years, The Garden and the City6), we know very little about what I may call "the other" eighteenth-century mythology of the city yet we know that it must have existed. For as any reader must realise, the traditionalist denunciations of city culture implicitly or explicitly referred to the fascination, the magnetism and, even more significantly, to the self-congratulating sinfulness which appeared to make this culture so fatal for society and its morality. In other words: they reacted to other, completely different images or mythologies, or better, interacted with them. Ronald Paulson, a remarkable exception among the old guardians of Eighteenth-Century Studies, even tried to sketch a model for this interaction between what he termed "popular and polite" culture7(1979). He described it as an ongoing dialogue, extremely competitive most of the time, with both sides reclaiming metaphors or arguments the other side was seen to have 4

6

F.S. Schwarzenbach, "London and Literature in the Eighteenth Century" (a review article covering, among other titles, Byrd, London Transformed), Eighteenth-Century Life 7, (1982), 100-112; 102. Arthur J. Weitzman, "Eighteenth-Century London: Uiban Paradise or Fallen City?", Journal of the History of Ideas 36 (1975), 469-80. Maynard Mack, The Garden and the City (Toronto and Buffalo, 1969). Ronald Paulson, Popular and Polite Art in the Age of Hogarth and Fielding (Notre Dame and London, 1979).

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misused for ideological purposes. This in its turn led to fascinating hybrids "bifocal" texts or series, as Paulson called them. In a famous analysis of Hogarth's Industry and Idleness, he illustrated, for instance, that the series of prints did more than ostentatiously confirm an authoritarian message (viz. that idleness is the surest road to Tyburn and industry will be outrageously rewarded). It also offers a second, clearly subversive interpretation of the story which would be understood by the apprentices of the time (viz. that idleness is a form of rebellion which is only too justified, considering the inhuman treatment and exploitation of these dependants). This, of course, means for the researcher: only if you make yourself familiar with that specific subcultural figure (the Apprentice) can you understand the subtle ambiguities and the double-faced perspective of this seemingly straightforward moral fable. Something similar applies to the images of eighteenth-century London: Swift, Pope, Gay, and Fielding constructed their gloomy images of the city in reply, as it were, to another set of images which they thought were misleading (but whose attractions had to be reckoned with). To understand the dynamics of their texts, their targets and especially their strategic compromises and bifocal innuendoes, one has to include this "other" mythology, i.e. the seemingly irresponsible and frivolous celebration of city life, into one's analysis. The following introduction to these "other" eighteenth-century images of the city has to restrict itself to a few illustrative samples, trying to convince the reader of three things: firstly, that these images acquire a topical recognisability, that they combine according to syntactical rules and that they thus, indeed, form a "mythology" in its own right; secondly, that many of these images are "competed" (to use a legal expression), that they are, in a certain sense, shared with the dominant city mythology of the "pastoralists"; and thirdly, that the texts in question, though certainly not claiming a place in the first aesthetic league of eighteenth-century literature, do claim an "enduring" interest. For they are part of a process, the evolution of the modern myths of the city, with which we are strangely familiar, because it has not been closed yet. At the beginning of the century Ned Ward, later to become one of Pope's victims in the Dunciad, published The London Spy, an extremely successful series of periodical essays8 forming an ongoing plot. A narrator, after giving up his studies and his retirement in the countryside, goes to London, naively puzzled by the thousand phenomena he does not understand, but guided and instructed by a knowing friend who introduces him to all aspects of city life. The beginning is highly significant. The narrator, growing more and more dissatisfied with his books, feels a longing for the thing itself: I shifted them off one by one, with a Fig for St. Austin, and his Doctrines, a Fart for Virgil and his Elegancy, and a T—d for Descartes and his Philosophy; till, by this means, I had eas'd Howard William Troyer convincingly argues that "the essential nature of The London Spy [...] is that of a periodical" [Troyer, Ned Ward of Grubstreet. A Study of Sub-Literary London in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1946), 30],

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my Brains of those troublesome Crotchets, which had rais'd me to the Excellence of being half Fool and half Madman, in studying the weighty difference betwixt Up-side-down and Topside-turvey, or to be more knowing in some such Nicety, than the rest of my Neighbours.[...] I found an itching Inclination in my self to visit London.9

St. Augustine, Descartes and Virgil, in other words: the precepts of Christianity, the rational categories of the Enlightenment and the perfection of the classics (especially, maybe, of the Augustan pastorals) are discarded; they seem to have become irrelevant in face of a contemporary reality which defies the rules of logic, reason and traditional morality. London, replacing the world of bookish learning, is here defined, from the outset, as the epitome of this topsy-turvy, chaotic reality, in other words: of life itself. Thus Ward begins, with his very first words, that dialogue between popular and polite culture (or between dominant and subversive culture) of which I have spoken. He breaks away from the pastoral/philosophical/ Christian discourses and their attempts to contain and domesticate the wild anarchy of London life. This implies that he turns not only against the old pastoral denunciations of London, but also against the new "Whiggish" attempts to stylise London into a well-ordered centre of middle-class industry and community. Where Mr Spectator, ten years later, charts rather than visualises the realities of the metropolis, Ward's narrator permits himself to be amazed and overwhelmed by these realities: The Streets were all adorn'd with dazling Lights, whose bright Reflections so glitter'd in my Eyes, that I could see nothing but themselves. Thus walk'd I amaz'd, like a wandering Soul in its Pilgrimage to Heaven, when it passes thro' the Spangled Regions.10

This idea, or rather: this discursive gambit (that the immediacy and sensuality, the speed and the intensity, the endless variety and the chaos of London were not to be confined by the dominant discourses of the day, but constituted "life itself', even an ecstasy of a quasi-religious kind) became topical in the course of the century. Tom Brown's Walk Round London and Westminster (1707)11, obviously inspired by The London Spy, duly takes up this leitmotif. Again a naive visitor, a native West Indian, led round by the narrator, admits to be overwhelmed: [...] I think your Streets and Publick-Houses abound with such an amazing Medley of all manner of Contrarieties, that if a Man had the Eyes of Argus he might employ them all in this your Christian Babel to his continual Satisfaction.12

The quote is an instructive example how in these popular texts the evaluations which were obligatoiy in conservative city discourses are being imperceptibly undermined. The Babylonian Confusion was one of the most topical, almost 9

Ned Ward, The London Spy. Compleat in 18 Parts. The First Volume of the Author's Writings. Third Edition (London, 1706). This quotation: 2. The London Spy, 26. Quoted from The Works of Mr Thomas Brown. Serious and Comical, in Prose and Verse. In Four Volumes. Eighth Edition (London, 1720), vol. Ill, 276-329. A Walk round London and Westminster, 322.

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emblematic metaphors of essayists and poets. Here, however, it is reinterpreted and re-evaluated: the confusion, seen as a glorious variety of sights and sounds and impressions, creates in the observer amazement and a "continual Satisfaction". This curious (and indeed subversive) capitulation of moral judgment before the city as "life itself' will inspire, several decades later, the famous diary entries of James Boswell ("After unpacking my trunk I sallied forth like a roaring Lion after girls, blending philosophy and raking,"13) and, more surprisingly, a very impressive passage in one of Charles Lamb's letters to the Wordsworths: I have passed all my days in London, until I have formed as many and intense local attachments, as any of you mountaineers can have done with dead nature. The lighted shops of the Strand and Fleet Street, the innumerable trades, tradesmen and customers, coaches, waggons, play-houses, all the bustle and wickedness round about Covent Garden, the very women of the Town, the Watchmen, drunken scenes, rattles, - life awake, if you awake, at all hours of the night, the impossibility of being dull in Fleet Street, the crowds, the veiy dirt & mud, the Sun shining upon houses and pavements, the print shops, the old book stalls, parsons cheap'ning books, coffee-houses, steams of soups from kitchens, the pantomimes, London itself a pantomime and masquerade - all these things work themselves into my mind and feed me [ ...] and I often shed tears in the motley Strand from fulness of joy at so much Life."

The passage is striking, of course, because the passionate attachment to this form of life is seen to be as strong and as comprehensive as any Romantic attachment to - "dead" - nature. But we are concerned here with the early eighteenth century and thus with the equally surprising fact that Lamb's letter retains so much of the rhetorical and discursive traditions which were begun by Ward and others a full century earlier. There is the topical admission that even the "wickedness" and prostitution - and one should add: especially the wickedness and prostitution - are constitutive elements of this fullness of city life, as are the dirt and the noise and the stink. And there is also the almost endless enumeration of extremely heterogeneous, even contradictory elements which was so typical of the early subversive images of London. Ned Ward and, in a lesser degree, Tom Brown cultivated a rumbling paratactic rhythm of enumeration whose function was clear: it was designed to express the unceasing movement, the unlimited variety, the mad medley of persons and sensations. Here is Ward with his description of the queues trying to buy lots of the national lottery: One Stream of Coachmen, Footmen, Prentice-Boys and Servant Wenches flowing one way, with wonderful hopes of getting an Estate for threepence. Knights, Esquires, Gentlemen and Traders, Marry'd Ladies, Virgin Madams, Jilts, Concubines and Strumpets; moving on Foot, in Sedans, Chariots and Coaches, another way; with a pleasing Expectancy of getting Six Hundred a Year for a Crown.15

13

14

Private Papers of James Boswell, eds. Geoffrey Scott and Frederick Pottle (New York, 1930) vol. VII, 163. The Letters of Charles and Mary Lamb, ed. E.V. Lucas (New Haven, 1935), vol. I, 241. The London Spy, 340.

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There are so many vivid examples of Ward's and Brown's enumerative virtuosity that it is impossible even to attempt something like a representative sample. Brown's narrator, for instance, gives an almost endless list of vices and vanities paraded at one and the same tavern - "a little Sodom": libertines, "saints", aldermen, rakes with their whores, young quality, etc., etc. But again, this listing of vices is less than serious; it is offered as a parody of a hotgospelling "MountebankOration" making the grinning West Indian "shew his Ivory-Teeth" 16 . Other examples include Ward's highly grotesque depiction of the riotous crowd of spectators watching the Lord Mayor's Parade 17 , and a street scene overwhelming the two adventurers with an incredible chaos of smells and sounds and people (like the sailors who are compared to a bawling "Litter of Rhinocerosses") 18 All these enumerations have three things in common: firstly, they show the coming together of extremely different classes, groups and types. Both Ward and Brown concentrate almost exclusively on city places or institutions where lords and footmen, traders and beaux, duchesses and punks met: the lottery, Bartholomew Fair, the centres of vice around Covent Garden, including the bagnios and hummums, the Pleasure Gardens, the Coffee Houses and the generally popular taverns. Secondly, the authors celebrating the never-ending stream of city impressions try to express the sense of speed (to quote Ward: "of the inundation of mobility", 19 ) and intensity radiated by city life; and thirdly both, though sometimes affecting a slightly satirical stance, show an attitude of amused detachment and tolerance which accepts even the promiscuity and prostitution, the drinking and disorderliness as colourful elements of this medley. If one compares this to the conservative denunciations of the city, one will immediately recognise that both discourses shared the same set of images and qualities. Here is Smollett's Bramble: The hodcarrier, the low mechanic, the tapster, the publican, the shopkeeper, the pettifogger, the citizen, and courtier, all tread upon the kibes of one another, actuated by the demons of profligacy and licentiousness, they are seen every where, rambling, riding, rolling, rushing, justling, mixing, bouncing, cracking, and crashing, in one vile ferment of stupidity and corruption. All is tumult and hurry; one would imagine they were impelled by some disorder of the brain, [,..]. 20

While the advocates of the new city celebrated the blending of high and low, the same phenomenon is also seen and described, but deplored as a dangerous disintegration of social order; and the rapidity of movement, enjoyed by the one as exhilarating, strikes the other as a symptom of collective madness. Byrd can say with some justification that "a gigantic Bedlam increasingly becomes an image for the city". 21 But what he does not say is this: that the metaphor had been introduced by the subversive city chroniclers like Ward and Brown - again, of course, with a 16 17

19

20

A Walk round London and Westminster, 277. The London Spy, 294-5. The London Spy, 324. The London Spy, 248. Humphrey Clinker. [Everyman's Library, 1966], 84. Byrd, London Transformed, 91.

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completely different intention. When the amazed West Indian is being introduced to his first London bawdy-house, he exclaims: What Place ... is this you have brought me to? Yet another Bedlam? All the People I have lately seen are mad, some one Way, some another, every House has its peculiar Frenzy.22

But again it should be remembered that the unexperienced visitor views the everchanging scenes of madness with a "continual satisfaction" and a fascinated grin. Bedlam is, for both Brown and Ward, indeed the epitome of the city - a symbol denoting the frenzied quality of life, the liberation from "normal" social and moral limitations, a source of fascination and curiosity rather than of moral shock or repugnance. This is the London Spy and his friend in Bedlam: Having pretty well tir'd our selves with the Frantick Humours and Rantling Ejaculations of the Mad-Folks, we took a turn to make some few remarks upon the Looseness of Spectators, amongst whom we Observ'd abundance of Intriguing; Mistresses, we found, were to be had of all Ranks, Qualities, Colours, Prices and Sizes; from the Velvet Scarf, to the Scotch-Plaid Petticoat [...]. Every fresh comer was soon engaged in an Amour; tho1 they came in Single they went out by Pairs [.. .]. All that I can say of it, is this, 'Tis an Aims-House for Madmen, a Showing Room for Whores, a sure Market for Leachers, a dry Walk for Loiterors.23

One does not need a complicated deconstructionist text theory to recognise that here "vice", i.e. an illicit and promiscuous sexuality which obsessed so many eighteenth-century writers, appears to form a strange coalition with the idea of madness - even replaces it, in a certain sense: you go to an "Almshouse for Madmen", and you find yourself in a "market for lechers". The two elements seem, in the context of this new mythology of the city, to re-enforce and complement each other; and it is certainly true that in books like those by Ward and Brown "vice" is, besides madness, the one pervading semantic field of the narrations. Prostitution and "intriguing" take place not only in the specific Covent Garden institutions, but also at the fair, in the streets, in Bedlam and even in church. When Ward's narrator and his friends follow a group of "religious lady-birds" into Covent Garden Church, they are highly astonished to discover that the pious assembly inside the church [...] stood Ogling one another with as much Zeal and Sincerity, as if they worship'd the Creator in the Creature; and Whispering to their next Neigbour, as if, according to the Liturgy, they were Confessing their Sins to one another; which I afterwards understood by my Friend, was only to make Assignations; and the chief of their Prayers, says he, are that Providence will favour their Intrigues.[...]24

One discovers traces here of a heathenish, almost blasphemous association of a free sexuality with religion - which finds, in Brown's account, even a historical justification. The narrator explains to his West Indian guest that the close 22 24

A Walk round London and Westminster, 297. The London Spy, 66-7. The London Spy, 215.

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Stratmann

neighbourhood of church and brothel has an ancient foundation - that, for instance, the old Egyptians "never suffered any one to be made a Priest, till he were initiated in the Rites of Priapus" 25 and even the Catholic Church "will admit no Pope till the Porphyry Chair has confirm'd his Manhood" 26 so that only in Protestantism "the Bawdy-houses are fain to go in Disguise"27 (i.e. are forced to disguise themselves as coffee-houses or harmless taverns). And his West Indian friend, true to his topical role, confirms that by the standards of the noble savage, a bit of spontaneous premarital sexuality is only NATURAL, while at the same time strongly objecting to the aberrations of commercial prostitution: In the Indies, says my Indian, it is no Shame for the young Women, before their Marriage, to make use of their own; but then it is not in this manner traffick'd for by Brokers and Goersbetween, who put an Extortion on the Pleasure, and cheat both the Purchaser and the Seller. 28

This cannot be more than a first sketch giving an outline of a project. But even the few quotations will provide a glimpse of the amazing textual strategies employed. Both Ward and Brown (and later Boswell) make "vice", i.e. a promiscuous sexuality, the central and ever-present element of their mythical versions of London. More importantly, by associating it with highly charged spaces of madness, of topsy-turvydom, of savage innocence and even of religion, they frequently make it the symbol and expression of that positive energy and liberty which defined the new city culture. Moreover, both Ward and Brown tended to link sexual promiscuity and social promiscuity, so that in a certain sense the one seemed to imply the other. Intriguing and prostitution are great social levellers, as are the madhouse, the lottery, streetlife or Bartholomew Fair. Yet one more element has to be added to this subversive picture of London; but in order to understand its functional place in the context of this mythology, a short summary could be helpful: A certain kind of popular literature at the beginning of the century developed a myth of that new phenomenon, the modern city which London was becoming. This myth, one might say, translated the slightly ambiguous fascination of the city into a complex narrative and symbolic structure. In this mythology, London is seen as "life itself' defying all the traditional conceptualisations of pastoral writing (in the widest sense), of philosophy or religion; the only way to study this "life" was to dive into it ("blending philosophy with raking"). London is characterised, positively speaking, by the unlimited variety of its expressions, the unmediated clash of "contrarieties", by its speed, its sensuality, its "amazing" (even ecstatic) impact. Negatively speaking, it appears to be a gigantic deconstructive mechanism - invalidating hierarchies and the boundaries between social ranks or between the sexes, mixing high and low promiscuously, and thereby breaking down most of the barriers and taboos of the time. 25

A Walk round London and Westminster, Ibid. 27 28 Ibid. A Walk round London and Westminster,

294.

26

298.

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113

This implied that the "new and modern urban man" 2 9 could choose what social roles he fancied and make use of the liberty of the city. For those celebrating city life, London became a marvellous stage on which one could escape the confinement of one's own social code. We automatically think of Boswell again, hunting for prostitutes in endlessly varied disguises (as a poor sailor, the rough highlander Macdonald, a barber, "one of the Wits in King Charles the Second's time" 30 or Captain Macheath with two frivolous young Ladies in the Shakespeare's

Head)\ I toyed with them and sang Youth's the Season and thought myself Captain Macheath; and then I solaced my existence with them, one after the other, according to their seniority.31

Boswell even theorised on his own obsession of role-playing and justified it as one of the great privileges of city life. This is one of his journalistic efforts: In town we see each other only during fragments of our existence; and may more easily assume what character we please. But in the country we have whole days together; and each day is a life, as Shakespeare said in Macbeth; so it is exceedingly difficult to disguise our real tempers and characters.32

There is also Moll Flanders, one remembers, taking on her several disguises, even cross-dressing, only partly for professional reasons and partly driven by an inexplicable obsession. And the hero of Ned Ward's London Spy (even the title implying the idea of disguise) loves to play with different social identities, acting a coarse carman, for instance, to frighten away a bunch of effeminate beaux in a coffee-house. 33 The two aspects belong together, of course: on the one hand, the new city culture deconstructing social definitions of rank and degree, on the other hand a new type of urban adventurer, exploiting and enjoying this liberty by taking on new roles every day. Thus it is, perhaps, not surprising that so many descriptions of city life, the conservative denunciations as well as the subversive celebrations, singled out one social event as the quintessential expression of London culture; and this was the masquerade. Terry Castle34 describes the beginning of this fashionable craze in the twenties when the Count of Heidegger staged his first huge masquerades at the Haymarket Theatre. In hundreds of contemporary essays, sermons, tracts and comedies, the masquerade figured as the most typical and most dangerous symptom of city vice. The two reasons for this unqualified rejection in so many of the periodicals were obvious. The one was the levelling of all social differences, the fact that (I quote the Weekly Journal of 1724) "all state and ceremony are laid 29 30 31

32 33 34

Byrd, London Transformed, 97 (characterising Boswell). James Boswell, The London Journal 1762-63, ed. Frederick Pottle (New York, 1950), 140. The London Journal, 264. Boswell's Column, ed. Margery Bailey (London, 1951), 206. Cf. Troyer, Ned Ward ofGrubstreet, 44. Terry Castle, Masquerade and Civilization. The Carnivalesque in Eighteenth-Century Culture and Fiction. (London, 1986).

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aside; since the Pear and the Apprentice, the Punk and the Duchess are, for so long a time, upon an equal Foot."35 The other reason was that that masquerades became favourite occasions for erotic adventures and informal prostitution ("all about the Hundreds of Drury, there was not a Filie de Joi to be had that Night, for Love nor Money, being all engaged at the Masquerade"36). Many of the critics were exceedingly passionate in their denunciations; they believed that masquerades "encouraged sexual female freedom"37 and were convinced of the political danger of letting the powerless dress up as the powerful. The very popularity of the London masquerades, however, demonstrates that the congenial representatives of the new city were quite numerous and that they did indeed share Ward's or Brown's mythology. For the masquerade, bringing together men and women from all social ranks, was itself an expression of that mythology, a kind of text, a signifying practice, blending the various elements which dominate Ward's and Brown's urban landscape: the "mad" and "topsy-turvy" exchange of identities, the "promiscuous" mingling of classes, the latent and open eroticism, and the passion for acting out "alien" roles (including many varieties of cross-dressing). No wonder then, that Ned Ward added, more than two decades after the London Spy, a kind of supplement (called The Amorous Bugbears, Or, The Humours of a Masquerade): Others as frisky and as airy as a young Widow at a Sailor's Wedding, or a Playhouse Curtezan in a loose Comedy, all aiming at much the same thing as in the Greek, that is, the Maids to gain Husbands, the Jilts to tempt Bubbles, and the Wives Gallants; both Sexes and all Degrees, that can but purchase Tickets, having equal Opportunities in this promiscuous Convention, of meeting with their Matches, if they have but Courage enough to push home at a fair Mark, and Skill enough to manage an Intrigue to the best advantage.38

It is hardly necessary to repeat that Ned Ward regarded the masquerade, indeed, as the ritualised expression of city culture. All the keywords are there, syntactically interrelated in a way which by now has become familiar. The masquerade was celebrated as a liberation from the restrictions of class and sex, as a triumph of art as well as sensuality, as a carnivalesque deconstruction of rules. There were even a few attempts to formulate a theoretical defence of the specific liberty of the masquerade: As nothing is more essential to the Growth of all Arts than Freedom, so a Masquerade being a perfect Commonwealth (as every Body is there upon the level) is the very Country of Liberty, in which they must flourish [...] 9

But these "subversive" voices were certainly in a minority. Much more typical were the Weekly Journal and most of the other periodicals - and, of course, Fielding, 35 36

37

Weekly Journal, January 25, 1724. Ibid. Castle, Masquerade and Civilization, 33. The Amorous Bugbears (London, 1725), 21. James Ralph, The Touchstone. Or: Historical, Critical, Political, Moral, Philosophical, and Theological Essays Upon the Reigning Diversions of the Town (London, 1728), 191.

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who in his Tom Jones made a masquerade the central event to illustrate his stern verdict on the city. Fielding's name serves as a timely reminder that this paper must remain, necessarily, open-ended. There is not enough space left to demonstrate that (and how) the more "conservative" evocations of the city (in Fielding, in the pastoralists, in Smollett and Sterne, but also in The Spectator and in some of Defoe's writings) interacted with those subversive images of London, that they are themselves only understandable as voices in a complicated competition of discourses. Such a contest of voices produced not only mutually exclusive myths, but also (and more interestingly) a range of strange compromises, hybrids and "bifocal" ambiguities. This perspective implies a loss of certainties, of "completed forms, or unified identities, or well-documented traditions"40; but it has its reward, too: a sense of excitement and fascination which had been missing - or so many younger scholars thought - in the more conventional fields of Eighteenth-Century Studies.

40

Nußbaum and Braun, "Revising Critical Practices: An Introductory Essay", 10.

SECTION II: FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR

Erich Steiner (Saarbrücken) Günter Weise (Greifswald)

Introduction

When we were asked to arrange and chair a section on Functional Grammar within the Anglistentag 1995, we gladly accepted the opportunity to do so. Our initial excitement was immediately followed by the inevitable questions Where should the boundaries be drawn between what is and what is not Functional Grammar?, or Given that comprehensiveness is an unattainable goal, how can a selection be made without an unfair bias? The result of our efforts can be seen in the choice of topics represented in this section. 'Functionalism' is a term used in a range of different disciplines with considerable differences in meaning. Fortunately, we did not have to worry too much about defining 'functionalism' as such, as the title of our section was 'Functional Grammar', thus already clearly indicating that the concept at risk here was functionalism in linguistics, rather than in, say, biology, anthropology or sociology. Yet - and this is what we have tried to illustrate in our choice of papers and topics - even within linguistics, functionalism has already brought forth an entire family of approaches sharing a number of features vis-à-vis other, e.g. structural or formal approaches, but also being internally differentiated as to preferred object of study and/or methodology. In this section, then, we find represented Prague School Functionalism, Dutch Functional Grammar, Systemic Functional Linguistics, and Funktionale Grammatik of the type arising out of work in East Germany and more generally eastern Europe. These are schools of linguistics to which could have been added at least American (West Coast) Functionalism, a family of approaches that was not represented simply because of problems of geographical distance. Yet, apart from functionalist schools of linguistics, there is often something which manifests itself as a functionalist orientation in the explanation of empirical, descriptive, or historical work, and this general tendency is common to all of the papers presented here, regardless of whether or not their authors associate themselves with any particular functionalist school. Uwe Carls addresses Semantic role types and topicalization, one of the classic areas of functionalism at the interface between semantics and grammar. Peter Erdmann gives a functional explanation of pre-posed adjectival phrases in texts, thus exemplifying corpus-based work at the interface between grammar and discourse with a tendency towards functional explanations. Lachlan Mackenzie in his Functional Grammar and the Analysis of English provides an overview of Dutch Functional Grammar. Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen uses a Functional Approach to Modality in English to highlight the realizations of modality across

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lexicogrammatical categories. Erich Steiner discusses Systemic Functional Linguistics against the background of a recent debate in German linguistics between 'Chomsky-Theories' and 'Mead-Theories'. Eija Ventola attempts a functional explanation of difficulties in non-native academic English in terms of the notions 'Theme' and 'Rheme' and their function in the creation of text. Giinter Weise, finally, discusses 'Functional Semantic Fields' in a fresh look at some key areas of semantics and lexicogrammar. We were fortunate in securing the cooperation of the colleagues participating in this section. We were also very happy to be able to welcome John Sinclair (Birmingham) as the plenary speaker for linguistics, who delivered a paper on Functions in Grammar and Lexis, drawing on notions offunction as they emerge out of empirical work with the Birmingham corpus. We regret not being able to include a written version of this paper here. Our introduction here is not the place to go into details of content - this we shall leave to the individual papers. It may be the place, though, for us to express gratitude to the organizers in Greifswald for creating a pleasant atmosphere in a university with a long tradition which is in the midst of a period of change and restructuring.

Uwe Carls (Berlin)

The Function of Role Types in Unmarked ThemeRheme Structures With regard to their communication^ perspective, English sentences are quite frequently organized according to a principle that allows them to begin with a relatively unimportant thematic element and to end with a rhematic element as the very core of the message. The aim of this paper is to analyse a few of those lexical and grammatical means that can be used in the written language to arrange or even re-arrange the constituents of a sentence in a way that brings them into line with this obviously basic principle. I would like to start with a few introductory comments on the topical ization process in general, using the term "topicalization" to refer to the process by which the theme-rheme structure of a sentence is developed as well as to the themerheme structure itself. The communicative strategy that the sender of a message develops in order to realize her/his communicative intentions in full includes the processing of the single bits of information contained in a sentence according to their differing degree of relative information value (i.e. to their relative contribution to the information given in the respective sentence). S/he tries to encode the different degrees of communicative value in such a way to allow the receiver of the message to comprehend them completely. In her/his assignment of communicative values to the single constituents of the sentence, the sender of the message is guided by objective as well as by subjective criteria because the state-of-affairs described in a sentence is something given objectively, its reflection and description, however, are influenced by subjective criteria such as the sender's intention, interest or cognitive capacity. As a rule, certain constituents of a sentence are rated low as to their relative contribution to the information that is to be imparted. In terms of Functional Sentence Perspective (FSP), these constituents are thematic (th), with the one that has the lowest information value being the Theme proper (Th). In a sentence like (1)thAfter

that

Tlt

he threw rha stone Rhinto a shop window.1

the first two constituents are thematic with he as Theme proper (cf. Firbas 1992: 81). Other constituents are rated higher as to their relative information value. In example (1), for instance, the last two constituents are rhematic (rh), and the directional adverbial functions as Rheme proper (Rh) with the highest degree of communicative value because it "completes the development of the 1

The examples are taken from Quirk et al. 1985: 10.18ff., DCE2 or CCELD, or formed on the basis of examples found in these books.

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Uwe Carls

communication" (Firbas 1992: 72) or conveys "the piece of information towards which the communication is perspectived" (loc. cit.: 73). High and low information values and the respective rhematic or thematic status of sentence constituents depend on the NEWness or GIVENness of the constituents in question.2 All the constituents that are presented or set as NEW are rhematic. In my interpretation, constituents are NEW (1) when they have not yet been mentioned in the preceding context (as, in example (1), the use of the indefinite article in a stone and a shop window suggests), (2) when they do not form part of the communicational situation, (3) when they have already been mentioned but the sender feels that s/he should recall or present them again as NEW3 or (4) when a phenomenon or a person occurs in a NEW relation.4 The relatively low information value of thematic constituents results from their GIVENness. GIVEN are those constituents that (1) have been mentioned in the preceding context, (2) form part of the communicational situation, or (3) are known constituents that are set as context- or situation-dependent. In addition to this, a scene-constituting element of the event described is thematic when it does not constitute the only new element in the sentence. Thematic constituents provide the basis for the introduction of NEW constituents and are typically expressed by anaphoric means. In the present paper I shall concentrate on Themes and Rhemes proper, which will simply be referred to as "Themes" and "Rhemes". In addition to the means that have already been mentioned, i.e. those expressing indefiniteness for Rhemes and definiteness for Themes, one more and probably the most obvious linguistic means to signal communicative values is serialization, i.e. the arrangement of the constituents of a sentence according to the requirements of FSP (cf. Eroms 1986: 31). It is quite normal to open a sentence with a thematic constituent as a common starting point for the sender and the receiver of the message, and to finish it with the Rheme. Such an unmarked theme-rheme structure makes use of what Firbas (1992: 10; following Bolinger) calls "linear modification" and what Eroms (1986: 6; following Paul) calls "fortschreitende Determination" ('progressive determination') and represents Firbas's (1992: 10) "basic distribution of degrees of C[ommunicative] D[ynamism]". That this is something basic can be seen from the fact that there are quite a number of means in English to arrange the semantic elements in a sentence according to an unmarked theme-rheme structure. I would like to stress, however, that it is, first of all, the context that makes an element the Theme or Rheme of the sentence, irrespective of 2

With regard to these categories, a distinction must be made between parts of a sentence that reflect constituents of the state of affairs itself and those which embed it into the dimensions of place and time, i.e. local and temporal adveibials as constituents of the communicational frame. The criterion of NEWness and GIVENness is especially relevant to the FSP status of sentence elements of the first type. See Haftka's concept of "BewuBtseinsprasenz" (1980: 4-11), which, however, seems to depend on the sender's assessment of the receiver's range of memory. Cf. e.g. (John and Peter failed in their exam. Two days later, the dean of the faculty received an infamous letter.) This letter was written by John: where John was mentioned before, but not as the writer of this letter.

The Function of Role Types in Unmarked Theme-Rheme Structures

123

its position. The context may even work counter to the sequence "Theme before Rheme" as can be seen in the following example: (2) RhA strange boy gave

Th

it to him.

Such a disagreement between the basic distribution of communicative values and context seems to be typical of certain semantic structures (cf. Firbas 1992: 67-87). Moreover, I would like to stress that the linguistic means I am going to deal with are, as a rule, multifunctional, and that sometimes their function in topicalization is only a by-product of other functions. This is proved by the fact that there are synonymous constructions with different relations between a certain semantic role and the syntactic function of the constituent representing it, but obviously with no difference in the theme-rheme structure of the sentence; cf. (3 a), where DIR.3 is syntactically object, and (3b), where it is an adverbial of direction: (3a) Th/S/AGJohn (3b) Th/S/AGJohn

entered Rh/0/DIR,he wentRh/AdvDir/DIRinto

room. the room.

In addition to this, it is possible to change, or even reverse, topicalizations arising from the assignment of syntactic functions to semantic roles (so-called "primary topicalizations") by shifting a syntactic constituent with its role to a thematic or rhematic position (so-called "secondary topicalizations"); compare (4a) with (4b), where the original Rheme, the local adverbial representing LOC, is made the Theme and the original Theme becomes the Rheme of the sentence; cf. (4a,b) and diagram 1: (4a) Th/S/PATMyfriendsatRh/AdvP,/L0Cnearthe door. (4b) Th/AdvPl/LOCNear the doorsatRh/S/PATmyfriend

Diagram 1 : Th S PAT Const.

Rh P STAT

AdvPl LOC Const.

Topicalization is a multilevel process and begins at the logico-semantic level because the propositions underlying sentences already reflect a choice regarding 5

The definitions of the predicate types and role types mainly follow Hansen et al.{19903: 165171): PAT(IENT) 'phenomenon that has the property of a state; carrier of a state', STATIVE 'phenomenon that occurs in a statai relationship', PROCED(ENT) 'carrier of a process', PROCESSIVE) 'phenomenon that occurs in a processual relationship', AG(ENTIVE), OBJECTIVE) 'effected or affected object' differentiated by Hansen et al. as FACTITIVE and OBJECTIVE, DAT(IVE), INSTR(UMENTAL), DIR(ECTIONAL), MAN(NER), LOC(ATIVE), TEMP(ORAL), MAT(ERIAL), QUAL(ITY). This inventory has been supplemented by EVENTIVE (Quirk et al. 1985: 10:25), a condensed representiation of an event, and FREQ(UENCY).

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the predicate type (ACT, PROCESS or STAT) and the role types to be represented in the sentence. This choice is influenced by objective as well as subjective criteria. Predicates and role types are specified by lexicalization, and are, depending on the syntactic valence of the predicate verb, assigned syntactic functions. This relationship between semantic roles and syntactic functions may be unmarked or marked. It is unmarked when a semantic role is given the syntactic function that is required by the predicate verb. For instance, in sentences like (5) AGMary wrote OBJa letter. PROCFD I DC (6) These flowers are growing in John's greenhouse. (7) PATJohn

is NATIVEa

teacher

it is quite typical and normal that the constituent playing one of the "carrier" roles of AG (of an action), PROCED (of a process) or PAT (of a state) is given subject function because it is intrinsically connected with its respective predicate. That is why such constituents tend to be Themes and why this kind of assignment of role types to syntactic constituents is unmarked. The same holds true for the realization of a DIR as an object in (3a) or an adverbial of direction in (3b), or the occurrence of a LOC as subject of a sentence with the verb contain, as in (8)

i oc

This envelope contains all his money.

A relation of assignment of semantic roles and syntactic functions is marked, however, when other role types are made the subject of a sentence, as for instance the constituent that represents the 'receiver of the action' (DAT) in passive constructions. If the context does not interfere, all the syntactic functions constituting a sentence tend to occur in a certain unmarked order, as for instance S - P - O (cf. [3], [5]). Within the framework that is determined by the language type and the sentence type, the basic order is the most natural sequence of elements in a nonemphatic, context- and situation-independent sentence (cf. also Haftka 1982: 194 and Eroms 1986: 36-42). This "most natural sequence" may also be dependent on the form of a sentence constituent. For instance, FREQ can be expressed by a frequency adverbial in the form of an adverb or a noun phrase; cf. (9) and (10), which both represent unmarked sequences, however, with different theme-rheme structures.: (9) (10)

I've FreqAdv/FREQoften thought about it. I've thought about it Rh/FreciA™/FREQvery many times.

Th

Thus, considerations of FSP may even be decisive for the form type of a syntactic sentence constituent. As a rule, unmarked sequences correspond to unmarked theme-rheme structures with a Theme tending towards the beginning and a Rheme tending towards the end of a sentence. If context does not interfere, there is, ideally, a correspondence between an unmarked theme-rheme structure ("Theme before Rheme"), an

The Function of Role Types in Unmarked Theme-Rheme Structures

125

unmarked syntactic structure (normal relations of assignment between roles and syntactic functions), and an unmarked sequence. There are lexical and grammatical means in English which allow the sender of a message to arrange the constituents in such a way as to make them correspond to an unmarked theme-rheme structure. First, the lexical means will be discussed. They comprise symmetrical predicates, lexical converses, incorporations and "excorporations". Symmetrical predicates like to be related/married to are predicates that express a relation of reciprocity. Cf., for instance (1 la)Th/S/PATTermites

are closely relatedRh/0/STATIVEto

cockroaches.

where a complete reversal of the perspective can be achieved by a mere exchange of the constituents termites and cockroaches, whereas the syntactic functions or the roles of the elements that function as Theme and Rheme remain unchanged; cf. (1 lb) and diagram 2: (lib)

Th/S/PAT

Cockroaches

are closely related to

Rh/ /STAT,VE

°

termites.

Diagram 2: Th S PAT

Rh non-S STATIVE

P STATAL

Const ] *

* [Const.

Sometimes, however, it is only a change of the perspective within the thematic elements that can be achieved in this way; cf.: (12a) Th/S/PATIam (12b)

Th/S/PAT

She

relatedto

thherRh/AdvManMANbymarriage.

is related to thmeRh/AdvKian/MANby

marriage.

In a similar way, lexical converses allow different perspectives. According to Crystal (1980: sub "converse(ness)" "converse terms display a type of oppositeness of MEANING". This applies to expressions of reciprocal social roles (cf. [13a,b]) and spatial relationships (cf. [14a,b]) but also to a number of verbs with opposite meanings; cf. for example: (13a) (13b) (14a) (14b)

Th/S/PAT

One nurse is in charge ofRh/0/STATIVEseveral babies. Several babies are under the control 0fRh/O/STATIVEone Th/S/PAT The bus isRh/Pred/L0Cin front of the car. Rh/Pred/L0C Th/S/PATThe car is behindthebus.

Th/S/PAT

nurse.

As with symmetrical predicates, the change of the perspective is due to a mere exchange of the constituents (cf. also [lla,b]). This is different in (15a,b) (cf. also diagram 3)

126

Uwe Carls

(15a) Th/S/PATSome (15b) Th/S/LOCThe

970 million people live M/AdvPl/LOCjn Rh/0/PATsome argas contain 97Q

urban

urban

argas

miUio„peopie.

Diagram 3 : Th S

Rh P STATAL

PATH Const.

O

fLOC Const.

Here, the LOC is made thematic subject and the PAT thematic subject of (15a) has become the PAT rhematic object in (15b). In your new address. (16a) Th/S/AG Your parents informed John Rh,PrP0/0BJof (16b) Th/S/PROCEDJohn learnt your new address Rh/AdvDir/DlR^.om your

parents

the conversion changes the predicate type from ACT (16a) to PROCESS (16b). This results in a change of roles and, consequently, in new relations between roles and syntactic functions (a new topicalization), which allows a new arrangement of the constituents according to the basic distribution of communicative values. Thus, your parents is made the Rheme by assigning it the role of DIR and the syntactic function of a prepositional object to enable it to be shifted to the position that is typical of the Rheme. Quite naturally, the 'carrier of the process' (PROCED) is made the thematic subject; cf. diagram 4: Diagram 4: Th

PROCEP Const.

Conversions of this type come very near to being passive constructions. In (16c), however, the state-of-affairs is described as an action with an AG as compared to the somewhat vaguer DIR of (16b); cf.: (16c) Th/S/DAT John was informed of ^^your

new address /Rh/prpO/AG^y0ur

parents).

Sometimes, the incorporation of a semantic role into the predicate verb has some influence on the theme-rheme structure of the sentence. For instance, in (17b) the role of INSTR, which is explicitly mentioned in (17a), has been incorporated by way of zero-derivation into the verb. Since the position of the INSTR adverbial in this sentence is that of the basic sequence, it tends to be the Rheme. In (17b), the rhematic position has been cleared for some other constituent, now the object; cf. (17a - 19b) and diagram 5:

The Function of Role Types in Unmarked Theme-Rheme Structures (17a)

Th/S/AG

fastened the door Rh/Advlnstr/INSTR^

(17b)

Th/S/AG

boltedRh/0/OBJthe

She She

127

bo,ts

doQr

Diagram 5: Th

Rh

S AG Const.

f) OBJ Const.

P AC T cat. lex.

"Advlnstr INSTR Const.

Th Rh He fought his way through the crowd with his elbows. Rh (18b) H e elbowed his way through the crowd. (18a)

lTh n

(19a) ^He covered the driveway n

(19b) He

tarred

Rh

the

R

^with a tar surface.

driveway.

Th Rh simpler. Th Rh (20b) '"The new government simplified the tax laws. (20a) "'The new government made the tax laws

From the angle of FSP, these incorporations may be considered a means of derhematization as well as of rhematization because the constituent in the position of the Rheme is removed to make way for the constituent preceding it in the unmarked sequence. A number of constructions with EVENTIVE objects (Quirk et al. 1985: 10.30) have the opposite effect as far as FSP is concerned. Here, the lexical and the grammatical meaning of the predicate verb are assigned to two different formatives: the former to a deverbal noun that may be used as a direct object in rhematic position, the latter to a verb whose function is reduced to that of a mere carrier of grammatical categories. This object represents a quasi-role, especially when the relationship between the syntactic object and the role of OBJ "is extended to an abstract product, activity or mental event. By inference, such an object is metaphorically endowed with the properties of a physically-created patient" (Givon I 1993: 112); cf. (21a,b) and diagram 6: Th/S/AG (21a) InudgedRh/0/DATHelen. (21b) WMGlgave Helen Rh/ Um diesen Fragen nachzugehen)-, the problem is presented as more manifold in German. The German version displays most of the unfolding of the text, the global structure of the paper, in the 'Vorfeld', and the topics/the answers to the problems in the rhematic part. The English version of this introductory paragraph presents the unfolding of the global structure linguistically more confusingly. When providing the author's answer, the translator displays the unfolding of the argumentation by the following linguistic items: first (Clause 6), will be followed (Clause 7), The following section (Clause 8), in the fifth section (Clause 9a), in the concluding section (Clause 9b). The German version would suggest that these items should be thematic in English. When looking at the English translation from the thematic point of view, we discover what seems fairly random choices of Theme: the items first, will be followed, in the fifth section and in the concluding section fall into the realm of the Rheme in the clauses, whereas only The following

Theme in Translation: Some Considerations

203

section is set in the Theme part. The original, relatively efficient global pattern created by the German author seems to have been broken down by the translator. It may be assumed that these shifts will slow down the readers' interpretation and complicate the sorting out of information. A further difficulty for the reader is the lexicalization of the order of the answers; the rhematic in the fifth section (Clause 9a) seems to appear 'out of the blue' - so far the reader has not been requested to count the topical points, except for the first one in (Clause 6). If we look at the Themes in Clauses 7 - 9b, the reader may find it difficult to interpret the referential Themes That and This in Clauses 7 and 9 a Does That in 7 refer to 'the category of creativity' or to 'the comparison of the explanatory schemes' or both in Clause 6? Does This in Clause 9a refer to 'the following section', which makes it referring to itself, or to 'Whitehead's attitude'? The last clause, Clause 9b is rather clumsily connected to Clause 9a with the conjunction and, and the thematic selection displays the New rather than the Given; the Given (i.e., an indication of the global structure of the text) is located in the Rheme. These examples clearly show that the translation choices the translator has made do not always follow and display the same rhetorical principles and effects as the author's original text. The translator seems to make unmotivated changes in the Theme - Rheme structure of the clauses. Consequently the translator only partially succeeds in displaying the unfolding of the global structure of the article in English; the German version appears clearer in its presentation of the unfolding. These changes in the foci of the text complicate matters for the reader. A further factor that often causes difficulties for translators is the fact that Themes can be very extensive in German texts, and when translated, the result is often somewhat cumbersome, as illustrated in (10) (the Theme given in bold). The translator further complicates the reading process by marking the qualifying clause as a non-defining relative clause when it here is a defining qualifier (i.e. no commas). (10) Die Geräte und Apparaturen, mit denen die gewünschten Versuchsbedingungen hergestellt und die Beobachtungsergebnisse ermittelt, verstärkt und fibertragen werden, sind technischer Art. The devices and apparatus, with which the test conditions are produced and experimental results are amplified and transferred, are technical in nature.

When this relatively 'literal' translation practice is combined with some changes in the thematic and informational structures, the resulting translation totally destroys the textual effect that the author has carefully tried to construct in German, as illustrated in (11). (11)

Das allgemeine Prinzip, das im experimentellen Vorgehen zum Ausdruck kommt, ist 2) die analytische Methode. Diese Methode zielt nicht auf ein möglichst umfassendes Verständnis ab, in dem die jeweils untersuchten Zusammenhänge in ihrer ungeschmälerten Totalität und Ganzheit zur Geltung kommen.

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The universal principle the experimental procedure is based on, is the analytical method. Achievement of the most comprehensive understanding possible, in which the phenomena under examination are prominent in their unrestricted totality and entirety, is not the aim of this method.

The German version introduces the analytical methods as 'news' in the Rheme, and then the writer takes 'the methods' as the next Theme, telling the reader what can be achieved by this method. The English translation does not follow the same thematic pattern, and the result is informationally cumbersome. The alternative translation starting with This method aims... would have sustained the original Theme - Rheme structure and the original information structure. The following example, Example 12, further illustrates that if translators are not trained to pay attention to such textual patterns as Theme - Rheme their work is left half finished. In (12), the German text has been translated by two different translators. (The translator of Version-b also had Version-a at his disposal while translating.) As can be seen, the translator of Version-b is willing to make more 'radical solutions' in his translation than the translator of Version-a, who sticks closer to the German version in his translation. (12) 7. In der vielfältig aufgefächerten Ethikdiskussion werden neben den Gefahrenpotentialen spezieller Problembereiche (Kernkraft, Gentechnik, Informationstechnologie) die Möglichkeiten für eine "rationale" Techniksteuerung und für eine verantwortungsvolle Selbstbeschränkung diskutiert (Lenk, Zimmerli). (a) 7. In the diversified ethics discussion, aside from the potential dangers of special problem areas (nuclear energy, genetic engineering, information technology), the possibilities for a "rationale" guidance of technology and a responsible self-limitation are being debated (Lenk, Zimmerli). (italics the translator's) (b) 7. In the wide-ranging discussion of the ethical issues involved in technology the topics addressed include special problem areas (nuclear energy, genetic engineering, information technology). Furthermore, the opportunities for a rational use of technology the destruction of the natural environment and the waste of resources are being discussed (Lenk, Zimmerli).

As a result of the 'literal' translation, Version-a of (12) is thematically heavy and the Rheme is practically 'empty' of New information. The translator of Version-b tries to give the text more 'end-focus' by breaking down the information, but then falls into the same trap as the translator in Version-a, i.e. the Rheme part in the second clause consists of the reporting verb only. A different, end-weighted solution to translating this section of the text is offered in (12c). This translation would appear to correspond more closely to the way in which the German writer intended to capture the reader's focus. (12c) The discussion centering on ethical issues comprises various fields and extends itself beyond addressing the potential dangers involved with special problem areas (nuclear energy, genetic engineering, information technology). It deals with the possibilities of using

Theme in Translation: Some Considerations

205

technology rationally and taking responsibility for the destruction of the natural environment and the waste of resources (Lenk, Zimmerli).

Thematically the rewritten version follows the writer's textual train of thought. Splitting the information into two clauses makes the text easier to read (as attempted by the translator of Version-b). Keeping the Theme constant (i.e., the discussion centering on ethical issues), the writer can organize 'a place' for the •New information' concerning the Theme. These changes are in line with the total development of the text by the German author. The writer is presenting the most important viewpoints on the development of the philosophy of technology: Die folgende knappe und schematischgehaltene Übersicht über die Entwicklung der Technikphilosophie in Deutschland kann nur grobe Entwicklungslinien aufzeigen, ohne Details und Nuancierungen einzugehen .... He then discusses each of these viewpoints in turn: 1. Beim anthropologisch-naturalischen Technikverständnis betrachtet man ..., 2. Die methodologisch-rationalistische Technikdeutung stützt ..., 3. In der lebensphilosophisch-kulturtheoretischen Sicht ..., 4. Bei der spekulativ-metaphysichen Technikdeutung geht es ..., 5. Die neomarxistischsozialkritische Technikdeutung betont ..., 6. Die systemtheoretisch-funktionale Analyse geht ..., 7. In der vierfältig aufgefächerten Ethnikdiskussion werden... . Now it should be obvious to the reader why Version-b is better than Version-a and why Version-c may be considered even more communicative than Version-b. In Example (12) the German writer has not complicated the process of text comprehension; rather, the translators have been insensitive to the kinds of global meanings that the writer attempts to construct. But in all fairness to the translators' work, it must be pointed out that German writers do not always make life bearable for translators. It is well-documented that German writing is considered rhetorically different; some see it as being unnecessarily complex. (The nature of German academese has been widely discussed e.g. by Clyne 1987a, 1987b, 1987c, 1991; Clyne et al. 1988.; an interesting discussion on cultural differences in academic writing can be found e.g. in Mauranen 1993.) Sometimes the intervening structures frequently used by German authors cause problems for translators - these structures seem to fit poorly into the clause structure in English (see (13)). At times the problems of translation are caused by the fact that German seems to allow more complicated premodifications and postmodifications of nominal phrases than English. Especially the nominal phrases that function as the Theme of the clause seem to be complex in their structure, as in (13). In (14), the translator has had difficulties in translating the function Role (as...) into English. (13) Der Gedanke, daß jede Art der diskursiven, wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnis durch Subsumption der zu untersuchenden Gegenstände unter Allgemeinbegriffe - und das heißt eben: unter gleichbleibende, wiederkehrende Elemente - erfolgt, kommt in Piatos Ideenlehre ebenso zum Ausdruck wie in der Klassifikation nach genus, species und differentia specifica und der umfassenden Ausgliederung der arbor porphyrii.

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The notion that all discursive scientific knowledge occurs through subsumption of the objects being investigated under universal concepts - under variable recurring elements comes equally to the fore in Plato's theory of forms as in the classification by genus, species, and specific difference, and in the system of comprehensive classification provided by the Porhyrian Tree.

(14) In Process and Reality bezeichnet Whitehead 'creativity', 'many' und 'one' als die schlechthin allgemeinsten Kategorien, die für den universellen Prozess der schöpferischen Verbindung vieler verschiedenartiger Seiender zu neuen Einheiten bestimmt sind. In Process and Reality Whitehead describes 'creativity', 'many' and 'one' as the ultimate universal categories that define the universal process of the creative combination of many disparate thing into new entities.

The translator has managed to translate the relatively complex German clauses into English, but they are still relatively monstrous in the English reader's eyes. What is needed is a more thorough investigation of the Theme - Rheme issues and the role they play in creating 'textuality' and 'cohesion' in translations of texts. But if we turn to translation theorists and to the textbooks the theorists have written for translation practice, it is only in relatively few cases where we find that textbook writers have actually focused upon these questions.

4. Theme - Rheme issues in translation theory and practice concluding remarks

-

The space here is too limited to present a thorough critical discussion of thematic issues (and other textual issues) in translation theory and its practice. A concise and clear overview of the recent models of translation theory is presented in Neubert (1991). The models are: a critical model, a practical model, a linguistic model, a textlinguistic model, a sociocultural model, a computer model, and a psycholinguistic model. Following his description of the models, many would assign this paper to the textlinguistic model. The discussions that have been presented in this paper follow the views of systemic-functional theory which, as Taylor (1993:87) has recently pointed out, has many 'potential aids' to offer to translators. The systemic-functional textlinguistic approach goes further than the description Neubert gives to the textlinguistic model. It goes a giant step toward "a more adequate global theory of translation" that Neubert (1991:26) seems to call for. This is because the systemic theory pays simultaneously attention to a product and a process, to linguistic forms and how these are used by writers to construe various kinds of text types in different socio-cultural contexts, and the theory is also applicable to computer translation. It is therefore somewhat disappointing to see how slow other translation theorists and especially translation practitioners seem to be in utilising the tools offered by functional linguists (Taylor 1993:102). A quick glance, for example, at fairly recent handbooks of translation theory show that the topic of this paper, thematic progression issues, has not been extensively covered.

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207

The focus in various handbooks and textbooks on translation tends to be on the clause, not on the textual motivation for Theme - Rheme patterning in texts, see e.g. the discussion on Theme - Rheme in Newmark (1988:60-63). Newmark's latest book (1991) covers his views on translation theory in the 1980's and can similarly be criticized for its fairly limited considerations of textual matters; the focus is mainly on grammatical metaphor and on the use of connectives; see Taylor (1993:94) for a discussion. Bell (1991:58) acknowledges the importance of 'Theme - Rheme awareness' for translators and also discusses it in length, but does not demonstrate the thematic analyses at work in extensive texts. But there are exceptions as well. Hatim and Mason discuss the notions of Theme and Rheme and acknowledge that "When Theme and Rheme analysis remains restricted to the boundaries of the sentence..., it is naturally unable to bring out the function of these elements within texts" (Hatim and Mason 1990:217). They, in fact, provide examples of how thematic progression can be taken into account in translation and also relate the choices in translation to generic considerations. Possibly the best discussion so far on Theme - Rheme choices in translation textbooks is offered by Baker (1992:118-160) who gives many translation examples of Theme - Rheme in text extracts and discusses the concepts critically from the translators' point of view. This paper began by pointing out how Theme - Rheme structures are often skilfully used in texts to present the 'news' to the reader, to give him/her a possibility to follow the story and its happenings almost visually, as if the reader were looking through the lens of a film camera. In academic papers the Theme Rheme patterns are important in guiding the reader through the logical paths constructed by the writer. If little attention is paid in translation to these rhetorical effects, writers' attempts to help the readers are destroyed. This paper has shown various examples of thematic changes in translation which are likely to complicate the reading process of a translated academic article. When the readers are unlikely to check the original version, the authors may be interpreted to be 'difficult to read'. A German author is known to use a certain kind of academese when writing scientific papers. When his/her papers appear in English translations in which the logic of the paper is at times distorted by less appropriate Theme - Rheme constructions, the blame usually falls on the writer and not on the translator, who has the benefit of remaining in the background; in translations of scientific papers the names of the translators may not even be mentioned. Too little of that linguistic information which can be useful for translators has yet filtered through to the translation theories and to the educational system constructed for training translators. Roller (1989:19) has pointed out that translators have had high expectations of linguistics and its benefits for their practical work, but that they have been disappointed by the promises that 'the ivory tower theorists' have given them. In many respects this disappointment is justified. But one also has to remember that for those views which most likely were in the position to offer tools for translators could not get their voices heard in the linguistic atmosphere of the 1960's and 1970's and even in the 1980's. A long time ago, Michael Halliday (1961:275) pointed out that considering linguistics only as a

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study of formal grammar and nothing else was like "a colourless green idea that sleeps furiously between the sheets of linguistic theory, preventing the bed from being made." It seems to me that now the bed has been made, and functional linguists, translation theorists and translators can look forward to having their serious 'powwows' to plan how to unite theory and practice.

References Baker, Mona (1992): In Other Words. A Coursebook on Translation.- London: Routledge. Bell, Roger T. (1991): Translation and Translating. - London: Longman. Berry, Margaret (1989): "Thematic options and success in writing". - In: C. S. Butler, R. A. Cardwell, and J. Channell (eds.). Language & Literature - Theory & Practice. A Special Issues of Nottingham Linguistic Circular, 62-78. Clyne, Michael (1987a): "Cultural differences in the organization of academic texts" - In: Journal of Pragmatics, 11,211-47. - (1987b): "Discourse structures and cultural stereotypes". In: W. Veit (ed.). Antipodische Aufklärungen. Festschrift for Leslie Bodi. - Frankfurt: Lang, 77-86. - (1987c): "Discourse structures and discourse expectations; implications for Anglo-German Academic Communication in English". - In: Larry E. Smith (ed.). Discourse Across Cultures. - New York-London-Syndey-Tokyo: Prentice Hall, 73-83. - (1991): "The sociocultural dimension: the dilemma of the German-speaking scholar". - In: Hartmut Schröder (ed.). Subject-Oriented Texts. - Berlin-New York: Walter de Gruyter, 4967. - , Hoeks, J. & Kreutz, H. J. (1988):. "Cross-cultural responses to academic discourse patterns". - In: Folia Linguistica, 22, 3-4:, 457-75. Daneä, Frantisek (1974): "Functional Sentence Perspective and the Organization of the Text". In: Frantisek DaneS (ed.). Papers on Functional Sentence Perspective (- Janua Linguarum, Ser. Minor, 147). - The Hague: Mouton, 106-128. Enkvist, Nils Erik (1991): "Discourse Type, Text Type and Cross-Cultural Rhetoric". In: Sonja Tirkkonen-Condit (ed.). Empirical Research in Translation and Intercultural Studies. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 5-16. Firbas, Jan (1974): "Some aspects of the Czechoslovak approach to problems of Functional Sentence Perspective". In: Frantisek DaneS (ed.). Papers on Functional Sentence Perspective (= Janua Linguarum, Ser. Minor, ¡47). - The Hague: Mouton, 11-37. - (1992): Functional Sentence Perspective in Written and Spoken Communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fries, Peter (1981): "On the status of theme in English: arguments from discourse". In: Forum Linguisticum, 6, 1: 1-38. - and Gill Francis (1992): "Exploring Theme: problems for research". In: Occasional Papers in Systemic Linguistics, 6: 45-60. Gibson, Tim R. (1993): Towards a Discourse Theory of Abstracts and Abstracting, ponographs in Systemic Linguistics, 5). - Nottingham: University of Nottingham, Dept. of English Studies. Halliday, M.A.K. (1961). "Categories of the theory of grammar". In: Word, Vol. 13, No. 3., 241292. - (1985): An Introduction to Functional Grammar. - London: Arnold. Hatim, B. and I. Mason (1990): Discourse and the Translator. - London-New York: Longman. Koller, Werner (1989): "Lingvistisen lähestymistavan mahdollisuudet ja rajat käännöstieteessä" (The possibilities and boudaries of linguistics in translation theory). In: R. Jokisaari (ed.).

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Kääntäminen ja kielten opetus (Translation and Teaching Languages). Kymenlaakson täydennyskoulutuslaitoksen julkaisusaija, Saija A, No. 1. - Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, (19-36. Mansfield, ¡Catherine (1991): The Garden Party and other stories - Das Gartenfest und andere Erzählungen. - München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag. Martin, James R. (1992a): English Text. System and Structure. - Philadelphia-Amsterdam: John Bemjamins. - (1992b): "Theme, Method of Development and Existentiality: the price of reply". In: Occasional Papers in Systemic Linguistics, 6: 147-183. Mauranen, Anna (1993): Cultural Differences in Academic Rhetoric. - Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Neubert, Albrecht (1985): Text and Translation. (Übersetzungswissenschaftliche Beiträge, 8). Leipzig: VEB Verlag Enzyklopädie. - (1991): "Models of translation". In: Sonja Tirkkonen-Condit (ed.). Empirical Research in Translation and Intercultural Studies. - Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 17-26. Newmark, Peter (1988): A Textbook of Translation. - Hemel Hempstead: Prentice Hall. - (1991): About Translation. - Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Steiner, Erich & Wiebke Ramm (1993): "On Theme as a grammatical notion for German". In: Functions of Language, Vol. 2., No. 1. Taylor, Christopher (1993): "Systemic Linguistics and Translation". In: Occasional Papers in Systemic Linguistics, 7: 87-103. Weinrich, Harald (1993): Textgrammatik der deutschen Sprache. - Mannheim-Leipzig-WienZürich: Duden Verlag.

Günter Weise (Greifswald)

Functional-Semantic Fields

1. Introduction The present paper is an attempt to draw generalizations from research that started in the 1980's at the University of Halle-Wittenberg and has been continued at the University of Greifswald. The aim of the project has been to arrive at a complex functional description of present-day scientific English. While only one of the directions followed can be described here, an attempt will be made to point out the interelationship between this and other functional approaches. It would seem appropriate to define, although briefly, what we mean when we are using the terms function and functional. A very general definition offunction is "the ability of a system to affect a certain behaviour" (Lewandowski 1976, I, 210). This can be applied to the language system which, in the wake of Prague School linguistics, is regarded as an instrument to meet the requirements of social communication. Perhaps the clearest way to characterize functional studies is in terms of a "means-ends model" (Jakobson 1964, 481 f.) where specific language features are linked to certain communicative effects and where the two main language functions, cognition and communication, are considered as being closely interwoven.

2. Directions of functional studies Due to the complexity of language, functional studies may start from different points. On the one hand, they may proceed from a contextual analysis of particular language structures (e.g. word classes, grammatical constructions) and try to establish their functions in texts. This line of research, proceeding from form to function, has been found to be amenable primarily to text analysis. On the other hand, functional studies may start from certain semantic categories (e.g. numerality, temporality, causality) and try to establish their corresponding lexicogrammatical realizations. This direction, proceeding from meaning to form, has proved to be better suited to the task of text production. A third, more recent line of research is even more activity-oriented in that it studies the sequence of speech acts making up specific kinds of text. Being communicative-pragmatic in nature, this is part of functional text linguistics. The unifying principle of all these approaches rests in the functional view which is applied from different angles and focussed on different levels of language (structures, meanings, texts). In the following, I am going to concentrate on functional-semantic categories, in particular those with a grammatical core, either morphological or syntactic. These

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categories, such as determination, temporality, modality, adversativity, concessivity, instrumentality, etc., have become well established in the history of linguistics (cf Jespersen 1924), although it must be conceded that some of these notions are imprecise or even controversial, especially when studied from a crosscultural point of view. Cases in point are the conflicting definitions of aspectuality or modality in different languages, or even within one language. But it must be stressed that it is the fiizziness of language itself that has prompted linguists to accept fuzzy (Boolean-type) categories. We must take it for granted that it is necessary for linguists to work with categories that are fuzzy enough to capture the dynamic nature of language and at the same time precise enough to deserve the label category. Hence we are looking for a model that allows us to describe and explain imprecise categories.

3. The functional field approach One model of linguistic description that meets the above-mentioned requirements is the functional field model which is closely associated with the pioneering work of A.V. Bondarko and the Leningrad/St. Petersburg School (cf. Bondarko 1984, 1991). It was worked out for the description of the Russian language, though it lends itself to cross-linguistic purposes (cf. Sommerfeldt u. Starke 1984). Our own work is clearly indebted to Bondarko's approach. The functional field method is one way of organizing language material according to functional criteria. It is concerned with semantic functions, i.e. functions that are more or less definitely marked by the context. Some kind of overlap of function and meaning is possible, but generally speaking it is possible to keep the two apart. Semantic qualities are absolute qualities of linguistic units, intrinsically bound up with their identity, whereas functions are relative qualities, inherent in the linguistic system, but largely dependent on the functioning of units in discourse. Thus, function is seen in a twofold way, viz. - the ability of a unit to fulfil a certain task, to meet a certain purpose (potential function); - the result of functioning in context, i.e. an objective realized in discourse (actual or resultative function). Both kinds of function, one related to language as a system, the other related to language activity, are bound up with each other in a dialectic way (cf. Bondarko 1991, 26). The advantage of representing language units in a field is that one can show the complex nature of how semantic notions and categories are organized and interrelated. Mapping a grammatically centred field will reveal, e.g., that grammatical forms are not the only way of expressing aspectual, temporal, or modal meanings. Grammatical forms will often be reinforced or graded by lexical forms. Some forms may be more categorial than others, and some may even invade the territory of neighbouring categories. The functional field method can thus demonstrate the hierarchy, proximity, and overlapping of features.

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213

In line with Bondarko (1984, 1991), Gulyga & Sendel's (1969) and Sommerfeldt & Starke (1984) we postulate the following characteristics of functional-semantic fields (FSFs): - A functional-semantic field is constituted by language means from different levels that have a common semantic invariant. - The language units so obtained are studied bilaterally with both their form and function in mind. - All the features are listed and studied in their interaction with other features. - A functional field is organized and subdivided into core and periphery, and there may be microfields within a macrofield. - There are fuzzy boundaries and overlappings not only between core and periphery or between macro- and microfields, but also between neighbouring fields. In our investigations we have adopted a three-step procedure: The first step consists in establishing the common semantic basis by listing semantic invariance and possible differentiation. The second step consists in mapping the formal representations, i.e. the relevant language means of central and peripheral importance. The third step, which links up with studies of the textual level, consists in establishing the communicative range and value of the units so found, their quantitative selection and qualitative distribution in the text corpus. In the following I am going to attempt to give a brief description of three FSFs of different status. This may help to illustrate the procedure used and at the same time highlight some of the problems involved in field presentation.

4.

Examples of FSFs in present-day English

4.1.

Determination (Det.)

Determination is a FS category that embraces two opposite, even polar meanings: definiteness versus indefiniteness. The functions of Det. must on principle be established in connection with the meaning of the nouns to which they are attached. This implies that the intralingual as well as the extralingual context has to be taken into account (cp. 0glass versus a/the glass). For a FS description of Det. two microfields, representing the two poles of the meaning opposition, are postulated: Definiteness and Indefiniteness. Semantic and statistical evidence suggests that the core means of Definiteness are the definite article and the demonstratives, while the core means of Indefiniteness are the indefinite article and the zero article. The main functions of Det. as established in the corpus are: 4.1.1. Definiteness -

Identification or specification, realized by the definite article in front of sg. or pi. nouns, e.g.

the size and concentration of the molecules in solution; the methods employed.

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-

Specification through reference to proximity or distance, achieved by the use of demonstratives. This/these refer to something spatially or temporally close, while that/those refer to something more distant or mentioned previously; cp. this (the present) review as against that (the former) review. - Specification through indication of belonging, realized by the use of possessives, both those having pronominal status (its, their, etc.) and those derived from nouns, e.g. our present model, Dalton's Theory. - Specification of members of a set, realized by cardinal numbers, ordinal numbers and distributives such as the next, the last, the former, the latter, e.g. two basic techniques; the latter procedure. We notice here an overlap with the FSF of Numerality. - Determination through quality specification, using such (a), which denotes a qualitatively specified unit from a set of similar elements, e.g. Such a relation is obvious... Here we notice an overlap with the FSF of Quality. 4.1.2. Indefiniteness includes the following semantic functions: - Generalization The 0 article is used for the expression of general or abstract notions, with countable nouns in the sg. and with non-countable nouns in the pi., e.g. time and space', radioactive elements. - Classification The indefinite article a(n) usually characterizes a noun as not yet introduced in the text. It is also used for the designation of a class or species, e.g. in definitions: A recent publication states..., A catalyst is a substance that speeds up the rate of a chemical reaction... - Relative determination of amount or degree This function is realized by quantifiers such as much, many, more, most, little, few, several, enough, a great number / deal of. Since in these cases a comparative element is involved, there is an overlap with the FSF of Comparison as well as with the categories of Amount and Degree. - Referential contrast or opposition This group includes distributives from either of the two FSFs discussed here. The distributives form a number of sets of which the first item is usually more strongly determined than the subsequent one(s): each, every; some, any; all, either, neither, no, e.g. Some hypotheses attain the status of theories, but any theory will have to be verified or falsified. As for the discourse functions of determiners, their role in establishing cohesion is obvious. Whereas the indef. article serves to introduce a notion that has not been mentioned previously, the def. article refers to a notion that has already been introduced, hence it has anaphoric reference:

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There might be a stereochemical fit between the side chain of an amino acid and the group of nucleotides which specifies the amino acid. On the other hand, the def. article may have cataphoric reference when the noun it defines is modified, e.g. The temperature of the system has to be measured continuously. The internal structure of the FSFs of Definiteness and Indefiniteness, their organization into core and periphery and their overlap with each other and with neighbouring FSFs are illustrated in Fig 1. 4.2. Temporality: Pastness Using the past tense, the speaker/writer expresses a state-of-affairs or an event which happened before the moment of speaking, i.e. the event is assigned to a definite point or period of time in the past. The event referred to by the speaker/writer is separated from the present, or from the moment of speaking, by a time lag. The main function of the past tense is to signal that the secondary reference time to which the state-of-affairs or event is assigned occurred before the moment of speaking and is not connected with it (cf. Graustein et al. 1989, 152, Kirsten et al. 1994, 82). The core of the FSF of Pastness is clearly formed by the past tense forms of the verb. In addition, the notion of Pastness is achieved lexically through the referential components in the verb lexemes, syntactically through the connection of verb forms with temporal adverbs, conjunctions or subjunctions, and pragmatically through the relations between linguistic expressions in the text and their extralinguistic reference (cf. Piehler 1990, 17). These lexical, syntactic and pragmatic means of expression are either complementary to the core or part of the periphery of the field. The plain past can express - the completion of past actions or events, e.g. She took her Ph.D. in 1985. - a sequence of events, e.g. He first moved to Surrey, then accepted an invitation to Keele. - the beginning of an action or event parallel to an ongoing action or event (background action), e.g. They entered the hall when the party was in full swing. In addition to the past tense, Pastness may be indicated by the following linguistic items: - temporal adverbs (then), interrogatives (when?), subjunctions (when, while) - certain adjectives such as previous, past, the late - certain proper names referring to the past, e.g. the Bloomsbury Set, the neogrammarians - historical events of the past, e.g. the foundation of the Royal Society - certain localities evoking notions of the past, e.g. the old Globe Theatre. There are numerous overlaps with other FSFs of Temporality, in particular PrePresentness, as well as with Aspectuality, Modality and Locality.

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The communicative function of Pastness is often reinforced by the cooccurrence of deictic or non-deictic temporal adverbials and prepositions referring to past events. But even without such indicators, the pastness of the event can usually be concluded from the context or cotext. In discourse, past tense indicators are preferentially used to express speech acts such as - rendering an account, reporting (giving factual information about past events) - narrating (giving subjectively weighted information) - depicting (conveying information in a vividly impressive and emotional way). It should be added that all these may occur in direct or in reported speech (cf. Kirsten et al. 1994, 84). A graphic illustration of the organization of the FSF of Pastness into core and periphery as well as the potential overlaps with neighbouring FSFs is given in Fig. 2. 4.3. Adversativity (Contrast) This FSF embraces all linguistic means that denote a contrast to a previously made statement. Since the category provides a frame for two opposing statements, it may be referred to as a FS relation-type (Adversativity). It shows a striking overlap with the FSF of Concessivity, so that a number of test procedures had to be developed to mark the two fields off. On the basis of semantic criteria and frequency of occurrence, the following indicators were assigned to the core of the FSF of Adversativity: - expression of pure contrast, e.g. Their ideas were discussed widely, but the majority of their contemporaries refused to accept them. For this purpose, but, while, whereas and however are used most frequently. Since but and however can also occur with concessive connotation, their exact meaning must be ascertained by a substitution test using on the other hand. As while originally has temporal meaning, there may be an overlap between Adversativity and Temporality. Apart from the functional indicators mentioned so far, there are other lexical indicators expressing pure contrast, e.g. contrary to, in contrast to, be opposed to. In certain contexts a similar effect may be achieved by linking two sentences asyndetically. In addition to pure contrast, further shades of meaning can be expressed by items which are placed more at the periphery of Adversativity. These semantic functions and their formal indicators are: - exclusion of a state-of-affairs, signalled by except, excepting, except for, except that, without+Ving, e.g. All data, except those in Fig. 2, are derivedfrom the same source material. - replacement of a state-of-affairs, signalled by instead, instead of, e.g. Instead of going to completion, the majority of these reactions tend to form equilibrium mixtures. - preference for a state-of-affairs,

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indicated by rather than, e.g. Rather than accelerate the reaction, a sharp rise of temperature will bring about the rupture of the chain. - reversal of a state-of-affairs, indicated by conversely, often in the combination In general...; conversely... - additional contrast, e.g. The technique is not only highly effective but also safe and elegant. The structure of the FSF of Adversativity, its division into core and periphery, and the overlap with other fields, especially Concessivity, are illustrated in Fig. 3.

5. Evaluation of FSF Theory In the following section I want to address myself to some of the criticisms that have been brought against field theory and its linguistic application. I will try to refute some of the criticism by pointing out the possibilities of a dialectic and flexible field representation. Properly speaking, although the criticism has been launched against field theory in general, the main thrust is against the Weisgerber School with its focus on the meaning of individual words. The main spokesman of the critics, S. Wyler (1990, 14) put the question pretty succinctly: Is lexical field theory still up-to-date? In contrast to Weisgerber (1962, 168-211) we try to employ a model of representation that includes semantic invariance and differentiation with lexical and grammatical realization in a given context. Wyler's main objections to the theory of lexical fields followed by our comments are: - Visual field representation always involves overlappings and fuzzy zones. This is a factor that has to be acknowledged but can be turned into an advantage. - Field representations embrace predominantly paradigmatic, rarely syntagmatic relationships. This situation can be improved by the syntagmatic scanning of the corpus material and the determination of its communicative range. - There is a danger that fuzziness may be replaced by neatness, particularly at the periphery of fields. It is true that a certain degree of simplification is involved in any two-dimensional representation, but the overlaps can be marked and fuzziness can be verbally explained. As Wyler is fair enough to concede, there are also some advantages of field theory and field representations: Field theory is useful as a heuristic method since it enables us to give a graphic illustration of the relations holding between meanings and functions and their formal realizations. Though artificial to some extent, field representations are useful not only heuristically but also for applied purposes. To us, the advantages of FSF theory far outweigh its shortcomings. Above all, it has to be stressed that FSF representation is in line with linguistic reality. As Frawley (1992, 30) puts it: Language is "full of gradient phenomena... The insight behind fuzziness indicates that categories have vague boundaries and are internally organized from central focal values, the prototype,... to less focal instances and fringe values. As the

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centrality of the category fades, criteria for membership in the category are less decisively applied, and categories merge into each other." In section 4, we have given some examples of these mergings. Another advantage of FSF studies, not mentioned so far, is their value in crosscultural contrastive investigations. Provided the theoretical and methodological approach is kept constant, FSF lend themselves to intralingual as well as interlingual comparison. The investigations carried out so far have shown that intralingually the inventory of realizations varies with the textual basis, both with regard to domain (e.g. social vs natural sciences) and genre (research paper, textbook, manual). On the other hand, it stands to reason that interlingual comparison, e.g. of English and German text corpora of a similar nature, would give graphic insights into similarities and differences of FSF organization. They would point out possible blanks, partial correspondences and dissimilarities in the semantic structure and its formal realization, thus enabling teachers to plan remedial work against errors that are due to interlingual interference. And a last point: FSF studies of the kind described above may be useful building blocks for a grammar that differs from existing conventional grammar books in being better suited for active and productive purposes.

6. Towards a Productive Grammar In this final section I want to outline the internal structure of a functionally oriented productive grammar. Since FS categories are part of any utterance, however elementary or complex it may be, FS studies have an important intermediate role between structural and pragmatic studies. If this view is accepted, we should strive to create an integrated model of functional description that links systemic structure with semantic organization and pragmatic intention. Taking up a suggestion first made by Leech and Svartvik (1977, 12 f.) though modifying their ideas in a number of points, we propose a system of five concentric rings which represent, in ascending order, the FS categories that can be assigned to, and are thought to be characteristic of utterances, discourse and texts of growing complexity (cf. Fig. 4). In the following, only a few comments can be made. The inner ring comprises the categories bound up with nomination; they include those elementary FS categories that operate within the noun group (e.g. determination, numerality, quantity). The next ring comprises the basic categories of predication, where categories of the inner ring are linked with those functioning within the verb group (e.g. temporality, aspectuality, diathesis, epistemic modality). These are needed to formulate basic descriptive and expository speech acts. The following ring contains categories used for the expression of attitude and the control of behaviour (e.g. deontic modality and imperativity). These are in close correlation with directive speech acts such as commanding, instructing, suggesting and requesting.

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The fourth ring comprises relational categories required for the formation of complex sentences or sequences of utterances (e.g. causality, conditionally, concessivity, adversativity). These are dominant in complex speech acts such as giving reasons, arriving at conclusions and providing evidence. The outer ring, which embraces all the others, is concerned with the functional organization of meaning in texts or discourse. The categories treated here are semantic as well as pragmatic in nature (e.g. thematic progression, speech act configuration, macrostructure rules). They relate to the textual aspects of verbal communication. However, these can only be tackled when the linguistic means of the preceding categories are mastered. These five concentric rings allow the student to progress in communicative complexity via a graded arrangement of FS categories supplemented by a visual representation of the FSF in question. The model suggested is integrative in two respects. First, it promotes the grouping of language material of increasing complexity from different linguistic levels (lexis and grammar) under clearly defined FS aspects. Second, it treats functional-semantic and communicative-pragmatic means in close cooperation. The interdependence of substantial-relational and intentional language means reflects, as it were, the close links between the propositionalsemantic and the communicative-pragmatic components in utterances, discourse and texts.

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-FSF Definiteness

Overlap with

Overlap with

such (a)

possessives, poss. case Overlap: distributives

Overlap with

det. of degree/ amount little much enough

indef. art. zero article generalizing classifying

FSF Indefiniteness

' quantifiers\ more less a great number/ deal of

Fig. 1.: The FSF determination: Definiteness/Indefiniteness> (cf. Weise 1986, 14 ff.)

Overlap with

221 Overlaps with

'already, recently, always, ever, never, today, tonight, in (June...) in (the morning...) before this (morning...) once, formerly just now, then yesterday ago Overlap with

on May 6th, 1980 in former times in those days at that time in (1957)

/ \ f \ Whenever... / Past | It's a long time \ Tense J since... \ /

Overlap with

last (week) the other day that morning the day before yesterday in London. (= when he was in London)

r

erlap with

Fig. 2.: The FSF (cf. Piehler 1990, 25.)

222

Pure contrast, as against opposition involving - exclusion - replacement - preference - reversal

Fig. 3.: T h e FSF (cf. Weise 1986, 31 ff)

Günter

Weise

Functional-Semantic

Fields

A.

Categories of nomination

B.

Categories of predication

C.

Categories expressing attitude and control of behaviour

D.

Relational categories

E.

Categories referring to the functional organization of

(in complex utterances and sequences of utterances) meaning in discourse (FSP, thematic progression)

Fig. 4.: Functional-semantic categories in discourse

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References Bondarko, A.V. (1984): Funkcional'naja Grammatika. - Leningrad: Nauka. - (1991): Functional Grammar. A Field Approach. - Amsterdam u. Philadelphia: Benjamins Frawley, W. (1992): Linguistic Semantics. - Hillsdale, N.J. und London: Lawrence Erlbaum. Gulyga, E.V. u. E.J. Sendel's (1969): Grammatiko-leksiCeskie polja v. sovremennom nemeckom jazyke. - Moskva. Jespersen, G. (1924): The Philosophy of Grammar. - London: Allen & Unwin. Kirsten, H. (1994) u. Mitarbeit v. E. A. Ehrig, A. Hindorf u. D. Schneider: Englische Verbformen. Bedeutung und kommunikative Leistung. - Essen: Die Blaue Eule. Leech, G. u. J. Svartvik (1977): A Communicative Grammar of English. - London: Longman. Piehler, S. (1990): Kommunikative Lehrstrategien zur Grammatikbehandlung, dargestellt am Beispiel der funktional-semantischen Mikrofelder der Vergangenheit und der Vorgegenwart. - Staatsexamensarbeit Univ. Greifswald Sommerfeldt, K.-E. u. G. Starke (1984): Grammatisch-semantische Felder der deutschen Sprache der Gegenwart. - Leipzig: Enzyklopädie. Weise, G. (1986): Untersuchungen zum funktionalen System der englischen Wissenschaftssprache. Arbeitsberichte Kommunikativ-funktionale Sprachbetrachtung. Nr. 121. Univ. Halle-Wittenberg Weisgerber, L. (1962): Grundzüge der inhaltbezogenen Grammatik. - Düsseldorf: Schwann. Wyler, S. (1990): Ist die Wortfeldtheorie noch zeitgemäß} - Zeitschrift für Anglistik u. Amerikanistik 38 (1990) 1, 14-24.

SECTION III: SOCIETY, GENRE, AND LANGUAGE IN MEDIEVAL ENGLAND

Hans-Jürgen Diller (Bochum)

Introduction In the Forum which traditionally opens the Anglistentag, Medieval Studies had received perhaps unexpected praise from a colleague in Cultural Studies for integrating the various academic disciplines which make the Middle Ages their subject. It certainly was the ambition of the three organizers of this section (Lilo Moessner, Stephan Kohl, and H.J. Diller) to cut across the conventional boundaries of linguistic, literary and cultural studies. The central concept, which was intended to link society and language, was of course "genre". For this reason Professor Matti Rissanen, of the University of Helsinki, had been invited to give the section's plenary lecture on "Genres, texts and corpora in the study of medieval English". He emphasized the importance of genre in the compilation of the diachronic part of the well-known Helsinki Corpus of English Texts, which was built up under his direction. The extent to which the goal of integration has been achieved in the Section itself may be gauged by the fact that, with perhaps one exception, all papers can be said to have crossed at least some of the boundaries that traditionally sub-divide the field of English Studies. The first session, on Monday afternoon, was devoted mainly to the study of non-literary genres: Reinhard Gleißner, whose paper on "Notional taxonomies and world view" unfortunately does not appear in these pages, discussed a large number of encyclopedic works from Pliny to the Scots Thesaurus (1990), concentrating of course on the Middle Ages. He demonstrated how changes in the genre, showing chiefly in the arrangement of chapters and thus in the classification of phenomena, reflect changes in the authors' world view. Werner Hüllen made us aware of the conventional character of many of Caxton's dialogues by quoting numerous parallels from similar works, at the same time demonstrating how knowledge of the conventions of the genre can help us to extract socio-historical information from it. Hüllen's contribution, of which we are pleased to publish an abstract, will form part of a more comprehensive study. Andreas Fischer, speaking on 'Dream lore and dream lexis' illustrates not so much the interdependence as the comparative independence of lexical and conceptual systems. Although Middle English, like other vernaculars and medieval Latin, had a highly specialized dream terminology, the differentiations enabled by this were exploited, if at all, only in the technical language of the manuals. In general speech, different words, like ME sweven and dreem, were used interchangeably, even by a poet like Chaucer, whose knowledge of, and interest in, dream theory cannot be doubted. Chaucer is also the subject of Manfred Markus' paper on prose in the Canterbury Tales, the first paper in the Tuesday morning session. According to Markus, the two prose tales in the collection are parodies of the vernacular

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sermon, which became highly popular about that time (see also Sabine Volk-Birke in this Section). To those who find it acceptable, Markus' theory would suggest that "genre-consciousness" in the late fourteenth century, or at least in Chaucer, included non-literary as well as literary genres. Such a view would mark a significant enlargement of the scope of parody. Dieter Kastovsky offered a step-by-step reconstruction of the regrouping that the weak verbs had to undergo in their transition from Old to Middle (and early Modern) English. With the reduction of inflectional morphology the past tense becomes the only consistently marked grammatical category of the finite verb, and this has its reverberations on the status of syllabic vs. non-syllabic allomorphs: the contrast between -d-/-t-/-0- and -ed- changes from a historically to a purely phonetically motivated one, thus entailing a redistribution of inflectional verb classes. If the category of text genre seemed to experience some strengthening in the course of this morning, that of inflectional class was certainly weakened. Those who regret this blurring at the microscopic level may take heart at the apparently increased role of higher-level units. The last session, on Wednesday morning, was again devoted to literary and nonliterary genres. Each of the papers (on poetry, the Wycliffite sermon, and private letters) showed an inter-disciplinary orientation, and each, though in varying degrees, took into account the social background of the texts under study. In his discussion of "The Poet's Repentance" (ms Harley 2253), Wilhelm Busse offered weighty arguments for considering the hitherto underestimated role of bishops as literary patrons. Sabine Volk-Birke, in her contribution on Wyclif, concentrated on the function of the sermon in late-fourteenth-century English society as well as on the potential of vernacular prose for the discussion of rather subtle theological issues. Ursula Schaefer looked at the Paston Letters and demonstrated how the punctuation of modern editions tends to obscure ambiguities in the letters' syntax, which are often due to an adaptation of tournures from epistolary conventions in French or Latin as well as to a still "oral", more fluid conception of syntax. The adoption of a new mode of communication by a social class hitherto unused to it thus reveals itself as a complex socio-cultural and linguistic process which modern philology cannot make visible unless it reflects on its own conventions and the often implicit preconceptions which have shaped them. If after the Greifswald Anglistentag medievalists are still shy about accepting the compliment paid them at its opening, they can proudly point to large areas of knowledge where an inter-disciplinary approach has yielded exciting and even convincing results.

Matti Rissanen (Helsinki)

Genres, Texts and Corpora in the Study of Medieval English Variation and change in language can be properly analysed and understood only if language is primarily regarded as a means of communication between people, a tool used by thinking and feeling individuals to serve a variety of purposes. In simple terms, the study of texts and their grouping into types or genres means an attempt to define and describe man's aims and purposes of communication and to relate them to the social, cultural and political conditions of the speech community. It is appropriate and important to analyse language and its development at an abstract level, with little concern for either speakers or listeners, or writers and readers. However, dynamism and 'movement' of language plays an essential role in the study of change. Ignoring this dynamism would seem to make just as much sense as an attempt to describe a galloping horse by analysing the tissue of its muscles and measuring the distances between its hoof prints. For a language historian, the study of texts and their grouping into genres is important for two reasons. The first refers to the study of change in general terms. Language is highly variable in its expression. This sounds like a truism, and scholars have based their research on this tenet for decades. It is interesting, however, to note that it was first formalized as a principle for systematic linguistic analysis only some thirty years ago, in the highly influential essay by Weinreich, Labov and Herzog (1968). They divide the problems involved in the study of linguistic change into five parts: constraints, embedding, evaluation, transition and actuation. All these points are closely related to speech community and the social character of change.1 They argue powerfully that the 'orderly heterogeneity' in language must be taken into account in explaining and analysing change. In a highly simplified form, we can visualize language as a set of variant fields formed by roughly synonymous expressions such as words, forms, structures and pronunciations. The variants within one and the same field mean roughly the same thing or at any rate are semantically closely related.2 Change in language appears as changes in the shape of the variant fields, loss and addition of forms and, above all, changes in the linguistic or extralinguistic (internal or external) factors which affect the conscious or unconscious choices between the variants. The study of varying expressions in texts differentiated by subject-matter, purpose, discourse situation, etc., gives us valuable insights into these aspects of change and development and into the shape and size of the variant fields. 1 2

Cf. also Milroy & Milroy 1984; Milroy 1992. Cf. Halliday's (1973: 51-58) discussion of meaning potential. The semantic problem of the synonymy of the variants, particularly lexical and syntactic, has been pointed out, for instance, by Rydin (1979, 1987), Romaine (1982).

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A central issue in the study of texts and genres from the point of view of the general development of language is our attempt to find evidence of the spoken language of past centuries. It is obvious that there is no reliable way of describing past speech earlier than the age of electrical recording devices. Some conclusions about the expressions typical of spoken language can, however, be drawn from comparisons between texts which, when judged by extralinguistic criteria, stand at different distances from the spoken end of the continuum of linguistic expression. We can assume that if certain forms or phrases are frequent, for instance, in private letters, drama, dialogue in fiction, or the depositions of witnesses in law court records, they may reflect expressions typical of spoken language. The prerequisite for this kind of reasoning is, however, that the influence of other factors which may affect the frequencies can be effectively eliminated. The second reason why the study of texts and genres is of particular interest to the language historian refers to philological or literary studies rather than purely linguistic ones. This is genre study in its own right, the development of genres and their typical forms of expression. The emergence of new genres, the death of old ones and their changing scope, purpose and character gives us important information on the cultural, social and intellectual history of speech communities; how people express themselves in speech and writing, in various situations, for various purposes, at different times. This research goal is of course closely related to the first: a similar comparative analysis method is typical of both. It can be said without exaggeration that the introduction of computerized corpora has meant a revolution in the text-based empirical study of the history of English. Corpora give the scholar easy access to vast amounts of empirical evidence about the previous stages of the language and make the handling and organizing of material much faster and more reliable than before. The verifiability or falsifiability of research results has improved greatly. The increasing popularity of the variationist approach in the diachronic study of language, describing and analysing variant expressions and their linguistic and extralinguistic environments, has made computerized corpora indispensable as sources of evidence. For the compilers of multi-purpose corpora,3 the inclusion of the texts adequately representing as many genres as possible is of utmost importance, and the value and usefulness of these corpora can be estimated by the genre coverage of the text samples included. A major problem in diachronic studies based on genres or text types,4 and in diachronic corpora applying genre coding to text samples, is the lack of adequate genre taxonomy to classify texts written in the older periods. Too little research has so far been done in this field, and it seems impossible to create a valid all-purpose classification of texts for diachronic

4

I.e. corpora intended to be used by scholars for various research purposes over a longer period of time. The terminology is not yet fully established. Biber (1988) calls the groupings of texts formed by extra-linguistic criteria, mainly by the topic and purpose of the text, 'genres'. The classes consisting of texts sharing similar linguistic features are referred to as 'types of text'. In the Helsinki Corpus the term 'text type' or 'type of text' is used to describe categories formed by extra-linguistic criteria (cf. also Romaine 1982). The term 'genre' is perhaps less successful than the more neutral 'text type' because it is also a term used in literary criticism.

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studies. We are always, at least to some extent, prisoners of our own time, our own views and interpretations. To take an example: should Chaucer's Parson's Tale be labelled as fiction or sermon, or a religious treatise? Texts are also often internally heterogeneous. While part of Chaucer's Tale of Melibee, for instance, should probably be labelled fiction, part of it should be regarded as a philosophical treatise. The problems of taxonomy are made even more difficult by the fact that the number and character of the genres do not remain stable throughout the centuries. 5 Despite classificatory problems, genre or text type taxonomies are necessary for diachronic variationist studies, and all compilers of corpora should be encouraged to provide their text samples with a generic parameter coding. For one thing, genre labels tell the users a lot about the contents of the corpus; how representative the corpus claims to be of the 'linguistic reality' of the period or periods it covers. The fact that the classification applied is bound to be insufficient as to the accuracy and logic of its details is of secondary importance in comparison with its information value. The texts reflecting man's purposes, wishes and needs for expression are so various that they do not easily allow groupings characterized by scientific exactitude. 6 The texts should be assigned their genre labels by extralinguistic criteria such as subject-matter, purpose and discourse situation - not by a mixture of extralinguistic and linguistic features. We should also be aware of the fact that individual texts within one and the same genre may vary widely in their linguistic profiles. One important result of genre-oriented diachronic study is to describe and analyse the linguistic variation within texts which belong to the same genre when defined by extralinguistic characteristics. The most obvious disadvantage that the unavoidable limitations of diachronic genre classification may produce is that genre-based distribution figures of linguistic features are mechanically presented in support of research results without due consideration of, and sensitivity to these problems. To avoid the most obvious blunders, scholars should always keep in mind that the basic unit in all corpora and genre studies is the individual text. If it seems that the genre taxonomy built into the corpus does not give a true picture of the textual distribution of the linguistic feature under investigation, the scholar can and should regroup the corpus texts in a way more appropriate to the research problem at hand. Next, I shall briefly describe the genre classification of the Helsinki Corpus of English Texts (see Kyto 1993; Rissanen et al. 1993) and discuss some of the genre-specific features and developments suggested by the study of its texts. 7 This 5

6

7

Schmied and Claridge (1996) contain a modern and adequate discussion and a proposal for the genre labelling of the texts in an Early Modern English corpus of pamphlets. Cf. also Gorlach 1991. A good indication of this is Gorlach's observation (1991: 203) that there are more than 1000 text type labels in use. The Helsinki Corpus is the most extensive long-time-span diachronic English corpus so far completed. For information about other diachronic English computerized corpora either completed or in preparation, see Kyto, Rissanen, Wright (1994); Hickey, Kyto, Lancashire, Rissanen (1996).

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corpus is the result of team work by more than a dozen scholars attached to the English Department of the University of Helsinki. It consists of text samples from the eighth century to the beginning of the eighteenth. The samples are of continuous text; the length of the extracts taken from longer texts varies from 2,000 to 20,000 words. The Old, Middle and Early Modern English parts of the corpus each contain some half-a-million words. We may begin the discussion of the genres of a corpus reaching all the way back to the Middle Ages by asking what were the important aspects of life that people in a weakly literate, unsophisticated society found worth recording, either in writing or in oral tradition. A simplified definition suggests that there are four important topics: 'death', 'myth', 'love' and 'law'. (My classification aims of course more at pithiness, alliteration and assonance than at accuracy of labelling.) What are the medieval genres of text covered by these four major topics? 'Death' refers to an attempt to solve the problems of mortality or immortality and the supernatural, religion or religions. 'Myth' as a concept is of course closely related to religion, but here the reference is particularly to people's consciousness of their roots, their past, the glorious deeds of their forefathers. Histories, chronicles and heroic poetry belong to this macro-genre. 'Love' refers to human relations, emotions, positive and negative feelings, entertainment, imagination, the lighter and life-preserving aspects of human existence. Fiction and lyrics can be grouped under this heading. Finally, 'law' in this context is a synonym for 'society' referring to orderliness, decent behaviour, everyday husbandry, welfare, etc. Laws, documents and rules belong to this category, and even recipes, handbooks, and other writings pertaining to the daily routines of life can be included. It is interesting to note how easily the genres included in the medieval sections of the Helsinki Corpus can in fact be divided into these main categories. We can say that 'death', 'myth' and 'law' are well represented even in the earliest English period of writings. Texts relating to 'love' can also be found although they are obviously regarded as less worthy of recording in writing. In this period, thanks to the impact of Greek and Latin culture, the first scientific texts appear, and these attempts to explain phenomena from other than purely practical or religious standpoints marks an expansion beyond the four basic aspects of human experience described above. In the Helsinki Corpus there is a two-level genre or text type categorization. The more general set is called 'prototypical text categories' or 'diachronic text prototypes'. What is 'prototypical' in these categories is that they cut through the periods and centuries, from Old to Modern English, and in this way encourage long-span diachronic genre studies. There are six categories of this type: statutory texts, secular instruction, religious instruction, expository writing, non-imaginative narration and imaginative narration. It is easy to see that although these categories can be defined by extra-linguistic criteria, they have been specified with distinctive linguistic features in mind. Stipulation, instruction and narration seem to offer another means of outlining the needs and aims of human expression in the written form; 'exposition' incorporates even scholarly and scientific texts. The division into secular and religious is of prime importance in the Middle Ages; it is more difficult to distinguish between imaginative and non-imaginative narration. This distinction

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is intended to mark the basic difference between history and fiction, but in medieval context the borderline between the two is much less clear than now. Many narratives that a modern reader would regard as the products of imagination were told and read as historical truth at the time of their composition. We have here tried to respect the author's attitude and intentions and have labelled legendary material, saints' lives, etc. as non-imaginative. The purpose of these texts is clearly much more serious than that of typically imaginative narration, such as the Old English Apollonius of Tyre or Middle English romances. There are two important classes missing from our diachronic categorization: argumentation and description (cf., for instance, Werlich 1983). In English medieval writing these two do not seem to be represented as genres in their own right in the same way as the six I have mentioned. Argumentative and descriptive passages are of course included in many instructive and narrative texts but we have coded text typological variation within single texts only in exceptional cases.8 Table 1 shows the Old, Middle and Early Modern English genres coded in the Helsinki Corpus. Even in Old English there are as many as seventeen genre specifications. Laws and documents, handbooks, various types of religious texts, histories and biographies (i.e. lives of saints) are well represented. Alfred's and /Elfric's prefaces to their works are very early specimens of this genre. There are also samples from various versions of the Bible; philosophy is represented by King Alfred's Boethius translation and the Diets of Cato. Such astronomical treatises as Byrhtferth's Manual and /Elfric's De Temporibus Anni can be classified as scientific. Travelogue {Alexander's Letter to Aristotle), geography (Marvels of the East) and fiction (Apollonius of Tyre) complete the list.9 The expansion of the types of text material from Old to Middle English can be clearly seen in Table 1. In addition to recipe collections, we get handbook material from other walks of life, including the cure of domestic animals; scientific medical treatises also appear.10 It is no surprise that the genre of fiction is expanded in Middle English by romances, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, etc. In late Middle English, three highly interesting new genres appear: witness depositions in law court records, private letters, and drama. The role of these genres in the study of medieval English will be briefly discussed below.11

3

9

10

The first pamphlets appear in the Early Modern English period. This genre has been included, for instance, in the Corpus of Older Scots (see Meurman-Solin 1996) and the Lampeter Corpus of Early Modern English Texts (see Schmied and Claridge 1996). For more detailed information about the genres and texts included in the Helsinki Corpus, see Rissanen et al. (1993); Kyto (1993). No genre label has been given to Old English poetry or to Middle English love lyrics. In the Helsinki Corpus classification, the difference between a handbook and a scientific treatise is primarily determined by readership, handbooks being intended for general public and scientific treatises for professionals. Because of the scope of this paper the Early Modern English genres are not commented on, although they are given in Table 1, to illustrate the further expansion of genre selection. For more detailed comments on the genres and texts in the various periods included in the Helsinki Corpus, see Rissanen et al. (1993).

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Table 1. Genres in the Helsinki Corpus, from Kyto (1993: 52-2) Old English

Middle English

Early Modern English

Law

Law

Law

Documents

Documents

Handbook Astronomy Handbook Medicine Handbook Other

Handbook Astronomy Handbook Medicine Handbook Other

Handbook Other

Science Astronomy Science Medicine

Science Medicine Science Other Educational treatise

Philosophy

Philosophy

Homily

Homily Sermon

Rule

Rule

Religious treatise

Religious treatise

Preface/Epilogue

Preface/Epilogue

Philosophy Sermon

Proceeding Depos. Proceeding Trial History

History

History

Travelogue

Travelogue

Travelogue

Biogr. Life Saint

Biogr. Life Saint

Fiction

Fiction

Geography Diary Private Biogr. Auto Biogr. Other Fiction

Romance Drama Myst Drama Comedy

Bible

Letter Private Letter Non-private

Letter Private Letter Non-private

Bible

Bible

X It can be easily seen from the labelling in Table 1 that the system of genre categorization in the Helsinki Corpus gives room for criticism for insufficient logic and symmetry. The compilers of the corpus were aware of these shortcomings, but were convinced that a coding system which would do justice to the extant stock of

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texts and illustrate the scope and restrictions of the corpus was preferable to one that would try to force heterogeneous and one-sided text material into a more elegant but less serviceable system. As pointed out above, the user of the corpus can easily regroup the samples in a way that serves the purpose of his or her research better. One recent pioneering approach in genre study has been developed by Edward Finegan and Douglas Biber (see e.g. Biber 1988; 1995; Biber & Finegan 1989). They introduce the concept of dimensions in their discussion of linguistic variation, and their analysis and characterization of the salient features of texts along such dimensions as involved/detached or integrated/fragmented has provided new impetus to the study of variation. In the following, a few simple examples of genre developments, mainly along Biber's and Finegan's involvement/detachment or contextualized/decontextualized dimensions, will be given. These observations, based on the Helsinki Corpus genres, may offer some indications of the potential of corpus analysis. The scholar who has studied the involvement/detachment dimension in terms of subjectivity or the presence or absence of personal affect most thoroughly on the basis of the Helsinki Corpus, is Irma Taavitsainen of the University of Helsinki.12 The linguistic features Taavitsainen (1994a, 1994b, 1996) has used for her analyses of the development of Middle and Early Modern English genres include the frequency of first and second person subject pronouns, exclamations, whquestions, private verbs {love, hate, think, hope, desire, feel, taste, etc.), and proximal and deictic pronouns. Tables 2 and 3, which are based on Rissanen (1992), give the figures for the distribution of the first, second and third person subject pronouns in two Old and Middle English genres: laws and handbooks. The change in the distribution figures in law texts13 graphically reflects the development of society - although in no particularly unexpected way. Table 2. Occurrence of the subject forms of personal pronouns in some law texts in the Helsinki Corpus (adapted from Rissanen 1992: 197)

950-1050 1350-1500

12

13

I

WE

2 1%

37 16%

-

-

THOU

vi:

HE

SHE

IT

THEY

1 1% 2 1%

126 53% 25 18%

8 3%

39 16% 75 54%

24 10% 38 27%

-

I would like to thank Dr Taavitsainen for her valuable help in compiling this paper. I would also like to emphasize the role played by the other members of the Helsinki research team in genre-based studies of linguistic variation. There was a rich and extremely interesting code of Old English laws written in the vernacular. The oldest texts, the Laws of Ine, may ultimately go back to the seventh century, and the tradition continues until the Norman Conquest and beyond. Not surprisingly, the tradition breaks down in Early Middle English, and the next law texts written in English only emerge in the fifteenth century.

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The significant feature revealed by Table 2 is the high percentage o f first person plural pronouns in the Old English laws. This clearly s h o w s h o w legislation w a s associated with the person o f the King assisted by his Council in A n g l o - S a x o n England, in a completely different w a y from Middle English legal wording. Examples 1 and 2 illustrate the development o f the genre. (The abbreviated titles in square brackets refer to the text list in Kyto 1993: 169-230). 1. Jjis is seo woruldcunde gercednes, fre ic wylle mid mi nan witenan rasde, {jaet man healde ofer eall Englaland. 6®t is tonne srest, {jset ic wylle, {jaet man rihte laga upp araere & aeghwylce unlaga georne afylle ... And we laeraft, t>ast, fceah hwa agylte & hine sylfne deope forwyrce, Jjonne gefadige man steore, swa hit for Gode sy gebeorhlic & for worulde aberendlic ... And we beodad, Jjaet man Cristene men for ealles to lytlum huru to deafie ne forrsede; (Laws of Canute [LAW11C] 308) 'This is the secular ordinance that, according to the advice of my councillors, I want to be followed in all England. That is then first that I desire that rightful laws be established and all unjust laws abolished ... And we teach that although anyone offend or commit a serious sin, let the correction be regulated so that it be becoming before God and tolerable before the world ... And we command that Christian men should not, indeed, be too lightly condemned to death...' 2. The Kyng oure Sovereigne Lorde, for dyverse causes and resonable considerations hym movyng, by the assent of the lordes spirituall and temporall and the Comens in this present parliament assembled and by auctorite of the same, hath enacted ordeyned and stablysshed, that every persone of what condicion or degree he be of, beyng or herafter be in oure seid Soverayn lord the Kynges wagis beyonde the See in Biytayn, at his plesire have the protección ofprofectur ... Also be it enacted that the Jugementis to be yeven from hensfourth in suche assise arained or to be arained shall not be prejudiciall to eny of the seid persons so beyng in the servyce of our sovereign lord the kyng in Britayn as is aforeseid, (Statutes of the Realm [STAT2] 528-9)

Table 3. Subject forms o f personal pronouns in s o m e Old and Middle English handbooks and scientific treatises (adapted from Rissanen 1992. 197, 199) lp

2p

3p

9

40

201

62 48 15

26 19 102

64 36 136

OE Lacnunga & Med. Quadr. ME Chaucer, Astrolabe Equatorie of Planets Treatise on Horses

The development in handbooks and scientific treatises is also interesting. W e could assume that even in these genres the development has been straightforward, from involvement to detachment, from personal to impersonal. A s a general trend this may be correct, but the development shows several details which are worth our attention. Furthermore, the influence o f the underlying Latin tradition must be

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taken into consideration here; texts written more or less at the same time in different traditions can show various quantities of involvement features (Taavitsainen 1994a; cf. also Gorlach 1989; 1992). I have shown earlier (Rissanen 1992) that Old English recipe collections were texts of simple instruction, with little personal involvement expressed by such features as the first person subject forms. Even the proportion of second person subjects is low. In Middle English, the handbooks can be either first or second person oriented. The figures in Table 3 show how the two Old English texts have relatively few first and second person subjects, and how the Middle and early Modern English texts show variation in this respect. Chaucer's Astrolabe and the Equatorie of Planets have a much higher proportion of first-person subjects than the more straightforward Treatise on Horses. It seems obvious that the more firstperson oriented the treatise is, the more scientific bias and discussion can be found in it. Passages of an Old English recipe book (Ex. 3) and the Middle English Treatise on Horses (Ex. 4) can be compared with a passage from Chaucer's Astrolabe (Ex. 5), a first-person oriented treatise.14 3. Cardiacus hatte seo adl Se man swifle sweeteS on, on hy man sceal wyrcean utyrnende drzenccas & him wyrcean clidan toforan his heafde & to his breostan, genim grene rudan leaf, scearfa smale & cnuca swide, & beren meala gesyft do fiaerto, & swetedne eced, wyrc to clidan & do on Jjicne clad & bind on }>reo niht & Jjry dagas, do eft niwne to, & drince seoca of braemelberian gewnmgene oft. (.Lacnunga [LACN] 104) 'Cardiacus is the name of the disease with which a man greatly sweateth. Against it purgative drinks shall be made, and a poultice for his forehead and for his chest. Take green leaves of rue. Shred small and pound thoroughly; and add thereto barley-meal and sweetened vinegar. Make into a poultice and put on to a thick cloth and bind on for three nights and three days. Put on a fresh one again. And let the sick man often take a long pull at the juice of pressed bramble-berries.' (Editor's transl.) 4. And when JJOU hast a good hors at Jjin owen wille loke {>at J)ou be warre bi-tyme t>at he take not harme J)rou3 rauhede of blode whereJ)rou3 an hors take]? many euelis. And J)us schalt {>ou knowe when Jjin hors nede]) to be I-lete blod. (Treatise on Horses [HORSES] 87) 5. Rekne and knowe which is the day of thy month, and ley thy rewle upon that same day, and than wol the verrey poynt of thy rewle sitten in the bordure upon the degre of thy sonne. Ensample as thus: The yeer of oure Lord 1391, the 12 day of March at midday, I wolde knowe the degre of the sonne. I soughte in the bakhalf of myn Astrelabie and fond the cercle of the daies, the whiche I knowe by the names of the monthes writen under the same cercle. Tho leyde I my reule over this foreseide day, and fond the point of my reule in the bordure upon the firste degre of Aries, a litel within the degre. (Chaucer Astrolabe [ASTR] 669.C1)

14

See Taavitsainen (1994a, 1994b) for a detailed discussion of the occurrence of involvement features in handbooks and scientific treatises in Middle and Early Modern English.

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Another example of genre development is offered by charters and other official documents. They are highly contextualized both in Old and Middle English, although their character changes to a certain extent.15 Wills and testaments can be found both in Old and Middle English. From the late fourteenth century on, personal petitions and appeals expand this genre. In Old English, there is a special sub-genre of boundary definitions, landmearce, which offer extremely interesting material for historical vocabulary studies. These documents contain a wealth of topographical vocabulary describing the details of landscape or terrain, many of which disappear from the language in the Middle English period (see Rissanen 1986). Part of an Old English boundary definition has been quoted in Example 6. 6. 6is syndon 6a landgemaera into Bradewassan, of Temede streame in wynna bsce, of wynna baece in wudumor, of wudumore in wstan sihtran, of J)am waetan sice in 6a bakas & of {>am bacan in 6a ealdan die, of (Saere ealdan die in seges mere & of seges mere in {jass pulles heafod & of 6am heafde to Jjornbrycge, of 6ornbrycge in pone pull & asfter J>am pulle in baka biyege, of baka bryege in J)st waete sice & of {jam sice in foxbsece, of foxbaecae in pone wulfsead, of ¡)am sea6e in J>a ealdan stihle, of j)»re stihle in dodhaema pull, of J>am pulle eft in Temede stream. (Documents, Robertson [ROB2] 4) 'These are the boundaries of Broadwas. From the River Teme to the white brook, from the white brook to the marsh by the wood, from the marsh by the wood to the wet watercourse, from the wet water-course to the brooks and from the brooks to the old dyke, from the old dyke to seges pond and from seges pond to the head of the pool, and from the head to Thornbridge, from Thornbridge to the pool and along the pool to the bridge over the brooks, from the bridge over the brooks to the wet water-course and ftom the water-course to Foxbatch, from Foxbatch to the wolf-pit, from the pit to the old stile, from the stile to the Doddenham pool, from the pool back to the River Teme' (Editor's transl.)

Philosophical texts represented by samples of Boethius translations from Old to Modern English provide a bridge across the centuries allowing the study of the development of English vocabulary from the concrete towards more and more abstract modes of expression. In view of the early stage of the language, with only a short tradition of literary expression, the Alfredian translation of De Consolatione Philosophiae can be regarded as a most remarkable achievement; the translator, whether Alfred himself or one of his scholars, could cope with highly abstract argumentation using almost exclusively native resources. How this was done, and how Chaucer and the Modern English translators solved the problems of rendering the Latin or French original into English with a combination of native and borrowed vocabulary, offers important topics for research for a long time to come. Another relevant question for scholars of the history of English is when our genres start giving us information, even if unreliable and indirect, about the expression typical of spoken language. As pointed out above, one of the main aims of historical linguists is to find this kind of information, and the lack of it is one of their major sources of frustration. The appearance of texts or genres helpful in this respect is thus of major interest. 15

There is, again, a gap after the Norman Conquest. With a few exceptions, documents written in English only reappear in the fourteenth century.

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Old English texts give little evidence of spoken expression, but the new genres appearing in Middle English change the situation to a certain extent. In romances and secular lyrical poems we find passages of witty dialogue, often between lovers. From the romance it is only a short step to other types of entertainment such as the humorous story in verse, which could be called the predecessor of drama, based on light-hearted dialogue with even bawdy implications. Through these humorous texts we can glimpse the spoken language of the Middle English period, although we must remember that no written text can ever reproduce genuine speech or even give a close approximation of it. The earliest specimen of medieval English humour is found in Ancrene Riwle, which is of course a serious religious treatise. Humorous turns with the sole purpose of entertainment can be found in some of the poems of the famous MS Harley 2253, and in Dame Sirith and the related Interlude, all dating from around 1300. It is worth remembering that the earliest specimens of the genre of humorous story antedate Chaucer by almost a century. Example 7 shows the lively and down-to-earth character of the dialogue in the Interlude . 7. "Wei wor [were] suilc [such] a man to life Yat [that] suilc a may [maiden] mithe haue to wyfe." "Do way, by crist and leonard, No wily [will I] lufe na clerc fayllard [wayward], Na kepi [keep I] herbherg, clerc, in huse, no y flore Bot his hers [bottom] ly [lie] wit uten dore. Go forth yi [thy] way, god sire, ffor her hastu losye al yi wile [tricks]." "Nu, nu, by crist and by sant ihon; In al yis [this] land ne wis [know] hi [I] none, Mayden, yat [that] hi luf mor yan [than] ye [thee], Hif [if] me micht euer ye bether be. ffor ye hy soiy nicht and day, Y may say, hay wayleuay!" Y luf ye mar [more] yan mi lif, Yu [thou] hates me mar yan yayt [goat] dos chnief. (Interlude [INTERL] 5-20)

The drama, that is, mysteries and miracle plays emerge towards the end of Middle English period. Despite their serious themes, these plays lean on tradition of unsophisticated, down-to-earth dialogue, not far removed from humorous story. Example 8, from Adam's and Eve's dialogue after the Fall, in 15th century York Plays, illustrates this nicely: 8. Adam To ete it wolde Y nought eschewe Myght I me sure in thy saying. Eue Byte on boldely, for it is trewe, We shalle be goddis and knawe al thyng. Adam To wynne J>at name I schalle it taste at thy techyng.

the the the the

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Et accipit et comedit. Alias, what haue I done, for shame! Ille counsaille, woo worthe the! A, Eue, t>ou art to blame, To J)is entysed {)ou me Me shames with my lyghame, For I am naked as methynke. Eue Alias Adam, right so am I. Adam And for sorowe sere why ne myght we synke, For we haue greved God almyghty fiat made me man Brokyn his bidyng bittirly. Alias J>at euer we it began. J)is werke, Eue, hast J)ou wrought, And made Jjis bad bargayne. Eue Nay Adam, wite me nought. Adam Do wey, lefe Eue, whame J)an? Eue The worme to wite wele worthy were, With tales vntrewe he me betrayed. (York Plays [YORK] 67)

At roughly the same time, private correspondence appears in the Shillingford, Paston, Stonor and Cely letters. Although the language of these letters is still far from colloquial - remarkable development in the letter genre takes place in the Early Modern English period - they give us another point of comparison with other, less colloquial genres. This is both because the letters often deal with simple everyday topics and because they occasionally contain direct quotations of real-life speech, as illustrated by Example 9. 9. Hengston seide openly that Radeford and he hadde communication at home of this mater, and were well negh accorded; and my lord seide, "Wolde god hit hadde be so," and yet "Wolde hit were so, for oure discharge." Y, Mayer, seide y knywe well and was spoke to of suche a communication; but what the privyte and the menyng was y myghte not knowe, and yf y hadde hit sholde have be never the werce but the better; and so we departed, (Shillingford Letters [SHILLET] 14)

And finally, samples of the important new genre of court records with witness depositions are recorded from the fifteenth century. Example 10, dating from 1428, gives perhaps the earliest passage of genuine direct speech as quoted in a factual, non-fictitious context in a Middle English text. There is another short early quotation, from 1437, in which the witness quotes his own direct speech and that of another person in a way that has the ring of a natural, heated and angry exchange of words (Example 11). Later on, in the Early Modern period, we can rely on a rich stock of quotations of authentic speech in similar contexts.

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10. And whan the same Thomas hed harde these wordes: he said, that sothe hit was: that {je said Iohn Baylly shewed hym suche a dede: And. yn struglyng be twene hem bothe: he brake of the seales: and so he knoweleched the brekyng ther of: openly a fore alle the Court / and said these wordes: I didde hit. what wolle ye sey ther to: take youre auauntage: (iChancery English [DEPOSC] 296-7) 11. forth with wawton seith J>at he seid to fie lord ffaunhop it is J>e vnruliest cession J>at I haue euer sey in Bedford and yif it be not ojierwise reuled I wol complaine vnto J)e kinges counseill to ])e which J>e lord ffaunhop shulde haue seid complaine as t>o wole y defie {» menasing and all f)ine euel will wawton seide he answered I sette litil of J)i defiance and with J)is fiere was rumor and noyse in [)e halle and soo J)ei rose vp bo])e f)e lord ffaunhop wawton Enderby and all J>e remenant / and J)e lord ffaunhop stode vpon J)e Cheker borde J>e which borde stode a fore J)e benche (Chancery English [DEPOSC] 169-170)

I hope my discussion of the importance of genres in the study of medieval English, their classificatory and coding problems, and their role in the structure of the Helsinki Corpus of English texts, has given some indication of how society, genre and language are inseparably interlinked and how corpus-based analysis can support the historical study of the English language in a new way.

References Biber, Douglas (1988). Variation Across Speech and Writing. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. - (1995). Dimensions of Register Variation: a Cross-linguistic Comparison. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. - & Edward Finegan (1989)."Styles of Stance in English: Lexical and Grammatical Marking of Evidentiality and Affect". Text 9: 93-124. Görlach, Manfred (1991). "Text Types and the Linguistic History of Modern English", in C. Uhlig & R. Zimmermann, eds., Anglistentag 1990 Marburg: Proceedings. Tübingen: Niemeyer. - (1992). "Text-types and Language History: the Cookery Recipe", in M. Rissanen, O. Ihalainen, T. Nevalainen & I. Taavitsainen, eds., History of Englishes: New Methods and Interpretations in Historical Linguistics: Berlin, Mouton de Gruyter. Halliday, M. A. K. (1973). Explorations in the Functions of Language. London: Edward Arnold. Hermes: Journal of Linguistics 13. Thematic section: Corpus linguistics (1994). Eds. F. Frandsen, K.M. Lauridsen & O. Lauridsen. Äihus: Handelshajskolen in Ärhus. Hickey, Raymond, Meija Kytö, Ian Lancashire & Matti Rissanen, eds. (1996). Papers from the ICAME Conference, Toronto, May 1995. Kytö, Merja (comp.) (1991, 1993). Manual to the Diachronic Part of The Helsinki Corpus of English Texts. Coding Conventions and Lists of Source Texts. Helsinki: Department of English, University of Helsinki. - & Matti Rissanen (1993). '"By and by enters [this] my artificiall foole, ... who, when Jack beheld, sodainely he flew at him': Searching Syntactic Constructions in the Helsinki Corpus", in M. Rissanen, M. Kytö & Minna Palander, eds., Early English in the Computer Age: Explorations Through the Helsinki Corpus. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 253-266.

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Meurman-Solin, Anneli (1993). "Involvement Markers in the Characterization of Early Prose Genres", in On the Sociohistorical Conditioning of Linguistic Differentiation and Standardization in the History of Scots. Helsinki: Finnish Academy of Sciences and Letters. Milroy, James (1992). Linguistic Variation and Change. Oxford, Blackwell. - & Milroy, Lesley (1985). "Linguistic Change, Social Network and Speaker Innovation", Journal of Linguistics 21: 201-16. Nevalainen, Terttu & Helena Raumolin-Brunberg (1989). "A Corpus of Early Modern Standard English in a Socio-historical Perspective", Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 90: 67-111. Rissanen, Matti (1992). "The Diachronic Corpus As a Window to the History of English", in J. Svartvik, ed., Directions in Corpus Linguistics: Proceedings of Nobel Symposium 82. Stockholm, 4-8 August 1991. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. - , Meija Kytö & Susan Wright, eds. (1994). Corpora Across the Centuries: Proceedings of the First International Colloquium on English Diachronic Corpora. St Catharine's College Cambridge, 25-27 March 1993. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Romaine, Suzanne (1982). Socio-Historical Linguistics, Its Status and Methodology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ryden, Mats (1979). An Introduction to Historical Study of English Syntax. Stockholm: Almkvist & Wiksell. - & Sverker Brorström (1987). The 'Be/Have' Variation with Intransitives in English with Special Reference to Late Modem Period. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell. Schmied, Josef & Claudia Claridge (1996). "Classifying Text- or Genre-variation in the Lampeter Corpus of Early Modern English Texts", in Hickey et al. 1996. Taavitsainen, Irma (1994a). "On the Evolution of Scientific Writings from 1375 to 1675: Repertoire of Emotive Features", in F. Fernandez, M. Fuster & J. J. Calvo, eds. (1994). English Historical Linguistics 1992. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. 330-342. (1994b). "Subjectivity As a Text-type Marker in Historical Stylistics", Language and Literature 3 (3): 197-212. - (1996). "Narrative patterns of affect in four genres of the Canterbury Tales", The Chaucer Review 30 (2): 191-210. Weinreich, Uriel, William Labov and Marvin I. Herzog (1968). "Empirical Foundations for a Theory of Language Change", in W. P. Lehmann & Y. Malkiel, eds., Directions for Historical Linguistics: A Symposium. Austin and London: University of Texas Press. 95-195. Werlich, Egon (1983). A Text Grammar ofEnglish. Heidelberg: Quelle & Mayer.

Werner Hüllen (Essen)

William Caxton's Dialogues in French and English as a Source of Information about Social Reality Obviously, medieval glossaries and colloquies are valuable sources for our knowledge of cultural history. The living conditions of people, their arts and crafts, their knowledge of nature, legal conditions, the division of the secular and the spiritual - all these topics appear in them and can be filtered out by historiographers who have the benefit of hindsight. As the glossaries and colloquies give the names for things and ideas, we assume that these things and ideas must have been known to the people who wrote and who read them. However, we must be aware that medieval texts often represent a tradition of words rather than of things. Many works were originally taken from classical authors and then handed down from word-list to word-list. There were names of plants and animals which nobody had ever seen. There were names of diseases of which people had heard but did not suffer. Medieval learning, as is well known, was done by words whose meaning was guaranteed by tradition, not by experience. This is why historiographers have the task to separate in such texts the socially real from the merely verbal information if they want to read them from the (rather modern) viewpoint of social reality. William Caxton's Dialogues in French and English (originated around 1340, printed 1483, modern reprint edited by Henry Bradley, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. 1900), in particular the passage where 87 proper names are used to present dialogical exchanges on arts and crafts, are a good case in point. Such lists are standard in colloquies and nominals. However, as Das Standebuch of 1574 shows, they all too often mirror an ideal order of society but not social reality. However, Caxton's dialogues give hints which we can read as significant for the society of Bruges, where the book originated. The entry articles on arts and crafts can be broken down into four clearly distinguishable groups, namely (i) articles which simply speak of the activities of the person whose proper name is its headword, (ii) articles which add some special personal feature to this man's or woman's activities and which betray a personal acquaintance between him/her and the author/speaker, (iii) articles which directly connect the person's activities with the speaker's business, and (iv) articles which speak of persons as private individuals and in no other capacity. The first three groups are fairly evenly distributed with 25, 24, and 28 cases each. With 10 cases the fourth group is much smaller. Whereas the articles of the first group are neutral with respect to social reality, the articles of the following groups indicate more or less clearly the native speaker's acquaintance with the world and with people around him. Another way of directly mentioning the social reality, if not of Bruges alone, is Caxton's technique of introducing geographical names in connection with the

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hierarchically organised lists of those dignitaries that represent the church and the state. More than others, these lists tend to be not bound to social reality but are meant to mirror an ideal order. By connecting them with the names of kingdoms or of the bishop's sees, Caxton at least points to the reality that is known to him and to his readers. (The topic is treated at length in a chapter of a monograph on the development of onomasiological lexicography in England from the beginning to the end of the 17th century, which is currently being prepared.)

Andreas Fischer (Zurich)

Dream Theory and Dream Lexis in the Middle Ages

This paper is an attempt to bring together two approaches to dreams which are as relevant to the Middle Ages as they are to the present: the way people think about dreams on the one hand, and the words they use for the notion 'dream' on the other. My paper will thus fall into three parts: Part I will concern itself with what may be called 'dream theories' in the Middle Ages, Part II will discuss the 'dream lexicon' in the history of English and in particular in Middle English, and Part III will be an attempt to relate the two to each other. I A desire to know what dreams (OED: 'a train of thoughts, images, or fancies passing through the mind during sleep; a vision during sleep; [...]') are all about is probably as old as mankind, and many cultures have developed what may be called dream theories: structured, elaborated accounts of types of dreams and of ways to interpret them. In 20th century Western thought the dominant theory is the psychoanalytical one pioneered by Sigmund Freud (Die Traumdeutung, 1900). It is an essentially retrospective theory which sees dreams as individual windows into a person's (otherwise buried) subconscious and his or her past. Classical and medieval dream theories were fundamentally different, since they worked with the assumption that dreams, if they were meaningful at all, were predictive, namely windows into a person's future. Apart from this consensus there was no uniform dream theory. Instead we find, throughout the Middle Ages, dreambooks by various authors which offer typologies of dreams and their interpretation. This tradition of medieval dreambooks originated in classical antiquity, and according to Kruger's authoritative account in his book Dreaming in the Middle Ages (1992: 89) "three distinct kinds of medieval dreambook survive", namely dream alphabets or chancebooks, dreamlunars, and dreambooks proper. The first of these, the dream alphabet, "consists of a list of potential dream significations keyed to the letters of the alphabet. The future is divined by means of a random process, unconnected to the dream's specific content." The second, the dreamlunar, "similarly disregards content in disclosing the meaning of dreams. Here, the only key to a dream's significance is the phase of the moon during which it occurs; thus on any given night, all dreams predict the same outcome." The third kind, the dreambook proper "differs from the others in basing its interpretations on the dream's content, [but] its method of arriving at a knowledge of the future is as rigid and mechanical as theirs. Like modern popular dreambooks [...] the dreambook proper simply provides a list of the consequences that will follow from a variety of possible dream contents." Dreambooks typically provide classifications of dreams,

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and they often distinguish between false, malevolent or meaningless dreams on the one hand and true, meaningful ones on the other. The following is a very brief summary of three such classifications.1 Probably the best known classifications dating from classical antiquity are the ones by the pagan Neo-Platonists Macrobius and Calcidius. In his Commentary on the Dream of Scipio Macrobius2 (Kruger 1992: 23) "depicts the realm of dreams as split between the true and the false, the predictive and deceptive, [but] he simultaneously describes that realm as a hierarchy, a graded system that proceeds steadily from one extreme to another." Macrobius's system involves five types of dreams, ranging from the highest, oraculum, to the lowest, insomnium: oraculum true (revelation by an authoritative, otherworldly figure) visio true (revelation through a vision of mundane events) somnium true, but couched in fiction visum false (spectral) insomnium false (mundane) (Kruger 1992: 23)

Calcidius's system (Kruger 1992: 24-32), which is found in his Commentary on Plato's Timaeus, contains two classifications, of which only the second will be presented here since it allows a comparison with Macrobius's. Like Macrobius, Calcidius distinguishes five types of dream-like phenomena called, respectively, revelatio, spectaculum, admonitio, visum, and somnium, which can be arranged in a hierarchy from the highest or most divine to the lowest, or mundane: revelatio

whenever secret things of imminent issue are revealed to those ignorant of future fate spectaculum as when a celestial power presents itself to be seen by those who are awake, ordering or prohibiting something clearly, in a wondrous form and voice admonitio when we are ruled or admonished by counsels of angelic goodness visum which is appointed by a divine power somnium which [...] arises from the remnants of the motions of the soul (Kruger 1992: 31, adapted)

Both authors grade dream experiences and they use partly identical terms, but a closer examination quickly reveals that the similarity of their systems is only superficial: Macrobius, for example, has more to say about the false, mundane part of dream experience than Calcidius, and neither his somnium nor his visum are the same as Calcidius's. The church fathers like Augustine or Gregory the Great, too, developed theories of dreams. Gregory in his Dialogues, for example, classifies dreams according to their origin: It is important to realize ... that dreams come to the soul in six ways. They are generated (1) either by a full stomach [uentris plenitudine], (2) or by an empty one [uentris inanitate], (3) or by illusions [inlusione], (4) or by our thoughts combined with illusions [cogitatione simul et 1

See Kruger (1992) and Wittmer-Butsch (1990: 90-189). On Macrobius see also Spearing (1976: 8-11).

Dream Theory and Dream Lexis in the Middle Ages inlusione], (5) or by revelations [reuelatione], revelations [cogitatione simul et reuelatione], (Kruger 1992: 45, adapted)

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(6) or by our thoughts combined with

Assuming that dreams of the stomach are morally neutral, Kruger claims that "we can see Gregory establishing a hierarchy of dreams based on the relative 'goodness' or 'badness' of the motives underlying them," ranging from the most benevolent ones, which are caused by revelations, to the most malevolent ones, which are caused by illusions: [somnia... generantur...] reuelatione cogitatione simul et reuelatione uentris plenitudine - uentris inanitate cogitatione simul et inlusione inlusione (Kruger 1992: 47, adapted)

Dream theories were well known in the Middle Ages, as we know from at least two sources. First, as Maria Wittmer-Butsch (1990. 172-89) has shown, Latin as well as vernacular dreambooks of all kinds were widely disseminated in medieval Europe. Secondly, dream poems constitute one of the most popular genres of medieval literature, and they, in turn, presuppose a keen interest in dreams and in their classification and meaning. Such an interest in 'dream theory' (which we assume to lie behind the 'dream practice' evident in dream poems) may be implicit or explicit. Andrew Galloway (1994), for example, has argued that the authors of the Old English poems The Dream of the Rood and The Wanderer were influenced by Gregory the Great, although there is no explicit reference to his dream theory in either poem. The beginning of Chaucer's Parliament of Fowls, on the other hand, features Macrobius's Scipio in person, and the debate on dreams in the Nun's Priest's Tale is steeped in dream lore of a fairly technical kind, although it is well hidden in the lively altercation between Chauntecleer and Pertelote. Spearing's book on Medieval Dream-Poetry (1976) is a reliable guide through dream poetry in Middle English and its background. Throughout the Middle Ages, therefore, authorities like the ones just quoted provided anyone interested in dreams with a variety of classifications or 'theories', and these theories all came with a range of Latin terms for dreams. We have seen already that these theories differ a great deal from each other and that their terminologies, containing overlaps and potential ambiguities, are confusing at least for a modern mind. If medieval authors write about dreams in the vernacular, however, one would nevertheless expect them to use or even develop a terminology which matches the range of terms found in Latin. This will be my topic in the Sections II and III of this paper.

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The English vocabulary for the semantic domain of dreaming (both nouns and verbs)3 has undergone some fundamental changes, especially in Middle English, and I would like to begin with a survey of the most important words in question. The main noun, in Old English, was swefn 'sleep, dream', with the derivatives (ge)swefnian 'to sleep, to dream' and swefning 'dreaming, a dream'. All three were used well into the Middle English period, but then disappeared from the vocabulary of English (according to the OED sweven becomes rare in the 16th and 17th centuries; the verb swevenen is last attested in 1532, swevening in 1423 as a gerundial noun and in 1570 as participial adjective). In addition to swefhian, Old English had another verb, the much more frequent mcetan, plus a derived noun meeting. Both lived on into the Middle English period, and in the 14th century we even find a new derivative, metels, but like sweven and its derivatives these three words dropped out of use towards the end of the Middle English period (in the OED the noun meting is attested until c 1430, the verb meten until a 1643, while the derivative metels was current only in the 14th [and early 15th (MED)] centuries). Middle English turns out to be a period of transition for the semantic domain of dreaming: all words derived from the Old English stems swefn- and meet- disappeared, but they were replaced by dream and its derivatives, which are first recorded in the late 13th century. The precise history of the word dream in English is a well known puzzle. Since it has no direct bearing on our problem, however, a few words must suffice. In Old English dream meant 'joy, gladness, delight, ecstasy, mirth, rejoicing' as well as 'melody, music, song, singing', the corresponding verb dryman 'to sing aloud, rejoice'.4 These senses were only current until the (early) Middle English period (the noun is last attested in c 1330, the verb in a 1240), but from the late 13th century onwards, as just noted, one finds the senses 'a vision during sleep' and 'to have visions and imaginary senseimpressions in sleep'. Are we faced with two senses of one word or even with two different words (one of which was present, but not recorded in Old English), or is Middle English drem a semantic borrowing from Old Norse?5 Be that as it may, the fact is that drem and its derivatives {dreming, dremels and the verb dremeri) in time completely replaced the terms derived from the Old English stems swefn- and 3

4 5

Throughout this paper the spelling of Old English words is taken from Hall (1960), that of Middle English ones from the MED. These are the senses given in Hall (1960); see also the DOE, and Ostheeren (1964) and (1992). Following the OED, Ehrensperger (1931: 85-88) assumes that there were originally two different Germanic roots, and that "in some way the Middle English dreme developed from the missing Old English cognate of the Old Saxon drom" (86), but he judges Norse influence as equally likely. Rynell (1948: 302f. and 358) postulates Scandinavian influence. The MED (s.v. drem n.2) gives a consensus view: "A blend of OE dream joy, etc. & ON (cp. OI draumr a dream). Although OE dream in the sense 'dream' is not attested, this meaning may have existed; cp. OS drom "bustle, revelry, jubilation' & 'dream'. ME sweven was earliest and most frequently replaced by drem in the East Midlands and the North, where Scandinavian influence was strongest."

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meet-. A few additional, far less frequent and semantically more specific nouns must be mentioned before we look at the development in Middle English in detail. In Old English we find gesiht/sihd 'vision', which in Middle English is replaced by (a)vision, attested from the very late 13th century onwards. Other marginal Middle English words are appearance, miracle, oracle, phantom, revelation and showing6 In the sense 'a female spirit or monster [...]' nightmare is first attested in 1290 , but in the sense 'a bad dream' only from 1562 onwards. In a paper published in 1931 Edward C. Ehrensperger gives a useful overview of "Dream Words in Old and Middle English" backed up by quantitative evidence, and what follows is a précis of his findings with a number of supplementary remarks. Ehrensperger begins his study with rough statistics, followed by a series of questions: Nouns swefn: 156 gesiht/sihd: 22 Old English drem: 430 sweven: 369 Middle English Verbs (ge)mcetan: 37 (ge)swefnian: 3 Old English meten: 242 dremen: 155 Middle English Ehrensperger (1931: 81, adapted)

meeting: 3 vision: 184 swevenen: 28

It is Middle English which presents the real problems in the matter of dream words. How does it happen that swefn, the Old English word, is supplanted by dreme, and from whence does this word dreme come? Why in Middle English as a whole are forms of the verb dremen outnumbered by forms of meten, whereas forms of the nouns dreme outnumber sweuenl And finally, what are the relations of Old English, Middle English, and Old Norse terminology to modern usage? These questions may be discussed more satisfactorily by considering the Middle English usage chronologically. Ehrensperger (1931: 81)

The most frequent Old English noun for 'dream' was swefn, with gesiht/sihd and meeting used as rough synonyms. This situation changed quite radically in the Middle English period. Sweven slowly went out of use, while the 'modern' drem took its place. Ehrensperger summarizes the situation as follows: In Old English, swefn is clearly the most frequent noun, found 156 times in his corpus, against 22 instances of gesiht/sihd and 3 of meeting. In very early Middle English, before 1250, the regular noun is still sweven, and there are no instances of drem as yet. The same holds for the period 1250 to 1300 in general, but two works (Genesis and Exodus and Havelok) have the first instances (17 and two, respectively) of drem. In the period from 1300 to 1350 drem is gaining ground, but the older sweven still predominates. The situation is reversed in the next half-century (13501400), when drem becomes the most frequently used noun, although the situation differs from text to text and from genre to genre. In the romances of this period, for instance, there are 27 instances of drem as against 10 of sweven, while in Trevisa's translation of Higden's Polychronicon (1387) or in the C-text of Piers 6

The list is from Ehrensperger (1931: 81), who gives these words in their Middle English form.

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Plowman older sweven still outnumbers newer drem The situation in the works of Wyclif and his associates on the one hand and of Chaucer and Gower on the other is highly instructive: the older version of the Wycliffite bible (1382) has 73 instances of sweven against 7 of drem, while the later one (about 1400) has 7 against 70. Likewise Gower has 41 instances of sweven against 5 of drem, while his contemporary Chaucer has 22 against 63. As Ehrensperger (1931: 85) puts it: "Both Chaucer and Gower live in the transition period of dream terms, but Chaucer points forward while Gower points backward." The development comes to an end in the century from 1400 to 1500, when drem establishes itself for good and sweven finally becomes obsolete. Turning now to the verbs, we find that by far the most common verb in Old English is mcetan (which has a derived verbal noun meeting), while its synonym swefnian, a derivative of the noun swefn, is used far less frequently. The situation in Middle English roughly parallels that among the nouns in that the main verb in Old English, mcetan, is slowly replaced by the new verb dremen. The verb dremen, like the noun drem, is first evidenced in both Genesis and Exodus and Havelok, then gradually replaces older meten (with the balance tipping in the second half of the 14th century). Meten is not used after the 17th century (the last quotation in the OED dates from a 1643), while swevenen, which played a marginal role both in Old English and in Middle English, disappears earlier (the OED last attesting it in 1532). The overall picture, therefore, is the following: the two main Old English words, the noun swefn and the verb mcetan, were completely replaced by drem and dremen in the Middle English period. Both the noun and the verb are first evidenced in the late 13th century, in the late 14th century they become the most commonly used terms, while from the 15th century onwards the older words become less frequent and then obsolete. Apart from semantically more specialized terms such as revelation, vision or nightmare, Modern English only has the word

dream. Ehrensperger's discussion of the mechanics of this replacement is convincing, and he does shed some light on the provenance of drem, but most of the questions he asks at the beginning remain unanswered (Why does drem supplant sweven? Why, in Middle English altogether, is the noun drem more frequent than sweven, while among the verbs meten still outnumbers dremen?). I cannot offer any ready solutions either, but in Part III I would like to turn to two additional points not addressed by Ehrensperger at all. The history of the English lexicon is full of cases where the inherited wordstock is enriched by newly coined or, more frequently, borrowed terms and where this availability of near synonyms leads to semantic differentiation. Such semantic differentiation among competing dream words would have been possible in the 13th and 14th centuries, and Part III will be devoted to the question of whether it actually happened and whether the dream theories mentioned in Part I had anything to do with it. For reasons to be given, this section will be focused largely on Chaucer. The second question to be addressed will be why the coexistence of terms in Middle English did not last and why Modern English appears to be well served with just one term.

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III When one wants to establish how the available dream lexis was actually used one can study two kinds of texts, technical and general ones. The former are the dream books mentioned in Part I, the latter can be any kind of text as long as it offers enough instances of dream words. This section will concentrate on non-technical texts (the works of Chaucer in particular), on the assumption that they are more representative of common usage and thus of greater relevance for the further development of English. An examination of the technical texts is also needed, but a preliminary examination of some of them7 has shown that their dream vocabulary is surprisingly general and non-specific. For a number of reasons Chaucer's work constitutes an ideal corpus of texts to study the Middle English dream vocabulary in more detail. First, Chaucer lived at a time when the interpretation of dreams had ceased to be the privilege of the church,8 and he evidently took an active interest in dreams and dream theories: he explicitly refers to Macrobius several times, and dreams as well as dream theories feature prominently in his works from the earliest to the latest.9 Secondly, as I have shown in Part II, Chaucer happened to write when the lexical replacements described by Ehrensperger were in full swing, and we may thus expect to be able to witness linguistic change in progress. Thus if anyone had the knowledge and the linguistic means to write knowledgeably about dreams it was Chaucer. According to Ehrensperger "Chaucer points forward while Gower points backward." In the context of the late 14th century, in other words, Chaucer's dream vocabulary is 'modern', while Gower's is 'old fashioned'. The two authors do not use different words, but they use them in different proportions, as the following statistics show: Gower (according to Ehrensperger 1931: 85) Nouns drem: 5 sweven: 41 Verbs me ten: 17 dremen: 8 Chaucer (according to Ehrensperger 1931: 85) Nouns drem\ 63 sweven'. 22 Verbs meten: 48 dremen'. 19 Chaucer (according to my own count)10 Nouns drem\ 72 sweven: 25 dreming: 2 swevening: 2 Verbs meten: 47 dremen: 25

avisioun: 13 meting: 1

revelacioun: 4

This overall picture shows that Chaucer's main noun was drem, used three times as often as the older sweven. His main verb, however, was still older meten, used •7 Forster (1925-26), Forster (1944) and Taavitsainen (1988); the nouns used are mostly swefn /

g sweven and drem. 9 10

I would like to thank Wilhelm Busse for drawing my attention to this point; it is argued in detail in Busse (1994). Details and references are to be found in the explanatory notes of Benson's edition (1987). Based on Tatlock and Kennedy (1927) and Oizumi (1991). Ehrensperger does not seem to have used Tatlock and Kennedy (1927); with one exception (meten) his figures are lower than mine, but the general picture is the same.

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twice as much as the more modern dremen. Chaucer here reflects a general trend, since - as was shown in Part II - the replacement of dream nouns preceded that of dream verbs. This general picture can be refined when we look at individual works. For purposes of illustration I have chosen five works in which dreams feature prominently, and I have arranged them according to the tentative dates suggested by Benson (1987: xxii-xxv): Chaucer: The Book of the Duchess (1368-72) Nouns: 10 drem: 1 sweven: 8 Verbs: 9 meten: 9 dremen: -

visioun: 1

revelacioun: -

Chaucer: The House of Fame (1378-80) Nouns: 19 drem: 10 sweven: 3 Verbs: 12 meten: 7 dremen: 5

avisioun: 5

revelacioun: 1

Chaucer: The Parliament of Fowls (1380-82) Nouns: 4 drem: 1 sweven: 2 Verbs: 7 meten: 5 dremen: 2

avisioun: 1

revelacioun: •

Chaucer: Troilus and Criseyde (1382-86) Nouns: 21 drem: 17 sweven: 2 Verbs: 14 meten: 9 dremen: 5

avisioun: 1

revelacioun: 1

Chaucer: The Nun's Priest's Tale (1396-1400) Nouns: 35 drem: 25 sweven: 7 Verbs: 15 meten: 10 dremen: 5

avisioun: 3

revelacioun: -

It is clear from this table that for the young Chaucer, the author of The Book of the Duchess, drem and dremen were novelties. Ten years later the noun and the verb have a firm place in his vocabulary as rivals of the older words, but they will never oust them completely: even in a late work such as The Nun's Priest's Tale these older words sweven and above all meten still have a secure place. Given that through most of his career Chaucer had at his disposal two or more lexemes both for the noun and the verb,11 how did he make use of them? Did he use his - no doubt extensive - knowledge of dreams to make semantic differentiations? This is suggested by a very prominent passage, the beginning of The House of Fame, where he displays his complete dream vocabulary in what appears to be an eminently serious, scientific listing:12 God turne us every drem to goode! For hyt is wonder, be the roode, To my wyt, what causeth swevenes Eyther on morwes or on evenes, And why th'effect folweth of somme, And of somme hit shal never come; 11

12

Chaucer also used the verbal nouns dreming, meting and swevening (see the overall statistics). However, neither the derived nouns dremels and metels nor the verb swevenen are attested in his works. The texts are quoted from Benson (1987); emphasis in all quotations is mine.

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Why that is an avision And why this a revelacion, Why this a drem, why that a sweven, And noght to every man lyche even; Why this a fantome, why these oracles, I not [...] (The House of Fame 1.1-12) Chauntecleer is an expert on dreams just like the narrator of The House of Fame, and he, too, appears to make a linguistic differentiation at least once: I am so ful of joye and of solas, That I diflye bothe sweven and dreem. (The Nun's Priest's Tale VII.3170-71) However, two passages alone are insufficient evidence of a finely differentiated terminology, and it soon becomes evident that the narrator of The House of Fame and, to a lesser extent, Chauntecleer here produce verbal pyrotechnics rather than a solid, scientific terminology. In fact the bulk of passages in Chaucer's works show that he used the words at his disposal as loose, cognitive synonyms (Cruse 1986: 88), that is for purposes of variation or to conform to the rules of meter and rhyme. The following passages from the five works analyzed statistically illustrate this well. Y fil aslepe, and therwith even Me mette so ynly swete a sweven, So wonderful that never yit Y trowe no man had the wyt To konne wel my sweven rede; No, not Joseph, withoute drede, Of Egipte, he that redde so The kynges metynge Pharao, No more than koude the lest of us; Ne nat skarsly Macrobeus (He that wrot al th'avysyoun That he mette, kyng Scipioun, The noble man, the Affrikan Suche marvayles fortuned than), I trowe, arede my dremes even. Loo, thus hyt was; thys was my sweven. (The Book of the Duchess 275-90) And to this god [the god of sleep] that I of rede Prey I that he wol me spede My sweven for to telle aiyght, Yf every drem stonde in his myght. And he that mover ys of al, That is and was and ever shal, So yive hem joye that hyt here Of alle that they dreme to-yere, (The House of Fame 1.77-84)

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Fischer

And in my slep I mette, as I lay, How Affrican, ryght in the selve aray That Scipion hym say byfore that tyde, Was come and stod right at my beddes syde. The wery huntere, slepynge in his bed, To wode ayeyn his mynde goth anon; The juge dremeth how his plees been sped; The cartere dremeth how his cart is gon; The riche, of gold: the knyght fyght with his fon; The syke met he diynketh of the tonne; The lovere met he hath his lady wonne. Can I not seyn if that the cause were For I hadde red of Affrican byforn That made me to mete that he stod there; But thus seyde he: [...] (The Parliament of Fowls 95-109) And whan he fil in any slomberynges, Anon bygynne he sholde for to grone And dremen of the dredefulleste thynges That myghte ben; as mete he were allone In place horrible makyng ay his mone, Or meten that he was amonges alle His enemys, and in hire hondes falle. (Troilus and Criseyde V.246-52) But herkneth! To that o man fxl a greet mervaille: That oon of hem, in slepyng as he lay, Hym mette a wonder dreem agayn the day. Hym thoughte [...] He wook, and tolde his felawe what he mette, And preyde hym his viage for to lette; As for that day, he preyde hym to byde. His felawe, that lay by his beddes syde, Gan for to laughe, and scorned him ful faste 'No dreem,' quod he,'may so myn herte agaste That I wol lette for to do my thynges. I sette nat a straw by thy dremynges, For swevenes been but vanytees and japes. Men dreme alday of owles and of apes, And of many a maze therwithal; Men dreme of thyng that nevere was ne shal. (The Nun's Priest's Tale VII.3076-94) Free variation is often possible with the nouns when they are not placed at the end o f a line: drem(e) and sweven as well as dremen and meten may be read as disyllabic w o r d s (but cf. (he) dremeth vs. (hej met in the passage from The Parliament of Fowls quoted above). Within a line Chaucer avoids the repetition o f an identical noun and verb (to dream a dream). Such repetition would have made possible the rhetorical figure called polyptoton, but judging by the examples quoted

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in the dictionaries it was used very sparingly throughout Middle English (the MED s.v. meten v.3, l.(b) quotes an example from the Cursor Mundi, line 19939: "For Jjis meteing J?at i of mett I did .. J)e for to fett."). To have different words for the same notion is also useful for purposes of rhyme: in Chaucer's works sweven, for example, regularly rhymes with even, drem rhymes with beem 'beam', lem 'flame' or rem(e) 'realm', and dremen rhymes with semen. In this study of the 14th century non-technical dream vocabulary Chaucer has been a useful source because he can be shown to have had an active interest in and a good command of, dream lore. However, our examination has shown that he did not employ this knowledge to use the vocabulary at his disposal to make fine semantic distinctions. He was not an exception: the relevant entries in dictionaries and occasional comments in editions of texts show that the various dream words in Middle English were used in almost free variation for as long as they coexisted. However, they did not co-exist forever, and these two facts are obviously connected. It is one of the few established facts of historical lexicology that the survival of synonyms leads to semantic differentiation or, conversely, that semantic differentiation promises or even guarantees survival. This did not happen with dream words, with the result that apart from very specialized terms such as vision, revelation, nightmare, etc. English made do with the noun dream and the verb to dream from the Early Modern English period onwards, and even the 20th century with its renewed interest in dreams has not changed this. Two questions remain to be answered. Why did semantic differentiation not happen, and what are the reasons for the central processes of replacement, namely of sweven by dream and of meten by dremenl Semantic differentiation, I suspect, did not happen because the dream lore of the Middle Ages was both too vague and too technical. It is true that the authorities specify the different types of dreams, their causes and their effects in great detail, but the lay person probably found it difficult to keep them apart (a fact slyly highlighted in the debate between Chauntecleer and Pertelote). In such a case a highly technical vocabulary such as Macrobius's was a hindrance rather than a help and had little chance to establish itself in common language even if, as the beginning of The House of Fame quoted above makes clear, plenty of native terms were available. The second question concerning the replacement of the basic terms is more difficult to answer, and it is probably fair to say that, as often in historical lexicology, we are faced with a process whose ultimate causation as yet defies explanation. The disappearance of the verb meten may well be due to a conflict of homonyms, since according to the MED no less than five homonymous verbs meten ('to measure', 'to feed', 'to dream', 'to come across', 'to paint') existed in Middle English. The details of this process await investigation,13 but it is a fact that of those five only the now archaic mete 'to measure' and meet 'to come across' have survived. Syntax may have been another factor: meten was often used in impersonal constructions (me mette, see OED s.v. mete v.2, 1.), and the verb was 13

In her study The Conflict of Homonyms in English Williams does not specifically discuss the five verbs in question, but she has a whole section on conflicts involving Middle English /E:/ and /e:/ (1944: 71-82); see also Samuels (1972: 144-53).

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certainly weakened by the disappearance of these subjectless constructions.14 Why, however, did the noun sweven disappear? Semantic as well as morphological factors may have been at work in this case. Old English swefn and Middle English sweven could mean 'sleep' as well as 'dream', and the disappearance of this word thus abolished cases of potential ambiguity, leaving only the unambiguous sleep and dream15 Morphology may have contributed, too, since the verb swefnian / swevenen, as we have seen, was never as frequent as the noun, and the noun was thus not fully supported by a cognate verb. Incidentally this also holds for the verb mcetan / meten, since the deverbal noun meeting / meting was never more than marginal both in Old and Middle English. The replacement under discussion thus results in increased morphological and semantic economy, since two Old English stems {swefn- and meet-) are replaced by a single Middle English one (drem-) without the loss of any semantic distinctions. All these factors, however, may not be regarded as sufficient explanations of the demise of meten and sweven, and their ultimate disappearance remains as mysterious as the appearance, in the late 13th century, of the word drem(en) 'dream'.

14

I owe this suggestion to Lilo Moessner. Note, however, that dremen could also be used in this impersonal construction. The OED (s.v. dream v.2, 3.) even notes that the impersonal construction was "[t]he regular construction in ON., and possibly the original in Eng. also." However, after the Old English period sweven meaning 'sleep' is attested so rarely as to make the noun practically monosemous in Middle English.

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References Benson, Larry D. (ed.) (1987): The Riverside Chaucer. 3rd ed., based on The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. F.N. Robinson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin; repr. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. Busse, Wilhelm G. (1994): "Träume sind Schäume". In: Hiestand (1994), 43-65. Cruse, D. A[lan] (1986): Lexical Semantics. Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. P O E ] , Cameron, Angus et al. (1986-): Dictionary of Old English. Toronto: The Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies. Ehrensperger, Edward C. (1931): "Dream Words in Old and Middle English". Publications of the Modern Language Association ofAmerica 46, 80-89. Förster, Max (1925-26): "Die altenglischen Traumlunare". Englische Studien 60, 58-93. - (1944): "Vom Fortleben antiker Sammellunare im Englischen und in anderen Volkssprachen". Anglia 67/68, 1-171. Galloway, Andrew (1994): "Dream-Theoiy in The Dream of the Rood and The Wanderer". The Review of English Studies, New Series Vol. 45, Number 180, 475-85. Gregory, Tullio (ed.). (1985): I Sogni nel Medioevo: Seminario Internazionale, Roma, 2-4 ottobre 1983. Lessico Intellettuale Europeo 35. Rome: Edizioni dell'Ateneo. Hall, John R. Clark (ed.) (1960): A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. 4th ed. with a supplement by Herbert D. Meritt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hiestand, Rudolf (ed.) (1994): Traum und Träumen: Inhalt, Darstellung, Funktion einer Lebenserfahrung in Mittelalter und Renaissance. Düsseldorf: Droste. Kieckhefer, Richard (1989): Magic in the Middle Ages. Cambridge Medieval Textbooks. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kruger, Steven F. (1992): Dreaming in the Middle Ages. Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 14. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [MED]. Kurath, Hans, Sherman M. Kuhn and Robert E. Lewis (eds.) (1952-): Middle English Dictionary. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. [OED], Simpson,J[ohn] A. and E[dmund] S.C. Weiner (eds.) (1989): The Oxford English Dictionary. 20 vols. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Oizumi, Akio (ed.) (1991): A Complete Concordance to the Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. 10 vols. Alpha-Omega: Lexika, Indices, Konkordanzen. Hildesheim: Olms-Weidmann. Ostheeren, Klaus (1964): Studien zum Begriff der 'Freude' und seinen Ausdrucksmitteln in altenglischen Texten (Poesie, Alfred, Aelfric). Heidelberg. - (1992): "Altenglisch dream 'Freude' - interkulturell". In: Wilhelm G. Busse (ed.): Anglistentag 1991 Düsseldorf: Proceedings. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 40-50. Paravicini Bagliani, Agostino and Giorgio Stabile (eds.) (1989): Träume im Mittelalter: Ikonologische Studien. Stuttgart, Zürich: Belser. Rynell, Alarik (1948): The Rivalry of Scandinavian and Native Synonyms in Middle English Especially 'Taken' and 'Nimen'. Lund Studies in English 13. Lund: CWK Gleerup. Samuels, M.L. (1972): Linguistic Evolution with special reference to English. Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 5. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Spearing, A.C. (1976): Medieval Dream Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Taavitsainen, Irma (1988): Middle English Lunaries: A Study of the Genre. Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique de Helsinki 47. Helsinki: Société Néophilologique. Tatlock, John S P. and Arthur G. Kennedy (1927): A Concordance to the Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer and to the Romaunt of the Rose. Washington: The Carnegie Institution of Washington; repr. Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1963. Williams, Edna Rees (1944): The Conflict of Homonyms in English. Yale Studies in English 100. New Haven: Yale University Press. Wittmer-Butsch, Maria Elisabeth (1990): Zur Bedeutung von Schlaf und Traum im Mittelalter. Medium Aevum Quotidianum. Sonderband 1. Krems.

Manfred Markus (Innsbruck)

Chaucer's Prose in the Canterbury Tales as Parody 1. Introduction The only two prose texts in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (CT) have generally been neglected up to now. The reason is obvious: hardly anyone could find a deeper sense in them. The Tale of Melibee (MelT) was in the main considered a "stupid piece", as an early critic would have it (Mather 1899, XV); and The Parson's Tale (PT) is "undeniably dull" (Robinson 1989, 766), at least from a modern point of view. Attempts were bound to be made in favour of a better reputation of the two works by seeing them in their proper historical context: Elliott (1974, 179) appreciated the PT as "a not unworthy piece of medieval didactic prose", and Schlauch (1966, 155f.) referred to the MelT with praise, admiring the "heightened colour" and also the "dignified style and high seriousness".1 Whatever was said for or against2, the two tales have mostly been seen as unrelated, and no particular attention was given to their common quality as prose.3 In the following I would like to show that they have two things in common: they both have moral topics (sin and the sacrament of penance in the PT, revenge and advice in the MelT), in both cases presented in an extremely boring way; and they both deal with the question of the theoretical status of prose. As to the final message of the two treatises, they are both meant to amuse more than teach. As is well-known, Chaucer has left us four pieces of prose: a translation of Boethius1 De consolatione philosophiae (c. 1380), A Treatise on the Astrolabe (1391, acc. to Robinson 1989), and the two so-called "tales" at issue as surrounded by the tail-rhyme stanzas or end-rhyme couplets of the other CT4. In view of Chaucer's big ouevre the four works in prose are extremely exceptional, and the two pieces in prose outside the CT can be suspected to have a specific function, the more so since the Boethius translation was written more than a decade prior to the compilation of the CT5, and its relevance to Chaucer was mainly one of contents and thought, not of form6; as to the Astrolabe, it was specially written as a kind of children's book for the instruction of Chaucer's son Lewis. 2

3

4 5

6

For further appreciative interpretations see Johnson 1990. See also Patterson 1978, 331-334, on the PT, Benson 1983, 70-74, and Waterhouse/Griffiths 1989 on the MelT. There are only very few exceptions, e.g. Patterson (1989), or Ruggiers (1979), who, however, refers only to the (serious) didactic content of the two prose pieces, showing little interest in their form. I take it that Equatorie of the Planetis has not been proved to be a work of Chaucer's. Around or shortly after 1385; cf. Johnson 1990, 139, for further reference. Early datings of the two tales are based on circular conclusions; cf. Hoffman 1969, 553. Cf. Robinson 1974, 320; Chisnell 1982, 160.

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No such specific circumstances can be claimed for the MelT and PT, and yet almost every scholar concerned with them has interpreted them as separate texts, taking them at face value7 and hardly as part of the CT8. But the position of the MelT after the - no doubt ironical - Tale of Sir Thopas and the fact that the PT is the very last of the CT, ending up in the retractatio, simply forbids an interpretation out of context. And if we take into account that Chaucer is a master of a tongue-in-cheek style and of double entendre elsewhere9, we can hardly expect a one-level utterance in the homilies. I would therefore suggest that the MelT and the PT are both preaching and parody. 2. Research on Chaucer's MelT and PT In a recent book Volk-Birke (1991, 193if., 228ff.) has given a helpful state-of-theart report of the research on the two tales. Some earlier critics, she admits - like Elliot (1974, 170-180), Lawrence (1968, 207-217), Whittock (1968, 21 Iff.), and Allen (1973)10 - saw in one or other of the tales a potential of parody or irony or at least a practical joke played on the Host.11 But Volk-Birke suggests that in recent years "a more favourable view" (228) of the MelT has become predominant and that Allen's ironic reading of the PT is "far from convincing" (194) to be taken into account.12 And the questions which she claims that the "more favourable" view is based on are those concerning the tales within the entire CT, moreover the tales' allegorical quality and prose style. I do not see why we should subject ourselves to this alternative. None of the criteria just mentioned and admittedly dealt with by numerous recent critics (cf. Volk-Birke 1991, 228, n. 5) excludes the possibility of irony, and Chaucer's irony, as was stated long ago13, does not "kill" its object, but tends to be partial in that it refers to a specific aspect, in our case to prose.14 As to that, critics have generally considered Chaucer's Canterbury prose to be far inferior to his poetry (cf. Volk-Birke 1991, 229), and some have ranked it high, but 7

9 10

13

Typical examples are Ruggiers 1979 and, for the PT, Dempster 1941. A case in point, which reveals lack of reference to the text, is Johnson (1990, cf. 150), who gleans from the MelT a comment of Chaucer's on the domestic political crisis of the late 1380's. - Knighten (1982) is a counter-example, understanding the PT in the context of the CT, though, in my opinion, without much conviction. Cf. Ramsey 1968 and Lindahl 1987, 34-36. Coulton (1927,257) and Baum (1958, 79-81) could also be mentioned here. Also see the similar state-of-the-art report on the Melibee in Waterhouse/Griffiths 1989, 338-341. Allen's (1973) ironical reading refers to contents - the theological position of the parson - , not to any structural features. - A few remarks about the ridiculous style are made in Finlayson 1971, 116, but the "satire" is still based on the Parson as an individual, not on his typical style and attitude. Cf.,e.g., Ramsey 1968, 303. Palomo (1974, 309) rightly argues that Chaucer is often in earnest and playing games at the same time and that "it would be wholly inappropriate - and somehow unChaucerian in spirit - to insist that a reasonable and incoherent argument for either case invalidates the opposite reading."

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for different reasons: Schlauch (1952, 1116; cf. 1966) appreciated the tales for their structural features of colloquialism, Bornstein (1977) found the style clergial, which was fashionable at the French and Burgundian courts in Chaucer's time, well represented, even reinforced in the MelT, particularly if compared to its source, Renaud's Livre de Melibée et Prudence. Palomo (1974, 308) drew the same comparison, but found the high style of the MelT intentionally misapplied, namely inflated to the point of ridiculousness, so that the tale is "a very subtle stylistic parody" (306), or "mock-moral" (308). Volk-Birke (229), somewhat misrepresenting Palomo by skipping the mock-elements in her (Palomo's) arguments, considers homiletic orality to be the main reason for the style clergial (231). Without rejecting any of the viewpoints in these investigations entirely, I would like to point out their deficiencies in due brevity as follows: (1) none of them has concentrated on the central question of prose vs. verse (as if this did not have any topical relevance in 1385); (2) none of them has focussed on the two prose pieces of the CT - the frame of reference has been either very wide (Chaucer, the sermons/the CT as a whole) or too narrow; and (3) there has been a general lack of quantification in stylistic arguments so far; but in order to test Iter's suspicion a hundred years ago (1893; quoted by Palomo 304) that Chaucer meant to parody "drasty speech" in the MelT, we may want to quantify the overwrought homiletic features of the sermons at issue. Now that the age of machine-readability has begun, quantification of stylistic features up to a point should not be too much of a problem.

3. The main stylistic features of the Canterbury prose tales The most striking feature is the high degree of repetition.15 First, there is frequent literal repetition of the main content words of the argument, e.g. ofpenitence in PT 81-3 or of wepen at the beginning of the MelT (16 x within some 20 lines on one occasion, cf. 11. 973-93). Since the tale is full of quotations, repetitions or synonyms of the verb say are extremely frequent. Passages such as the following are typical: Senek seith: 'A man that is well avysed, he dredeth his leste enemy.'/ Ovyde seith that 'the litel wesele wol slee the grete bole and the wilde hert.1/ - and the book seith, 'A litel thorn may prikke a kyng ful soore, and an hound wol holde the wilde boor.'/ But nathelees, I sey nat thou shalt be so coward that thou ther wher as is no drede./ The book seith that ...(1323-27)

Many of the words used repetitively are function words, particularly conjunctions. The continual use of and, when, then, but, this, therefore, after that, now, first, furthermore, for etc. serves to give the sentences cohesion. Causal connectives (therefore, for) are used illogically for connecting the inquits of matrix clauses ("And therefore seith Salomon ...") where the cohesion (normally a simply additive one) is really one within the embedded clauses of direct or indirect speech. The overall emphasis of cohesion has been seen as typical of the curial style of me. prose.16 15 16

This is one of the features also mentioned by Palomo 1974. Cf. Marx/Drennan 1987, 44.

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Both the MelT and the PT are no doubt extremely repetitive in their subject matter. The speakers keep talking about the same things though in a slightly modified form. One special subtype of repetition then is variation. The PT is, apart from the excursion on the seven deadly sins, a long-winded treatise on the various aspects of penitence, particularly contrition, confession and satisfaction.17 The frequency of these words alone reveals the, as it were, circular line of thought of the argument. The MelT, for its part, discusses and illustrates the role of advice as given to Melibeus (a) by his wife Prudence, (b) by his friends and neighbours, particularly the three "wise" ones that are quoted literally, and (c) by the dozens of authorities, both Christian and pagan, that are referred to again and again. Quoting from the Bible, the Church fathers or the ancients is of course fairly common in medieval expository writing. But in the two CT at issue the argument in some passages hardly consists of anything other than such references to Salomon (42 x in MelT), Senek (16), Tullius (i.e. Cicero; 16) "the book" (11) and more than fifty other sources18. With all this the debate develops in a recurring pattern: Melibee makes a statement and Prudence refutes it by means of quotations and proverbs. This repetitive pattern of the macrostructure is, in the microstructure of the text, corresponded by the presence of doublings, particularly in MelT. Flee and eschue, happy and blessed, myshappe and mystide, angry and wrooth, wratthe ne anger, repreveth or chideth, correcteth and amendeth, fulfille and parfourne - such are examples selected at random from one page (Robinson 1989, 184).19 These doublings or word pairs20 can generally be found in the 14th century (let alone the fifteenth), e.g. inMandeville's Travels, and Blake (1970, 380) points out that "This form of embellishment was to become a feature of E—nglish prose".21 It is true that in the case of the MelT the author could simply take some of the doublings from his French source, Renaud's Livre de Mellibee, itself a prose text. But as Elliott (1974, 174) has said, Chaucer carries things to an extreme, applying "this mode of verbal inflation" as an instrument of "mock-didactic technique". 17

20

For a detailed outline of the Parson's arguments cf. Whittock 1968, 286-290. In the MelT I have counted the following frequencies of references: Ovid 2, Senek 16, Jhesus Syrak 5, Salomon 42, Job 1, the surgian 1, the advocat 1, the olde wise man 1, the common proverbe 4, men 1, the book 11, Piers Alfonce 7, the Apostle 3, another clerk 1, Tullius 16, Cato 7, Aesop 1, philosophre 1, Cassidorus 6, David 3, lawe 3, Paulus 2, another 1, the poet 1, St. Gregorie 1, St. Peter 1, St. Jame 4, Pamphilles 3, St. Jerome 1, St. Austin 1, the prophete 1, wise man 1, Judas Maccabäus 1, Jesus 1, it is written 3. - In the first part of the PT alone, there are at least the following references: Isidor 1, Gregorius 3, Augustyn 5, Crist 1, David 6, Job 6, Ezechiel 4, God 2, St. Peter 2, Jerome 2, St. Paul 1, St. Bernard 3, St. Anselm 1, Jeremya 1, Moyses 1, Ysaye 3, Michias 1, John 1, St. Basilius 1, Senek 3, Salomon 5. In the PT I have easily found (within the first 9% of the text): herkenn and enquere, a Iapper and a gabber, hevy and grevous, sharpe and poinant (repeatedly), wrathed and agilt, shame and sorwe, foul and abhominable, vile and abhominable, servauntz and thralles to sinne, biwepe and (bi)waille (rep.), harm and torment, dignitee and heighnesse, abated and defouled\ likewise with or (15 % of text): to biwayle or to compleyne, Penitence or Contricion, rehercen or drawen in-to memorie, ordre or ordinaunce (rep.) etc. They also include phrases with an almost identical meaning. Also cf. Markus (1983, 123 f.) about this point in the fifteenth century.

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This can be made plausible by a comparison of the four Chaucer prose pieces (extracts) as to the quantity of doublings (table 1): MelT PT Astro Boeth

# words 2000 3548 1923 8703

# doubl. 20 16 0 21

% 1 0,45 0 0,24

Table 1: Frequency of doublings in Chaucer's prose The difference between the two CT in prose and Chaucer's other prose pieces is striking22, the more so since Chaucer, in his introduction to the Astrolabe, apologizes for his "rude endityng" and the "superfluite of wordes", which, as he hastens to add, is due to his didactic intentions (Robinson 1989, 546). Obviously this verbosity is of a different kind to the one in the MelT and the PT. In these, there are some other stylistic features which, due to their frequency, could be subsumed under the catchword "repetition", e.g. the striking role of "truth-emphasizers" such as certes, trewly, sikerly etc. These emphasizers, as such signs of an argumentative or persuasive attitude, may well be as many as a dozen occurences on every page of our texts. The form certes was of course taken from French and the cliche is that of the constant verily of the Gospels. Irrespective of this origin, table 2 shows a significant difference between a "normal" and a deviant usage of the cliche in me. prose: certes certeinly trewly sikerly verily (+ variants) sum total # words scanned

%

MelT 61 0 5 4 1 71 19983 0,36

PT 137 4 4 1 4 150 35477 0,43

Boeth 20 1 0 0 0 21 8703 0,24

Astro 0 1 1 0 4 6 19227 0,03

Table 2: Frequency of certes, trewly, sikerly et al. Another symptom of a persuasive attitude or intention on the part of the speaker concerned is the frequent address of the listener, either directly (as when Prudence addresses her husband as milord or sire and he calls her Dame2 ) or, indirectly, in the form of the pronouns thou and ye/you or by means of imperative or question clauses (as when the Parson introduces causal arguments by the rhetorical question "And why?"). One gets the impression that the speaker never loses control over the 22

23

The figures can't claim ultimate precision, since they were subject to my semantic interpretation of the and-passages presented by WordCruncher. Including spelling variants, the computer search produced the following figures: milord 7, sir 28, dame 4, lady 3. There is no such evidence of address in both the PT and the Boethius/Astrolabe texts.

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listener/reader - just as Dame Prudence takes the absolutely dominant part in the dialogue with her husband24. When Melibeus, after the long battle of discourse, finally gives up with the words "I putte me hoolly in youre disposicioun and ordinaunce" (1725), this situation of surrender metaphorically suggests the passive role of the reader/listener in pursuasive prose25: vis-à-vis the rhetorical firework of the calibre of Dame Prudence's there is not much point in counter-arguing. It is true, the stylistic features just mentioned are shared with the CT prose texts by the Boethius translation; here, too, the many thou/thee's and ye/you's and why's and question marks and exclamation marks reveal a dialogue situation between a schoolmasterly teacher and those forced into the role of the pupils. But then the Astrolabe considerably deviates from this, in that here only a high frequency of the second person singular gives evidence of the teaching situation. While it seems natural enough for teachers to address their pupils frequently, the close similarity between the Boethius text and the Canterbury prose in the present point is surprising and can, perhaps, be explained by the text being a translation - with weaknesses that the later Chaucer (of the Canterbury Tales) wished to ridicule. The speaker's dominance in our two prose pieces is, however, not only one over the listener/reader, but also over the material. Whereas poetry is structured according to traditional patterns of verse, line, stanza or fitte, writers of prose are fairly free in structuring their material as they find necessary. In the Melibee and the PT this control is expressed not only in the high frequency of connectives, but also in bridging passages that one could call stage directions, also in the fondness for enumerations. The first point can be illustrated in the following passages at the beginning of two sucessive paragraphs: Now, sith that I have toold yow of which folk ye sholde been counselled, now wol I teche yow which counseil ye oghte to eschewe. (1170) Now, sire, sith I have shewed yow of which folk ye shul take youre conseil, and of which folk ye shul folwe the conseil,/ now wol I teche you how ye shul examyne your conseil... (1199)

There are many more variants of this formula, by which the speaker sums up what he or she has done so far and what is to follow. This is a short selection from the PT: Now, as for to speken of... (336, 456)) And herkne this ensample. (362) Now it is behovely thyng to telle ...(382) As to the first synne, ...(415) As for to speken of... (457) Now, sith that so is that ye han understonde ... (474) Now wol I speke of ...(514, 607) Lat xis now touche the ...(610) Now comth the ...(641, 644 and ff.) etc. 24

The turn-taking is hardly balanced. She has 1515 lines of the dialogue (in 24 direct speeches), he has 228 (in 21 direct speeches). The text twice repeats this expression of unconditional surrender fairly literally soon afterwards (1740 and 1765).

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The last-mentioned formula "now comes" is similar to the also frequent mechanical enumeration of arguments or analytical points. We may well imagine the parson using his fingers to give emphasis to the great number of his arguments. Penitence is based on three things, he says (106), emphasizing a little later (127) that four things must be observed with "penitence or contrition"26. And there are six causes of contrition, as he then hastens to add (132; emphasis mine).27 To give evidence of one's dispositio is of course fully in line with rhetorics and is therefore to be found both in verse (e.g. in the Knight's Tale, 2051-3) and in Chaucer's other prose. But in our Canterbury prose the never-let-your-materialget-out-of-hand attitude of the speaker is more persistently marked. Picking out the quantifiable sentence adverbs now and first (including alderfirst), table 3 gives evidence of a significant difference between Chaucer's two types of prose: now first

sum total # words % of # words

MelT 27 20 47 19983 0,24

PT 64 56 120 35477 0,34

Boeth 8 3 11 8703 0,13

Astro 10 11 21 19227 0,11

Table 3: now and first as sentence adverbs The way in which enumerative disjuncts, emphasizers, repetition and variation cooperate in the MelT and the PT to achieve the effect of a totally scheduled style may be demonstrated by a longer quotation from the MelT: First, he that axeth conseil of hymself, certes he moste been withouten ire, for manye causes./ The firste is this: he that hath greet ire and wratthe in hymself, he weneth alway that he may do thyng that he may not do./ And secoundely, he that is irous and wrooth, he ne may nat wel deme;/ and he that may nat wel deme, may nat wel conseille./ The thridde is this, that he that is irous and wrooth, as seith Senec, ne may nat speke but blameful thynges,/ and with his viciouse wordes he stireth oother folk to angre and to ire./ And eek, sire, ye moste dryve coveitise out of youre herte. (1122-1129)

The last sentence is connected to the preceding enumeration by "And eek" - there is no absolute need for cardinal numbers. On the other hand, the last sentence is connected with what is to follow due to phrasal repetition. A few lines later we read: "And, sire, ye moste also dryve out of youre herte hastifnesse" (1132). This highlighting of certain expressions by means of repetition at a distance - a prosaic equivalent of poetic anaphora - is in fact another striking stylistic feature of the MelT. Shortly after the passage just quoted Dame Prudence begins a long list of advice with the phrase "and after that thou shalt considere". More than a page 26 27

Contrition is first a subtype of penitence, but now equalled. The confusion caused by some of the enumerations is due to the fact that they partly overlap and are not finished consistently. The whole treatise on the seven deadly sins, i.e. the middle part of the PT, is really an excursion spoiling the impression of the consistent treatment of the topic of penitence.

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later (in Robinson's edition) she comes back to this phrase, with only slight modifications: Alderfirst thou shalt considere (1202) And after this thou shalt considere (1204) Thanne shaltou considere (1206) Thanne shaltow considere (1208) Than shalt eek considere (1209) ... thanne shaltou considere (1211)

Soon after this, Prudence uses the phrase "ye han/have erred" repeatedly (again six times, cf. 1241ff). Not only morally, but also stylistically does she thus prepare her husband's statement (1260): "I graunte wel that I have erred". Another example of this "anaphoric highlighting" is the use of the formula "up roos" each time when the three neighbours start giving their advice (cf. 9): "A surgien ... up roos" (1010); "Up roos thanne an advocat" (1021); "Up roos tho oon of thise olde wise" (1037).

4. The 14th century background: features of prose In view of these stylistic observations the twofold question, of course, arises whether Chaucer had any possible reason for ridiculing prose and whether he was not simply using a common stylistic tradition. The first question mainly concerns the existence of 14th century prose available for Chaucer to ridicule. Tristram (1988) argues that Chaucer's two CT in prose are so bad as he did not have any narrative prose tradition to draw from (54), and that the prose of the 13th and 14th centuries that has come down to us was neither original nor narrative, but translation literature and/or "didactic, devotional, or utilitarian" (61). This is of course basically true, but it seems a modern fallacy to claim 14th century prose to be both narrative and original. While Chambers's suggestion of a "continuity" in English prose from King Alfred to Thomas More (1932) seems simplistic in the face of the scarcity of vernacular prose between 1200 and 1380, the impact of English prose, by the end of the 14th century, was much stronger than histories of literature tend to reveal. The late 14th and early 15th century brought such a flood of different prose genres28 that no contemporary observer including Chaucer could fail to take some critical interest in this new fashion. Prose was the medium not only for homilies, saints legends, and other religious material, but also for practical instruction (like recipes), everyday material needs (e.g. wills, charters and guildbooks) and various educational/entertaining contexts (cf. Diets and Sayings of the Philosophers and Mandeville's Travels). The reasons for this new development are manifold and need not be discussed here in detail. One of them is the new role of English (the "triumph of English", cf. Cottle 1969) in genres where French or Latin had been used up to then. Another is the general, not only Wycliffite determination to make the Bible available in the 28

Cf. Mueller's final remark (1984, 110) that the time from 1380 to 1500 was the "formative period of English prose".

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native tongue. Finally we have, somewhat connected with the religious changes, various social changes which led non-clerical members of society to play new roles which gave them the chance to use their vernacular in prose 29 . The growing role of English letters from the first examples of the 1380's to the big collections of the mid 15th century (Paston, Cely, Stonor) shows quite well what vernacular prose was more and more used for. While it is true that the extant English prose of the 1380's was still basically non-original and/or non-narrative, a trendy assimilation to the narrative mode has been convincingly claimed for Wyclifs English sermons and for 15th-century sermon collections like Jacobs's Well and John Mirk's Festial (cf. Mueller 1984, 123). So, from a non-biased point of view, the new prose is not easy to tag, and scholars trying to come to terms with its main characteristics (Workman 1940, Gordon 1966, Salter 1974, Blake 1972; Markus 1991) have widely disagreed. 30 For the present purpose, it may suffice to follow the very detailed description given by Mueller (1984, see 40-110), who sees me. prose style to be influenced by two main factors connected with each other: "Scripturalism" (i.e. Biblical influence) and the oral basis of composition. The typical concrete stylistic features are: 1. "open sentences": the term means an explicit syntax with a great many conjunctions, particularly and, the latter even in cases when there is no "symmetry" 31 of the text segments thus connected; 2. ellipsis, anacoluthon: these are features of orality, since they allow a speaker to be shorter than classical grammar postulates; 3. pleonasm (which implies semantic repetition) and various types of syntactic recursion, such as appositions, parentheticals, word pairs ("doublings") and nonrestrictive relative constructions (cf. Mueller 1984, 147-61 and 136 respectively); 4. colloquialisms of various kinds as traced earlier this century by scholars like Wyld (1/1920, 1936) and Langenfelt (193 3)32; these range from phonetic spellings such as "Shalbe" or "welynoughe" to idiomatic cliches ("bi day & eke by nyght") and the substitution of and for conditional i f 1 (Mueller 1984, 87, 126, 133 respectively). It is clear from these features that Chaucer in the MelT and the PT could draw on the scriptural and oral style of the homilies and of other prose works of his time 29

30

31

32 33

Mueller (1984, 8f.) talks about '"modern1 trends embracing urbanization, secularization, and enlarging popular participation in the national economy and culture." Salter contrasts prose of a "high style" to a "simpler, more moderate" style; Blake distinguishes the more secular type of prose in the wake of Caxton from the more religious works in line with Wynkyn de Worde. For a linguistic description of (a)symmetric syntax in line with Robin Lakoff 1971 cf. Mueller 1984, 24-28. Both quoted by Mueller 1984, 87-90; also see 96-110. An example from The Book of Margery Kempe\ "A, Lord Jhesu, I trowe, and thu were here to prechyn in thin owyn persone, the pepyl shulde han gret joy to heryn the" (quoted from Mueller, 133f.).

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that were just setting the trend for a new type of writing and that were to become a dominant fashion in the more prosaically minded 15th century. In the late 1380's, when Chaucer probably wrote his murye tales, the tradition of prose (style), as just sketched, was not yet established enough to be simply employed by Chaucer, but it was trendily present enough to be used by him as a worth-while object of ridicule. 5. MelT and PT within the Canterbury

Tales

In the prologues to the Melibee and the PT, prose as opposed to verse and alliterative poetry is characterized by the following catchwords: murthe (mirth), dootryne (MelT 235), little thyng (MelT 937), sentence (5x MT946-963), murye tale (MelT 964), treatis lyte (MT963), moral tale vertuous (MelT 940), myrie tale (PT46), meditacioun (2x: PT55, 69), soothfastnesse (PT33), vertuous (PT38, 63), moralitee (PT38), sentence (PT58, 63). In both prologues the context clearly refers to the opposition of verse (and/or alliteration) and prose. The Parson's lines in favour of prose - ironically enough uttered in verse - are well-known: I kan nat geeste 'rum, ram, ruf,' by lettre,/ Ne, God woot, rym holde I but little bettre (PT43f.)

In the Prologue to the MelT, Chaucer as narrator is very much forced to his plea for prose by the Host's outspoken criticism in view of his Tale of Thopas: "Thy drasty ryming is nat worth a toord!" (PT 930).34 It is also intriguing to observe that the attribute "little" is used for both the MelT and the PT, in the case of the MelT even with an emphatic repetition (cf. 956, 962; PT 1081: "this litel tretys or rede"). Since our two texts, just like other 14thcentury tracts and homilies, are rather long (and also long-winded), Chaucer's or the speakers' calling the treatises "little" can only be interpreted as sheer irony. On the basis of this evidence it can be assumed that in the two prologues at issue Chaucer, the poet, topicalizes himself not only as a comic narrator of the CT, but also as a potential writer of prose. This conclusion is confirmed by the second halves of the frames surrounding both the MelT and the PT. In the Prologue of the Monk's Tale, following the MelT, Chaucer, the narrator, first reminds us that the preceding tale was "my tale", then, in the following short disputatio between the Hoost and the Monk, again uses the words myrie (1924) and game and has the Hoost play a little game on the Monk, which ends in a downright poetical statement attributable to Chaucer (though uttered by the Hoost): But be nat wrooth, my lord, though that I pleye. Ful ofte in game a sooth I have herd saye! (1963f.)

While the deeper message of this couplet may be the overall mixture of seriousness and play, as claimed for Chaucer and other medieval authors by Reiss (1981, 34

I would follow Farrell's (unelaborated) suggestion (1985, 66f.) of the Thopas and the Melibee to be poetologically connected, "the first as Chaucer's desperate attempt to tell a tale of 'solaas,1 the second as a similarly strained effort to emphasize 'sentence'."

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218-21), the rest of the Prologue of The Monk's Tale is clearly dedicated to the question of genre, namely to the various formal patterns used for the story of the De casibus-tragedies: ...they ben versified communely/ Of six feet, which men clepen exametronl In prose eek been endited many oon,/ And eek in meetre, in many a sundry wyse. (3168-71)

The PT, on the other hand, is rounded off by the well-known retractatio-passage, which, it is true, does not discuss the question of verse and prose. But it is extremely poetological nevertheless in that the narrator's perspective subtly changes from the Parson's to that of Chaucer the author: both the Parson and Chaucer revoke (1084f), but it is Chaucer alone who then lists some of his works. This trick of unmarked point of view-shifting as well as the fact that the whole of the retractatio passage is, like the preceding PT, in prose strengthens the impression that Chaucer was again playing his let's pretend game - for the last time in the CT, but now more drastically than ever. Our two tales are thus framed by direct or indirect markers of the author's poetological interest and main concern with the following two questions: (1) what is the right genre and form (including the verse-prose alternative); (2) what is the relationship of poetic fiction and (religious) truth. 6. Summary Embedded thus and written the way they are, the two tales are illustrative examples of prose overfraught with both style and thought. They are hardly stories with a plot and with characters, but they mainly topicalize the opinions of the ancients on the problems at issue, sin and revenge respectively. In view of the abundance of digressions and the contradictions of the auctours consulted, both on and off the scene of the narrated action, the MelT has even been called "a game of Solomon Says" (Kempton 1988, 267). The ironical function of this game, Kempton suggests, is to demonstrate the subjectivity of truth and thus to epitomize the CT as a whole. Like Melibee in the tale, Chaucer is not fully convinced by his narrators, but a mere mouthpiece or reporter (cf. 274). This interpretation of the message of the MelT is perhaps too relativistic to be entirely convincing. It is, anyway, not quite applicable to the PT. As to irony, most critics (such as Birney 1985, 65-67) have found hardly any in the PT. But formally the two tales are very much alike. They are written in such a bizarre and exaggerated style (even from a 14th century view) that they cannot really be taken seriously. The evidence obtained from a computer analysis of the two texts, compared with Chaucer's other prose and the prose of the time generally, has helped us to conclude that Chaucer is, indeed, playing the game of a parodist here. This does not mean that the spiritual content of the Parson's sermon is discriminated, or that his exemplary integrity is questioned. While the PT as Chaucer's "last word" in the CT has the function of underlining the metaphorical analogy between the Canterbury pilgrimage of the collection and the "pilgrimage" of life, it is also a big hoax. I would like to side (against Baldwin 1955) with

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Whittock (1968, 295), who argues that Chaucer the artist, even in the excessive sobriety of the PT, does not give up his "own multidimensional ambiguity". In other words, ernest and game overlap.35 The deeper reason for this multidimensional view is Chaucer's humanist Christianity (described e.g. by Loomis 197036), according to which the author's satirical attacks are never total and always well-dosed. Likewise, in the two "tales" at issue, the target of ridicule is less the two narrators or the individual authorities consulted, but rather, as I hope to have shown, the new genre that was so much gaining ground in Chaucer's time: prose.

35

36

Lindahl (1987, 34) considers the "pray-and-play ethic" of the CT to be typical of the dual nature of medieval pilgrimage. - See also Reiss' (1981, 209-216) fundamental remarks on the medieval ironic view, Olmert's (1982) strong plea for a "ludic" interpretation of the PT, and Finke's (1984, 104) interpretation of the PT as closing the CT "on an ambiguous, even disturbing note", thus underscoring "the significance of the (Canterbury) tales diversity". The MelT has likewise been seen in these terms; see the short remarks by Marks 1982, 54, on Chaucer's "multiple perspectives" and "negative capability" in the CT as counter-illustrated by the example of the MelT, where the narrator (Melibee/Chaucer) is bound to fail since he "raises his voice on his own behalf 1 . Cf. for example, 289-312 ("Was Chaucer a Free Thinker?").

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References Allen, Judson Boyce 1973. "The old way and the Parson's way: an ironic reading of the Parson's Tale." Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 3: 255-271. Baldwin, Ralph 1955. The unity of The Canterbury Tales. Anglistica 5. Copenhagen. Baum, Paull F. 1958. Chaucer, a critical appreciation. Duke U.P., pp. 79-81. Benson, C. David 1983. "Their telling difference: Chaucer the pilgrim and his two contrasting tales." The Chaucer Review 18: 61-76. Birney, Earle 1985. Essays on Chaucerian irony. Toronto etc.: Un. of Toronto Press. Blake, N.F. 1970. "Late Medieval prose." In Bolton, W.F. ed. Sphere history of literature in the English language, I: The Middle Ages. London: Sphere Books . 371-403. - 1972. Middle English religious prose. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Bornstein, Diane 1977. "Chaucer's Tale of Melibee as an example of the style clergical," The Chaucer Review. 12: 236-254. Chambers, R.W. 1932. On the continuity of English prose from Alfred to More and his school. EETSOS 191A (repr. 1950, 1957, 1966). Cottle, Basil 1969. The triumph of English, 1350-1400. London: Blandford Press. Dempster,Germaine 1941. "The Parson's Tale." In Bryan, W.F., and Germaine Dempster eds. Source and analogues of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Atlantic Highlands, N.J. : Humanities Press, pp. 723-58. Elliott, Ralph W.V. 1974. Chaucer's English. London: Andre Deutsch. 132-180. Farrell, Thomas J. 1985. "Chaucer's little treatise, the Melibee." ChauR 20: 61-67. Finke, Laurie A. 1984. '"To knytte up al this feeste': The Parson's rhetoric and the ending of the Canterbury Tales." Leeds Studies in English 15: 95-107. Finlayson, John 1971. "The satiric mode and the Parson's Tale." ChauR 6: 94-116. Gordon, Ian A. 1966. The movement of English prose. London, New York: Longman. Hoffinan, Richard L. 1969. "Chaucer'sMelibee and Tales of Sondry Folk." Traditio 30: 552-577. Johnson, Lynn Staley 1990. "Inverse Counsel: Contexts for the Melibee." Studies in Philology 87: 137-155. Kempton, Daniel 1988. "Chaucer's tale of Melibee: 'A litel thyng in prose'." Genre 21: 263-278. Ker, W.P. 1893. "Chaucer". In English prose. I. Fourteenth to Sixteenth Centuries, ed. Henry Craik. New York: Macmillan. 40-43. Knighten, Merrel A. 1982. "Yeoman, Parson, Poet: a validation." Publications of the Arkansas Philological Association 8: 27-32. Langenfelt, Gosta 1933. Select studies in colloquial English of the late Middle Ages. Lund: Ohlsson. Lawrence, W.W. 1968."The Tale of Melibeus." In Chaucer and his contemporaries, ed. Helaine Newstead. Greenwich, Conn.: 207-217 (repr.). Lindahl, Carl 1987. Earnest games. Folkloristic patterns in the Canterbury Tales. Bloomingston & Indianapolis: Ind. UP. Loomis, Roger Sh. 1970. Studies in medieval literature: a memorial collection of essays. Lewiston, NY: Mellen Press. Marks, Herbert 1982. "Poetic purpose in the tale of Melibee." Massachusetts Studies in English 8: 50-55. Markus, Manfred 1983. "Truth, Fiction and Metafiction in 15th-Century Literature", FifteenthCentury Studies, 8: 117-140. Markus, Manfred 1991. "Glasnost in Middle English prose. Or, how is modern text type theory applicable to medieval texts?" In Anglistentag 1990 Marburg. Proceedings. Ed. Claus Uhlig and Rhdiger Zimmermann. Thiibingen: Niemeyer. pp. 177-194. Marx, C. William, and Jeanne F. Drennan, eds. 1987. The Middle English Prose Complaint of Our Lady and Gospel ofNicodemus. Heidelberg: Winter. Mather, F.J. ed. 1899. The Prologue, the Knight's Tale, and the Nun's Priest's Tale, from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Boston.

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Mueller, Janel M. 1984. The native tongue and the word. Developments in English prose style 1380-1580. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press. Olmert, Michael 1985. "The Parson's ludic formula for winning on the road (to Canterbury)." ChauR 20: 158-68. Palomo, Dolores 1974. "What Chaucer really did to Le Livre de Mellibee," Philological Quarterly 53: 304-320. Patterson, Lee W. 1978. "The 'Parson's Tale' and the quitting of the 'Canterbury Tales'." Traditio 34: 331-80. - 1989. '"What man artow?': Authorial self-definition in The Tale of Sir Thopas and The Tale of Melibee." Studies in the Age of Chaucer: The Yearbook of the New Chaucer Society 11: 117175. Ramsey, Vance 1968. "Modes of irony in The Canterbury Tales". In Rowland, Beryl ed. Companion to Chaucer Studies. London, Toronto: OUP. 291-312. Reiss. Edmond 1981. "Medieval irony." Journal of the History of Ideas 42: 209-226. Robinson, F.N. ed. 1989 [1933]. The works of Geoffrey Chaucer, 3rd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Ruggiers, Paul G. 1979. "Serious Chaucer: The Tale of Melibeus and the Parson's Tale." In Chaucerian problems and perspectives . Essays presented to Paul E. Beichner, C.S.C., eds. Edward Vasta and Zacharias P. Thundy. Notre Dame, London: University of Notre Dame Press, pp. 83-94. Salter, Elizabeth 1974. Nicholas Love's "Myrrour of the Blessed Lyf of Jesu Christ," Analecta Cartusiana 10. Salzburg: Institut fur Anglistik und Amerikanistik. Schlauch, Margaret 1952. "Chaucer's colloquial English: Its structural traits." PMLA 67: 11031116. - 1966. "The Art of Chaucer's prose." In D.S. Brewer ed. Chaucer and Chaucerians: Critical studies in Middle English literature. London. Tristram, Hildegard L.C. 1988. "Aggregating versus integrating narrative: original prose in England from the seventh to the fifteenth century." In Erzgräber, Willi, and Sabine Volk eds. Mündlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit im englischen Mittelalter. Tübingen: Narr. 53-64. Volk-Birke, Sabine 1991. Chaucer and medieval preaching. Rhetorics for listeners in sermons and poetry. Tübingen: Narr. Waterhouse, Ruth, and Gwen Griffiths 1989. "'Swete wordes' of non-sense: The deconstruction of the moral Melibee." The Chaucer Review 23: 338-361; 24: 53-63. Whittock, Trevor 1968. A reading of the Canterbury Tales. Cambridge: UP. Workman, Samuel K. 1940. Fifteenth-century translation as an influence on English prose. Princeton: University Press. Wyld, Henry Cecil 1936. A history of modern colloquial English, 3rd ed. Oxford: Blackwell.

Dieter Kastovsky (Vienna)

Morphological Reclassification: The Morphological and Morphophonemic Restructuring of the Weak Verbs in Old and Middle English 1. Introduction 1.1. Morphological classifications, like all other linguistic classifications, have one basic goal: they aim at providing a rationale for the fact that certain linguistic items exhibit the same type of behaviour with regard to some specific phenomenon, e.g. syntactic function, or the combinability with a specific set of other linguistic items such as inflectional endings. This "fact" is necessarily a deduction based on the way speakers use these items. More precisely, it is based on the observation that these items are used in the same way, which in turn suggests that they must have something in common which is responsible for this shared behaviour. The classification enterprise thus basically boils down to discovering the properties that are responsible for the shared behaviour - in other words, to find class-defining criteria. These actually serve two purposes: on the one hand they should characterise the respective class or category sufficiently so as to distinguish it from other similar categories, and on the other hand they should provide a mechanism for recognising a given item as a member of the respective category, i.e. provide a set of diagnostic classification features. Since languages are never stable, but always subject to change, classifications are necessarily unstable, too. The ensuing changes are basically of two kinds, they can be local or global-structural-typological. The first type only affects individual items, resulting in their reclassification, i.e. they move from one class to another, without affecting the classification system itself. This usually happens when classmembership is defined by several concurrent criteria, which are partly also shared by other classes, i.e. in a case of partial class overlap. The second type involves a more radical restructuring and affects the basis of the classification system itself Thus, some class-defining features may be lost or be replaced by a different set of features, so that eventually the overall basis of the classification changes. Ultimately this might even affect the typological status of the whole classificatory domain. It is this latter phenomenon which is at issue in this paper. It will be argued in the following that during the Old and Middle English periods the basis of the morphological classification changed completely: first it shifted from external characterisation by an overt class-marker to an implicational-holistic characterisation, and then it ended up with what might be called a default classification: unless marked as "irregular" in the lexicon, an item will automatically adopt what might be called the "regular" inflection (cf., e.g., Quirk et al. 1985: 96 ff). In other words, the

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morphological system changed from one with several inflectional classes ("strong", "weak", "present perfects", "irregular") having the same status to one where one inflectional class has a privileged status (= "regular"), while the others are subsidiary and exceptional (= "irregular"). 1.2. At this point another question should be raised, one regarding the status of such classifications. How far do they really represent the intuitions of a native speaker as reflected by his behaviour, or how far are they just an artefact of linguistic description reflecting explicit - and more often implicit - theoretical and pretheoretical assumptions of the describer? With a language spoken today, where we have access to native speakers, their intuitions can at least be tested and will to a certain extent act as a corrective against preconceived ideas in a synchronic description. But in historical linguistics, where we have no direct access to the intuitions of native speakers, the situation is much more difficult, especially since the task of an historical description is not just to produce successive synchronic cross-sections (grammars), but also to account for the developments that lead from one grammar to another, i.e. to describe linguistic change and its gradual implementation. The historical linguist with his historical knowledge will of course be inclined to look backwards and will therefore be tempted to describe a given synchronic situation in terms of its antecedent, i.e. retrospectively, rather than in terms of what it eventually leads to, i.e. prospectively, although a genuinely synchronic description should actually be neutral in this respect. This understandable conservative bias of historical linguistics may often lead to carrying along criteria relevant for the classification at an earlier period into periods where these criteria would no longer play any role in an historically unbiased synchronic account. A classical example are the traditional handbook analyses of the Old English noun morphology in terms of its Indo-European or Germanic antecedents. There we find categories such as -a-stems, -o-stems, -/-stems, cf., e.g. Brunner (1965: 194ff.) or Campbell (1962: 222iF ), although none of these class-markers (stem formatives) was present any longer systematically in the inflectional paradigms1. Another example is the classification of the verbs. In Old English, these are usually grouped into classes such as "strong", "weak", "preterite-presents", "irregular" or "anomalous", continuing the classification used for Germanic, cf., e.g., Campbell (1962: 295 ff). In Modem English, on the other hand, one usually finds a binary distinction between "regular" and (more or less) "irregular" verbs (cf., e.g., Quirk et al. 1985: 96ff). The regular verbs form their preterits and second participles without stem-variation by adding one of the phonologically conditioned allomorphs /id/ ~ Id/ ~ lil, the irregular ones deviate from this default option in various ways (vowel alternation in the verbal bases, e.g. keep ~ kept, sing ~ sang, choice of a non-phonologically conditioned inflectional allomorph, e.g. learn ~ learnt, or both, e.g. deal ~ dealt). This is of course a relic of the Neo-Grammarian tradition with its exclusively historical orientation, which was more interested in reconstruction than in synchronic description.

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Histories of English do not really explain why, how, and when the traditional "weak"/"strong"/"irregular" distinction - incidentally usually maintained for the description of Modern High German - should be given up in favour of the "regular"/"irregular" distinction. Thus both Fisiak (1968: 96ff.) and Lass (1992: 123ff ), which might be regarded as basically synchronic descriptions of Middle English, still rely on the traditional distinction. This would seem to imply that the final implementation of the regular/irregular dichotomy was an Early Modern English development. Nevertheless, the roots of this Modern English dichotomy are much older and can be traced back already to restructurings in Old and Middle English. Thus the status of Middle English is indeed transitional also in this respect, cf. Lass (1992: 23), and it is therefore not at all clear whether the traditional classification should really be applied to this period as a whole. It might well be argued that at least towards the end of this period the modern distinction of "regular" and "irregular" verbs had replaced the traditional "weak"/ "strong'V'irregular" one. 1.3. Besides this purely morphological aspect, there is a second, morphophonemic aspect, which is closely related to the classification aspect, viz. the genesis of the Modern English alternations (1)/id/~/d/,/t/;/iz/~/z/,/s/, i.e. the alternation of inflectional allomorphs containing a vowel with vowelless allomorphs in the inflection of both nouns and verbs. From a purely synchronic point of view, this alternation is now usually treated as the insertion of a vowel between identical or near-identical consonants on the basis of a vowelless underlying representation of the inflectional morpheme (cf., e.g., Zwicky 1975, Dressier 1988), i.e. as (2) a

b

/iz/

= epenthesis

/s/

= assimilation

Historically, however, this alternation resulted from a progressive generalisation of vowel deletion to all environments except those where it would create a sequence of identical or near-identical consonants. This constitutes a case of rule inversion in the sense of Vennemann (1972). The exact implementation of this change has not been investigated systematically, but the following facts seem to be generally accepted. Verbs and nouns were not affected by vowel deletion at the same time. Moreover, with the verbs the development of the person/number endings and the preterit/second participle morphemes was not exactly parallel. With the latter, vowel deletion already started in pre-Old English, when high vowels were deleted

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after heavy syllables and in some other environments (High Vowel Deletion or Sievers' Law, cf. Campbell 1962: 146, Hogg 1992: 227ff ). This originally purely phonologically conditioned alternation, which accounts for instances such as cqpan : cepte vs. fremmcm : fremede, nericm : nerede, was gradually extended analogically in Old English, thereby losing its phonological conditioning. According to Luick (1921: 534ff), it was finally generalised in the 16th century, probably via phonostylistic variation and metrical requirements. With the person/number morphemes, some deletions are old and are again due to High Vowel Deletion (e.g. cepst vs. fremest), while others are much later and probably started out as phonostylistic variants in Middle English along the lines of the preterit/second participle morphemes. Vowel deletion with the nominal -s-forms (plural, genitive), on the other hand, began much later, probably in the early 14th century as a phonostylistic variant, but was already more or less completed in the late 15th century (cf. Strang 1970: 180) and Dressier (1988). In the long run, however, all these developments had the same result: rule inversion from deletion to epenthesis. The most important point for my topic is the behaviour of the preterite/second participle forms. Thus, the presence vs. absence of a vowel in the preterite morpheme is directly connected with the division of weak verbs into inflectional classes in late Old English and Middle English. And the generalisation of vowel deletion, i.e. the implementation of (2), finally leads to the establishment of the "regular" : "irregular" dichotomy of Modern English.

2. Morphological classification 2.1. Before I turn to these developments, a few remarks concerning the notion of "inflectional class" might be useful. I have adopted Wurzel's (1984: 71) assumption that a specific inflectional class can be postulated "wenn fur eine entsprechende Gruppe von Wortern jede abgeleitete Kategorie bzw. jedes abgeleitete Kategorienbiindel formal einheitlich symbolisiert wird und die Gesamtheit der abgeleiteten Flexionsformen aller anderen Wortgruppen [= inflectional classes, D.K.] formal distinkt ist". This definition has two aspects: 1) The formal distinctness of inflectional classes is based on the overall organisation or profile of a given paradigm, and not just on one specific inflectional form. 2) Only the uniformity and distinctness of the set of derived inflectional forms count in establishing an inflectional class, whereas the base form of the paradigm is disregarded and might even be identical with the base form of some other paradigm. Thus classical OE nericm and fremman belong to he same inflectional class because of their basically parallel inflectional behaviour, cf. nerede : fremede. Nerian and andswarian, on the other hand, do not on account of the different sets of inflectional endings characterising these two verbs, cf. nerede : andswarode, despite the similar base form, i.e. the shared -/aw-infinitive.

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An inflectional class is thus constituted by the global distinctness of a given paradigm from other paradigms. This distinctness can manifest itself in basically two forms: 1) Class membership is marked explicitly by a class marker which is present in all the members of the respective paradigm, e.g. in the form of a stem formative. In this case, class membership has a single external exponent, whose presence allows the unambiguous assignment of the item in question to the respective inflectional class (= external class characterisation). 2) Class membership is based on the overall shape of the inflectional paradigm, i.e. on the set of inflectional endings making up the paradigm as a whole and cannot be attributed to a particular morpheme or another single formal property. Here it is the configuration of the inflectional forms, the paradigm as a whole, which characterises the inflectional class in question (= implicational class characterisation). The former is of course the limiting case of the latter, since the general presence of a class marker also contributes to paradigm shape. But for the functioning of an inflectional system, and especially for the class assignment of individual items, it clearly matters whether classes can only be defined holistically, i.e. by an internalimplicational criterion based on the overall configuration of a paradigm, or externally, i.e. by referring to a localisable overt class-marker. And this is what the metamorphosis of the Germanic/English morphological system is all about. There is an additional aspect here, viz. the distinction between class definition and class-defining criteria on the one hand, and the assignment of class membership to a given lexical item on the other. Consider the following possibilities: 1) Class membership is predictable on the basis of any arbitrarily chosen inflectional form, e.g. on account of the presence of an overt class marker (stem formative), or on the basis of phonological structure (as with the strong verbs in Early Germanic). In this case, class membership assignment is always unambiguously possible. 2) Class membership is an opaque lexical property and can only be established by looking at an inflectional paradigm as a whole, i.e. it is in principle not predictable, or at least not predictable on the basis of a single diagnostic criterion. In other words, it is a lexical property which has to be learned by rote and cannot be deduced from something else. In this case, class membership is arbitrary. 3) Unless stated otherwise, a member of the respective word class by default follows a given (= "regular") morphological pattern. This is the complement of alternative (1). In (1), every class - if there is more than one - is marked by a separate overt class marker. In (3), all items follow a given morphological pattern except for those that are lexically marked as deviant, i.e. "irregular". The claim made in this paper is that English developed along these three stages.

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3. The historical development 3.1. Germanic The Germanic situation is characterised by three "prototypical" categories with a number of bridge classes:2 1) "Weak verbs", characterised externally by the presence of stem formatives such as -i-/-j-, -qj-, -ai-, -no-, which explicitly assign class membership in all forms, and by the dental preterit/second participle morpheme. 2) "Strong" verbs, characterised externally by the absence of a stem formative and a particular syllable structure, as well as ablaut, which might be regarded as a cross-breed of an external and an internal class marker. 3) "Irregular" verbs such as been, willan, dan, which have their own individual and completely unpredictable paradigms, and which therefore have to be regarded as implicationally defined. The bridge classes mentioned above either do not exhibit all the properties listed as characteristics of the respective prototypical classes, or they have properties of more than one class. Cf. the following examples: (3) a. bringan : brohte; preterit presents: witan : wat : wiste, agan : ahte, magan : meahte, cuiman : cann : cuj>e, unnan : ann : ujje, sculan : sieal: sceolde b. biddan : baed, sittan : s # t , liCgan : laeg, hebban : hof, swerian : swor, stieppan : scop, etc. c. se£an : sohte, byCgan : bohte, JwnCan : Jxihte, Jiyndan : Jjuhte, wyrtan : worhte3

The verbs in (3 a) lack a stem formative in all forms, but select the dental preterit/second participle morpheme typical of the weak verbs. The verbs in (3b) are basically strong, but have the stem formative of class 1 weak verbs in their present tense and infinitive forms. The verbs in (3c), finally, i.e. the so-called "Ruckumlaut"-verbs, lack a stem formative in the preterit and second participle only, but have the dental preterit and second participle associated with the weak verbs. None of these verbs is in fact characterised externally any more, at least in the strict sense of the definition given above. The verbs in (3 a, b) exhibit a mixture of strong and weak verb properties4, while those in (3 c) are the first instances of truly weak verbs where the vowel representing the stem formative is absent in the preterit/second participle5, i.e. they are the precursors of the alternations discussed in (1) and (2) above. 2

In the traditional descriptions, these usually figure as members of the prototypical inflectional classes, but it is questionable whether this is really justified. According to Prokosch (1939: 200), only these verbs lacked the stem formative in the preterit and the second participle already in Proto-Germanic; verbs such as ewe ¿dan : cweahte, re ¿¿an: reahte, tee ¿an : tahte, tellan : tealde, etc. seem to be later developments. The infinitive/present tense forms of the preterit presents (as well as bringan) fit into the syllable structure of the strong verbs, but the preterit/second participle is formed by the dental suffix of the weak verbs. This of course also holds for the verbs in (3 a), which also do not have a stem formative in the preterit/second participle. But with them the syllable structure of the stem conforms to the

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In view of these peculiarities and the fact that these verbs are not characterised externally any more, the traditional approach to regard them as subclasses of the prototypical verb classes is problematic. From a synchronic point of view, it might therefore be preferable to treat these three groups as separate and somewhat irregular inflectional classes. Together with the class of genuinely irregular verbs, they would then constitute the beginning of the dissolution of the old, externally characterised system forming the nucleus of the gradually emerging system based on implicational characterisation. 3.2. Old English 3.2.1. By the beginning of the OE period, the stem formatives had lost their derivational and stem-characterising functions (cf. Kastovsky, forthcoming). It would therefore no longer make sense to segment paradigms such as (4)

Stem + Person/Number/I nf.

trymm + an trymm + e trym + est trym + ed trymm + ad

Stem + Person/Number/Inf.

luf + ian luf + ie luf + ast luf + ad luf + iad

into a stem formative and separate person/number morphemes (as is done in many traditional handbooks), since the stem formative would never have a consistent exponent and would be invisible most of the time. From a synchronic point of view, only the segmentation suggested in (4) is plausible. It was certainly also carried over to the preterit and second participle, where the original class distinction would seem to persist in the guise of the -e-/-o-vowel alternation. We will therefore have to assume the following reanalysis, by which the exponent of the stem formative becomes part of the underlying representation of the preterit/second participle morpheme, i.e. is lost completely as a morphological category, together with external class characterisation: (5) trym + e + d + e > tiym + ed + e

luf + o + d+ e > luf + od + e

This reanalysis may already have taken place in pre-Old English and is obviously linked to /-umlaut losing its phonologically conditioned status as well as the operation of High Vowel Deletion (Sievers' Law). This latter development (also pre-Old English) had caused class 1 weak verbs with a heavy stem to lose the exponent of the stem formative6 altogether, cf. forms like (6) a. dem + an : dem + d + e : ge + dem + ed / ge + dem + ed + ne / ge + dem + d + e b. sett + an : set +1 + e : ge + set + 0 / ge + set + 0 + ne

strong verb template, and, moreover, the present also lacks a stem formative. The verbs in (3a) must therefore be regarded as "more irregular" than those in (3c) even at this stage, or the vowel of the underlying representation of the preterit/second participle morpheme /id/, depending on the morphological analysis

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The vowel representing the original stem formative can now at best be regarded as a secondary class marker among other class-defining properties, i.e. it had become part of the overall paradigm organisation, which now characterised inflectional classes and determined class membership. This, however, means that the language had lost external class marking as a structural-typological property. With the functional-phonological demise of the stem formatives, all inflectional classes became internally-implicationally determined. Class membership became an inherent lexical property of the verb stem itself. Moreover, it was linked to several rather than just one diagnostic features, which could cause categorial ambivalence (cf. the overlap of the -/««-infinitives) with subsequent reanalysis. The first traces of such reanalyses with corresponding shifts between class 1 and class 2 are already found in the Vespasian Psalter of the 9th century (cf. Mertens-Fonck 1984). 3.2.2. Let us now briefly look at the fate of the class-defining characteristics. At this stage, the verb classes are basically kept apart by different vowels in the inflectional endings, and by the fact that some verbs belonging to class 1 had undergone High Vowel Deletion, i.e. lacked a vowel in the surface representation of the preterit/second participle morpheme, cf. the following Early West Saxon patterns adapted from Hogg (1992: 159): Inf ISg 2 Sg 3Sg PI Subj Sg Subj PI Pret 2nd Part

Class 1 -an/-ian (/jan/ > /ian/) -e/-ie -est -ed -ad -e/ie -en/-ien -ed-/-d-/-t-/-0-ed/-d/-t/-0

Class 2 -ian /ian/ -ie -ast -ad -iad -ie -ien -od-od

Note, by the way, the variability of class 1 as against class 2. At this stage, the profiles of the two classes are still fairly distinct on account of the vowel differences. But when the unstressed vowels of the inflectional endings, especially /e/ and /o/, began to merge in /a/ (probably in the course of the 10th century), an even greater overlap and concomitant ambivalence of the classes arose, cf.8 (8) Inf 1 Sg 2 Sg 3 Sg

Class 1 -an/-ian -e/-ie -est -ed

Class 2 -ian -ie -ast -ad

0 stands for the deleted representation of the preterit/second participle morphemes. The -«-spellings should be interpreted as /a/.

Morphological Reclassification PI Subj Sg Subj PI Prêt 2nd Part

-ed -e/-ie -en/-ien -ed-/-d-/-t-/-0-ed/-d/-t/-0

281 -ied -ie -ien -ed-ed

3.2.3. It seems that at this stage, i.e. probably in Classical West Saxon, and even more so in Late West Saxon, one group of forms, viz. the preterits and second participles, began to develop into a dominant diagnostic feature. This not only served as the primary class-defining characteristic, but also as the basic criterion for class assignment, i.e. determined the choice of the remaining inflectional endings.9 Apart from the vowel differences in the present (whose actual phonological/phonetic status is unclear and may be very much obscured by scribal tradition), it is the syncopation of the vowel in the preterit that is characteristic of class 1. But syncopation only affected heavy stems, whereas all originally light stems preserved their vowels and thus became identical with the preterits and past participles of class 2 verbs after the merger of /e/ and /o/ in /a/. As a result, more and more class 1 verbs with light stems shifted to class 2, also adopting the -iV-/-aforms of this class in the present. Thus verbs like fremman : fremede : gefremed, trymman : trymede : getrymed, swebban : swefede : geswefed now show up as fremian : fremode/fremede : gefremod/gefremed, trymian : trymode/trymede : getrymodJgetrymed, swefian : swefode/swefede : geswefod/geswefed, etc. This shift was of course facilitated by the fact that only class 2 was really productive in Old English, i.e. loans and new derivatives automatically joined this class and not class 1. At this stage, the inflectional system had certainly become highly ambivalent, since the class membership of a given verb could no longer be assigned unambiguously, the original paradigms having in many respects become too similar. Put differently, it was no longer obvious on the basis of which differences the two inflectional classes should be kept apart. The result is obviously great fluctuation of class assignment, which eventually results in a redefinition of inflectional classes on the basis of the surface representation of the preterit/second participle morphemes as primary class-defining feature, i.e.: (9) Pret./2nd Part

Class 1 -d/-t/-0

Class 2 -ed

The new class 2 is now characterised by a preterit and second participle allomorph which contains a vowel, whereas in class 1 this vowel is absent (syncopated, if we assume an underlying form containing a vowel). Lass (1992: 127) calls these two classes "thematic" and "athematic". Secondarily, class 2 verbs still have some -ieforms in the present and the infinitive, but these were lost early in the North, while they were preserved somewhat longer in the South. The main point here is that presence vs. absence of the vowel is not predictable on formal grounds; it is an inherent property of the verb, i.e. it is purely morphologically conditioned. This 9

Note that a similar development occurred with the nouns, where this role was taken over by the nominative plural forms -as > -es and -an > -en ("-j-plurals" vs. "-«-plurals").

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realignment now produced two productive morphological classes, since the new class 1 with vowel deletion not only contains the continuation of the appropriate Old English weak verbs, but also French loans with stem-final consonants such as joynen, peinten. Loans with vowel-final stems usually joined class 2, cf. cryen, preyen, but we also find loan verbs ending in a consonant in this class, e.g. chaungen (Lass 1992: 128), which, however, also had class 1 by-forms. 3.2.4. The net result of this restructuring is now a purely morphologically conditioned verb morphology. But there is something else: class assignment of the individual verb has shifted from global paradigm-scanning to one dominant diagnostic criterion - the formation of the preterit and second participle, cf. Roger Lass's (1992: 123) statement: "of the potential inflectional categories in Old English (tense, mood, person, number), it is tense that becomes the single typefying inflection". 3 .3. Middle English 3.3.1. After the restructuring discussed above, the following inflectional categories can now be postulated for classical Middle English: 1) Verbs forming their preterit and second participle with a segmental dental morpheme, which has /9d/ as underlying form and alternates with /d/, /t/ and 0 . The presence vs. absence of the vowel is morphologically conditioned and therefore differentiates two classes (i.e. one with and one without vowel deletion). These verbs do not exhibit stem allomorphy and are the ancestors of the Modern English regular verbs. 2) Verbs also forming their preterit and second participle with a dental stop, but with stem allomorphy, type bring: brought, seek : sought, keep : kept, i.e. either old irregular verbs or verbs having developed stem allomorphy on account of lengthening and shortening processes in Old and Middle English. These are the ancestors of some subclasses of Modern English irregular verbs and might already be treated as irregular in Middle English. 3) Verbs forming their preterit and second participle by vowel alternation (ablaut) alone, i.e. the originally strong verbs. In view of their growing irregularities and losses (class shifts to class 1 and class 2 "weak" verbs), they are already rather more "irregular" than a coherent "strong" class; 4) Individual irregular cases such as be and the emerging modals (the original preterit presents). 3.3.2. Of all these classes, only the first category (the original "weak" verbs) seems to have been productive, with an apparent preponderance of subclass 2, the one having a vowel in the preterit and second participle. But, according to Lass (1992: 128), this class-distinctive feature - presence vs. absence of the vowel - due to rhythmic reasons became less and less reliable, since sometimes the person/number-denoting vowel following the preterit morpheme was deleted, resulting, e.g., in luvede > luved, and sometimes the vowel of the preterit itself was deleted, resulting in, e.g., luvede > luvde. Thus, a purely morphologically conditioned class-distinctive phenomenon became more and more a matter of

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phonostylistics. And when finally vowel deletion was generalised also with the other inflectional endings, especially the nouns, this class distinction between two types of "weak" verbs was finally obliterated. The net result was a neat distinction between regular verbs, which delete their vowel in the preterit/second participle, unless the verb ends in a dental stop, and a set of progressively more and more irregular verbs such as keep : kept, deal: dealt, cut: cut, write : wrote : written, be : am : is : are . was : were : been. But, technically speaking, the classification into these two sets of "regular" and "irregular" verbs is still a matter of a morpholexical property, since there is no external sign like a stem formative on the basis of which we can predict class affiliation except overall inflectional behaviour. Nevertheless, the situation is now radically different, as is implied by terms such as "regular" and "irregular". "Regular" refers to the default case: the normal phonologically conditioned rules apply to these verbs, i.e. they do not need any additional lexical specification as to their inflectional behaviour. It is only the "irregular verbs" which have to be specified accordingly.

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References Branner, K. (1965): Altenglische Grammatik. 2nd ed. - Tübingen: Niemeyer. Dressler, W. U. (1988): "Der englische Plural im Lichte einer Natürlichkeitstheorie". - In: D. Kastovsky, G. Bauer (eds): Luick revisited. Papers read at the Luick Symposium at Schloß Liechtenstein, 15. - 18. 9. 1985. - Tübingen: Narr, 171-182. Fisiak, J. (1968): A short grammar of Middle English. Part one: Graphemics, phonemics and morphemics. - Warszawa: Paristwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe. Hogg, R. M. (1992): "Phonology and morphology". - In: R: Hogg, (ed), The Cambridge history of the English language. Vol. 1. The beginnings to 1066. - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 67-167. Kastovsky, D. (1971): Studies in morphology. Aspects of English and German verb inflection. (Tübinger Beiträge zur Linguistik 18). - Tübingen: Narr. - (1985): "Typological changes in the nominal inflectional system of English and German". In: Studia gramatyczne 7, 97-117. - (1992): "Typological reorientation as a result of level interaction: the case of English morphology". - In: G. Kellermann, M. D. Morrissey (eds), Diachrony within synchrony: Language history and cognition. (Duisburger Arbeiten zur Sprach- und Kulturwissenschaft 14). - Frankfurt/M.: Lang, 411-428. - (1993): "Inflection, derivation and zero - or: what makes OE and German derived denominal veibs verbs?" - In: VIEWS 2, 71-81. - (1994): "Typological differences between English and German morphology and their causes". - In: T. Swan, E. Merck, O. J. Westvik (eds): Language change and language structure: Older Germanic languages in a comparative perspective. (Trends in Linguistics: Studies and Monographs 73). - Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 135-157. - (forthcoming): "Verbal derivation in English: A historical survey. Or: Much ado about nothing". - In: D. Britton (ed), Papers from the 8th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics, Edinburgh 1994. Lass, R. (1992): "Phonology and morphology". - In: N. Blake (ed): The Cambridge history of the English language. Vol. 2. 1066-1476. - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 23-15. Luick K. (1921): Historische Grammatik der englischen Sprache. Vol. 1. Part 1. - Leipzig: Tauchnitz. Matthews, P. H. (1974): Morphology. (Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics). - London: Cambridge University Press. Mertens-Fonck, P.(1984): "The place of the Vespasian Psalter gloss in the history of English". In: Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 17, 17-28. Prokosch, E. (1939): A comparative Germanic grammar. - Philadelphia: Linguistic Society of America. Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., Svartvik, J.(1985): A comprehensive grammar of the English language. - London: Longman. Strang, B. M. H. (1970): A history of English. - London: Methuen. Vennemann, T. (1972): "Rule inversion". In: Lingua 29, 209-242. Wagner, K. H. (1969): Generative grammatical studies in the Old English language. Heidelberg: Groos. Wurzel, W. U. (1984): Flexionsmorphologie und Natirlichkeit. Ein Beitrag zur morphologischen Theoriebildung. (Studia Grammatica XXI). - Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Zwicky, A. M. (1975): "Settling on an underlying form: the English inflectional endings". In: D. Cohen, J. Wirth (eds): Testing linguistic hypotheses. - New York: Wiley, 129-185.

Wilhelm G. Busse (Düsseldorf)

Bishops' Courts as Cultural Centres: The Case of the Harley Lyrics* The Harley Lyrics are far too well-known to need a special introduction. Suffice it to say that most scholars almost unanimously agree that the love lyrics in the Harley collection have to be considered as among the best which have come down to us, of Middle English lyrical poetry composed from the 12th to 14th centuries. With reference to the social and cultural milieu of these love poems, however, there is no such agreement. The manuscript may be dated to roughly 1330-1350. On the internal evidence of the fly-leaves which contain references to a consuetudinary in which St Ethelbert is especially remembered, it may be connected with the diocese of Hereford; some scholars would tend to be even more specific, and think of the MS as originating from Leominster, near Hereford. Unfortunately, however, neither the fly-leaves nor anything else in the manuscript is so uncontroversial as to make the connection a certain one. Nor do the contents help very much: MS Harley 2253 is an anthology typical of the middle ages, containing everything which was thought useful by the compiler, ranging from the holy to the obscene, and in three languages at that, Latin, French, and English. Some of the political poems contained in the collection can indeed be dated; but their dates cover a period from the Battle of Lewes in 1264 to the death of Edward I in 1307. Nothing definite, then, can be said about the date and provenance of the love lyrics; and when it comes to reconstructing their social and cultural milieu, we therefore seem to be left with no clue whatsoever of where to begin, and where to end our speculations. Modern scholarly analyses of the love poems are consequently mainly concerned with their internal linguistic organisation, with rhetorical features, with motifs and conventional topoi which are then compared with what is known from southern French troubadour or Northern French trouvère poetry of an earlier period. As a rule, the English lyrics come off badly from such a comparison; they tend to be styled weak successors of a superior poetic tradition on the Continent, having an especially home-spun style and diction about them, and exhibiting a rhetorical mannerism which both bespeak their belated prime in a different social and cultural context. In short, then, they are usually believed to be examples of decadence rather than representatives of a lively poetic tradition. Now I do not want to set out on a crusade against such value judgements which proceed on a number of assumptions among which those concerning the social and cultural milieu are not the least prominent ones. I rather want to make a fresh start, asking different questions about the cultural milieu of these lyrics, while at the same time making more moderate claims as to what we can learn from these lyrics *

Dedicated to Theo Stemmler on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday.

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about the context to which they may have belonged. As my starting point, I take the lyric which goes by the modern title The Poet's Repentance. Though on first sight it does not seem to be a love poem at all, it however explicitly refers to poetry in that tradition. After a short and rather sketchy interpretation in the first part of my paper, I will then, in the second part, ask questions as to the identity of the Richard who is mentioned in the last stanza; in the third part, I will in a rather sweeping way plead for more historical research in our interpretations of the love lyrics in the Harley collection, and in literature in general. The first part, then: the poem as my starting point, followed by a short and somewhat sketchy interpretation. I

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Weping haue}) myn wonges wet for wikked werk ant wone of wyt; vnbli{)e y be til y ha bet bruches broken, ase bok byt, of leuedis loue, Jjat y ha let, }>at lemej) al wi}) luefly lyt; ofte in song y haue hem set, J)at is vnsemly fier hit syt. Hit syt ant semej) noht J)er hit ys seid in song; J>at y haue of hem wroht, ywis hit is al wrong. Al wrong y wrohte for a wyf t>at made vs wo in world ful wyde; heo rafte vs alle richesse ryf, t>at durfte vs nouht in reynes ryde. A styjjye stunte hire sturne stryf, })at ys in heouene hert in hyde. In hire lyht on lede}> lyf, ant shon Jjourh hire semly syde. f>ourh hyre side he shon as sonne do{) t>ourh I>e glas; wommon nes wicked non sej)})e he ybore was. Wycked nis non J)at y wot fat durste for werk hire wonges wete; alle heo lyuen from last of lot ant are al hende ase hauk in chete. For|ji on molde y waxe mot f a t y sawes haue seid vnsete, my fykel fleish, mi falsly blod; on feld hem feole y falle to fete. To fet y falle hem feole for falslek fifti-folde of alle vntrewe on tele wijj tonge ase y her tolde.

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[I

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I>ah told beon tales vntoun in toune, such tiding mei tide, y nul nout teme of brudes biyht with browes broune; or blisse heo beyen, J)is briddes breme. In rude were roo wij) hem roune Jjat hem mihte henten ase him were heme. Nys kyng, cayser, ne clerk with croune Jiis semly seruen Jsat mene may seme. Semen him may on sonde J)is semly seruen so, bo})e wij) fet ant honde, for on [)at vs warp from wo. Nou wo in world ys went away, ant weole is come ase we wolde, Jjourh a mihti, methful mai, J)at ous ha{) cast from cares colde. Euer wymmen ich herie ay, ant euer in hyrd with hem ich holde, ant euer at neode y nyckenay t>at y ner nemnede {»at heo nolde. Y nolde and nullyt noht, for nojjyng nou a nede soj) is Jaat y of hem ha wroht, as Richard erst con rede. Richard, rote of resoun ryht, rykening of rym ant ron, of maidnes meke {>ou hast myht; on molde y holde J>e murgest mon. Cunde comely ase a knyht, clerk ycud that craftes con, in vch an hyrd Jjyn aj)el ys hyht, ant vch an afiel ¿in hap is on. Hap fiat ha])el hajj hent wij) hendelec in halle; selfie be him sent in londe of leuedis alle! Weeping has wet my cheeks because of evil work and lack of understanding; I will be sad until I have atoned for offences I committed - as the book commands against the love of ladies with which I interfered, who all shine forth with lovely hue; often I described them in songs which are unseemly where(ever) they are applied. It does not apply and is unseemly where it is said in song, what I composed about them is indeed completely wrong.

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Wilhelm Busse All wrong I composed because of a woman who brought unhappiness all over the world; she deprived us of all the abundant riches who had no right to show mastery over us. An excellent one put an end to her violent strife, who lives in the heart of heaven in hiding. In her alighted one who brings life and who shone through her seemly side. Through her side he shone as sun does through the glass; no wicked woman existed since he was born.

in 26

There is no wicked one to my knowledge who dared to weep/make them weep for the deed; they all live free from every fault of behaviour and are all as noble as a hawk in hall. Therefore I become sorry in this world 30 that I pronounced evil sayings my weak flesh, my false blood! often I humble myself before them on the ground. Many times I fall to their feet for my falsehood fiftyfold, 3 5 for all wrong things together which I said here, with my tongue. IV 40

45

V 50

55

60 VI

Though bad tales are told among men, such things may happen, I will not devise [such things] about bright ladies with brown eyebrows; they buy our bliss, these noble women! In a room it were rest to whisper with them who could take hold of them as it suited him. Neither king nor emperor nor cleric with tonsure would seem mean if he served them. It would seem him as a messenger to serve these beautiful ones in this way, both with feet and hands, because of one who rescued us from pain. Now pain and evil are gone from the world and bliss is returned as we wished through a mighty and gentle maid who freed us from serious sorrows. Ever and always I will praise women and always I will side with them at court, and ever if need be I will deny that I ever mentioned what she did not like. I did not and will not do it, for whatever necessity; truth is that I composed about them as Richard first advised me/as R. adv. me earlier. Richard, source of pure reason, judge of rhyme and song,

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65

70

289

over meek maidens you have power; on earth I take you to be the happiest man. Of nature seemly as a knight, well-known cleric who knows sciences, in each court your nobility is mentioned, and each virtue is part of your destiny. Good luck that man has received with courtesy in hall(s); happiness be sent to him of all ladies in the land! ]'

The central theme of the poem is concerned with two traditions of speaking about women. The one tradition which is here rejected, which the speaker seems to recant and for which he pretends to be sorry, is the antifeminist tradition in which women were blamed because of Eve's sin in Paradise; the other tradition which is here enthroned in its stead, is the praise of women and the Frauendienst of the courtly tradition which was justified by Mary who restored bliss to the world. The first stanza, as a kind of introduction, refers to the speaker's grief because of poetry composed in the first, the antifeminist tradition; everything he has so far said about women, is in the last two lines called "wrong". Stanza 2 gives reasons for his alleged change of attitude towards women: the antifeminist tradition proceeds on the misogynist teaching about the original sin which makes each woman a second Eve, a seductress, a snake, a she-devil. According to this teaching which most listeners in any medieval audience would have known, it was Eve who brought misfortune to the world. The burden of the original sin was, however, paid off by Mary and Christ; through her and him, bliss is restored to the world, and consequently all women are now good - says the poet. Stanza three shortly elaborates the statement of the last two lines of stanza two: from Eve to Mary, so to speak, all women were bad; since Mary, their evaluation has to be reversed completely. The speaker/poet then asks for forgiveness for the poetry and sayings about women he has composed or said. In stanza four, he protests his decision not to contribute any longer to bad tales about women; they, the women, are rather to be praised as those who promote bliss, and neither emperor nor cleric will lose a jot of his elevated position if he serves them. Praise of women, that is, and Frauendienst have to replace misogynism because of Mary. In the stanza which follows, statements about attitudinal changes are repeated once more, with variations; the speaker/poet again claims that from now on he will always praise women and even turn to lies if need arises, in order to protest his sincerity - which is, of course, mere pretence. But whereas in stanzas 1 and 3 (lines 5, 31) the speaker blames himself for his misplaced poetry and sayings about women, the blame is now, in lines 59-60, laid at Richard's door: responsibility for the wrong kind of poetry is transferred to a person called Richard who will be the subject of the last stanza. 1

Ed. G.L. Brook, The Harley Lyrics, Manchester 1968, pp. 35-36, with a few corrections in punctuation; translation my own. For the translation 'room' (ME rude, v. 41) cf. MED s.v. ride n. (3).

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Summing up what we find in stanzas 1 to 5, I for one think it goes almost without saying that all this is not meant seriously. I heartily disagree with those critics who think that we get a completely honest and sincere expression of repentance in these lines; despite my general admiration for Theo Stemmler's masterly critical study of the love poems in MS Harley 2253, I therefore do not subscribe to his statement that we can be 'certain that the poet is in earnest'.2 The juxtaposition of black and white images (wrong vs. right poetry, bad vs. good women); the hyperbolic statements (all women "lyuen from last of lot" etc.); the justification of the two extremes of either only blaming or only praising all women by a reference to either Eve or Mary; the repetition of these statements which clearly overdoes the point by saying the same thing thrice; the transfer of eschatological aspects (paradise lost and regained) to this world; the uncertainty as to the existence of bad tales about women, and their truth (w. 37-39): - all such statements testify to someone speaking with his tongue in his cheek; to someone who does not even attempt to fend off the orthodox clerical reproach that poetry is nothing but the fable of poets who lie, but who rather explicitly says that he will do so - "ant euer at neode y nyckenay". Stanzas 1 to 5, then, are an ironic play with two literary traditions; the poet who composed them, was in complete mastery of his topic. He knew the justifications for both traditions, and he knew the sources of these justifications, namely misogynist interpretations of the Fall on the one hand, and Marian adoration from the 12th century onwards, on the other.3 I therefore think it if not self-evident, then at least plausible that irony pervades the poem, that pretence is the dominating mode of speaking, and that no abjuration or repentance whatsoever is expressed in these lines. The whole thing is a joke, and nothing else Later poets of the 15th century would - for the better understanding of the contemporary audience as well as for the benefit of 20th-century literary scholars have added after each stanza a line or two which would definitely have told one what was meant, so that no trouble could arise over competing interpretations: of all Creatures women be best: Cuius contrarium verum est.4

In turning to stanza 6,1 switch from part 1 to part 2 of my paper though of course I will linger a little over part 1 in so far as stanza 6 has to be interpreted as well; but first and foremost, it has to be explained with reference to the person called 2

"Aus all diesen Gründen können wir mit Sicherheit annehmen, daß die Reue des Dichters durchaus ernst gemeint ist." When Stemmler's dissertation appeared in 1962, it represented the state of the art of new critical studies of the love poems in MS Harley 2253; today, it still retains its value as a thorough analysis of the linguistic and rhetorical organisation of these poems: cf. T. Stemmler, Die englischen Liebesgedichte des MS Harley 2253, Diss. Bonn 1962; the quotation appears on p. 196 (italics mine). For a succinct description of both traditions with regard to playful debates about them cf. the introduction in F.L. Utley, The crooked rib: an analytical index to the argument about women in English and Scots literature to the end of the year 1568, Columbus (Ohio) 1944. Quotation: burden of Brown-Robbins Index no. 1485 (late 15th century); similar examples are to be found in Latin, French and English literatures.

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Richard. Who is he? Let me answer that question by enumerating the characteristics any candidate who wants to qualify will have to fulfil - according to our poem. First, Richard is called a master mind with regard to reason and poetry, lines 61-62; second, he is comparable to a knight, with reference to his appearance, behaviour, and descent, for this is the range of meanings of "cunde" (66); third, he is a well-known scholar and cleric with a profound knowledge of "sciences" though "craftes" in line 66 may also include crafts in a more practical sense, as for example the artes mechanicae, fourth, he is praised in all courts for his apel, that is nobility and virtue (67); and fifth and last, each virtue and nobility are to be found in him. You will have noticed that I skipped one characteristic, his having power over "maidnes meke" - 1 will return to that later. When we now compare this stanza with similar stanzas in Middle High German, French, or Latin literatures, it becomes immediately obvious that we can exclude a number of candidates at once. Thus, we must not look for a master poet, as those critics have done who want to identify Richard with a certain Richard Spaldyng about whom nothing is known but the mere name - and that name shows up in a manuscript of the fifteenth century only, more than sixty years too late. We can discard the poets as candidates for the following reasons: the capacity of being a master mind of poetry is simply ascribed to our Richard; the stanza as a whole is typical of the praise and the eulogies showered on a patron or maecenas, throughout the whole middle ages. Such an ascription does not preclude the possibility that Richard was more than just a critic of poetry, and composed poems himself; but it is not with reference to his capacity as a poet that we have to identify him. We find similar ascriptions and eulogies of this kind in many Continental poems, in the vernaculars as well as in Latin.5 The fact that there seems to be no example in English poetry before the late 14th and the 15th centuries, does not take a jot away from my statement, for the type is well-known in English prose as early as King Alfred. Please don't propose a poet, then; the words do not mirror social reality. We also have to exclude proposals referring to a certain Richard Hyrd (spelt Hurd, Herd, Hyrd or Hird respectively) in identifying the Richard in question. Eric Stanley once proposed a word play on hyrd in line 67 (which is the English word for the French loan court), comparing "in vch an hyrd" of line 67 with "in a note of', in another Harley lyric, which yields the name Annot, and indeed Carter Revard was able to identify a Richard Hurd in the documents of Hereford Cathedral.6 I am sorry to say that this person turned out to be a lay brother working for the Cathedral as a tanner or tawer (that is German "[Loh]Gerber" or "Weifigerber"). Now though I for one, after reading Bede's account of the poet Caedmon, would never dare to deny the possibility that a tanner may become a master poet, I sincerely doubt that he would also qualify as "well-known scholar and cleric, praised in every court, knowing sciences" etc. In 5

6

Cf. e.g. Gerald of Wales's praise of Archbishop Walter of Coutance, ed. Dimock, Giraldi Opera, vol. 7, p. 38f (RS, London 1877). Cf. E.G. Stanley, "Richard Hyrd (?), 'Rote of Resoun Ryht' in MS. Harley 2253", Notes & Queries 22(1975):155-157; C. Revard, "Richard Hurd and MS. Harley 2253", Notes & Queries 26(1979): 199-202.

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short, then, the hunt is still open, any proposal for a candidate is welcome. As Richard is a common name, the hunt will however yield a "fair feeld ful of folk", if you stick to the name alone. It is therefore fortunate that stanza 6 puts a very strict limit to proposals, and it does so in the one reference to Richard's characteristics which I skipped when discussing the others, namely that he has power over "maidnes meke". Unless I have overlooked a proposal, no-one has so far understood the social reality behind line 67. Once we however discard the poets, and together with them any modern romantic notion which may lead us to imagine a man who by his good looks and enticing words alone would lure all inhibited women into adoring him and making him part of their day-dreams - once we discard such misunderstandings, we are perhaps prepared to accept a few and simple linguistic facts. Of course there is again a play of words with an erotic innuendo, to have power over "maidnes" may indeed imply love, if you want it to be implied and to mean just that. But there is also a quite innocent meaning, for according to the language games of the Church, it refers to a particular social group of women. In clerical speech, the "(meke) maiden" is either Lady Mary or a female saint (I drop both immediately, because they are not referred to); or the "maiden (meke)" is a nun, a religious women living in a monastery or a convent.7 To have "myht" over them, simply means to exercise jurisdictional power in their supervision. From what we know about religious communities of women in the late 13th and early 14th centuries in England, from what we know about their legal status, it clearly follows that Richard must be a bishop. Bishops alone had the right of jurisdiction and supervision, they had "myht" over "maidnes meke" - this is the innocent meaning of line 67.8 In sum, then: Richard, the patron or maecenas addressed in the last stanza, must have been a well-known bishop, famous for his learning, and respected in many courts. When I now introduce you to a person, I do so with the intention to use him as a type, not as a candidate. I am not interested in the person, but rather in the pattern which will help to reconstruct the intellectual climate of our poem as well as of some other love poems in the Harley collection. Please note: it is the pattern, not the person I want to refer to, though of course I use the person to illustrate the pattern. The historical subject I have in mind is Richard de Bury, bishop of Durham from 1333 to his death in 1345. He is well-known as the author of the Philobiblon, 7

8

For Lady Mary, cf. e.g. Thrush and Nightingale 171 ("a maide meke and milde"); for female saints, cf. the early 13th-century prose lives of SS Katherine, Margaret, and Juliana, e.g. Juliana 122 ("Jris meoke meiden"); for nuns being called "(meke) maiden" cf. texts of the ordination of nuns in E. A. Kock (ed.), Three Middle English versions of the Rule of St. Benet, EETS 120, London 1902, pp. 141-50, or Trevisa's translation of Higden's Polychronicon (e.g. VI, 215 "abbas of the same maydens"), etc. The bishop might of course appoint a deputy, but supreme authority rested with him. In only a few exceptional cases (e.g. the Gilbertines) do we know of masters exercising these powers; abbots do not qualify because the times of double monasteries headed by an abbot were long bygone around 1300. Cf. J. Burton, Monastic and religious orders in Britain, 1000-1300, Cambridge 1994, pp. 168-172.

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as a lover and collector of books who ran into debts because of his enormous expenses on books. The earlier stages of his career may be less well-known; they connect him, for example, with Oxford where he was a scholar, or with the diocese of Hereford where he held a prebend, or with the diocese of Wells where he was dean. Just a few facts and figures, to outline his career and connections.9 De Bury, born in the 1280ies, came from a knightly family near Bury St Edmunds, East Anglia. He was in Oxford from 1302 to 1312 where his fame as a scholar attracted the attention of the royal court; Edward II made him tutor of his son, the future Edward III, in the very first year of his son's birth in 1312. In 1322 de Bury became Chamberlain of Chester; the palatinate formed part of the Prince of Wales's appanage. That is: very early in his career, de Bury came into contact with Edward III, and that contact developed into a close connection which continued unbroken until his death. Among the many offices he held for some time during the reigns of Edward II and III, let me simply mention those of Principal Receiver in Gascony, Cofferer to the King, Treasurer of the Royal Wardrobe, Clerk and then Keeper of the Privy Seal, Lord Treasurer, and Lord Chancellor. He was extensively employed by Edward III in his diplomatic service, travelling time and again to the Continent as ambassador: for example, he went on missions to the French court, or to the papal curia in Avignon where he made the acquaintance of Petrarch with whom he afterwards corresponded for some time. He held prebends at Lincoln, London, Hereford, Chichester, Lichfield, and Sarum. When he was finally enthroned as bishop of Durham on the 5th June 1334, the ceremony and the feast were attended by Edward III and his queen, the queen mother, the king of Scots, both archbishops, five bishops, seven earls with their countesses, and all the magnates north of Trent. Richard de Bury was indeed a "clerk ycud" in all English courts. Nor do we lack evidence as to the intellectual climate which characterised his own court at Durham. He attracted to his court the most famous scholars of his day with whom he tended to discuss, or whom he had disputing before him, every day after dinner. Among them we find: Thomas Bradwardine, later archbishop of Canterbury, and in his capacity as scholar showing up in Chaucer's Nun's Priest's Tale; Walter Burley, a logician and commentator on Aristotle with a European fame; Richard FitzRalph, later archbishop of Armagh (Northern Ireland); John Maudit, a well-known astronomer; or the Dominican Robert Holcot whose treatise on dreams is one of the sources of Chaucer's Nun's Priest's Tale. Some of these connections of de Bury go back to his time as a scholar of Merton College in Oxford: Bradwardine, Burley, and Maudit were all fellows of Merton, and it has indeed been said that intellectually the years from c. 1300 to c. 1360, well beyond de Bury's time, were the heyday of the Merton School. Richard de Bury attracted to his court theologians, lawyers, and civil servants: these different social groups did not live in separate compartments necessarily antagonistic to each other, they rather constituted an intellectual communication community in which poetry of the

For de Bury cf. the introduction to M. Maclagan (ed.), Philobiblon by Richard de Bury, Oxford 1960, and N. Denholm-Young, "Richard de Buiy 1287-1345" in id., Collected papers on medieval subjects, Oxford 1946 (chapter 1).

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kind we have in the Poet's Repentance and in some other Harley lyrics could originate.10 A witty play of words, poking fun at one of the members in the audience (all the more so if he be the patron), presupposes the atmosphere of an intimate circle of close friends - and this is exactly what we find among the Mertonians who gathered at de Bury's court. They were all men of letters, literary connoisseurs. When we turn to other lyrics in the Harley collection, we find at least indications that the group of love lyrics as a whole may have originated in and may belong to such a clerical circle of literary connoisseurs. Just to scan a few examples: the Advice to Women in which we glimpse the antbnale position, plays with the situation of the confessor who tries to convince women to abstain from men who are all traitors, only to end up in suggesting a situation in which the confessor (male himself) becomes the potential lover - who, then, is the traitor? In the Fair Maid of Ribblesdale, the uncourtly "wilde wymmen" are presented as, and compared to, objects of courtly adoration, only to end up full circle on an erotic note saying that 'he might say that Christ visited him who could lie with her for a night; Paradise he would have there'. In the notorious Annot and John, the simple meaning 'She is the best of all women' is clothed in complex linguistic, stylistic, rhetorical, and thematic patterns drawing on knowledge one would most easily find in clerical circles, as for example lapidaries, herbals, bestiaries. In the short lyric on Spring, love in the natural universe is contrasted with courtly love, only to end up in the suggestion that courtly love is the unnatural and the erotic drive the natural way of love. That is: though all these lyrics may deal with traditional topics of the courtly tradition, they do so in a quite unconventional way, combining old and new, juxtaposing French and English, thereby adding a new note to the old debate about love. With these few hints I simply want to suggest that we ourselves have to ask new questions about these lyrics. To my mind, they share such a great number of common features that we have best assume their originating as a group, in a clerical (diocesan) circle of literary connoisseurs in which a patron named Richard stood sponsor to poetry which discusses, and experiments with, traditional images and conventions of speaking about love. Part three of my paper, the conclusion. Bishops' courts as cultural centres have far too long been neglected by literary scholars. Though they are on record as centres of learning and culture from their very first appearance, we still tend to think of them as places of seclusion from the world only, as places where theological and moral questions might be discussed and decided upon, as places where only moral and religious literature will have been produced and received. We do not imagine them as places where the secular and the ecclesiastical world could merge completely. Though it is true that we find quite a number of saintly bishops who favoured neither the production nor the reception of so-called secular 10

Beate Schmolke-Hasselmann has argued that de Bury may even have been a mediator between French and English literary traditions: cf. her "Middle English lyrics and the French tradition: some missing links", pp. 298-320 in G.S. Burgess et al. (eds.), The spirit of the court: selected proceedings of the 4th Congress of the International Literature Society, Dover (NH) 1985.

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literature, it is also true that quite a considerable number of cases testify to the contrary; courts like the one of Richard de Bury yield evidence of a different type of cultural manifestations in clerical circles.11 Much of our anonymous secular literature is transmitted anonymously only because it once belonged to literary circles in which it was not yet necessary to sign one's work, in order to identify text and author. Poet and audience were known to each other, they knew their respective pre-understanding(s) - their previous knowledge of literature for example, or their self-understanding as a group, or their attitudes towards particular problems - and could therefore communicate in the medium of literature about chosen aspects of their lives and worlds without in the least bothering about the possibility of others outside their groups understanding their communication. In trying to understand that communication we, the moderns, have to reconstruct the self-evident conditions of their literary communication by historical research. Without such reconstruction, our understanding of it will at least partly impose our own and modern pre-conceptions on the texts (as for example value judgements about the Harley lyrics). We therefore, I think, have to skip the notion of a clearcut complementary distribution of religious and secular texts, of the kind 'here world and secular' on the one hand, 'there church and religious' on the other; all the historical evidence we have suggests that this is not true, that too sharp a distinction between the secular and the religious is a modern view, and a simplistic one at that. Literature is social life: if we want to understand a literary text as the enactment of social life, we have to understand the question to which a text wants to be the answer (Collingwood). 12 In the case of the love poems in the Harley collection, the question may have been to fathom the poetic possibilities of discussing all aspects of the courtly love tradition - conventions, images, motifs, themes; to do so at an ecclesiastical court; to do so in an intellectual and witty play of words in English, and not in French, the language in which that tradition was transmitted and which up to that time was preferred among aristocrats at secular courts.

11

12

A good case in point is that early parody of the roman courtois, the Anglo-Norman Ipomedon, in which the author Hugh of Ruddlan, himself probably a clerical member of the diocesan court of Hereford, continuously pokes fun at the courtly lover in his poem, e.g. by referring him to his own superior knowledge in love, or that of Hugh of Hungary, another member of this diocesan court: A.J. Holden (ed.), Ipomedon, poème de Hue de Rotelande (fin du Xlle sièclej, Paris 1979, e.g. w . 5516-22 Cf. R.G. Collingwood, The idea of history, Oxford 1946, pp. 269-74, 278-302.

Sabine Volk-Birke (Bamberg)

Wycliffite Sermons: A Critical Commentary on Late 14th-Century England Heretics have always attracted the interest of scholars, as their role must be most illuminating in an interdisciplinary history of the mentality of any given period.1 Dissenters throw a glaring light on the conditions of their time, even if it comes from a particular angle only. Their theological non-conformity is often immediately associated - justly or unjustly - with a lack of political loyalty to the government. The reaction to Lollardy has also followed such a pattern. This religious movement, whose main inspiration was John Wyclif, originated among intellectuals at Oxford university, but soon found supporters among knights and later among common people.2 It was quickly associated with sedition, yet this conclusion is both correct and incorrect. The peasant revolt of 1481 was immediately blamed on Lollard heresies, and the attempt was made from several quarters to use the opportunity to strike against Wyclif s followers in the university as well as among noblemen. However, most historians are convinced today that the temporal coincidence of social unrest and Wycliffite views cannot be construed into a causal relation in 1481. Clearly, Wyclif himself stood for pacifism and condemned wars and violence outright. For him, they are never a legitimate means for political or religious reform. In this, the preacher of the Wycliffite sermons agrees with him completely - violence is to be avoided, one should suffer hardship patiently, as this is the common lot of humanity. In the 15 th century, there were indeed Lollard rebellions, but they were ineffective and not all Lollards were in sympathy with them. The first one was led by Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, who was originally a trusted servant of King Henry IV and brave companion-in-arms of the future King Henry V. When it became clear, however, that he held Lollard beliefs, encouraged Lollard preaching, and corresponded with prominent followers of Hus in Bohemia, he was eventually asked to justify himself. He avoided being caught for some time, but was finally arrested and convicted of Lollardy by Archbishop Arundel in September 1413. Instead of having Oldcastle executed immediately after the trial, as was customary, the king and the bishop were anxious to give him the opportunity to recant, and granted him a respite of 40 days in the Tower. During this time Oldcastle managed to escape and began to develop a plan not only for his own revenge, but a Lollard

2

Cf. for example Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou, village occitan de 1294 a 1324 (Paris, 1975); Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy (Princeton, 1983). H.B. Workman, John Wyclif. A Study of the English Medieval Church (Oxford, 1926); K. B. McFarlane, John Wycliffe and the Beginnings of English Nonconformity (London, 1952); Anne Hudson, English Wycliffite Writings (Cambridge, 1978); idem, The Premature Reformation. Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History (Oxford, 1988).

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revolt which would finally enable the sect to implement their reforms, instead of just preaching and hoping for an improvement of Church and society. The exact design of the action is not quite clear. It seems that the king was to be captured and political power was to be seized by force of arms, the nobility and higher clergy were to be dispossessed, Oldcastle to become regent of the realm. McFarlane calls the abortive rising "a reckless enterprise". It would have been impossible to get together enough men without attracting notice, not all Lollards were willing to commit high treason for their religious convictions, and besides, the details of the plot were betrayed to the king.3 So what insurrection there was on 10 January 1414 (obviously very much exaggerated by contemporary chroniclers) ended with about 80 of the poorly equipped and inexperienced artisan rebels being taken prisoner, and without a single casualty on the part of Henry's trained knights. Two days later, 69 prisoners were condemned to death, next day 38 of them were hanged, and seven men who were convicted of obstinate heresy had their bodies burnt afterwards. Oldcastle himself had escaped. Although a thorough hunt for heretics now began, 2 months later the king decided to show clemency to the smaller fry. Although the chroniclers speak of 20 000 Lollards in arms, McFarlane thinks there were no more than two or three hundred Lollards altogether who were wanted, arrested and brought to trial. Besides, it seems that there were quite a few rebels who did not belong to the Lollard community, but were attracted by offers of pay. Oldcastle was finally caught in October, and hanged, drawn, and burnt in December 1417.4 The revolt of 1431 took place while the young king Henry VI was taken to France to be crowned there. Not very much is known about this Lollard rising, except that probably the plan was to overthrow the government and to disendow the Church. The Duke of Gloucester took an armed force to Abingdon, had many Lollards arrested and the ringleaders executed as traitors. By this time adherence to Lollardy was restricted almost exclusively to the lower classes. Neither the university nor the gentry were involved any more. Instead, townspeople, artisans, merchants, and members of the lower clergy constituted the backbone of the movement. However, by the end of the 15th century, Lollard ideas filtered through to people of higher rank, too. The movement survived until the advent of the Reformation and merged with it. Centres of Lollard belief were Leicester, London, Bristol, part of the Chilterns and the Berkshire Downs, and eastern Kent. But even if we can see in retrospect that Lollardy never really was a serious threat to the political establishment of the country, yet it constituted a significant disturbance during the late 14th and the beginning of the 15th century, as is proved by the violence of the reactions against it. I will try to elucidate some aspects of the movement on the basis of the Wycliffite sermons, the largest and most complete vernacular sermon cycle we know from the late Middle Ages. For a comprehensive picture, we must look at several aspects of this text:

3

McFarlane, Nonconformity, p. 167. Cf. also Hudson, The Premature Reformation, pp. 114-119.

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1) its criticism of contemporary abuses of the Church, 2) its theological doctrine, that is, the Lollard bias of the sermons, particularly concerning the Bible and the Eucharist, 3) its author and its readers. This will lead to a consideration of Wyclifs theology and his involvement in politics, the contemporary discussion about the use of the vernacular, and the importance of literacy in the late 14th century. We will thus ultimately come back to the problem of the relevance of Lollardy within late medieval society.

1. Criticism of contemporary abuses The sermons are homilies which include frequent invectives against contemporary practice - or rather malpractice - in the Church. The preacher raises serious accusations. Pride, hypocrisy, and covetousness are the main sins of which pope, bishops, lower clergy and, of course, friars are guilty. They have come a long way from the humility and poverty of Christ and his disciples. The preacher thinks that popes have become worldly rulers in consequence of the Donation of Constantine.5 The authenticity of this document had hardly been questioned until the early 15th century, although several thinkers, among them Ockham, had doubted its legal validity. In this document, which must have been composed between 752 and 850, the emperor Constantine is supposed to have given pope Silvester all worldly power and honour,6 in addition to his spiritual realm, over the whole of the Occident, while Constantine moved to Byzantium and claimed only the East for himself. The evil consequences of this donation, so the preacher points out, can be seen everywhere. Popes and bishops live like emperors, their main interest is financial and not at all pastoral, they use every opportunity to get money. Popes demand what was called the first fruit of a benefice, that is the complete profit of the first year, bishops get paid 100 shillings for the consecration of a church,7 pardons and indulgences are sold everywhere, even preaching has a price, and the absolution is given to many penitents only if they make a large donation, in other words, if they pay for it. The lower clergy act in the same manner as the higher; instead of looking after their parishes they travel to Rome in order to negotiate for a more lucrative position.8 Moreover, the pope demands more and more annual revenue 5

7

8

English Wycliffite Sermons, ed. Anne Hudson, vol. I (Oxford, 1983), Sunday Gospels, Sermon 52, p. 461: "For J>e roote of whiche he cam, J>at is dowyng of f>e chirche and hi3ing of J)e emperour, is not fill hooly grownd of f>e chirche but enuenymed wi{) synne". "imperialis potestas, gloriae dignitas, vigor, honorificentia", cf. Lexikon fir Theologie und Kirche, vol. 6, p. 485. "[preestis] shulden here flee symonye, and neyjiur sulle t>er prechyng, ne o{)ur werkys fiat J>ei don. And J)is for3eton monye men, bofie more preestus and lasse; for popus wolon haue {>e furste fruytus for beneficis {)at ftei 3yuon, and byschopus an hundred schyllyngus for halwyng of o chyrche, and lordus wolon haue long seruyse for o chirche J>at J>ei 3yuen, and }>is is wor{> 3er by 3eer muche rente or muche money." English Wycliffite Sermons, ed. Pamela Gradon, vol. II (Oxford, 1988), Commune Sanctorum, Sermon 83, p. 163. "And {)us secler clerkis ben fülle of ypocrisye, bo{>e popes and byschopes and clerkys vndyr hem. Crist forfendide to putte miracles jjat he hadde doon to pe manhede of hym, for errour

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from the king of England.9 And finally, Pope Urban does not even stop short of a war against Pope Clement - many thousands of people are killed10 because the schism cannot be ended by any reasonable policy, such as both Popes resigning their claims and agreeing to the election of an authentic successor of St. Peter. N o wonder that the preacher traces the inspiration of the Pope back to the devil and antichrist, but not to God and the Holy Spirit, no wonder that he calls the bishops and prelates beasts, because they have given up reason,11 no wonder he thinks that the greatest enemies of the church and of true believers are to be found within the clergy. Priests and bishops, even the Pope, cannot be compared to the good shepherd, on the contrary, they are the wolves of the parable who kill the sheep. 12 The second prominent target of the preacher's trenchant criticism, which dominates a large number of sermons, are monks and friars, also called the "foure sectis". These are the Dominicans (called Preachers, or Jacobites after their Paris convent of St. James'), the Franciscans (called Minorites), the Carmelites, and the Augustinians. The preacher is convinced that all these new foundations are completely without any scriptural basis or justification, on the contrary, their laws and rules contradict Christ's teaching. They, too, are only interested in wealth,

9

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12

in byleue. But J>e fend dredif) not to feyne absolucionys and indulgenses, wij> ofire 3iftys that God grauntyde neuere, to spuyle men of here mone, and not for sowle helf>e for })anne wolde l>ei 3yue freely t>ese 3iftis, as Crist 3af hymself and bad of)re do. And Jras lowere clerkis trauelen by watyr and by londe for to haue benefices and propre possessiounes, more J>an {>ei don for help of mennys sowles. And howeuere ftei speke, f>ei lyuen alle in ypocrisye. And {>us whan men fi3ten, pledon or chiden, charite is not f>er eende, but pniyde and propre hauyng." Sunday Gospels, Sermon 23, p. 316. "And so don vikeres of Crist today, for harde penaunsis J>ei putten on men which sounnen J>er lordchip; and coueytise as penaunse ftei putten a3en resoun J)at J)ei may not grounde bi lawe. And 3if J>ei dispensen J>erwif), it shal be bou3t fill dere for money. And fius f>ei shewen pride of J>er power, and smyten J>e puple wifi coueitise; and J>us J>ei encresen annuel rentis, as J>ei diden wif> J>e reume of Englond, and obblischiden it in nyne hundrid mark to 3yue f>e pope 3eer bi 3eer. " English Wycliffite Sermons, ed. Anne Hudson, vol III. (Oxford, 1990), Ferial Sermons, Sermon 154, p. 89. "Lord! wher Jris pope Vrban hadde Goddis charite dwellyng in hym, whan he stirede men to fy3te and slee many {jousynd men to uenge hym on J>e tojrir pope, and of men J>at holden wi{> hym? 3if Jjat Goddis lawe be trewe, {ris was an opun feendis turne!" Sunday Epistles, Sermon 32, p. 617. "And so 3if we takon heed to popus and prelatis t>at ben now, J>ey fay/Ion foule in byleue [...]. And f)us Jiei faylon as bestis in |)ingus fiat ben byfore hem now, for smoke of pryude and coueytyse lettlj) syt of J>er byleue." Sunday Epistles, Sermon 3, p. 490. "[...] as J)e wolf wij) 30wlyng makef) schep to flocke for dreede, so prelatis by cursyng maken men to gydere hem and 3yue fiese prelatis goodis fiat J>ei wolon haue. And 3eet J>ei han anofiur cawtel J>at f>ese ypocritis vson; J>ei seyn J>at f>ei wolen 3yue suffragies gostly to mennys sowlus fiat passen al fris worldis good; and to colowre J>is ypocrisye J>ei turnen J>er snowte to heuene, and seyn fiat God haf> 3ouen hem power to 3yue pardown as J>ei wolon. And here f>ei 3owlon comunly, and blasfemen in God, and where Crist byddefi hem be schep, dwellyng among woluys, owre prelatis, by f>e feendys lore, ben turned to f>e contraiye whon J)ei stronglon and kylle men, and spuylen hem of f>er goodys." Commune Sanctorum, Sermon 64, p. 52.

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good living, fame and honour and they deceive the people in order to increase their possessions.13 Their preaching style comes in for particular criticism: these friars preach jokes ("japes"), tell fables and falsehoods, and blind people with stories that are not taken from Holy Writ, they boast of miracles they have performed and of the number of saints that have been canonized from their orders.14 The author of the Wycliffite sermons distrusts all these trappings profoundly, they only serve worldly ends; the friars should preach nothing but the gospel, all they need to rely on is the law of Christ. But such criticism of the Church is not unique in the 14th century. Langland and Chaucer for example see the same abuses, although they use different literary genres, different styles, and different techniques to expose them. The Wycliffite preacher refrains from irony, satire, allegory, or stories about individuals, he never deviates from his chosen path of straightforward analysis, polemics, and exhortation. There are few variations of tone, few images, and almost no humour. Should we then assume that this is due to the seriousness of the preacher's commitment? Should we take his bitterness and his exaggerations as the mark of an incorruptible zeal for reform? Are these sermons the result of a disinterested missionary spirit, working for the benefit of the Church? Before we can answer these questions we must look at the theological doctrine of these texts.

2. The Lollard bias of the sermons A close reading of these homilies reveals to an attentive reader who is well aware of the theological and philosophical debate in the late 14th century that they are indeed full of implicitly or explicitly Lollard views.15 In several sermons objections 13

"For to begynne at pe freris: [...]pei wolen sitte, wip lordis and ladies at }>e mete fill dignely; and in chirchis J»ei han per plasis bifore alle opere men, so pat J>ei may not be more nye to wordly staat pan J>ei ben. And algatis Jjei wolen be gret among comunetees of men, and be clipid maystis and doctours for J>e hyenesse of per name." Ferial Sermons, Sermon 154, p. 90. "[...] {>es ordris blyndon men wip talis bysyde holy writ, pat so monye myraclis han pei doon, and so manye seyntis of hem ben canonysude. But pis speche par no man trowe, but 3if pei teche [rat it is Godus word; for it is ynow to men to trowe Godus lawe, and o{>re pingus f>at pei perseyuen wip per wittis, al 3if pei be not gylude wi{> fablis." Sunday Epistles, Sermon 28, p. 596. "And wi}> pis synne ben frerus bleckude pat schapon to preche for wynnyng here; and herfore pei prechon pe puple fablus and falshede to pleson hem. And in tokne of J>is chafFare pei beggon aftur ^at pei han preched, as who sey, 3if me pi money pat I am worjii for my prechyng. And {lis chaffare is sullyng of prechyng howeuere pat it be florisched. Soply prestus may medefully aftur per sarmones ete wip folk, but not chalange for per sarmownes, nepur by dette ne by custom." Commune Sanctorum, Sermon 83, p. 164. Cf. for example: "O men pat ben on Cristus half, helpe 3e now a3enyus anticrist; for pe perelows tyme is comen pat Crist and Powle teldon byfore. But o counfort is of kny3tus, pat pei saueron myche pe gospel, and han wylle to redon in Englisch pe gospel of Cristus ly3f. For afturward, 3if God wole, pis lordschipe schal be take fro preestis; and so pe staf pat makep hem hardye a3enys Crist and his lawe. For pre seeds fy3ton here a3enys cristene mennys secte; pe furste is pe pope and cardynalys, by false lawes pat pei han mad; pe

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are raised against private oral confession, the secular powers are encouraged to correct the abuses of the clergy, if necessary, by taking their worldly possessions from them, true priests preach according to God's law only, that is, on the basis of Scripture, and many passages that deal with the much-debated contemporary question of predestination and free will have a clear Lollard bias. It should not be forgotten that this question is closely linked with the justification of demands made by the clergy on the laity - those not in a state of grace have no dominion over others -, so that even this seemingly remote theological or philosophical question has powerful political implications. The two most crucial points of Lollardy, however, relate to Bible reading and the Eucharist. The preacher takes the reading of Scripture in the vernacular by the laity as a matter of course, and he denies the orthodox interpretation of transsubstantiation. We will come back to both these points at a later stage. All these views were considered heretical from 1380 to 1520. This would have had grave consequences for those who possessed these texts, read them or preached from them, or even were known to have listened and consented to them. In other words: this was extremely dangerous literature. From 1382, itinerant Lollard preachers were persecuted and imprisoned. From 1388, commissions of laymen and ecclesiastics had the task to search actively for Wycliffite writings as well as for those who read them or taught them, and local mayors and sheriffs had to assist in this activity. Owners or readers of Wycliffite sermons were thus in danger of being punished by imprisonment and forfeiture of property.16 Although England never had an inquisition, in 1401 the statute De Heretico Comburendo came into effect, which opened up the possibility to punish obstinate or lapsed heretics, that is those who were convicted a second time, with death by fire. The sermons reflect this problem in several discussions of martyrdom.17 They also talk about heresy, but they apply the term not to Lollards, but to representatives of the Church - clearly the definition of heresy depends on the point of view of the speaker. The Lollards represent authentic Christianity for the preacher, whereas the bishops, friars, and priests who accuse the Lollards of heresy lead such reprehensible lives that they pervert Christ's teaching and must be regarded as the real heretics.18 Yet notwithstanding the dangers connected with these writings the

16

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secownde is emperour byschopys, wyche dispyse Cristus lawe; f>e Jmdde is {>e pharisees, possessyoneiys, and beggerus. Alle Jx:se Jjree, Godis enemyes, traueylon in ypocrisye and in worldly coueytyse, and ydelnesse in Godys lawe. Crist helpe his chirche from {>ese feendys, for Jjei fy3te perelowsly." Commune Sanctorum, Sermon 66, p. 64. Cf. Margaret Aston, "Lollardy and Sedition", Past and Present 17, 1960, 1-44, p. 33 f., and H. G. Richardson, "Heresy and the Lay Power under Richard II", The English Historical Review 51, no. 201, 1936, 1-28. Cf. particularly Sermon 66 from the Commune Sanctorum. On the whole, the preacher does not encourage reckless confrontation. One should know when it is wise to escape from danger and when one has to take a firm stand and risk even martyrdom for the sake of one's belief. Once caught, one should not deny Christ's law, nor confess a falsehood. There is no need to worry what to say, because Christ himself will teach the true believer which words to use. The same holds true for the word "sect" or "feend" or "anticrist". In the Lollard sermons, these are all applied to representatives of the establishment, such as the pope, bishops, and

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majority of the 31 known manuscripts of this English sermon cycle are professional productions, costly, and carefully overseen. Their shape and number suggest that behind them stood money, great learning, and efficient organization.19

3. Author and readers of the sermons The question who wrote or preached these sermons and who listened to them or read them has not yet been answered fully by scholars. The sermons were originally attributed to Wyclif himself by his first editor Arnold, but are today, more cautiously, called Wycliffite. Since 1983 the cycle is being edited and commented on by Anne Hudson, the last of the 4 volumes is to appear shortly. Hudson thinks that the cycle was written between 1390 and 1400, in a scriptorium in the East central Midlands, perhaps in Braybrooke, possibly even in Oxford, by a Lollard author. The cycle would have been suitable for preaching as well as for private reading.20 Although a number of Lollard communities seem to have existed almost in secrecy, there were also very prominent itinerant preaching activities going on. Apparently the skills of individual priests were astonishing, as they made many converts by their sermons. In fact, the size of the communities often depended on the charisma of an individual preacher. We have ample evidence of the dangerousness of this missionary activity as well as of simply reading vernacular devotional works or the Bible in conventicles, let alone of holding Lollard beliefs. The theological foundations of such beliefs are discussed in these sermons with a remarkable degree of assurance. Their author must have been one of the first generation of Lollards faced with the problem of discussing intricate theological and even legal problems and explaining doctrinally complex issues in the vernacular to a lay audience whose theological knowledge may have been only rudimentary. This is a remarkable achievement, as there was as yet little or no precedent for such subject matter in the English language. Yet it seems that although the preacher keeps coming back to important points of doctrine, he does not have to begin to convert his audience. One rather feels that he speaks to a community who shares his views anyway and who only needs pastoral confirmation, not missionary zeal. This impression is supported by the fact that the Lollard bias of these sermons is implicit rather than

20

friars. They are all called enemies of God, and Christ is implored to help his church (i.e. the Lollards) against these devils. - Not only in vocabulary (words are never a reliable indication of the Lollard bias of a text in themselves, but if the context is taken into consideration, then meanings emerge which are specifically Lollard, cf. Anne Hudson, "A Lollard Sect Vocabulary?", Lollards and their Books (London, 1985), p. 170), but also in style Lollards seemed to contemporaries to use a specific language. At least this is one of the accusations directed against them in pamphlets and disputations. Cf. English Wycliffite Sermons, ed. Ann Hudson, vol. I, p. 196 f. As the preacher sometimes makes suggestions for amplification, we can assume that these sermons were designed for oral performance (cf. also Sabine Volk-Birke, Chaucer and Medieval Preaching. Rhetoric for Listeners in Sermons and Poetry (Tübingen, 1991)), whereas other features of the manuscripts point to their use as reading material.

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explicit, covert rather than overt, certainly there for an attentive listener or reader to perceive, but not paraded aggressively. If this is so, then we can perhaps assume that the circle of people ready to discuss theological, and, by implication, political issues on the basis of Scripture was widening, and that the vernacular was beginning to accommodate these needs by the late 14th century. We shall discuss this question more fully later. In order to sketch the contemporary background of these sermons we must come back to the role of Wyclif. Although he was not their author, it is clear, however, that they are based at least to a large extent, though not exclusively, on Wyclifs Latin sermons - even though their author may not have relied on the extant Latin cycle, nor indeed on the Latin cycle in the form in which we have it now. It is assumed that Wyclifs Latin sermons underwent a continuous evolution from about 1377 to his death in 1384, so the author of the English sermons could have used any one of the various stages of the Latin sermons as his basis. Clearly there is a close, if complicated relationship between Wyclifs Latin sermons and this English sermon cycle. So we should look at the evolution of Wyclifs thoughts when we want to fill in the background to these sermons, even though the extent of his later involvement with the Lollards, after his retirement to Lutterworth, still remains to be elucidated, and even though the Lollard movement itself changed from an intellectual to a popular one. But there is no doubt that Wyclifs ideas, as expounded in his Latin works, provide the background for the beliefs which provoked such strong theological and political opposition against the Lollards from about 1380 to the second half of the 15 th century. Wyclifs teaching at Oxford university related initially mainly to philosophy and theology. But in 1373 he was asked by the government to defend its position in negotiations with the Pope which were politically highly explosive: is the Pope allowed to impose taxation on the English clergy and to appoint candidates to senior posts in the English church? This is one of the most hotly debated points in late 14th century diplomacy. After his return from the negotiations (which ended in a compromise that was virtually a victory for the Pope) Wyclif wrote a treatise on the problem, under the title On Civil Dominion, connecting theological positions with political consequences. Wyclifs thesis is as follows: a man in sin has no right to dominion or lordship, and a man in a state of grace possesses all the goods of the universe.21 The problem is, however, how the subjects of the realm and the members of a congregation are to know if their temporal or spiritual lord is in a state of grace or not, so that they can decide whether they must pay their taxes and tithes or not? Wyclif does not spell out all the consequences of his theories. But he is quite willing to criticize the clergy for their sins. Priests and prelates, he says, who are manifest sinners, forfeit their right to church property. "From all this follows that whenever an ecclesiastical community or person habitually abuses its wealth, kings, princes and temporal lords can take it away".22 No wonder that John of Gaunt, in pursuit of his own political interests, invited Wyclif to preach sermons 21 22

Cf. Anthony Kenny, Wyclif (Oxford, 1985), p. 45. Ibid., p. 49

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in London which criticized the bishops' wealth and worldliness. The bishops retaliated, Pope Gregory sent bulls of condemnation, but without much success for the moment. On the contrary, Wyclif was employed by the royal council to write an expertise on the question if the kingdom of England may lawfully keep back its treasure even if the Pope himself demanded money from the king. Wyclif did not disappoint his employers, who were powerful enough to protect him. It is essential to see that Wyclif s social criticism, particularly of the abuses of the church, does not simply spring from his own reforming zeal first and foremost. McFarlane speaks of "a thoroughly human compound of nationalist sentiment and puritanical censoriousness"23 which fuelled widespread public opposition to what was regarded as unjustified papal intervention into national concerns. Moreover, there was envy from all those who did not profit from papal provisions: the landed classes, whose ancestors had made massive endowments, the profits of which could now be pocketed by foreigners, as well as the poorer clergy who could not hope for even a small slice of the large cake. This is the contemporary feeling of which Wyclif must have been thoroughly aware. He looked to the English government to correct and reform the financial abuses of the higher clergy and the monasteries, and so does the preacher of the English sermons. Obviously Wyclif s critique of his times has its evolution within his own career, and its connection with previous criticism24 as well as with the same kind of criticism from other contemporary quarters at home and abroad. Pope Gregory died, and the election of his successor, Urban VI, gave hope to many Christians for a new pious and dignified ruler of the Church who was bent on reform. But within a few months the great schism broke out. This was not without consequences for Wyclif. As his views became more and more opposed to orthodoxy, he would have been subject to disciplinary action from Rome, if the Pope had been free to act. Urban, however, did not dare to stir up trouble in England, because he relied on the political allegiance of the English. Thus Wyclif profited from the very schism which he attacked as one of the greatest evils of the Church in his time. So far, Wyclif had defended positions which made him an anarchist in many people's opinion, but he was not yet a heretic. When he published his views on the Bible and on the Eucharist, he had crossed this Rubicon. As the examinations of the Lollards in trials show, their view of the Eucharist was regarded as the most explosive question.25 We should not regard the interpretation of this sacrament as a remote theological subject. On the contrary, the Eucharist had a most important position in the centre of the later Middle Ages. In her recent book Corpus Christi. The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture Miri Rubin states that at the centre of the whole religious system of the later Middle Ages lay a ritual wich turned bread into flesh - a fragile, small, wheaten disc into God. [...] The eucharistic wafer was 23 24

McFarlane, Nonconformity, p. 53. He is indebted for example to Richard FitzRalph's On the Poverty of the Saviour. Almost equally important was their knowledge or even possession of religious books in the vernacular.

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constructed as a symbol for which over hundreds of years, and all over Europe, people lived and died, armies marched, bodies were tormented or controlled by a self-imposed asceticism. [...] The eucharist provided an idiom through which life-worlds, interests, experiences and needs came to be articulated, in positions taken, and the claims made, for and against and about it.26

The eucharist is not only the core of the celebration of every mass, it is also newly emphasized and brought to attention through the institution of the feast of Corpus Christi in the middle of the thirteenth century. The feast began to flourish from the beginning of the 14th century. Public response was very lively, many activities sprang up around it, for example public sermons, fraternities, processions, and drama. Clearly, the Eucharist "possessed a central signifying power".27 Wyclif s position on the nature of the eucharist is a complex one. He always maintained that what appeared to the senses as bread really was the body of Christ. But on philosophical grounds he could not accept the theological position that although the accidents of the host remain those of bread, its substance is changed into the body of Christ. So eventually he wrote that the consecrated host is really and truly the body of Christ, but not corporally, in its substance.28 Besides, he was convinced that the priest cannot consecrate the host unless God does it for him, and that the healing power of the sacrament of the alter can only reach the believer if he receives it in the right spirit, if he lives in the love of God and obeys the divine commands. What can be seen quite clearly here is that Wyclif (and our Lollard preacher with him) devalued the role of the sacraments, and, automatically, the importance of the ordained priest as mediator between God and the laity, whereas he exalted the role of the Bible, which he regarded as God's law that must be applied to contemporary society. So the WyclifEte doctrine of the Eucharist makes perfect sense within the whole system of their beliefs. The status of the laity had always been rather inferior in comparison with the clergy, who provided sacramental access to God. This changed considerably now. Preaching was more important than the sacraments. Moreover, as the laity obviously lived more virtuous lives than the clergy, the sermons considered them as the members of the Church through whom reform could come, whether by following the example and precepts of Christ in humility, poverty, and suffering, or, if their political position gave them power, even by chastising the clergy. Wyclif s book On the Truth of Sacred Scripture, which grew out of his detailed studies of Scripture and its interpretations by the Fathers, also supported this attitude from a different angle. It turned out to be another provocation of orthodoxy. Wyclif makes three main points: 1) that the Bible is free from error, 2) that the justification or validity of all historical developments in the administration of the Church and in the interpretation of the Bible must be judged on the basis of 26 27

28

Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi. The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge, 1991), p. 1. Ibid., p. 5. "vere et realiter..., non tamen essentialiter, substancialiter, corporaliter vel ydemptice", cf. the excellent short article on Wyclif in Gestalten der Kirchengeschichte. Mittelalter II, hg. Martin Greschat (Stuttgart, 1983) 219-233, p. 229.

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the text of the Bible alone, and finally, the most revolutionary point of all, that the Bible, if it is the authoritative text of Christianity, must be at the disposal of everybody, not only the clergy, in Latin, but also the people, in English. The effects of this last argument are far-reaching. Two translations of the Bible, a literal and a later idiomatic version, are made during the last two decades of the 14th century; the latter is judged by modern critics as orthodox, untendentious, very readable, and remarkably accurate, considering the magnitude of the task.29 There is, however, another translation of parts of the Bible into English, which can be found in the Wycliffite sermons. The cycle follows the Sarum rite throughout the Church year and provides a sermon for every Sunday Epistle and Gospel, the Gospel for every Feast of a Saint, and the Gospel for every special weekday, 294 sermons all in all. The preacher invariably translates faithfully the whole of the Gospel or Epistle which constitutes his text, so he offers the congregation a complete vernacular prose translation of those parts of the Bible which are used in the liturgy. The manuscripts show that this must have been considered one of the most important features of the sermons by the scriptorium, as all passages that translate the Gospel or Epistle of the day (but not the translation of other Bible passages!) are carefully underlined in red ink, so that they are visually separated from the preacher's own words. Both the accurate translation directly from the Vulgate and the marking of the respective passages are very unusual for the genre - other preachers may translate individual passages or give the gist of a particular episode from the New Testament, but none of them provides a prose translation that is in any way comparable to those in the Wycliffite Sermons. Verse translations, such as the Orrmulum, or the Northern Homily Cycle, were considered harmless for the laity, as they did not constitute an exact, quotable text on which a theological argument could be based.30 According to Margaret Deanesly, there is no evidence of the Gospel being read in English before the sermon during mass until 1538.31 Although a great number of Latin texts were translated into the vernacular by the late 14th century, it could not come as a surprise to Wyclif and his followers that their effort to put an authoritative Bible text into the hands of the laity was not regarded as a desirable democratic gesture or even a large scale missionary activity, but provoked an outcry against their recklessness and irresponsibility. The Wyclif Bible as well as these sermons elucidate one issue which is at the same time theological, linguistic, social and political. It affects the whole structure of Latin intellectual culture versus English popular culture, scholastic university debate versus orthodox lay instruction, clerical experts in exegesis versus amateur readers unfamiliar with any commentary tradition or historical context.32 29

30 31

32

The classic on the medieval English Bible is still Margaret Deanesly, The Lollard Bible (Cambridge, 1920), in chapter 5 of The Premature Reformation Anne Hudson sums up what seems to her a generally acceptable position within the very controversial contemporary discussion in this field. Ibid., p. 146. Ibid., p. 199. In this context it is very revealing that Wyclif was finally forced to stop preaching, but he could continue to write his Latin books, and at some earlier point in his career he was asked to

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The theory of translation in the preface to the Wyclif Bible is one of "access to a textual legacy", not of appropriation of a text.33 It can be traced back to patristic theories, notably those of Jerome. In this tradition, translation "points beyond itself to an originary authority that cannot be overtaken or displaced".34 Translation of the Bible is possible and desirable because the ultimate truth of the Bible exists irrespective of the language in which it is written. The act of translation simply makes the text accessible to a larger number of people, it does not resignify the text. But the picture is even more complex. The two Wycliffite Bible translations represent two different theories of translation whose relative merits are already debated by Roman grammarians and rhetoricians. The first, literal version, which is almost a gloss on the Vulgate, is an illustration of the word-for-word translation which fell mostly into the province of the grammarian and textual commentator, whereas the second, idiomatic version is an illustration of the Ciceronian and Horatian ideal of a sense-for-sense translation, which asks not for the faithful grammarian, but for the effective orator. The idiomatic translation, however, always contains an element of appropriation of a text, even if a faithful rendering is intended. We know little about the motives which led to either version of the Wycliffite Bible, except perhaps that the literal version was hardly intelligible without reference to the Vulgate, but it is easy to see that the confidence in the powers of the vernacular cannot have been on the decline. The two translations trace the development from a deferential, modest gloss on the Vulgate to a fully fledged assertion of the potential of the English language to serve the purpose of the word of God just as well. This belief is well established and the technique well mastered by the time the Lollard author composes these sermons: he does not copy from existing Wycliffite Bible translations, but makes his own idiomatic translation from the Vulgate. The general outcry against such popularizing of Scripture can be heard distinctly in a letter by Archbishop Arundel to Pope John XXIII in 1411: "This pestilent and wretched John Wyclif, of cursed memory, that son of the old serpent ... endeavoured by every means to attack the very faith and sacred doctrine of Holy Church, devising - to fill up the measure of his malice - the expedient of a new translation of the Scripture into the mother tongue" .35 Such a position would have sounded strange to anybody after the publication of the Authorized Version of the Bible. But theologians had not only doubtful reasons for their reaction, such as preserving exclusive rights and therefore power for an elite. Spontaneous lay interpretation of the Bible could lead into error. Arundel may have had mixed motives for the measures he took in 1409 when he published his Constitutions. But he had clearly realized by that time that the question of the vernacular was a crucial one, if not the very core of the problem of Wycliftite beliefs. The Constitutions

34 35

carry his ideas no further than to Latin debates at Oxford. Rita Copeland, Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages. Academic Traditions and Vernacular Texts (Cambridge, 1991), p. 225. Ibid., p. 225. Cf. G. W. H. Lampe, ed., The Cambridge History of the Bible. The West From the Fathers to the Reformation (Cambridge, 1987), p. 388.

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consisted of a number of very strict regulations concerning the right to preach and the subject matter of sermons. No discussion of any sacrament was allowed, nor any critique of the clergy in front of a lay audience: both are rules which the Wycliffite sermons break in a flagrant manner. They also included a prohibition of the use of any book or tract by Wyclif in the schools, unless these had been examined and found orthodox, and a clause which forbade anybody to make a translation of Scripture into English, or to own an English version of the Bible unless special permission had been obtained from the diocesan.36 No doubt the reading and exegeses of Scripture had developed into a fine art over the centuries and had accumulated many volumes of commentary. It rested not only on vast resources of theological thought, but also on a knowledge of at least the Latin version of Scripture, if not its Greek or Hebrew sources. This kind of scholarship could not be mastered by those without a degree in divinity, let alone by persons without any university education at all.37 Clearly, nobody knew this better than the Bible scholar Wyclif. He did not expect any theological or scholarly finesse from the average reader, on the contrary, he thought that this was not necessary to a correct understanding of the Bible. In this point, the preacher of the English sermons is completely in accord with him. The most important of the four levels of meaning in Scripture is for both the literal sense, and this, they claim, is completely intelligible to any reader. The absolute truth of God's law, as the Lollards call the New Testament, is virtually self-evident. What the preacher of the Wycliffite sermons adds in his homilies to his faithful translation is the "secounde wit of J>is gospel", the sensus allegoricus, "whan men vnderstonden by wit of J)e lettre what t>ing schal fallen here byfore J>e day of doome" (Sunday Gospels, Sermon 12). This is not only the basis of the preacher's admonitions and exhortations to his congregation, it is also the foundation of the passages that express criticism of contemporary practice in the Church. The preacher points out direct parallels between the faults and abuses which were censured by Christ and the corresponding sins in late 14th century society. When the sacred text is made available to the laity in this indiscriminate manner, when their powers of reading and interpreting are thus valued and put virtually on a par with the whole apparatus of scholarly learning, and when we take into consideration other, secular translations of Latin texts into the vernacular, then it looks as if the exclusiveness of clerical learning were breaking down. The intellectual powers of the lay person seem to be equal not only to the knowledge, but also to the inspiration of the ordained priest. Against this background it is not 36

37

Cf. Anne Hudson, "Lollardy: the English Heresy", in: Lollards and their Books (London, 1985), p. 146 f. Cf. Lampe, Cambridge History, p. 391. When lay persons with Lollard convictions turned out to be not only literate, but most familiar with the Vulgate, Canon law, and patristic commentary, there was even more reason for alarm. In the trial against Walter Brut bishop Trefnant of Hereford employed a formidable team of experts against the heretic. Cf. Anne Hudson, '"Laicus literatus': a paradox of Lollardy", in: Heresy and Literacy, 1000-1530, ed. Peter Biller and Anne Hudson (Cambridge, 1994), 222-236.

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at all surprising that the Lollard movement did not collapse when it lost its connection to Oxford university, and not even when it lost the support of politically influential knights. Let us wind up this discussion of the relevance of the Wycliffite sermons within the cultural context of the late Middle Ages with a glance at the connection between Lollardy and literacy. The Wycliffite belief in the importance of Bible reading was one of the strongest incentives towards literacy among those who might not necessarity have needed it otherwise, and it encouraged those who could read to rely on this skill in even greater measure. The Lollards treasured books, they took great pains to possess or borrow them for private reading.38 This again of course encouraged a kind of communal spiritual life and must have helped to knit them more closely together in local circles. Brian Stock has pointed out the significance of textual communities for heretical movements of the 11th and 12th centuries. A textual community, that is, "a group of people whose social activities are centred around texts, or, more precisely, a literate interpreter of them" makes "the hermeneutic leap from what the text says to what they think it means; the common understanding provides the foundation for changing thought and behaviour". Stock argues that this principle takes us to the heart of broader issues linking literacy, heresy, reform, and group organization [...] the group adopted as a norm for behaviour within a given context a type of rationality inseparable from the text. The sense of logical interconnection thereby established could then be applied critically to other issues.39

Certain similarities seem to emerge between Stock's analysis and the implications of Lollard literacy. On the one hand, the importance of the text as well as its great length and complexity must have encouraged the Lollards not only to listen to preachers who read and interpreted the text for them (as in Stock's textual communities), but to acquire the ability to read the text themselves and consequently to be their own interpreters, too. Orthodox opposition to lay Bible reading derived its vehemence not simply from a reluctance to share a previously exclusive text, or even from the fear that the laity would misread individual passages, but from the realization that this was a decisive challenge to the relation between text and truth that had so far been determined by the clergy alone. When Stock points out that the consequence of textuality in the 12th century was a growing intellectualism, then this holds true in a different way for the late 14th and early 15th century in England, too. Chaucer drew attention again and again to the reality of immediate individual experience in contrast to the models for perception provided by traditional authorities. The readers of the Wycliffite sermons are asked again and again to observe the reality around them, to judge the clergy on the basis of their actions, not their words, in short, to rely on their own epistemological capacities. The norm of virtuous behaviour was there for them to refer to as often 38

Margaret Aston, "Lollardy and Literacy", in: Lollards and Reformers. Images and Literacy in Late Medieval Religion (London, 1984), 193-217. Brian Stock, Implications, p. 522 f.

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as they read their Bible, here they could see God's law in plain English, unadulterated by any perversions brought about by historical developments, canonical subtleties, or papal decrees. All they had to do is compare the text with the world around them. Lollard interpretation of the Bible has effects in two different directions, inward and outward. It creates a close-knit textual community which is grounded in a particular interpetation given to the text (considered heretical by those outside of this community), and it creates an attitude towards contemporary society which results at least in fierce verbal criticism of this society (the preacher repeats several times that one cannot be silent in the face of all the abuses of the Church), if not in actively promoting reform, perhaps even through more violent forms of change. At the same time, the debate of theological issues, explicitly banned from orthodox preaching in Archbishop Arundel's Constitutions of 1409, helped to develop a vernacular language that could cope with such theoretical subject matter. All in all, Lollardy, originally arising from a mixed origin of politics, sharp philosophical analysis, and commitment to theological and pastoral reform, eventually made a significant contribution to the intellectual emancipation of the English speaking laity. In this process, the Wycliffíte Sermons provide a clear spotlight which illuminates the whole context of late medieval culture with its theological, political, social, and linguistic implications.

Ursula Schaefer (Berlin)

The Late Middle English Paston Letters: A Grammatical Case in Point for Reconsidering Philological Methodologies1

On the other side of the Atlantic, Mediaeval Studies have recently come under severe methodological attack. In the 1990 January issue of the venerable journal Speculum, published by the Medieval Academy of America and dedicated to the topic of New Philology,2 Lee Patterson launched an attack against established American Mediaeval Studies. 3 1 just want to give you one sample: If medievalists have been willing to accept [...] professional conventions longer than those in other parts of the humanities, as a sign, conscious or not, of their definitive premodernity, the same acquiescence in the master narrative of their own and their subject's alterity also permits, at the level of scholarly method, the continued entrenchment of outmoded positivism (1990: 103).

There are evident differences between German and American (and also British) Mediaeval Studies in languages that may at least partly be attributed to the different departmentalization and also compartmentalization of fields of research in the humanities here and there. We could thus discuss at length the 'historicity' of these accusations in considering the place Mediaeval Studies have been assigned in the American academic curriculum. However, this is not what I intend to do here. When I gave my paper the subtitle "A (Grammatical) Case in Point for Reconsidering Philological Methodologies", this was neither to avert the accusation of "pre-modernity", nor further to entrench the "outmoded positivism" that allegedly characterizes our trade. Moreover, I am not discussing here whether "altenglische Diphthonge" produce a "besseren Englischlehrer" - a fact Thomas Finkenstaedt so sarcastically doubted only a few years ago (1992: 11). I would rather delineate a few ideas on the methods of approaching the large corpus of the 15th-century Paston Letters at the end of the 20th century. This is

2

3

For the printed version of my paper I have enlarged the range of examples to substantiate my point. - Before giving this paper at Greifswald, I had various opportunities to present the linguistic core of my argument advanced here in lectures given at Aachen, Rostock, and Regensburg. I want to take this opportunity to thank all the colleagues - and in particular Professor Rolf Berndt (Rostock) - whose critical remarks in discussing the paper have helped in clarifying some critical points I advanced. Cf. also the contributions by Stephen G. Nichols, Siegftid Wenzel, Suzanne Fleischman, R. Howard Bloch and Gabrielle M. Spiegel in the same Speculum number 65.1 (1990); Karl Stackmann 1994 discusses New Philology from a German - and Germanist - point of view. Cf. also Patterson 1987, esp. pp.3-74. I am discussing this aspect in my forthcoming article "Mediävistik heute?"; cf. also Schaefer 1993.

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not meant to be a methodological discussion per se, weighing the pros and cons for this or that approach. Instead I want to look at the - often tacit - assumptions that underlie many of our questions, demarcate obvious interfaces between 'purely linguistic' and 'purely literary' questions (if such a 'purity' is not a meaningless construct in the first place), and finally widen the scope to show what New Philology may contribute to our studies. The collection we refer to as the Paston Letters - which not only comprise letters strictu sensu but also other documents pertaining to this 15th-century family of influential Norfolk gentry - may be approached from various angles. Above all it has served as a primary source for social historians. This aspect I will leave aside here. For language historians the Paston Letters are a rich source for studying 15th century English. Literary historians, however, have not been very interested in these documents, except perhaps in referring to them as examples of what Standop and Mertner have called a "kraftvolle Prosa" (51971: 174). Here is the point that also attracted my attention to the Paston Letters. Whether the Paston Letters' prose is really "kraftvoll" or not: it is (late) Middle English prose, and it is apparently neither a translation from nor otherwise dependent on the two other dominant literary languages in England: French and Latin. In terms of my own interest in gaining a fuller understanding of the development of an English Schriftsprache I turned to the Paston Letters as examples for the 'second rise' as it were, of the English idiom in writing. In the following I will sketch what I consider 'preconceptions' with which we approach texts like the Paston Letters. Subsequently I will present a few examples from this corpus, which will finally lead me to some preliminary conclusions with regard to more recent approaches as they are applicable to the Paston Letters.

1. Preconceptions For historical linguistics the Paston Letters are a rich source for the study of the phonological, grammatical, syntactical and lexical 'state' of the English language in the 15th century. Compared to the majority of English texts that have come down to us from that period, they have the advantages mentioned above of being (a) prose texts and (b) seemingly independent of (and thus linguistically not influenced by) a French or Latin source. Such deliberations are of utmost importance for language historians. Their fellow linguists who study a modern 'living' language may analyze the structure of the language under consideration with living competent native speakers. Historical linguists, in turn, need to take recourse to written records. However, this fact - the fact that it is inevitably written language that historical linguists must study (unless they go for asterisked forms) - is usually not accorded much attention. In view of the Paston Letters - texts in written prose - historical linguists, rather, are happy to have at their hands prose, tacitly surmising that prose 'represents' or 'duplicates' language 'as it is spoken'. And this they do because it is seemingly a 'linguistic universal' that 'everyday' oral communication does not happen in versified

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language.5 Thus the cause of the Bourgeois Gentilhomme's astonishment - that he has been speaking prose all his life - is simply accepted as fact. As much as historical linguists, literary historians may be interested in the Paston Letters (if they regard them worth their attention at all), because these are prose texts. Literary historians turning to prose usually deal with it within the dichotomy of'poetry' vs. 'prose'. For modern literature - until about the twenties of our century - this distinction translates into the 'lyrical' and the 'narrative' mode of literary expression. For mediaeval literature, however, this distinction is invalid up to about the 13th century, as texts in the 'narrative mode' of the earlier period are usually versified. And even if there are prose 'narratives' from the earlier period such as jElfric's homilies rendering saints' legends, they depend on Latin sources and, on the other hand, bear 'rudimentary' characteristics of indigenous versification such as alliteration and a specific rhythm which make them at least mearcstapas between the two modes. Things change dramatically in the high Middle Ages, when vernacular - and secular - narrations in prose appear on the continent. - Not so in England. I would tentatively account for this difference between the continent and England by maintaining that - after the disaster of 1066 - the English language was for quite some time simply not yet fit for being used to produce prose literature.6 But this question is not central to the issues with which I am concerned here. Suffice it to remark that this difference between the continent and England has not received much attention in English literary studies, apart from Chambers' ardent plea for "[The] Continuity of English Prose from Alfred to More and his School" (1932). Evidently, what Chambers had in mind was not the type of prose that we meet in the Paston Letters. And this also is not the type of prose literary historians usually deal with. In terms of traditional generic classification letters do not belong to what literary historians ordinarily conceive of as their object. However: in terms of Lausberg's distinction between Verbrauchsrede and Wiedergebrauchsrede, many letters are not 'Verbrauchsrede' either. Some, though, may be or may have been: Once they have served their purpose - that of conveying a verbal communication from one person to another person while the two are separated spatially - , they have been 'used up', as it were. But then, what about, for example, the famous correspondence between Abaelard and Heloise (if it is not fake in the first place)? 5

6

In their discussion of the 'established boundaries' in our disciplines, Stephen Greenblatt and Giles Gunn remark with regard to literary studies: "One of the ways in which historical claims of territory are established is through continuous possession, inheritance, ancient titles. A simple example in literature (as distinct from criticism) is rhyme. There is no reason in nature (including the nature of social life) why nonliterary discourse should not rhyme - we may notice, in fact, that rhyme is a frequent feature of the nonliterary. But literature has an ancient title to systematic, self-consciously sustained rhyme" (1992b: 7). This discussion still needs to be led with regard, for instance, to the Old English metrical charms or the Old English 'collections' of gnomic verses. Are they 'poetry' because they have come down to us in alliterative longlines? Cf. Hildegard Tristram's discussion of this problem in Tristram 1988.

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Without joining those post-modern scholars who deny a difference between 'literary' and 'non-literary' texts, I think that the text type letter, in particular mediaeval letters, creates a considerable problem with regard to assigning it a place inside or outside traditional literary classifications. For one thing, we know - by the very shape in which they have come down to us - that the Paston Letters were not considered 'Verbrauchsrede'. They were 'filed', and this 'filing' was done in a way suggesting that no categorical difference was made between 'letters proper' and other documents such as an agreement between the family and a priory or the will of a family member.7 Moreover, there is another aspect that cuts across our traditional concept of a 'literary text': In the Middle Ages writing letters was an art proper - the ars dictaminisldictand.8 Both observations contradict traditional philological concepts. In a general survey on the "Transformations of English and American Literary Studies" Stephen Greenblatt and Giles Gunn have remarked the following about what literary historians deal with: Another development that has focused fresh attention on the map-making practices of literary studies has been the reconception of its object. What was once conceived as a "work" is now, in most fields of scholarship, construed as a "text", and this critical shift of focus from forms of the signified to processes of signification has raised serious questions about a number of other widely accepted interpretive conventions. (1992b: 3; my italics)

Post-structuralist literary studies most happily turn this around and say that all texts - by virtue of their manifesting "processes of signification" - are fit objects for their attention. For the time being I hesitate to subscribe to this in its entirety. Yet: what I indeed agree to is to question the applicability of heuristic categories at the very moment when they are historically - or should we say: 'historicizingly? questionable or downright inappropriate. In view of the Paston Letters we meet difficulties in assigning the text type letter to either the category of 'Verbrauchsrede' or of Wiedergebrauchsrede'. I suppose that the contemporaneous senders or their secretaries would have frowned at the question of whether they produced a letter for keeps or for disposal. And one important reason for this stupendous reaction could have been that they knew themselves indebted to a specific discourse tradition.9 That is, they consciously followed prescripts of the ars dictandi, an act that intersects with both of these categories. The art was the reproduction of models with a fixed structure and formulaic diction. - And last but certainly not least: if this art was not already mastered by the individual sender of the letter, it was the secretary to whom the letter was dictated, who gave the letter its 'artistic' shape.10

7

g S. Davis' "Introduction" in Davis 1971.

10

For a good introduction into this question s. Constable 1976; Norman Davis discusses this issue particularly in view of the Paston Letters in Davis 1967. For the notion discourse tradition cf. Koch/Oesterreicher 1985. Cf. for this paradigmatically the discussion of 'scribal problems' in Margaret Paston's letters by Davis 1951/52.

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The fact that we are dealing with dictated texts is pertinent for 'purely' linguistic studies. Their compliance with the ars dictandi denies their spontaneousness, and makes untenable the view that they were 'simply' media transpositions of what could as well - and in the same shape - have been uttered orally. With all this in mind, let me now discuss a few examples. I will do so by concentrating on what at first glance seems to have hardly anything to do with the problems to which I have just alluded. It is the question of the use of -ing forms in these letters. 2. -ing constructions in the Paston

Letters

Within a certain scope of variation the ars dictandi prescribes the following structure of a letter: (1) salutatio, (2) captatio benevolentiae/recommendatio, (3) narratio, (4) petitio, (5) conclusio. This may be illustrated, for instance, with Margret Paston's letters to her husband, where (1) and (2) are congealed in fixed formulae, while the opening of (3) seems in free variation: Nr. 126

(Dated prob. 1443, 28 Sept.; hand unidentified; Davis 1.218) Ryth worchipful hosbon, I recomande me to yow, desyiyng hertely to here of your wilfare, thanckyng God [...]M (Right worshipful husband, I recommend me to you, desiring heartily to hear of your welfare, thanking God [...])

Nr. 135

(Dated 1449, 9 May, hand of two other of Margaret's letters; Davis 1.235) Ryt wurschipfull hosbond, I recommand me to 30U, desyring hertyly to here of 3owr wellfare, prayi[n]g 30U [...] (Right worshipful husband, I recommend me to you, desiring heartily to hear of your welfare, praying you [...])

Variations of these formulae are also used in letters by other senders, for instance in that of Alice Crane to Margaret Paston, who, however, has a different type of transition to the narratio: Nr.711

(Dated perh. 1455, 29 June; hand unidentified; Davis 11.339) Ryght worshipfull cosyn, I recomaund me vn-to you, desyryng to here of youre welfare; and if it like you [...] (Right worshipful cousin, I recommend me unto you, desiring to hear of your welfare; and if it like you [...])

11

It is interesting to note here Davis' editorial footnote that in the manuscript there is no space between worchipful and hosbon; on the graphic level this supports the fonnulaicness of this address.

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In two letters from Eleanor Duchess of Norfolk to John Paston I (1455) and Katherine Duchess of Norfolk to John Paston III (1480-6) we find a different set of formulae: Nr.524

(Dated 1455, 8 June; clerk's hand; Davis II. 117) Right trusti welbelouid, we grete you hertili weel. And for as muche as it is thought right necessarie [...] (Right trusty and well-beloved, we greet you heartily well. And for as much as it is thought right necessary [...])

Nr.808

(Dated 1480-6, 2 October; formal secretary hand; Davis 11.449) Right trusty and entierly welbeloued, we grete you wel hertily as we kan. And for asmoche as we purpose [...] (Right trusty and entirely well-beloved, we greet you well heartily as we can. And for as much as we purpose [...])

Let us now look more closely at the transitions from the salutatio and recommendatiolcaptatio benevolentiae to the narratio. It is evident that this is a place where textual coherence may pose a problem, which, however, is solved by the ars dictandi. Thus, in the Paston Letters a rule is transferred to this place which has been set forth in an Anglo-Norman treatise of the middle of the fourteenth century for the transition to the conclusio.n There we find the advice to phrase [...] la comencement de v[ost]re Narratione issint que vous puiss6s comprendre la Narratione et Petitione en un clause et sa Conclusione ou un Participle, en seste manere: [...] (Ed. Uerkvitz, p.32) ([...] the beginning of your narratio in such a way, that you may comprise the narratio and the petitio in one clause, and its conclusio in one participle in this manner; [...])

In the letters from Margaret Paston - as we have seen before - a participle construction is already used in the transition from the salutatio to the recommendatiolcaptatio benevolentiae (Nr. 126 and 135); 'desiring heartily to hear of your welfare'. And so it is in Alice Crane's letter (Nr. 711). Within the formula desiring to hear of your welfare the (necessarily prepositioned) -ing form topicalizes the very core of the captatio benevolentiae. In Alice Crane's letter to Margaret Paston (Nr.711) we find an extensive - even excessive - use of such 'connecting' present participle constructions. In line 3f. it says (my arrangement):

12

Cf. Davis 1967: 8.

The Late Middle English Paston Letters The cause of my wrytyng

to you at this tyme is this

319 prayngyou (4)13

And there follow several appositional participle constructions: thankyng you of (6) also prayng you (10) Also thankyng you (15) prayng you of (16) 14

Only once is this series interrupted by the fresh start: "Also I pray you that" (8). To a modern reader these repetitive participles do not look any more elegant than an "...and... and... and + finite verb" series. Yet Alice Crane or her amanuensis must have thought this series of participle constructions the generically 'correct' - to our minds: hypercorrect - way of phrasing. It should be remarked that here - other than with Margaret Paston - the transition to the petitiolnarratio is not immediately performed with an absolute present participle construction. The phrase "of my wrytyng to you" is rather the attribute to "the cause", and one may regard this as something like the Latin gerund construction causa scribendi - ; the 'proper' participle transitions then syntactically follow as complements to the verb phrase. Phrases like my writing to you are classified in the Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language by Quirk, Greenbaum, et al. in Present Day English as "nominal -ing participle clause" (15.12),15 here as part of a prepositional complement. In view of the stylistic use of such constructions in Present Day English Quirk/Greenbaum note that "the style is formal" (ibid.). And they classify the my - historically correct16 - not as the possessive pronoun, but rather as 'subject in the genitive', insisting that this -ing-iorm just is not the verbal substantive. And indeed: in this case the verbal character of writing becomes obvious in the following prepositional object to you. We have a parallel case in the construction "thanckyng God of your a-mendyng of J)e grete dysese" (2; 'thanking God of your amending of the great disease') in Margaret Paston's letter Nr. 126. Here the construction "thanckyng God [...]" immediately connects with what has been said before. Within this construction the nominal constituent is once more a prepositional object "of your a-mendyng", which itself is a 'nominal -ing form' (cf. Quirk/Greenbaum 16.7f.). And again, the verbal character of "a-mendyng" is conserved by the prepositional object "of £>e grete dysese". A very striking bundle of examples in this vein is found in the opening of a letter from Agnes Paston to William Paston (Nr.13, Davis 11.26; dated prob. 1440, 20 April): 13

15

16

MnE: 'The cause of my writing to you at this time is this, praying you [...]'. MnE: 'thanking you of (6); 'also praying you' (10); 'also thanking you' (15); 'praying you of (16).

According to the convention among linguists the quote references are to the chapter numbers. Cf. for instance Brunner 1962: II.355f.

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Dere housbond, I recomaunde me to yow, &c. Blyssyd be God, I sende yow gode tydynggy.s- of f>e comyng and t>e brynggyn hoom of Jie gentylwomman that ye wetyn of fro Redham {¡is same nyght, acordyng to poyntmen that ye made }>er-for yowre-self. 'Dear husband, I recommend me to you, etc. Blessed by God, I send you good tidings of the coming, and the bringing home of the gentilwoman that ye know of from Redham, this same night, according to appointment that ye made there for yourself.'

First of all, an effort is made, to "comprendre la Narratione [...] en un clause". Within this 'clause' we have, for one thing, the plural verbal noun tyddynggys.11 Next we have pe comyng in the attributive prepositional phrase ofpe comyng and pe brynggyn hoom. Comyng is coordinated with brynggyn, the latter, however, having the (infinitive) ending -yn. The definite article pe endows both comyng and brynggyn with qualities of nouns, while the adverb hoom - certainly complementing both comyng and brynggyn - supports their verbal character. Moreover we may interpret of the gentylwomman as 'subjective' with regard to comyng and 'objective' with brynggyn. This example perfectly substantiates Mustanoja's observation of the "overlapping in syntactical functions" of the infinitive, the verbal noun in -ing, and the present participle (1960: 1.511).18 - The only 'proper' present participle in this extract is acordyng {to), which is an adaption of the French acordafujnt (as in the well-known line in Chaucer's "General Prologue" to the Canterbury Tales. "Me tynketh it acordaunt to resoun" (37)). Let us briefly reconsider the instances and uses of -ing forms here. In Margaret Paston's letters that we have had a look at, we have the topicalizing use of absolute present participle constructions which evidently have a 'comprising' function at the point of transition from the captatio to the narratio. With the alternating use of 'praying' and 'thanking' the core of Alice Crane's letter - a series of petitiones - is held together. All of these constructions may be accounted for as following (or rather extending) a rule of the ars dictandi. Moreover, both in the two letters of Margaret Paston and in Alice Crane's letter under consideration, we find what may be termed 'gerund' constructions with nominal as well as verbal characteristics. These testify to the growing use of such constructions - at first sight spreading independently of any such 'artistic' rules. Finally, in the sample from Agnes Paston's letter we find a massive co-occurrence of -ing forms, which - at least on the surface - cannot be accounted for in terms of 'artistic' participle transitions but rather as an attempt of'artistically comprising' the narratio in 'one clause'.

17

18

According to the OED the noun tiding goes back to a loan from Old Norse appearing first in Late Old English; in other words: it is not really a derivate of the verb base tidan. The -yn in brynggyn must, of course, in this instance be interpreted (by us) as 'ungrammatical', because in this syntactic place no infinitive may occur. However: judged from the linguistic point of view of the present scribe an -yn form and and -yng form may stand side by side (although we would say that systematically the infinitive and the -yng form are not interchangeable here); for other instances of 'interchangeability' of infinitive and -ing forms cf. Mustanoja 1960: 1.511.

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3. Conclusions With regard to overall English language history I hold it indispensable to take what I call "the medial question" into consideration. The abundant - and at times insecure - use of -ing forms we just observed, are a good example: the 'nominal -ing clauses', e.g., in particular with the 'possessive' or 'subject in the genitive' have since remained in a form of discourse that may be called 'conceptionally literate' ("konzeptionell schriftlich"; Koch/Oesterreicher 1985). As Quirk/Greenbaum remark for Present Day English: "The genitive form [...] is often felt to be awkward and stilted" (16.42); and Brunner observes: "[Der] Genitiv bzw. das Possessivpronomen [sind] in solchen Fällen eher literarisch" (1962: 11.356). With direct reference to the Paston Letters Norman Davis says: Constructions of this kind can be found in early Middle English and slowly become commoner; in the Wycliffite Bible they are frequent. But they are so much more numerous in the fifteenth-centuiy letters than anywhere else that they may fairly be attributed to the epistolary tradition in particular [...]. (1967: 8f.)

And with regard to English language history he draws the important conclusion that these (and other) grammatical forms "are not colloquial in origin but developed in written use" (1967: 9). Whether paying attention to such observations - in this case: the finding that 'nominal -ing clauses' belong almost exclusively to the Schriftsprache - has an ultimate bearing on systematic linguistics I am not in a position to decide. But how will we ever know if we do not ask the question in the first place? As we have seen, the occurrence of such constructions must be considered in conjunction with precepts in the ars dictandi. I concede that there are whole passages in those letters that seem to display less 'regulated' (and also less 'prefabricated') discursive techniques. Nevertheless: once we have become aware of the influences of the ars dictandi on the phrasings of the Paston Letters, and once we have, moreover, become aware that the letters are products of dictation and subsequent redaction, we must avoid treating them as 'spontaneous' speech in spite of their being in prose. All of this also bears on the question whether texts like the Paston Letters belong to the corpus of interest to literary historians. The contemporaneous conception of these letters evidently was not that of 'Gebrauchsrede', in spite of their 'prosaic' diction. Pragmatically, though, they must have been in part, technically they most certainly were not conceived as such. In view of such overlaps and intersections a number of long cherished 'boundaries' collapse. Thus: unless we want to give up completely, we must reorient ourselves. In its theoretical indebtedness to Derridaian Poststructuralism and Deconstruction the New Philology suggests a reorientation by "redrawing the boundaries", which is the title of the volume on "The Transformation of English and American Literary Studies", edited by Stephen Greenblatt and Giles Gunn in 1992. In this volume Anne Middleton has characterized the New Philology as

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[...] an interpretive practice grounded in the manuscript matrix of texts, as a cultural place of "radical contingencies" that contrasts sharply with the rationalized and codified textual forms that were the imaginative objects of early humanist philological endeavor and were in turn sustained by print culture [...] (1992: 27).

I strongly support this warning against "imaginative objects", objects that are given a reality as 'appropriate' objects of specific scholarly scrutiny because of more or less traditional and unquestioned assumptions. And the contextualization of the Paston Letters that I have attempted here should have also shown the necessity of realizing contingencies. Whether they are radical, I do not know. However: they certainly are relevant, and they clearly call for a reconsideration of established literary and linguistic - in other words: philological - methodologies.

References Bloch, R. Howard (1990), "New Philology and Old French", Speculum 65.1, 38-58. Brunner, Karl (1960-62), Die Englische Spache. Ihre geschichtliche Entwicklung, 2 vols., Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. Chambers, R. W. (1932), On the Continuity of English Prose from Alfred to More and his School (Extract from the Introduction to Nicholas Harpfield's 'Life of Sir Thomas More' edited by E. V. Hitchcock and R. W. Chambers) London: Oxford UP. Constable, Giles (1976), Letters and Letter-Collections, vol. 17 of Typologie des sources du moyen äge occidental, ed. L. Genicot, Turnhout: Brepols. Davis, Norman (1951/52), "A Scribal Problem in the Paston Letters", English and Germanic Studies 4, 31-64. - (1967), "Style and Stereotype in Early English Letters", Leeds Studies in English, n.s. 1, 7-17. - (1971-76), Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century, ed. N. Davis, 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, part 11971; part II 1976. Finkenstaedt, Thomas (1992), "Entwickeln oder Abwickeln? Anglistik und Lehrerausbildung in der ehemaligen DDR und anderswo", Zeitschrift fiir Anglistik und Amerikanistik 40, 10-13. Fleischman, Suzanne (1990), "Philology, Linguistics, and the Discourse of the Medieval Text", Speculum 65.1, 19-37. Greenblatt, Stephen and Giles Gunn (1992a), Redrawing the Boundaries. The Transformation of English and American Literary Studies, ed. S. Greenblatt and G. Gunn, New York, N.Y.: The Modern Language Association of America. - (1992b), "Introduction." Greenblatt/Gunn 1992a, 1-11. Koch, Peter and Wulf Oesterreicher (1985), "Sprache der Nähe - Sprache der Distanz: und Schriftlichkeit im Spannungsfeld von Sprachtheorie und Mündlichkeit Sprachgeschichte", Romanistisches Jahrbuch 36, 15-43. Lausberg, Heinrich (31990), Handbuch der literarischen Rhetorik. Eine Grundlegung der Literaturwissenschaft, 3. Aufl. mit einem Vorwort von Arnold Arens. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. Middleton, Anne (1992), "Medieval Studies." Greenblatt/Gunn 1992a, 12-40. Mustanoja, Tauno F. (1960), A Middle English Syntax, Part I: Parts of Speech, Helsinki: Société Néophilologique. Nichols, Stephen G. (1990), "Introduction: Philology in a Manuscript Culture", Speculum 65.1, 1-10.

Patterson, Lee (1987), Negotiating the Past: The Historical

Understanding of Medieval

The Late Middle English Paston Letters

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Literature, Madison: University of Madison Press. - (1990), "On the Margin: Postmodernism, Ironic History, and Medieval Studies", Speculum 65.1, 87-108. Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum et. al. (1985), A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, London/New York: Longman. Schaefer, Ursula (1993), "Alterities: On Methodology in Medieval Literary Studies. - The Albert Lord and Milman Parry Lecture for 1991-1992", Oral Tradition 8, 187-214. - (forthcoming), "Mediävistik - heute?", in: Insular Literature II, ed. Hildegard L. C. Tristram, ScriptOralia, Tubingen: Gunter Narr Verlag. Spiegel, Gabrielle M. (1990), "History, Historicism, and the Social Logic of the Text in the Middle Ages", Speculum 65.1 (1990), 59-86. Stackmann, Karl (1990), "Neue Philologie?", in: Modernes Mittelalter: Neue Bilder einer populären Epoche, ed. Joachim Heinzle, Frankfurt/M.: Insel Verlag, 398-427. Standop, Ewald and Edgar Mertner (21971), Englische Literaturgeschichte, 2nd ed. Heidelberg: Quelle und Meyer Verlag. Tristram, Hildegard L. C. (1988), "Aggregating Versus Integrating Narrative: Original Prose in England from the seventh to the fifteenth century", in: Mündlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit im englischen Mittelalter, ed. Willi Erzgräber and Sabine Volk, ScriptOralia 5, Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag. Uerkvitz, Wilhelm (1898), Tractate zur Unterweisung in der anglo-normannischen Briefschreibekunst nebst Mitteilungen aus den zugehörigen Musterbriefen, Diss. Greifswald.

SECTION I V : SOUTH AFRICA

Erhard Reckwitz (Essen)

Introduction I The awareness that, also as far as literature is concerned, the centre no longer holds has begun to filter down sufficiently far by now to reach the English departments of at least some German universities. But even before this process set in, one single look at the names of Booker Prize winners, as well as of those authors that 'only' made it as far as the short list, should have sufficed to convince even the most stalwart defenders of the classical literary canon that, from about the mid-Seventies onward, the Empire was writing back with a vengeance: It is now writers from Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, South Africa, Nigeria, plus from a sprinkling of other former British colonies, that determine the fate of English literature to such an extent that one feels rather hesitant about using the capital E, thereby somehow insinuating the continued existence of an entity like the 'central' English canon in the sense of Leavis' Great Tradition. But despite this more recent burgeoning of a literature more english than English, what is indeed amazing in retrospect is the fact that the ongoing cultural transactions between the centre and the periphery should have gone unnoticed for such a long time. This is partly due to the circumstance that the centre itself, with its insistence on its civilizing mission and the attendant ideology of bringing culture to the most far-flung corners of the globe, combined with its silencing of other cultures, was intent on obfuscating to what an extent it was retroactively influenced as well as changed through its contact with newly discovered and conquered worlds. These changes are manifested in the immense allure exerted by "marvelous possessions"1 in the New World, in the terrors held by "dangerous pilgrimages" to the unknown, or in the melancholy contemplation of living in a lapsed state inspired by encounters with allegedly 'noble' savages that had not been exposed to the corrupting influence of European civilization. All this, in its turn, gave rise to a host of travel writings - all of them more or less imaginary, no matter whether they were factional or fictional in intent - , a spate of philosophical speculation as to what constitutes the essence of man, and, most importantly, a vast body of texts that can count as literary transcodings of the challenge posed to European imagination by an ever expanding world - from Luis Camoes' Luisades through Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe to Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

2

3

Cf. Stephen Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions. The Wonder of the New World, (Oxford: OUP, 1991). Cf. Malcolm Bradbury, Dangerous Pilgrimages. Trans-Atlantic Mythologies and the Novel, (London: Seeker and Warburg, 1995). Hinrich Fink-Eitel, Die Philosophie und die Wilden. Über die Bedeutung des Fremden für die europäische Geistesgeschichte, (Hamburg: Junius, 1994).

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These are, however, only the superficial symptoms of the more deep-seated changes wrought at the level of the underlying systems of signification and representation. The discovery of the New World put an end to the allegorical relationship hitherto presumed to obtain between worldly events and a body of authoritative texts that were, so to speak, officially entrusted with the task of bringing every new occurrence within the purview of some established paradigm. The unheard-of or unthought-of marvels encountered in the early stages of the colonial enterprise eventually rendered null and void the explanatory force of such allegorical préfigurations, in the process shifting the emphasis onto the individual encountering things on its own terms without having recourse to a preexisting mode of cognition, thereby changing the previously valid order of things intellectually, culturally, and, in the last resort, politically.4 It is no exaggeration to say that the discovery of the New World rang in the beginning of the age of modernity in its widest sense, with expectation of the new to come for the first time in human history exceeding the bounds of acquired past experience, and the forward-looking sequentially of time replacing the spatial concept of experiential stasis.5 But apart from these phenomena more distant in time, there are other more recent cultural achievements, generally believed to be authentically European or American products emanating from some central Western wellspring of originality, which, on closer inspection, reveal themselves as at least partly conditioned by the centre's transactions with the periphery: Thus Terry Eagleton has argued that James Joyce's Ulysses, one of the highlights of aesthetic modernism, could only have originated in a peripheral, quasi-colonial backwater like Dublin where the modernist dismantling of what had so far counted for reality - human agency, causality, linear time - was easier and more natural to achieve because here these concepts were not so deeply entrenched as in, say for instance, London.6 Equally as pertinently Edward Said has formulated this unacknowledged indebtedness of the centre to the margin: "Most histories of European aesthetic modernism leave out the massive infusions of non-European cultures into the metropolitan heartland during the early years of this century [...].1,7 What this brief historical sketch is supposed to lead up to is the conclusion that, in refusing to realize that its dealings with the periphery were definitely two-way, the centre was foreclosing an essential opportunity of understanding its own identity in terms of certain important cultural and historical preconditions. This goes far beyond the usual hermeneutic tenet that any dialogical understanding of the other ("Fremdverstehen") automatically entails a better understanding of the self ("Selbstverstehen"). On the contrary, since the history of the other is so inextricably interwoven with that of the self, we can only afford to neglect the 4

6 7

Cf. Donald E. Pease, "Author", in: Frank Lentricchia, Thomas McLaughlin (eds.), Critical Terms for Literary Study, (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1990): 105-117. Cf. Reinhart Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft. Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten, (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1979). Cf. Terry Eagleton, The Ideology of the Aesthetic, (Oxford: OUP, 1990): 321f. Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism, (London: Vintage, 1994; ' 1993): 292.

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former at our own peril. It was, at least partly, the Empire's writing back so vociferously that created or furthered our awareness of this, thus holding up to the centre the cracked looking-glass of a servant. Another important influence, almost coinciding with the rise of the postcolonial novel, was the discovery, in the guise of poststructuralism, of the Western subject's decentredness, its absolute dependence on a differential system of meaning not of its own making, and the ensuing dismantling of all those "hiérarchies violentes"8 set up by this subject in order to valorize what it held most dear: the superiority of men over women, white over black, culture over nature, reason over unreason, centre over periphery, and so on. It can be argued that our eurocentric consciousness would have been less susceptible to the startlingly new representations of reality provided by the 'english' authors mentioned above if we had not been alerted, on a theoretical metalevel, to the fact that there can be no selfhood without a clearly defined otherness, that no centre can pose as such without having previously relegated all that it deems negative to the margin, or that there can be no picture without a frame shutting out the rest of a contingent world. Thus the seemingly unmediated "presence" of the identity of the self is subjected to a semantic "detour" which in turn "distances" the self from itself, as Derrida has put it. Or, to express this insight in Foucaultian terms, the discursive normality posited by "l'histoire du même" is contingent upon what is excluded as the 'abnormal' "histoire de l'autre". This means that within the binary economy of the "Manichean Allegory"9 the self is only capable of being as good and valuable as it has managed to denigrate the worth of the other, this other being, psychoanalytically speaking, that part of the self which the former is so intent on repressing. These systematic considerations, carrying to extremes some of the basic tenets of Saussurean differential linguistics, later on formed the ground for what came to be known as postcolonial theory, especially as it was evolved by Homi K. Bhabha, one of its practitioners most indebted to post-Saussurean linguistics, Derridean deconstruction, Lacanian psychoanalysis and Foucaultian discourse analysis. It was Homi Bhabha in particular who, with his insistence on the "hybridity" of "the colonial subject", by which term he designates not only the subjected colonized but also the subjecting colonizer, was instrumental in systematically developing the mutual dependence of the one upon the other, thereby proving the dominant culture to be just as "displaced", i.e. deprived of unquestioned self-presence, as that of the dominated.10

9

10

Jacques Derrida, Positions, (Paris: Minuit, 1972): 56f. Abdul R. JanMohammed, "The Economy of Manichean Allegory. The Function of Racial Difference in Colonialist Literature", Critical Inquiry 12 (1985): 54-87. Cf. Homi K. Bhabha, "Signs taken for Wonders: Questions of Ambivalence and Authority under a Tree outside Delhi, May 1817", Critical Inquiry 12 (1985): 144-156, and "The Other Question: Difference, Discrimination and the Discourse of Colonialism", in: F. Barker (ed.), Literature, Politics and Theory. Papers from the Essex Conference 1976-1986, (London: Longman, 1986): 148-172.

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This intricate relationship between colonizer and colonized arguably also applies to the South African context which, even though on a smaller national rather than a grand global scale, is equally marked by the mutually alienating "specular fascination" (Lacan) typical of any colonial encounter. Expressed in more specific literary terms, this means that one should beware of establishing a narrowly defined canon of South African English literature that, in its splendid isolation from any of the other cultures, would not take into account such interdependencies. On the contrary, under the given circumstances every literary text, whatever its language English, Afrikaans or any of the indigenous languages - , quite inevitably bears the traces and marks of a multiplicity of other texts from other cultures that impinge upon it, and in relation to which it acts, however consciously or unconsciously, as a kind of response. As a result of this dialogical process every text is inevitably made to resemble a complex 'metaphorical' overlay of meanings, whose semantic presence unto itself is rendered problematic by its, often unacknowledged, differential relationship with other texts. South African literature can thus be best understood, in the Barthesian sense, as an echo-chamber with a multiplicity of voices criss-crossing and reverberating. An awareness of this puts an end to the notion of a monologically dominant culture silencing all the other voices with which it is in competition. Especially now that, under the new dispensation, all eleven languages, and by implication cultures, have been accorded equal rights, literary scholarship, in its attempts to historically as well as systematically examine the specifically South African relationship existing between "nation and narration" (Bhabha), can no longer afford not to take cognisance of this complex state of interculturality as well as intertextuality of all the texts produced in this country. Accordingly, all the papers presented in the South Africa section, in one way or another, address the issue of mixedness, hybridity or ambivalence: Ampie Coetzee, in his key-note lecture, argues in favour of discarding the notion of literary history with its implications of linearity and totality, and replacing it with the Foucaultian concepts of discourse and genealogy, thereby accommodating the multifariousness of discursive instances as well as the disruptions and silences within one particular discursive field so typical of South African literature. Mbulelo Mzamane's key-note lecture complements this approach by highlighting the extent to which the supposedly 'silenced' oral tradition of South Africa has been kept alive as a constant black subtext running underneath the dominant white text, eventually emerging in the form of a particular kind of black writing that is as undeniably contemporary as it is a harkening back to some older tradition. Zbigniew Bialas deconstructs the assumed factuality of colonial map-making and travel writing by showing them to be merely symbolic, in the process exposing the representational grammar and rhetoric through which the semiotic alterity of the colonized territories and their peoples is 'naturalized' and suppressed in order to serve the colonizer's cognitive as well as material purposes.

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Martina Ghosh-Schellhorn, in her essay on autobiography, analyses the manner in which the search for identity informing every autobiographical project, whether by white or black writers, in the South Africa context is vitiated and rendered ambivalent by remaining locked in the binarism of racial specularity. Ambivalence, though in a more positive sense, is also the theme sounded in Bernd Schulte's paper on Es'kia Mphahlele's cultural politics, whose idealistic insistence on an essentially ambivalent or open interculturality as a possible resolution of racial and cultural conflict he sees endangered by the levelling influences of economic postmodernity. Frank Schulze-Engler, in his turn, questions the desirability of a unitarian cultural identity in South Africa, especially in view of the fact that most literary representations of civil society as the enabling condition of such an identity tend to go off on a tangent from each other, which suggests that, at best, something like a highly delicate balance between different cultural alternatives can be achieved. Paul Goetsch, in a detailed analysis of Nadine Gordimer's latest novel, demonstrates the extent to which the spatial symbolism of that text is concerned with overcoming barriers, with crossing over, thereby, however implicitly, opening up creative vistas of a multicultural society. Finally, Manfred Gorlach, in a linguistic survey of the current state and possible development of South African English, outlines the extent to which language is capable of accommodating a wide range of dialectal or sociolectal divergences from the (white) standard while still retaining its function as a means of communication within a national community. The overriding concern of all the section papers with the mixedness and possibly irreconcilable contradictions so typical of the present situation in South Africa may be regarded, in Lacanian terms, as a sign of the 'mature' stage of the symbolic order with its social checks and balances replacing the 'infantile' stage of specular binarism and its obsession with the racial Other, or as Patricia Waugh has put it in another, more general context: "If [...] maturity is the ability to live with ambiguity, hesitation, contradiction and paradox and still be capable of belief, then to grow up may be to live suspended between [two states], resisting the temptation to come to the security of ground on either side."11

11

Patricia Waugh, Practising Postmodernism. Reading Modernism, (London: Routledge, 1992): 164.

Ampie Coetzee (Western Cape)

South African Literary History The Black and the White Perspective

1. Introduction Before April 1994 being white in South Africa in practice meant being colonialist if one interprets that concept in terms of internal colonialism, or modern colonialism of a special kind. According to this view the social realities in South Africa were defined as follows: Internal colonialism corresponds to a structure of social relations based on domination and exploitation among culturally heterogeneous, distinct groups.1 Because South Africa combines the worst features both of imperialism and colonialism in a single national frontier ..."Non-White South Africa" is the colony of "White South Africa".2 All who then had the right to vote for the central minority government - even those of us who resisted from within the country - were part of a Eurocentric culture which had built its hegemony and ruled over the non-European, peripheral world. Our forefathers from Holland and England invaded what to them was a world to be charted, divided, described and inscribed according to their visions. But like Joseph Conrad's Africa (in Heart of Darkness) and E M Forster's A Passage to India these lands were unapprehendible and too large3. From Forster's novel we read:

2

3

Quoted by Harold Wolpe from Gonzalez Casanova, in The theory of internal colonialism1. Beyond the Sociology of Development. Economy and Society in Latin America and Africa. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London and Boston, 1975:231. Colin Bundy, 'Around which corner?: Revolutionary theory and contemporary South Africa'. Transformation, Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa, University of Natal, Durban. 8(1989):3. The concepts 'imperialism' and 'colonialism' will coincide with the meanings given by Edward Said in Culture and Imperialism, Vintage, London, 1994:8: "As I shall be using the term, "imperialism" means the practice, the theory, and the attitudes of a dominating metropolitan centre ruling a distant territory; "colonialism", which is almost always a consequence of imperialism, is the implanting of settlements on distant territory ... In our time, direct colonialism has largely ended; imperialism ... lingers where it has always been, in a kind of general cultural sphere as well as in specific political, ideological, and social practices". Cf. also pp. 12, 267, 268, 271, 290, 327, 345, 359, 407. Said, 1994:243.

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Coetzee

How could the mind take hold of such a country? Generations of invaders have tried, but they remain in exile. The important towns they build are only retreats, their quarrels the malaise of men who cannot find their way home. India knows of their trouble. She knows of the whole world's trouble to its uttermost depth. She calls "Come" through her hundred mouths, through objects ridiculous and august. But come to what? She was never defined. She is not a promise, only an appeal4. That w a s in 1924. Still today the novelist writing from these lands cannot find the meaning o f landscape and country. The Afrikaans writer Karel Schoeman's traveller from Holland in 'n Ander Land ( 1 9 8 4 ) {Another Country) attempts to describe a landscape in South Africa: Only from the deck of a ship on the open sea, after the last land has disappeared behind the horizon, has he seen desolation like the plain he is now looking across, unmarked by a house, a tree or any other sign of life, an empty space waiting for something to happen, a page which has never been written5. And a German pastor says: In other countries there are gods and spirits in the woods, in the ravines and streams, but here there are none. No spirits have ever taken possession of this land, no gods have been born here, nothing has ever happened here. There is only this empty space, this silence (1984:2256, own translation). In his most recent novel - Die uur van die engel ( 1 9 9 5 ) (The Hour of the Angel) Schoeman reiterates by asking:

-

Who can understand this aloof and excluding landscape that makes no allowances, the space upon which roads and towns are merely temporarily etched like engravings in the top layers of the rock which over the ages will inevitably weather, peel off and disappear, the emptiness in which the imprint of a foot will not remain and the sound of voices blowing away, hardly audible on the wind'6. Stephen Greenblatt in his study o f travel writing characterises European representational practice as follows: 'Struggling to grasp hold o f the immense realms newly encountered, Europeans deployed a lumbering, jerry-built, but immensely powerful mimetic machinery, the inescapable mediating agent not only o f possession but o f simple contact with the other' 7 . Today w e k n o w that representation is not adequate, that language cannot represent reality. Nevertheless the first imperial narratives, the travel texts 8 that described South Africa and its people created constructs o f those people 4

6

Quoted by Said, 1994:243. 'n Ander Land, Human & Rousseau, 1984:31. Human & Rousseau, 1995:384. Marvelous Possessions. The Wonder of the New World, Clarendon Press, Oxford. 1991:23. Said says that 'imperialism has monopolized the entire system of representation' (27), and considers imperialism as the 'founding' ideology of the English novel (cf. p. 82); he adds: ' ... the novel as a cultural artefact of bourgeois society, and imperialism are unthinkable without each other' (84). My view is that one can begin before the novel, with the travel journal.

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constructs that are still alive today; without the country, its people, those narratives and those constructs there would be no white Afrikaans and white English literature in South Africa. As all South African writing up to 1994 has been written within this period of internal colonialism should one, therefore, reject all of it - as failing to inscribe this land, as being part of a colonial and imperial hegemony?

2. Reinscription Discarding white writing for these reasons would be tantamount to discarding black writing. The Western novel, the poem as we know it (not the oral poem), is also being written by writers in African languages, with other cultures infusing it, but making use of the same creative technology, initially informed by the Bible and missionary texts. We should therefore rather see interdependence, and begin reading retrospectively in the light of decolonization - but especially in terms of the power relations that enabled the white literatures to come into existence. Afrikaans literature is an example. The language developed from the Dutch spoken on the trade-routes by the seamen, soldiers and traders of the East India Company in the 16th and 17th centuries. The import of slaves from the east after a permanent settlement was begun in 1652 leading to increased language mixing. The resulting kitchen patois and service language - the language spoken between maid and madam, master and slave - this simplified, faulty interlanguage started to penetrate the writing of petit-bourgeois intellectuals. It became appropriated by them and a language movement began in the 19th century9. Writers and journalists developed the language through standardisation of its orthography and by utilising all literary genres - to such an extent that it has been determined that an Afrikaner nationalism was constructed between 1902 and 1924. The development of a hegemony, the standardisation of a language, the creation of a literary canon and the making of authors are instruments of power. But whereas this literature can be read retrospectively as being an instrument in the making of Afrikaner nationalism with its systems of exclusion, this same literature has, particularly since the 1960's, become a force of resistance against that power. Afrikaans and white English literature should be re-read within and against that power created during a colonialism of a special kind, in the context of the ideal of a united country, and reinscribed within the other literatures of this country. But I can only attempt this project by making use of European theoretical 'master narratives', because it seems unavoidable that there is a certain confinement within the centre of a Western system of knowledge and discipline. The question is: how does one find a resolution to the following antithesis stated by Said: 'Exactly as in its triumphant period imperialism tended to license only a cultural discourse that was formulated from within it, today post-imperialism has permitted mainly a 9

Language movements for the acceptance of 'new languages' were, of course, at this time almost a universal discourse, cf. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, Verso. London, New York. 1991:72-75.

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cultural discourse of suspicion on the part of formerly colonized peoples, and of theoretical avoidance at most on the part of metropolitan intellectuals'? (1994:234). His answer lies in the transformation of disciplines and '... an investment neither in new authorities, doctrines, and encoded orthodoxies, nor in established institutions and causes, but in a particular sort of nomadic, migratory, and anti-narrative energy' (1994:337). My attempt will therefore be discursive: not reading literature autonomous, and by using and misusing the tools provided by Michel Foucault, particularly in The Order of Things and An Archaeology of Knowledge™ - as an academic between peoples of various cultures, between languages, where the author as we once used to know her/him has died, and where some literatures that have been written have not yet been read.

3. The history of the present In Discipline and Punish Foucault states: I would like to write the history of this prison, with all the political investments of the body that it gathers together in its closed architecture. Why? Simply because I am interested in the past? No, if one means by that writing a history of the past in terms of the present. Yes, if one means writing the history of the present".

History is then not to be seen as a teleological development, as the histories of South African literatures have thus far been written. There is of course no real beginning: only a series of disruptions and events which can be identified within the present in definite discursive formations made by the regular dispersion of statements. Genealogy is the descent of practices as a series of events, and history is the questioning of our existence, an investigation into the events that have constituted us as subjects today, focusing as a diagnosis on the moment of arising12. What is the history of the present in South Africa in respect of literature and literary history? What are the forces attempting to constitute us as new subjects? Political and cultural leaders are creating a construct of one-nation-ness, of 'unity within diversity'. We have a Government of National Unity, we have a flag and an anthem of national unity, we are remembering to forget the past (we even have 'one country, one team'). An imagined political community. These are statements within a discourse, and whether one is sceptical about nation, nationness and identity the construct is being created as antidote to the divisions of the past. Then, the boundaries of the country are being redrawn, the geography is remapped, the disinherited are returned to their land. We now have eleven official languages, with an envisaged Pan South African Language Board to ensure that no 10

12

Tavistock Publications, London:1985; Pantheon Books, New York: 1972. Penguin Books. London, 1977:31. Paul Rabinow, 'Modern and counter-modern: Ethos and epoch in Heidegger and Foucault1, in The Cambridge Companion to Foucault, ed. Gary Cutting, Cambridge University Press, 1994:203.

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person's language will be discriminated against, and that those nine languages which have been relegated in the past will be empowered. If all this is to happen within one geographical entity, then the question naturally arises regarding cultural unity, and particularly concerning canonised literature as artistic and cultural expression. Can there be such a thing as a national literature in a country with 11 languages? Should they be described separately or as one, and in all languages? Or perhaps these questions should not be asked, and literature as an autonomous creation be left to itself, in the words of Foucault: "... a silent, cautious deposition of the word upon the whiteness of a piece of paper, where it can possess neither sound nor interlocutor, where it has nothing to say but itself, nothing to do but shine in the brightness of its being"13.

4. Discursive formations If one attempts to read all literatures in South Africa that have been produced in the past - particularly those of the hitherto unvoiced - as a non-teleological, discontinuous narrative of the present, as a narrative of a nation (without the pejorative connotations of the concept nationalism), then the possibility of the discursive formation and the rules for the formation of discourses, for the genealogies of writing should be considered. Then literature becomes but one form of discourse among many others, as well as entailing statements within different discourses. Without explicating the concepts of discursive formation/practice, énoncé (or statement), and archaeological description I shall summarise. The basis of the archaeology of knowledge is the énoncé or statement, which, when ordered, forms discourse: 'A statement belongs to a discursive formation as a sentence belongs to a text, and a proposition to a deductive whole. But whereas the regularity of a sentence is defined by the laws of language, and that of a proposition by the laws of logic, the regularity of statements is defined by the discursive formation itself14. The regularities of these statements, which may also be events, form certain formations, and discourse is formed by the repetition of statements. An archaeological analysis is a study of discursive formations, and archaeology, viewing history as a formation of sedimented layers, does not seek to find what could have caused statements or to read them hermeneutically. It tries to discover their rules of formation. It is furthermore important to note that within archaeology there is no synchrony: "Archaeology disarticulates the synchrony of breaks, just as it destroyed the abstract unity of change and event. The period is neither its basic unity, nor its object: if it speaks of these things it is always in terms of particular discursive practices, and as a result of its analyses"15. 13 14 15

The Order ofThings:300. Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, 1972:116. Quoted by Keith Michael Baker, 'A Foucauldian French Revolution?', in Foucault and the Writing of History, ed. Jan Goldstein. Basil Blackwell, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1994:188.

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History would not be seen as teleological, but as a series of disruptions and events16 which can be identified in the present within definite, although often crisscrossing, discursive formations, made up of the regular dispersion of statements. One then has to identify these discursive formations and determine to what extent the literatures of a country are part of them, or to what extent literatures have written those formations. In a sense Edward Said reiterates this when he says we have to connect, not to separate, to make a voyage into discourse, to cross borders between literary and other texts (he specifies cultural texts, but I would extend that also to texts of power) - and crossing borders means opposing borders, being disruptive. Said's perspective is contrapuntal: " . . . this ... contrapuntal analysis should be modelled not ... on a symphony but rather on an atonal ensemble ,.."17. (I am reminded of Foucault's beginning to 'The Discourse on Language': "I would have preferred to be enveloped in words, borne away beyond all possible beginnings. At the moment of speaking, I would like to have perceived a nameless voice, long preceding me .... There would have been no beginnings ... Behind me, I should like to have heard ... the voice of Molloy ...'I must go on; I can't go on; I must go on; I must say words as long as there are words, I must say them until they find me, until they say me - heavy burden, heavy sin; I must go on; maybe it's been done already; maybe they've already said me; maybe they've already borne me to the threshold of my story, right to the door opening onto my story; I'd be surprised if it opened'". 1972:215). In the archaeological description of literary writing as statements within discursive formations I would attempt to indicate those discursive formations as they can be identified, with the possible statements constituting those discourses. There are, of course, uncertainties. I do not know - as a decolonised of colonial heritage - , for instance, to what extent these discourses are also part of - or have also been written by - the literatures of the periphery, of those in the nine other languages of South Africa. That has to be determined by colleagues who know those literatures and are prepared to read them in terms of discursive formations. They may also find other discourses of today. The following, provisional, discursive formations which should be considered genealogically can be recognised at the present. And I am ever on guard against the trap of looking for beginnings since Nietzsche and Foucault's deconstruction of 'Herkunft' and 'Entstehung'18. 16

17 18

Here we are not dealing with a succession of instants in time, nor with the plurality of thinking subjects; what is concerned are those caesurae breaking the instant and dispersing the subject in a multiplicity of possible positions and functions. Such a discontinuity strikes and invalidates the smallest units, traditionally recognised and the least readily contested: the instant and the subject. Beyond them, independent of them, we must conceive - between these discontinuous series of relations which are not in any order of succession (or simultaneity) within any (or several) consciousnesses - and we must elaborate outside of philosophies of time and subject - a theory of discontinuous systématisation'. Foucault, 'The discourse on language', The Archaeology of Knowledge, 231. Culture and Imperialism: 386. Cf. also pp. 36, 260, 373, 382. Cf. 'Nietzsche, Genealogy, History1 in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, selected essays and interviews by Michel Foucault. Edited, with an introduction by Donald F Bouchard.

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5. Travel writing The seamen and the voyagers from Europe to new countries since the histories of Herodotus created new geographical spaces by their texts, intruded their texts, where the text as text is then already a statement within a discourse, but ultimately also a discourse unto itself - as signifier and signified. Texts - the Portuguese and Dutch roteiros - recorded the signs for seamen to be aware of, but they were also maps in themselves. Through travel the voyagers acquired knowledge, and the text, as the representation of the journey, was the document of that knowledge. But with representation (another énoncé within this discourse) came the creation of constructs about countries and people (another statement), and, in the words of Mary Louise Pratt, the 'history of imperial meaning-making'19 and the beginnings of colonialism (a further statement, which becomes a discourse on its own), and from that the 'civilising of barbarians' (the missionary énoncé and discourse of its own). Then there is the immense library of novels where the journey and reconnaissance is the motivating force - for instance: the English novel and Robinson Crusoe; and one is reminded again, since Said's analysis, of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and in South African literature of the ironising hybrid novel/travel/poetry journals of Breyten Breytenbach, A Season in Paradise and Return to Paradise - all examples of connecting statements within disparate discourses.

6. The discourse on land In a moving passage towards the end of one of the most recent novels in South Africa, Die uur van die Engel (The Hour of the Angel) by Karel Schoeman an old woman says: 'They took possession of the fountains and chased away the sheep and the people, they took the land and made farm upon farm, they built their homesteads, their barns en kraals (corrals), they laid out their towns there, and their churches, their church councils they chose and appointed their dominees (pastors) to rule over everyone. But it wasn't right, and that I say again here at the end of my life, to them who built houses and churches, who sit in the front benches and are honoured as rich and pious men: that it was unjust, that injustices were committed, and that it must not be forgotten, and that the Lord God sees it and will take revenge and will avenge His people ...'(1995:377).

This is one statement within the history of the present: that of the re-appropriation of land taken away by colonialism and apartheid. Other statements within this discourse are: the appointment of Freeburghers in 1657 to start cultivation; Bessie Head's introduction to Sol Plaatje's Native Life in South Africa on the Native's Land Act of 1913; the settlement of the Khoikhoi at the Kat River in 1829; the establishment of Native Reserves in Natal (1846) and a 'Bushman' reserve in 1863; the effect of the 1913 Land Act on the African National Congress (its formation 19

Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York, 1992. Imperial Eyes. Travel Writing and Transculturation. Routledge, London and New York, 1992:4.

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indirectly as a result of it); the many farm novels in Afrikaans, significantly almost since the beginning of Afrikaans canonised literature; the novels of Olive Schreiner and Nadine Gordimer, and J.M. Coetzee's essays. Coetzee's main character in 'The narrative of Jacobus Coetzee' (in Dusklands20) says: 'We cannot count the wild. The wild is one because it is boundless. We can count fig-trees, we can count sheep because the orchard and the farm are bounded. The essence of orchard tree and farm sheep is number. Our commerce with the wild is a tireless enterprise of turning it into orchard and farm. When we cannot fence it and count it we reduce it to number by other means. Every wild creature I kill crosses the boundary between wilderness and number ... I am a hunter, a domesticator of the wilderness, a hero of enumeration. He who does not understand number does not understand death ...'(1974:85).

Then there is also the threatening statement from a white farm owner in another recent Afrikaans novel, Toorberg by Etienne van Heerden: 'My birthright... gives me a servitude on this land, even if the deeds say it is yours ... Even if it is the devil's. Through birth I have the right here and I shall wander here, ex defectu sanguinis, in the absence of descendants, on my own, even after my death. Hear me'.

The final statement in this discourse, which is now becoming a discourse of power, is from Nelson Mandela. He recently said that no less than three million people were unjustly removed from their own land; and that a land commission would have to examine deals where land from which blacks had been removed was expropriated; that the new government was committed to a process of land reform22.

7. Other identifiable discourses From ¿nonce's in the two discursive formations that I have briefly mentioned above, other discourses have developed and are still active in literary, cultural, political, legal and other texts of power today. Apart from those I have indicated namely the text, representation, the creation of constructs, imperial meaningmaking, civilising barbarians, literary discourses such as the novel of discovery or travel, appropriation of land, resettlement of people, the meaning of the farm, the return of the land, the creation of order - there are other discursive formations which may be common (although I have not yet investigated these) to the various literatures in South Africa: - the Other in white writing, eventually becoming part of the writing in Afrikaans and English where other writers also write in those languages - but still from a marginalised position. (Serote, Mphahlele, Sepamla, Langa, Kuzwayo, Head, Small, Petersen etc.). There was recently, for instance, a conference of 'Black Afrikaans writers' near Cape Town - where the writers are mostly coloured, i.e. 20 21 22

Ravan Press, Johannesburg, 1974. Tafelberg, 1986:125. Cape Times, 19th Oct. 1994.

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brown, and some of the speakers are white. The concept 'black' is becoming a discourse which may need elucidation and deconstruction. -

'Discipline and Punish'. The first texts of the colonisers made contracts with the indigenous peoples (which the latter were unable to read). When these contracts were broken they were punished. An interesting example is the Dutch Governer Van der Stel's journey to Namaqualand in 1685: the Amacquas broke the 'contract' he made with them, and when confronted they remained silent - a vivid illustration of the silence of those who could not heed the Western text. From this discourse the various statements of ressentiment come: prison literature, protest literature. And today a Truth Commission is being set up in South Africa. Again to discipline and punish, or to remember to forget?

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Identity as discourse. This relates to the development of separate nationalisms, like, for instance, that of the Afrikaner; and today the creation of the construct of one-nation-ness.

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A related formation is industrialisation together with the loss of culture, the cultural clash (as in the Xhosa novel of A C Jordan, The Wrath of the Ancestors), and poverty.

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The master-slave relationship, which is probably part of the patriarchal discourse, and gender. Instances here are women's diaries, both of domestic relations (the maid and madam) and political and matrimonial repression.

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Landscape, nature, ecology, the resurgence in recent Afrikaans novels of the people of nature (hunters, trackers).

With research other connecting discourses may be found, such as the myth of the lazy native mentioned by Said; sexuality and repression; the body.

8. Conclusion Since decolonisation and the liberation from internal colonialism, and with the legalising of the equality of all languages it is to be hoped that the literatures in languages that have been silent to international audiences may become heard. It still remains a question whether the languages of power, Afrikaans and English, with their literatures constructed within political and economic hegemonies, may not retain their dominating position, and whether English may not eventually become the national language. South African Literature would then be that which is written in English or translated into English. This situation could ultimately be detrimental to literary production, as only the privileged few would then write in a home language of their own.

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The task of the literary historian and theoretician is at the moment that of developing a methodology by which the majority of literary texts can be connected into one, diverse and discontinuous, narrative of a nation. From identifiable discursive formations in the present South African cultural, social and political reality, read in connection with literary texts, one may find several narratives in which the literary text will still maintain its status as literary; but it may then also become part of texts in the literatures of the other languages. Reading literature as an autonomous discourse of its own, however, within the particular genres that have developed, would remain a separate interpretative exercise, practised for each literature. In this manner there would not be a South African literature, but an Afrikaans, English, Ndebele, North-Sotho, South-Sotho, Swati, Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa, Zulu literature. Perhaps that is also a unity, not in diversity, but in separateness. And are we then not again at the divisions of colonialism?

Mbulelo Vizikhungo Mzamane (Fort Hare)

Literature for a National Culture in South Africa: Perspectives of Oppressed Groups

1. Introduction This paper examines the relationship between revolutionary cultural theory and practice in South Africa in the past three decades and argues that a democratic culture has been unfolding in South Africa which stands at the polar end of the exclusive, stagnant minority culture of oppression and exploitation. This unfolding culture of liberation is especially suited for forging a new national culture of reconciliation to supplant apartheid culture, restore the underprivileged and oppressed to their history and culture and at the same time validate cultural pluralism in its positive aspects in South Africa.

2. Culture and Struggle Culture can be seen as the ensemble of meaningful practices and "uniformities of behaviour" through which self-defined groups within or across social classes express themselves within an identifiable "field of significations".1 It is the process which informs the way meanings and definitions are socially constructed and historically transformed by the actors themselves. Cultures are distinguished from one another by their differing responses to the same social, material, and environmental conditions. Culture is not a static or even a necessarily coherent phenomenon: it is subject to change, fragmentation, reformulation. It is both adaptive, offering ways of coping and making sense, and strategic, capable of being mobilised for political, economic, and social ends. Such an understanding of the function of culture in society is necessary to our appreciation of the political importance of the cultural struggle in South Africa. Every community has its own peculiar culture geared towards survival which can also be mobilised for social transformation. Ngugi wa Thiong'o explains how culture evolves and what functions it serves in a community: "In the process of their economic and political life, the community develops a way of life often seemingly unique to that society. They evolve language, song, dance, literature, religion, theatre, art, architecture, and an education system that transmits all those plus a knowledge of the history and geography of their territory of habitation from one generation to the next." 2 The culture thus evolved expresses their conception 1 2

Contemporary Cultural Studies (Birmingham, U.K.) No 5 (1985), n.p. Ngugi wa Thiong'o, "Education for a National Culture", Barrel of a Pen: Resistance to Repression in Neo-Colonial Kenya, (Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press, 1983), pp. 87-100 (p.89).

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of what they consider right and wrong (moral values), good and evil (ethical values), ugly and beautiful (aesthetic values). From these values springs a community's consciousness, their world outlook and life-style, their collective and individual self-image, their identity as people who look at themselves and their relationship to the universe in a certain way. Neither in traditional nor modern or contemporary society has culture, in the comprehensive sense in which it has been defined, ever existed as an entity separate from other social structures: rather it embraces all. It has always been in the interests of the ruling classes, however, to keep art and culture, like religion, as "apolitical" as possible, for then such a dichotomy, which in reality does not exist, confirms them in their unchallenged position of dominance. Culture is not a neutral commodity, although this may seem to be the case in societies where a social truce appears to exist between various classes in the society. Culture can be a repressive or liberating force; it can either retard or facilitate social transformation. Mao Tse Tung observed that in the world today, all culture, all literature and art belong to definite classes and are geared to definite political ends; that there is, in fact, no such thing as art for art's sake, in the sense of art that stands above classes, art that is detached from, or independent of politics.3 The artist or cultural worker, like the school teacher, is the vehicle for the expression and propagation of certain values, consciously or unwittingly. Whether an individual artist knows it or not, every artist is committed to such values long before sitting in front of a typewriter, stepping on a stage, or pulling out canvass and paints; what the artist produces affirms or opposes certain dominant social relations.4 In societies that are in the grip of social and political upheaval, the fallacy of cultural neutrality, culture free of ideological leanings, becomes clear for all to see. Amilcar Cabrai says of the cultural struggle: "The study of the history of liberation struggles shows that in general they are preceded by an increase in cultural phenomena which progressively crystallize into an attempt, successful or not, to assert the cultural personality of the oppressed people in an act of rejection of that of the oppressor." And again: "It is generally in culture that the seed of protest, leading to the emergence and development of the liberation movement, is found."5 In Cabral's analysis, national liberation is necessarily an act of culture, and the liberation movement is the organised political expression of the struggling people's culture. To engage in a struggle to seize back the right and the initiative to 3

Mao Tse Tung, "Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art", Selected Works of Mao Tse Tung, (Oxford etc.: Pergamom Press, 1965), Volume 3, pp. 69-98. Alex La Guma, Culture and Liberation in south Africa, Sechaba, X (1976), 50-59. Amilcar Cabrai, "Liberation Nationale et Culture," Unité et Lutte 1: L'arme de la Theorie, (Paris: François Mspero, 1975), pp. 316-335 (p.321). "L'étude de l'histoire de luttes de libération montre qu'elles sont en général précédés par un accroissement des manifestations culturelles, lesquelles se concrétisent progressivement par une tentative, réussie on non, de l'affirmation de la personnalité culturelle du peuple dominé comme acte de négation de la culture de l'oppresseur, que la domination étrangère et l'influence des facteurs économiques, de la contestation, amènant à la structuration et au développement du mouvement de libération".

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make one's humanstory is both an act of education and an educational process. Culture is a product and a reflection of that humanstory. South Africans laid a firm foundation for a national patriotic culture that will one day embrace all who live in that country, whether of African or non-African origin. South Africa has a long and venerable humanstory of resistance to racial domination, a tradition which has given rise to the majority culture of liberation which is opposed to the establishment culture of oppression. In South Africa, the culture of the oppressed has always enjoyed primacy and dominance, by virtue of the fact that it is the majority culture, but has not always been accorded even by some African elites the recognition to which it is entitled among all sectors of the community. The establishment culture of oppression, on the other hand, has always relied upon propaganda and state coercion because it is a minority, unpopular, imposed culture. The majority culture derives from a democratic tradition that is as ancient as the institution of the traditional mbizo, kgotla or pitso, the village square where matters of social significance were always thrashed out in the community. The majority culture is as rooted as the theatrical tradition of izibongo, maboko or lithothokiso (Heroic Poetry) and the story-telling performing art form of the intsomi, tsomo or inganekwane (Traditional tales), amabali (legends) and imilando (humanstory). These cultural forms constitute African classical literature, better described as orature, which has a peculiar artistic complexity and architectural elegance that cultivate equally complex forms of mental development from infancy and early childhood. This resilient culture of the majority survived more than three centuries of settler-colonial repression by building a new base in each new era, by digging in its transplanted roots firmly on new soil made fertile by the blood of a people schooled in sacrifice and struggle. It is dynamic, and not as stagnant as the settler-colonial culture, and promises farreaching social changes; it is already providing the infrastructure for the new order. This liberation culture, which has the capacity to triumph in the end, could form the foundation of the new economic and social order in South Africa. A precise description of our unfolding culture of liberation, that is, of the state of culture in South Africa in the past three decades, its most striking though least understood attributes, provides a useful starting point from which to construct any new social order that would take cognisance of the people's very cultural institutions.

3. Black Consciousness and Cultural Regeneration Where people live under conditions of severe repression, with no attention paid to their political voice, culture often becomes an important medium for expressing their desire to transcend their oppressive situation. The last three decades in South Africa have been remarkable in this regard. The legacy of Steve Bantu Biko and Black Consciousness lies precisely in the way culture, in the hands of Black Consciousness activists, came to take on the burden of articulating African political aspirations after the African National Congress (ANC) and the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) had been outlawed in 1960; it lies in the manner in which culture

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came to be utilised in prosecuting the liberation struggle. However, this must not be construed to mean that the genesis of our liberation culture was Black Consciousness, which was but a continuation of earlier traditions. Indeed, in the 1980's Black Consciousness came to be superseded by another political expression, which was not itself devoid of elements of its predecessors. All this is dialectical, for all these stages build on each other. In our unfolding culture of liberation, therefore, the beginnings of this process predate the 1970's, although from the 1970's it becomes sustained and moves with greater intensity for a number of reasons. Robert Kavanagh points out how Black Consciousness emerged to fill the vacuum left by the outlawed organisations. Operating in a different and more vicious political climate, Black Consciousness adopted a different approach. It concentrated not so much on political defiance and protest as on mobilising and strengthening the inner resources of the downtrodden and oppressed. Black Consciousness realised that a demoralised people with no confidence or pride in their forebears, capabilities or achievements could never carry out a successful revolution. The founding members of Black Consciousness advocated withdrawal from unnecessary collaboration which could perpetuate dependence on whites, but only as a strategy in order to achieve self-sufficiency and solidarity. In a climate where overt extra-parliamentary opposition attracted swift and brutal retribution, its less overtly political direction meant that Black Consciousness paid more attention to humanstory, cultural and artistic issues than had previous liberation movements. In this regard, Black Consciousness realised more than any other group the essentially political importance of the cultural struggle. It was active in all the arts but in none more effectively than theatre, including poetry performances. Black Consciousness, Kavangh concludes, emphasised the educational function of cultural and artistic activity and exploited the political resources of art, theatre, and culture in general.6 Until the 1960's not much of the performing arts that had been evolved in South Africa had been politically relevant, in the sense that they contributed directly to either the analysis of the repressive system or advocated political protest against the regime. In the African communities, however, there was a widespread tradition of "sketches", which were a popular performing art form consisting of skits on every conceivable subject and spoke directly to the affected community. We learn, too, from Edward Roux ip Time Longer than Rope that in the 1930's in Cape Town there were performances organised by the Trotskyites of political material in which blacks and whites took part.7 With the rise of Black Consciousness in the 1960's systematic and co-ordinated efforts to promote popular consciousness through theatre, and to promote self-reliance among the downtrodden and oppressed, began to take root in the urban communities and by the mid-1970's 6

Mshengu (Pseudonym for Robert Kavanagh), "After Soweto: People's Theatre and the Political Struggle in South Africa", Theatre Quarterly, London, Vol. IX, No. 33 (Spring 1979), 31-38. Edward Roux, Time Longer Than Rope: A History of the Black Man's Struggle for Freedom in South Africa, 2nd edition, (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964), p. 312.

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these efforts had spread to some of the rural communities as well, where by then most of the leaders of Black Consciousness had been banished.

4. Ambiguity, Commitment and Reaction in Theatre There were reasons why theatre, including poetry performances, became a crucial area of political activity in the 1970's. Robert Kavanagh argues that conventional political action, under the banner of the ANC or the PAC, was illegal and dangerous. The press and the radio were in the hands of the white establishment. Publishing was a white monopoly and vulnerable to censorship. Film was beyond the reach of the fledgling political artist in the townships. Kavanagh points out the many advantages of theatre: it was cheap; mobile; simple to present; and difficult to supervise, censor or outlaw. He does not point out, however, that such theatre as emerged already had a tradition derived from ancient performance practices in the community, such as the traditions of story-telling, heroic poetry, song and dance in ritual and other ceremonies, and sketches. Clearly theatre, like graffiti, was the one medium left to the people to use to conscientise, educate, unify, and mobilise both rank and file. A contrast with Black Consciousness theatre was provided by Gibson Kente's township plays of the 1960's and 1970's. In its non-radical or ambiguous phase, as in Gibson Kente's early plays, one characteristic of township theatre was its urban setting; another characteristic was that it was commercial. A range of themes characterised township theatre including education, adultery, promiscuity, rape, religion, crime, drink, the corruption and the cruelty of the authorities, and occasionally conditions at the working place. Although many of the plays projected an apolitical message and proposed non-radical solutions to society's ills - usually some humanitarian moral solution - the issues they dealt with were, however, an accurate reflection of the quality of life led by the urban majority. This is not to say that traditional African culture was no longer relevant and that these plays did not reflect it. A stock scene was still the visit to the diviner or herbalist in moments of crises. A marked characteristic of such theatre was its truly eclectic nature. Zionist (meaning independent African Christian) music, dance, and life-style permeate these plays, as they do township life. Wakes, weddings, and funerals all retain certain traditional characteristics, over which new and often perverse ways are supplanted, and are also stock scenes in the drama. Kente was not alone. All over the Witwatersrand, and further afield in such townships as New Brighton in Port Elizabeth, theatre groups were springing out and touring other urban centres. 8 By the mid-1970's, as Kente sensed the changing political pulse of the youth in the townships, who formed the bulk of his audiences, his plays had turned radical. The lead had, in fact, been set by the success of such Black Consciousness productions as Shanti by Mthuli Shezi and Give Us This Day by the Reverend 8

Robert Mshengu Kavanagh (ed.), "General Introduction", , Credo South African People's Plays: Plays by Gibson Kente V. Mutwa, Mthuli Shezi and Workshop '71, (London: Heinemann, 1981), pp. ix-xxxi.

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Mzwandile Maqina. Using the popular formula of the period, usually depicting some disgruntled student activists, in quick succession Kente wrote his political plays, How Long, I Believe and Too Late, all of which carried a message of defiance and anger to the urban masses. The accumulated effect of such theatre activity played an important part in preparing youth groups and the workers for the struggle that was precipitated when, on 16 June 1976, police opened fire on demonstrating school students in Soweto. For Kente, however, this radicalisation of township theatre did not derive from any deep political convictions and was no more than a formula for producing box office hits. By the end of the 1980's, sensing a new and more prosperous audience among whites, he had turned in a decidedly reactionary direction, as reflected in his entry for the 1987 Grahamstown National Arts Festival. Sekunjalo ("The Time Has Come"), which was a success at the Festival, is Rente's dramatic monument to his own disaffection, ambition, and opportunism. The play tells the story of the moment of liberation in South Africa, which is in fact a moment of disaster: "African capitalists vie unsuccessfully against African socialists in elections, and the society, peopled with characters such as 'Hiki-Hiki, the witty hobo', falls apart in a wave of State brutality which mimics apartheid. The story is told through a plot spiced with slapstick at moments that might have been tragic. Hiki-Hiki, adorned with toy horns on his head and between his legs, provides a vaudeville accompaniment to the disasters and the disappointments of liberation. Himself a joke, the world he inhabits becomes a joke as well."9 Kente described his play as "a warning to the people" about the "even crueller rule that a black socialist government would mean after liberation."10 Again: "I am protecting free enterprise and attacking the worst form of communist state. I am warning against the one-party state that wants power totally and throws the rights of the people to the winds. This has been the experience in other parts of Africa where communists have seized power."11 In his play, Kente blames the liberation movement for the lack of any decent training and education for oppressed groups, but apartheid which forbids the proper education of the children who, as a result, orchestrate school boycotts survives Rente's pseudo-analysis unscathed. Unlike his earlier productions and others coming out of the townships, Sekunjalo had expensive sets and costumes, which gave the play the look of Western theatre. Although like his previous plays Sekunjalo also makes extensive use of African songs and dance forms, this is more in the tradition of "Ipi Tombi" to lend the play the feel of exotica that has strong appeal to white, middle class audiences. Kente, in reducing these traditional forms to the level of exotica, thereby drains them of their cultural and symbolic power - exactly what must happen for them to become marketable on State television and theatres under the apartheid regime. These

10

11

Rachel Weiss, "Creating Freedom: Revolutionary Culture in South Africa" (Unpublished), Boston, October 1987 (20 pages). Charlotte Bauer, "Radicals Detest the Play: Police Arrest the Players" (review), Weekly Mail, Johannesburg, September 11-17,1987. Barbara Orpen, "Festival Men Shocked at Play Banning" (review), Eastern Province Herald, East London, July 8, 1987.

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facts, in combination with the play's clear message that Africans are incapable of self-rule, guaranteed its success in Grahamstown. Thus Sekunjalo marked Kente's decision to forsake the rundown township halls for white theatres. "He talks glibly of a possible run at the State Theatre," wrote Kathy Berman in a Weekly Mail review earlier cited. "In reaction to my surprise at abandoning his traditional audience, he states, matter-of-factly, that it is time he started educating whites." With its focus on infighting among Africans, it seems amazing that Kente's play was banned just after the Grahamstown Festival. This became much less amazing, however, in view of the fact that the play was scheduled to be performed in the Eastern Cape, traditionally the area of strongest resistance to apartheid. Although the play probably received approval from the Censorship Board, it is also likely that its run in King William's Town, Biko's birth place and strong-hold, and East London might have provoked "incidents of unrest" from African audiences at its reactionary politics. In its ambiguous and radical phases, nonetheless, Gibson Kente's theatre forms a valid basis for popular theatre. Its accessibility makes it a potent weapon for mass education. It shares some common features with Poor Theatre evolved in Latin America and increasingly used in formal and non-formal education.12 Examples abound of community theatre now used in adult literacy, health, and agricultural campaigns; in the promotion of participatory democracy; in encouraging participation in problem-solving as well as in mass mobilisation for a variety of other purposes. The University of Dar es Salaam led the pack in community theatre and in Ile-Ife, in Nigeria, Wole Soyinka devised a "guerrilla" theatre that employed any available open space to enact drama based on contemporary issues, such as the corruption which beset the implementation of the Green Revolution in Nigeria under the Shagari regime. Other moderately successful programmes of this kind in Africa have been the Samaru Project in Zaria, Nigeria; Badzanani Theatre in Botswana; and Lerotholi Theatre in Lesotho founded by playwright Zanemvula (Zakes) Mda.13 "Alternative" theatre in South Africa, in the work of such playwrights as Matsemela Manaka, Maishe Maponya, Gcina Mhlope, John Ledwaba, Mbongeni Ngema, and Percy Mtwa, took a distinct turn in the 1980's, away from establishment theatre. More and more, theatre practices evolved in Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Africa began to take root in South African theatre and the people were weeding out cultural imperialism along with alien and alienating cultural modes that had previously dominated their cultural practices.

5. "Art" Against "Culture" Ivor Powell makes a useful distinction between establishment and alternative culture in South Africa but formulates his ideas in terms we cannot accept altogether. He correctly argues that in our recent past, "culture" had something to do with Shakespeare, and Milton and Michelangelo and Beethoven and also 12 13

Paulo Freiere, Cultural Action for Freedom (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970). Michael Etherton, The Development of African Drama (London: Hutchinson, 1982); Zakes Mda, When People Play People (London: Zed Books, 1993).

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enabled one to choose the correct utensils at formal dinners. He contends, too, that such "culture" separated the lower from the upper classes and the "Europeans" from the "Natives". It was that mysterious quality, he says, which along with the "Word of the Lord" justified, even demanded, their presence in the Third World. He realises, as an increasing number of thinking white South Africans have begun to, that we are experiencing one of those sublime ironies of which our history is capable, whereby "culture" has ceased to be the preserve of the ruling classes in South Africa and its ownership has been transferred to the proletariat. When one talks these days about "culture" one is talking in relation to the political agendas of what in the 1980's came to be known as the mass democratic movement - about the overthrow of those traditional and Eurocentric norms which fell under the rubric of "culture" in the old sense. "Now 'culture' no longer has anything to do with 'art'," Powell says rather provocatively. "'Culture' has ceased to be the preserve of educated Westerners, what separates the upper from the lower classes, the colonisers from the colonised; it has become the property of the masses. And at the same time it has set itself up in opposition to 'art', which has come more and more to be associated with a basically white and definitely elitist set of practices."14 An assumption that underlies Ivor Powell's implicit criticism of the "Alternative" culture and theatre, including poetry, is that "art" and "culture" are no longer parts of the same whole but, at best, uneasy bedfellows, at worst, bitter enemies; and that, seen from the perspective of the opposite polarity, the former tends to be elitist, alienated and irrelevant, the latter plebian, propagandistic, and dull. He speaks from a standpoint, inside the energy system of Anglo-South African culture to which he belongs, that views politics which is at odds with Anglo-South African liberal-humanist traditions "as nothing more than a fad or fashion in art and fads and fashions come and go". 15 Ivor Powell errs in one important respect: There is no necessary irreconcilability between "art" and "culture", between aesthetics and political commitment, which is what the polarities he poses amount to. The dichotomy is false, a smokescreen to keep art and the political culture of the oppressed separate and Anglo-South African cultural dominance intact. The Broadway success of Mbongeni Ngema's Sarafina and the film version, which featured Whoppi Goldberg, bear eloquent testimony to the feasibility of blending radical politics, from the perspective of the downtrodden and oppressed, with high art of the variety traditionally associated with Broadway, the West End and Hollywood. Sarafina echoed Gibson Kente's early musicals in some of its choral music and stock scenes. The production even featured a 1960's Kente stalwart in Ndaba Mhlongo. A Kente protege himself, Ngema admits that he found much that was of lasting value in the theatre of Kente and much that he had to discard.16 The play attempts to see events in South Africa's townships since the revolt of the children in 1976 through the eyes of the students themselves and focuses on the contribution of African women to our 14 15

Ivor Powell, Weekly Mail, Johannesburg, September 25 - October 1, 1987, p. 25. Ibid. Mbongeni Ngema, Culture and Resistance Symposium, Yale University, Southern African Research Program, Fall Workshop, November 13, 1987 [Tape in Author's Files],

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unfolding culture of struggle. Ngema thus avoids the pitfalls of distortion common among more orthodox political commentators, because his theatre is truly rooted. Ivor Powell's criticism underlines the need to examine the assumptions by which we live and to reassess aesthetic criteria, so that we stop looking for the "finesse" of an English top-hat from a "folksy" Basotho hat. "Art" and "Culture" merge not only in our theatre but also in poetry, which in the African community features in such diverse situations as funerals, commemorations, and the labour movement. Poetry in the African community plays a different role from its role in "European" communities, especially the English speaking community.

6. From Imbongi to Worker Poet Andre Brink argues that English speakers in South Africa "having lost their political power and much of their economic power after a century and a half of uncontested domination, find in poetry a - relatively harmless - domain within which the old muscles may now be flexed in a literary manner, in order at least to maintain an illusion of power." For African writers, he says, poetry is exactly the opposite: "an instrument of liberation, a new language which exhilaratingly gives shape and meaning to black aspirations and awareness and an experience of unity that transcends all vernacular divisions. It is a means of ... confronting political power."17 Poetry is not a "new language" to the African, and the izibongo is perhaps the highest verbal art form among the Southern abantu. With less exaggeration and more penetrating insight, Jeremy Cronin draws the link between popular culture and mass struggle, between people's poetry and people's power, in the context of the trade union movement in South Africa. We were once taught to think of poetry as obscure and elite, he says. In the last three decades, however, poetry has been marching in the front ranks of the mass struggles that have rolled through our land. He argues that it was the township student and youth organisations that began to integrate militant oral poetry into their activities after 1976. In fact, the trend goes back a decade earlier to the rise of Black Consciousness and the cultural renaissance it fostered among groups such as Dashiki, Mihloti, and TECON (Theatre Company of Natal), and harks even further back to ancient African traditions. What was qualitatively new, however, in the 1980's was the way in which performance poetry also took root within the trade union movement. In particular, it was the traditional art form of izibongo that we found in evidence in the labour movement: "The poet draws freely from what Amilcar Cabral described as the 'great reservoir' of the liberation struggle, the centuries-old people's cultural traditions."18 The vitally important role played by poetry in precolonial African society was being re-enacted in the altogether different context of the African labour movement and political struggle in South Africa in the 1980's. In traditional African communities, the performance of poetry was a significant ritual element in 17 18

Andre Brink, Weekly Mail, Johannesburg, July 10-16, 1987 p. 22. Jeremy Cronin, Weekly Mail, Johannesburg, March 13-19, 1987, p. 23.

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education and government, at dances, feasts, festivals, weddings, circumcision schools, funerals and other social, ceremonial, and religious events. The reasons are not hard to find: "In an oral culture, the word is sound, and discourse - partly for mnemonic reasons - naturally lends itself to poetic organisation. Thought typically finds expression in heavily rhythmic, balanced patterns, in repetitions and antitheses, in alliterations and assonances, in proverbial and other formulaic expressions. The traditional community's history, values, beliefs and aspirations were recorded not in books but in its oral tradition of songs, folk tales and epic narratives."19 The article cited above, from the NELMNews (n.d.) further argues that with the advent of literacy in South Africa, orature was for a long time relegated to the margins of literary, cultural, and political respectability. It survived, however, in the rural areas and in such urban adaptations as the work songs chanted by labour gangs - such as "Shosholoza" and the work chant, "Abelungu ngo-damn" ("God damn whites"). But, generally speaking, African poetry bowed before the supremacy of print and the influence of Western models to become an art form written and read by individuals. It nevertheless remained more determinedly public, more social and political in its characteristic concerns, than its white South African counterpart. The 1960's, following a period in which literary output had been dominated by prose forms, saw the publication of lyric poetry written in English. Informed by the ideology of Black Consciousness, the new poetry was initially characterised by bitter ironic depictions of ghetto life and injustice - as in the poetry of the four leading authors from the Black Consciousness era: Oswald Mtshali, Mongane Serote, Mafika Gwala, and Sipho Sepamla. As the 1970's wore on, and particularly after the Soweto revolt of 1976, increasing use was made of rhetorical devices derived from orature, in order to articulate a growing political militancy. South African poets sought to assert their identity by recovering a sense of cultural continuity with the heroic, precolonial past - a continuity long effaced by the discourse of white supremacy - while at the same time valorising the township "subculture" of their experience. This process was described by Mothobi Mutloatse, a poet and short story writer who emerged in the heady days of Black Consciousness, in his introduction to his epoch-making anthology Forced Landing. Africa South: Contemporary Writings, as a concerted attempt to nationalise the English language and its literary conventions in the service of the populist cause. The process culminated in the publication in 1979 of Ingoapele Madingoane's "contemporary epic" Africa My Beginning. Significantly, before its appearance in print, Madingoane's work had already achieved great popularity at township performances, organised by such pioneering Black Consciousness groups as Mihloti and MDALI (Music, Drama, Arts, and Literature - the acronym also means "Creator" in Nguni), to both of which Madingoane belonged and whose genesis from the late 1960's Molefe Pheto describes in his prison memoirs, And Night Fell. 19

"From Imbongi to Worker Poet", NELM News 11, The National English Literary Museum, Private Bag 1019, Grahamstown 6140, South Africa, 1987.

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For Africans in South Africa, poetry once again became an important means of popular communication. After 1976, it became customary for poetry to be performed at political meetings, funerals, trade union rallies and other occasions providing for an affirmation of group identity and solidarity of purpose. The canonisation of dub poet Mzwakhe Mbuli as imbongi yesizwe jikelele (poet laureate) occurred when he made his royal command performance during President Nelson Mandela's inauguration in May 1994. Similarly, the opening of South Africa's first post-apartheid Parliament was marked by the performance of an imborgi to commemorate the occasion. In this resurgence of orature, heroic poetry or izibongo enjoyed a particularly vital renaissance in the context of the labour movement. This revitalisation was reflected in the publication in 1986 of Black Mamba Rising, a collection of izibongo by "worker poets" Alfred Temba Qabula, Mi S'dumo Hlatshwayo, and Nise Malange. The poems were originally performed at trade union meetings in the Durban district. Qabula's celebrated "Praise Poem for FOSATU" (Federation of South African Trade Unions - later Congress of South African Trade Unions), for example, adapts the heroic ethos of the royal izibongo by apostrophising the organisation as the 'Black Forest' ('Hlathi limnyama') in which its members seek refuge, a familiar praise name for both King Cetshwayo and the veteran ICU official A.W.G. Champion. In the 1980's labour movement in South Africa, Izibongo of this sort became "a unique tool in raising workers' consciousness of their union and its role in their lives as workers. Yet they are also quite clearly an expression of an old and tenacious art form with its roots deep in social and political awareness."20 Such poetry, like theatre and the new prose fiction which accompanied it, carved a role for itself in liberation education and can continue to play a role in education for a national culture in a transformed South Africa. Mi Hlatshwayo, as Congress of South African Trade Union's Cultural Co-ordinator, states that, "Creativity without a base, without direction, without the support of a democratic movement, is easily manoeuvred into commercial art."21 Education without a base can be similarly manoeuvred into education for privilege and elitism, and not for a democratic national culture. The new man and woman in South Africa are determined not to be manipulated and exploited again. The Durban Workers' Cultural Local, in a 1985 manifesto, declared: "We have been culturally exploited time and time again: We have been singing, parading, boxing, acting and writing within a system we did not control. So far, black workers have been feeding their creativity into a culture machine to make profits for others. Worker creators are promised heaven on earth and hoards of gold - from penny-whistle bands to mbaqanga musicians, from soccer players to talent actors... they were taken from us, from their communities, to be chewed up in the machine's teeth. Then... they are spat out - an empty husk, hoboes for us to nurse them. This makes us say it is time to begin controlling our creativity."22 20 ru-j 21 22

Ibid. Quoted in Weekly Mail, July 17-23, 1987, p. 20. Durban Workers Cultural Local, 1985 (Pamphlet).

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The Eurocentric assumption, therefore, that literature could not exist without writing led most early ethnographers to ignore the role of orature in their accounts of African society. A pedagogy for liberation education cannot afford to ignore the resources of orature in raising consciousness, transmitting values, and integrating the majority into future programmes for national reconstruction and démocratisation in South Africa.

7. From Protest to Revolt: African Fiction in the 1980's The 1980's also produced a radical shift in South African fiction from protest to revolt, in line with the phase in the struggle which the novels depict. It was a literature of empowerment concerned with the shifting balance of power. The novel since Soweto is not just concerned with depicting the courageous acts of the youth but also with reflecting the upsurge of guerrilla activities and revolutionary actions. In Mongane Serote's To Every Birth its Blood and Sipho Sepamla's A Ride on the Whirlwind the revolt itself does not receive the comprehensive treatment that it receives in The Children of Soweto and in Miriam Tlali's Amandla Serote and Sepamla are more concerned with showing the links between the revolt and the liberation movement, and the way these associations gradually fused into organised guerilla struggle far beyond the usual character of "riots". We get from all these novels a comprehensive coverage of the nature, the character, and the essence of the revolt. The sum total of the picture adds up to a documentation of African experience in the period. The Soweto novel has a relative structural complexity which its immediate predecessor lacks and contains a number of innovations and modifications. Events in the novels jump into one another; the numerous characters fuse and separate; the time sequence varies with each episode and point of view, so that the work becomes loose and variegated. These general assumptions are not absolute because each has its peculiarities. The Childen of Soweto is a "trilogy" only in the sense of an escalating crisis but does not retain the same characters in all three parts. To Every Birth its Blood begins with a linear plot, which suddenly becomes more complex as other characters and points of view come into prominence and the tempo of events is heightened. Subsequently, the political direction the events ultimately take and the development of the characters determine the structure of the novels. In other words, the Soweto novel is structurally situational. There are no s/heroes or heroines, in the classical sense, in these novels. Although we meet flesh and blood characters with real desires and distinctive eccentricities, their individualism is submerged beneath the collective predicament. The characters, however, are not stereotypes but credible individuals with different levels of personal integrity and intellectual insights. Nonetheless, their private lives are never allowed to cloud the collective predicament or to assert themselves too much over the collective aspirations of the communities in which they live. The community as a whole is the s/hero in these novels. Collective concerns triumph over purely personal aspirations. Thus the social environment itself, in as far as it determines our being and consciousness, becomes the central protagonist in the unfolding events.

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Mike Kirkwood, former director of Ravan Press, the publishers who blazed the trail of liberation literature in South Africa, viewed the new writers to emerge in the wake of Soweto as the story-tellers in orature come to life and said that he found it difficult as he reads their work not to see the authors in front of him: "It is the polar opposite of James Joyce paring his fingernails behind the complete and self-sufficient art-work. The Soweto writers carry the function of the story-teller into the midst of the fractured lives of the prisoners of apartheid. They are the sympathetic listeners who tell the stories of others, but sometimes they will advise, and maybe at a crucial juncture they will act. They look for the continuities hidden under the oppressive face of the land.23 Their work, which also raises several generic expectations, can only be fully appreciated in the context of the unfolding culture of liberation in South Africa; they render invaluable service in advancing a national consciousness and providing a national culture of reconstruction.

8. South African Women Writers Disproportionate power in South Africa rests with white males. In our African majority led government power is still concentrated in the hands of men. The plight of women needs full exposure in any educational system and women's issues need full integration within the agenda of the Reconstruction and Development Programme. A starting point, in the context of education for social transformation, is to understand both the constraints under which women have laboured for centuries and the uniqueness of their contribution to our unfolding culture of liberation. Their writings offer the most intimate and authentic window into their souls. Such a stress on womanist and feminist issues does not imply a separation of gender from race and class factors but is intended to highlight the most marginalised sector in all our communities. Apartheid tended to camouflage this other form of apartheid (with a small letter 'a'). Apologists emerged even within the liberation movement who would have us wait until after "liberation" to address gender oppression, in their perhaps well intentioned but misguided views that Apartheid (with a capital 'A') was the major enemy to dislodge and that no "side" issues should be allowed to distract us from the main goal or fragment antiapartheid forces. The tradition of literature by women writers in South Africa is unique and challenging. Since the nineteenth century several South African women of both African and non- African origin have published poems, short stories, novels, plays, and auto-biographies to create the most impressive, most substantial body of literature by women writers in Africa. With few exceptions, writers in South Africa have to create under conditions of stress. African women writers are the worst affected. They have had to overcome apartheid threats of harassment, censorship, house arrest, or imprisonment. The indirect, less publicised but equally stifling impediments - limited education, malnutrition, separation from families, stark slum conditions - all inhibit creative writing endeavour among Africans. For African women, who suffer the standard 23

Mike Kirkwood, Letter to M.V. Mzamane, 17 March 1980.

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restrictions of unequal pay, abuse by the more muscular, and traditional subjugation in domestic service, the situation is even more grim. It is surprising that any African women writers in South Africa actually manage to write at all. African women writers have contributed substantially towards South African literature in the African languages, the earliest body of literature (as distinct from orature) to emerge from the continent, with the exception of writing in Amharic and Swahili. From early beginnings in Sotho and Xhosa, women writers are now prominent in every African language literature in South Africa. Writing in English, the major literary language, Noni Jabavu blazed the trail through her autobiographical work, mingled with anthropological and women's concerns, written in exile : Drawn in Colour: African Contrasts (1960) and The Ochre People: Scenes from South African Life (1963). She was followed in the 1970's by another exile, already known as a journalist and poet, Joyce Sikakane, author of A Window on Soweto. Autobiography, revitalised in the 1980's, produced worthy successors to Noni Jabavu in Winnie Mandela, Ellen Kuzwayo, Maggie Resha, Miriam Makeba, Sindiswa Magona, Emma Mashinini, Caesarina Kona Makhoere, Phyllis Ntantala Jordan, and Frieda Matthews. Fatima Dike emerged in the 1970's as the first major African woman playwright in English and was succeeded in the 1980's by Gcina Mhlope. The thin body of published playscripts belies the rich theatrical tradition in the African community going back to antiquity. In this tradition, women take part in dance, music, and songs for religious, cultural, and agricultural festivals and celebrations of birth, death, and marriage, as well as the everyday songs that accompany all aspects of work and play. And through their responsibility for educating the young, women largely developed the classical story-telling tradition of tsomo, inganekwane, or intsomi. Such orature constitutes a direct vehicle for ethical teaching. More indirectly, orature expresses the shared attitudes and beliefs of the community through songs for grinding grain, songs for entertaining children, and songs the children themselves sing for their mothers going off to the day's work. As with izibongo, such performing art forms have survived conquest. Evidence of their resurgence, adaptation, and transformation abounds in South African women's culture. Women in South Africa, in unscripted productions such as the guerrilla theatre from the squatter settlements of Crossroads, or in formal dramatic terms at the Space Theatre in Cape Town or the Market Theatre in Johannesburg, have been quick to exploit the political resources of theatre to place women's issues on top of the agenda of the liberation movement and the new South Africa. In prose fiction in English, Bessie Head, who died in exile in Botswana in 1986, occupies pride of place as the leading African female novelist South Africa has produced. Her fiction reaches deep to her psyche to expose her trauma as a South African of mixed racial origin, so scathed by rejection that for a time she lost her country, her sanity, her chance to teach and to earn a living, and her credibility as an immigrant. As a female in South Africa and in exile, she suffered under males who despise and degrade women as sex objects, under whites who reject anyone with African blood, under Africans who look down upon the lighter castes, and under the educated elites in power who wish to control the ordinary people. An

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extraordinary writer who has yet to be accorded the recognition she so richly deserves, Bessie Head wished to be ordinary, to live simply and calmly among the villagers in Serowe, Botswana, apart from political tension or elitist domination. Between 1968 and 1986 she wrote four novels, a collection of short stories and numerous uncollected magazine stories, and a short account of the humanstory of Serowe. After Bessie Head, the next major novelist to emerge was Miriam Tlali. In 1974 Muriel at Metropolitan made its first appearance in South Africa, but raised little comment, received slight acclaim, and enjoyed only a short life before it was banned. It was an autobiographical novel based on the experiences of Miriam Tlali while she was working as a clerk-typist in a Johannesburg shop, selling electrical wares. Although herself blatantly exploited by her white employer, she found herself part of the process of exploiting her fellow Africans while suffering constant slights and insults from the white employees. In her book she depicts no major calamity and her tone is subdued by comparison with the anger of earlier protest literature and later writers of the Soweto era. The force of her work is its artistic control, honest attention to significant detail, and lack of historic gesture. Caught in the spiralling violence and counter-violence after 1976, she lent her talents to the new writers movement which arose out of Black Consciousness and wrote a column, "Soweto Speaks", based on various working class characters, for Straffrider, the magazine that represents the Soweto generation. In 1980, her second novel, Amandla, discussed in an earlier section, appeared. This book was also banned. A collection of her earlier writing and some stories appeared as Footprints in the Quagga Following in the footsteps of Gladys Thomas, poet and short story writer from Cape Town, Zoe Wicomb, now living in Scotland, is an additional African voice from Cape Town. Other African women writers, some still living outside South Africa, though their messages may be intermittent and curtailed, are gradually being heard. They include Lauretta Ngcobo, Farida Karodia, Amelia House, Lindiwe Mabuza, Christine Douts Qunta, and Sankie Nkondo. Less marginalised than their African counterparts, white women writers represent an important voice of the oppressed segments in our society. The first major novelist in South Africa, Olive Schreiner, of German and English origin, was almost a lone voice at the end of the nineteenth century, impressing people in Great Britain and America of women's right everywhere to employment as co-worker with man. Her novels, in particular The Story of an African Farm, were widely read and much discussed. She believed in a woman's movement, in global concern for women everywhere, and in necessary dignity and freedom for women. She proclaimed their right to recognition and to the responsibility of controlling their own minds and bodies. Without formal schooling, all on her own, she created an international stir. Her outcry for the Western woman's need to work, to differ from the banal, to create freely and to dispose of her produce as she sees fit, is startlingly pertinent today. She was followed by, among others, Sarah Gertrude Millin and Pauline Smith.

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Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer was first recognised in the 1940's for her short fiction. She has achieved unquestioned eminence as a novelist and a critic who has placed emancipation veiy high on her priority list. She has written fourteen novels, all dealing with an increasingly tense setting of growing apprehension and violence. Her short stories are now collected in nine volumes. With increasing repression, restriction, and censorship much of her work before 1990 was banned in whole or in part. As a critic, she is an objective advocate for the African writers of her society; fair and understanding, she never presumes to speak for them. She shares their conviction, however, that when extreme oppression crushes humanity, injustice becomes the only possible subject for creative art. Speaking as a rational, sometimes idealistic, ever-sensitive white South African woman, she makes real for her readers all over the world the pain that whites in their confused, unstable, and very sad plight experience. Striving for a hearing beside Nadine Gordimer are other white South African women writing in English, at home and abroad, such as Sheila Fugard, Sheila Roberts and a woman of Afrikaner parentage, Menan Du Plessis. In addition, Afrikaans women writers, usually marginalised in literary studies are gradually being heard and some, like Elsa Joubert and Welma Odendaal, have raised their voices against the inhumanity and repression under apartheid. The special case of the Afrikaner, however, in a liberatory context, needs separate examination and one can do no better than refer the reader to Ampie Coetzee's paper first delivered at the Victoria Falls meeting in July 1989 between Afrikaans writers and representatives of the African National Congress Cultural Unit. 24 His own contribution to this volume also deals with the subject.

9. The Art of Liberation And The Liberation Of Art Kofi Buenor Hadjor, a former aide to Kwame Krumah, suggests that literature and resistance in the Third World are indissolubly linked. We contend that culture and national reconstruction are similarly linked. He argues that the yearning for change and freedom is anticipated with vigour and force in literature - we should add the graphic arts, dance, music, and theatre. He sees the unfolding culture of liberation and transformation in South Africa as unique and at the same time universal, qualities which qualify it as the foundation for a national patriotic culture in South Africa. Its uniqueness, he says, derives from the specific experience of the individual in South Africa; its universality stems from the basic yearning of all people for freedom. He points out, on a different note, that the motives people may have had to become involved in a programme for social transformation could be varied and sometimes contradictory: "But whatever the original impetus - experience of degradation, reaction to personal injustice, impoverishment, thwarted ambition, even failure in love - at a certain stage individual motives assume the character of a 24

Ampie Coetzee, "Reading the Silences", Literary Supplement to the Weekly Mail, August 2531, 1989, pp. 6-7.[Tape of Victoria Falls Conference Address in Author's Files].

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collective desire for social transformation." 25 In such a situation, the basic function of education is to facilitate a shift from individual alienation to involvement; its design is to awaken and channel the innate desire for liberation in a collective direction. The impulse for liberation thus engendered throws up liberation literature, along with a culture of transformation that is capable of adequately meeting the needs of development and national reconstruction. Transformational culture, then, is not simply the product of the isolated individual. The unfolding culture of transformation is predicated upon the spirit of transformation among the people. Unless such a spirit, which cannot be artificially invoked, is drawn from real life it cannot be a force in social transformation. The wider experiences of social struggle which provide the raw material for its subject matter also give transformational culture its force. A yearning for liberation based on the experience of oppression, but also on involvement in struggle, gives transformational culture its appeal and force. Although the culture is based on the experience of individuals, the focus is social. Based on the experience of oppression and a collective response to it, transformational culture overcomes that fragmentation of human life and provides a portrayal of the active side of people with all possibilities. The perception of these possibilities by the writer, artist, politician, or trade union organiser is not the product of some mystical talent. The artistic experience and practice that lie behind transformational culture are inextricably linked to the very unfolding of collective consciousness and liberation. According to Hadjor, "the insights gained under these conditions which, at first, exist in the subconscious are represented by the writer as a mirror of life in which the reader recognizes himself or herself."26 Liberation art is not exclusively art for art's sake. In form and content it is bold and innovative. However, its concern is not with form or the alienated individual, as is often the case with bourgeois art. It is not only introspective but also consciously sets out to disturb, to communicate, and to inform. Instead of celebrating artistic activity as an end in itself, it aims to transcend the chasm between the artist and the audience. At its best, there is no chasm to transcend because the artist and the audience have a great deal in common. Detached from the mystification and elitism of "high culture", the culture of liberation acquires a form that is popular and accessible. This form suits it for use in mass education. The unfolding culture of liberation and transformation is democratic in production as well as in consumption, like liberation education or literature for social transformation that must flow from it. The culture is direct, immediate and speaks in the idiom of everyday life. For that reason, it does not suffer from the externality of bourgeois culture but in every sense belongs to the people: "It gives to the mass movement a new range of perceptions with which it understands itself and its circumstances. In directly stimulating the development of a new popular culture of resistance the art of liberation constitutes the liberation of art." 27 25

27

Kofi Buenor Hadjor, "Essay: The Literature of Resistance", Third World Book Review, London, Volume 2, Numbers 1 and 2 11-12(11). Hadjor, p. 11. Hadjor, pp. 11-12.

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In the struggle for social transformation in South Africa every aspect of existence is affected. The profoundly liberating character of this process is illustrated by its cultural dimension. Participation and involvement mean not only new attitudes and a new outlook but also the stirring of passions and emotions. The oppressed no longer see the world from the view point of traditional conventions. The rejection of oppression necessarily leads to the rejection of values that attach themselves to the system of domination. These are the markings of the new culture which must be encompassed in education as much as in the economic and political spheres. Through the struggle for liberation a new South Africa is born. At the beginning the qualitatively new is barely perceptible, but in due course the democratic movement in its various formations becomes aware of its creations. The songs, the dances, the stories, and even the jokes assume a new significance and take on a deeper meaning. This is the treasure house of new conventions which provide the writer and other cultural workers with rich experience. For the writer this is a unique opportunity to work on the newly emerging popular idiom and through literature give it coherence. Such literary creations are the essential components of the new culture of liberation, the new national culture, transformational culture. In the final analysis, the struggle for total liberation and social transformation is inseparable from the struggle against cultural imperialism. Culture becomes both a means, one among several, and an end in itself in the process of emancipation and transformation. Culture has been an important weapon in the South African struggle for national liberation and in its continuing quest for social transformation, a struggle whose penultimate goal is the creation of a new democratic and egalitarian national culture. Oliver Tambo, the ANC's President in exile, recognised the political importance of the cultural struggle when he made the following appeal to South African cultural workers in the antiapartheid years: "Let the arts be one among many means by which we cultivate the spirit of revolt among the broad masses, enhance the striking power of our movement and inspire the millions of our people to fight for the South Africa we envisage."28 What we are here advocating is that, even at the rendezvous of victory, let the unfolding culture of our liberation struggle provide the foundation for and foster a national culture of reconstruction and development in a transformed South Africa.

28

Quoted in Third World book Review, Volume 2, Numbers 1 and 2 (1986), p. 12.

Zbigniew Bialas (Katowice/Essen)

From Vasco da Gama's Astrolabe to John Barrow's Artificial Horizon: The Cape Colony and Cartographical Momentum1 But where are we, in what uncharted world? Camoens, The Lusiads (5:25) 1. Introduction Three historical incidents are analysed in this essay. The first one reveals the fifteenth century ideological set-up influencing Vasco da Gama's landing on South African shores. Renaissance pre-Mercatorial zeal was then still directed towards maritime exploration and therefore the Portuguese sailors did not intend to penetrate the interior. They had enough will, however, to preparatorily and symbolically empty the land by deterritorialising the natives. The second incident, placed in the seventeenth century, reflects Fitzherbert and Shillinge's unsuccessful act of taking possession of the Cape and the palimpsestic attempt at building on the emptied ground, providing welcome traces for the future cartographical and colonial endeavour. The last instance presents South Africa's first official cartographer, John Barrow - initiating the geographical adventure in the interior busy measuring the territory which had been symbolically emptied by Vasco da Gama and overwritten by Fitzherbert and Shillinge. This was at the end of the eighteenth century and the time when in the South African context, the cartographical momentum towards measuring, logoising and hierarchising the land became directly linked to the project of colonial expansion. 2. Before the Rise of Cartographical Momentum In 1488 Bartholomew Dias "discovered" the unpopulated Cape. Dias' successor, Vasco da Gama, cannot maintain the illusion of emptiness, therefore, upon landing he depopulates the beach. Vasco, unlike in Luis de Camoens' poetic version (1572, The Lusiads), encountered and "handled" physical coastal natives, not a metaphysical spirit of Adamastor. Wilhelm Lichtenstein relates in his early history, how, in November 1497, Portuguese travellers met for the first time the aboriginal inhabitants of Southern Africa. The date coincides rather closely with Columbus' initial confrontation with Americans and the treatment of the natives is emblematic. The coincidence is a telling one because it reveals that what Greenblatt shows in 1

This paper is a part of a larger project. I wish to acknowledge the financial help of Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (Bonn) which is sponsoring the entire undertaking.

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Marvelous Possessions with reference to American colonisation (100-110) applies very well to South Africa. The same strategies are employed in interracial encounters, including, as if in a standard recipe, landing, measuring, deception, kidnapping, lack of linguistic understanding, the giving of gifts, etc., with the same result - promoting the politics of the Empire: Vasco was making astronomical observations on the beach when he learned from some of his people, that two natives near the landing place were busy collecting honey and apparently had not noticed the presence of foreigners. He ordered his men to approach them secretly and to catch them without any violence. They caught one of them ... none of them understood the captive's language ... They treated him in a friendly way, gave him presents and ... gained his confidence. (Lichtenstein, 23)

Vasco da Gama in a proprietorial gesture starts zealously to conduct his geographical business of observation the moment he sets his foot on the ground, but he is not interested in the reality of the land. Significantly, if one considers da Gama's mission, he looks out of the peninsula, not into it. Preoccupied with "finding his bearings on the cosmic chart" (Camoens, 5:26) he uses his measuring (navigational) instruments with a view to the further voyage. Presumably, he is armed with an astrolabe (cf. Camoens, Canto 5: 26), - used by travellers for ascertaining longitude but metaphorically serving as "theoretical eyes" (Boelhower, 52), - the icon of magic and scientific power. The whole scene suggests, as in a Renaissance painting, a desire for correct order and symmetry, especially seen as appropriate at a place where two worlds met. Thus, the Portuguese observe the natives, whereas the natives are ignorant of them. The sailors arrive from the sea; the natives from the land. The meeting is enacted in the "contact zone" (Pratt, 6), the in-between space of the initial colonial encounters, typically - on the beach, supposedly neither here nor there. (This is the first mistake in the symmetrical structure because the beach is not, as maps misleadingly show, an abstract line where land meets water, it is not a no-man's terrain between the land from which the natives come and the sea from which the travellers arrive. It belongs to the land, so being on the beach is already an incongruous, radically asymmetrical encroachment, a minimal, yet unmistakable invasion). If Vasco has an astrolabe, the natives have "wild sweet honey" (Camoens, 5:27). Until now the scene is presented as symmetrical and static. When it becomes dynamic, with spectacularly different roles assigned to co-present subjects, it still remains symmetrical. Instead of yielding to the temptation of enjoying the complexities of contact zone interaction, Vasco - thinking in terms of a less complex but more effective binary logic - issues an order, though the natives form no threat, to arrest them, but aesthetically - without violence. One native is caught, the other escapes. Such implied symmetry is equivalent to beauty to the Renaissance mind, striving hard for some organic unity. How someone can be caught secretly by an armed stranger, without recourse to violence is a thoroughly mystifying issue, and I do not possess a cognitive structure to explain it, other than to concede that violence had to be used but it had to be presented as non-violence. How the Portuguese could determine whether they had gained the confidence of the prisoner without speaking

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a word of his language is another mystery of colonial translation. What is evident however is that it is the Portuguese who did what they wanted and interpreted it the way they wished. They separated and deterritorialised both natives (one is taken aboard and the other one forced to flee) and emptied the contact zone. They left a record and substituted the natives' presence with their own traces, planting stone crosses along the shore (Lichtenstein, 18) but they still did not develop a properly strong penetratory momentum and did not master adequate idiom necessary for producing a map of the hinterland. This momentum towards mapping and claiming the interior was developed in Europe much later, in the mideighteenth century (Pratt, 9), as a logical aftermath to previous maritime exploration. In South Africa this momentum is, additionally, half a century delayed.

3. A Heap of Stones Official map making comes to travel literature in the Southern African context at a relatively late stage (as a direct result of British invasion of the Cape in 1795) with the figure of Sir John Barrow who in his Travels into the Interior of Southern Africa, published in 1801, marking the beginning of the nineteenth century, presents himself proudly as an uncontested pioneer of South African cartography. That was possible because Col. Gordon who did precede Barrow in that respect committed suicide when the British captured the Cape and did not publish his own exhaustive Great Atlas. Thus, Barrow could maintain that nobody seriously cared about publishing the results of mapping the hinterland of the Cape between 3 July 1620, when in the name of King James, Humphrey Fitzherbert and Andrew Shillinge, two members of the English East India Company enthusiastically yet unsuccessfully took possession of the land adjacent to Table Bay and the years 1797-98, when John Barrow "armed with 'an artificial horizon; a good pocket chronometer; a pocket compass; and a measuring chain,' [laid] a possessive grid of latitude and longitude over the colony" (van Wyk Smith, Grounds, 3). The year 1620 is conveniently symbolic because it enables comparisons between South African colonisation and the founding of the Plymouth Plantation in America. In an impressive manner, both architecturally and metaphysically, Fitzherbert and Shillinge introduced an act of, literally, building a city on a hill, by piling up stones. It appeared to be a futile act because of lack of subsequent support from the British Government discouraged by the cost of establishing such a refreshment station (Lichtenstein, 32-3; Were, 19). This lack of official support signified a lack of the need to draft maps but the cartographic fervour directed towards the interior, the look into the land, absent from Portuguese accounts, can easily be detected. In the document written by Fitzherbert and Shillinge in 1620, the symbol of taking possession is not yet a horizontal move forward, nor a survey and relocation of frontiers; it is a simple imitation of the activity of building: And in token of possession, taken as aforesaid and for a memorial hereafter, we have placed a heap of stones on a hill lying West-south-west from the road in the said bay, and call it by the name of King James his mount, (in: Barrow, vol. 1, 4)

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The geographical vocabulary is here (west-south-west), the activity of naming on behalf of the Empire is highlighted (the mountain is given the name of King James), the possibility of expansion is retained (the road), the possibility of surveying the countryside is hinted at (the hill) and the wish for the stability of the White presence is suggested too (a memorial, a heap of stones). About one hundred and fifty years later, driven by similar impulses, Col. Gordon "erects a stone" (Cullinan, 61) in commemoration of Governor Van Plettenberg's expedition. For the colonial subject erecting a cairn of stones can be fraught with both political and mystical symbolism. For the colonialist it stands for a building, a vision of the city, and it was already Heidegger who derived the Western Ich bin from the root word bauen (cf.: Boelhower, 43). Moreover, a heap of stones suggests the idea of organic unity of structure. If one takes into account that it all happened in the year 1620, it is possible to see in this act the yearning for a fresh Renaissance ideal, where a perfect city would have to display just such organic unity. The problem for the colonialist begins, however, when it appears that his symbolism of possession coincides with the native symbolism of succession. A cairn was used by "Hottentots" and "Bushmen" as a grave marker. Col. Gordon comments: "Saw no skeletons and only one grave which was a circular heap of stones" (Cullinan, 36). Twenty years later John Barrow records: "a heap of stones, piled upon the bank of a rivulet, was pointed out to me as the grave of a Hottentot." (vol. 1, 108) The question a colonialist faces is of a truly philosophical nature: if one is confronted with the same structure, does the symbolism of possession overpower the symbolism of succession? Only the affirmative answer justifies the colonial expansion. If the answer is negative (which it is), colonial expansion has to entail a simultaneous erasure of the unwanted heaps of stones and after a period of celebrating the emptied space, a global palimpsest of writing anew. Thus, Barrow, reverting uneasily to the muffled concepts of similarity, difference and antiquity has to perform a rather obscure logical somersault to explain why succession in Africa does not mean the same thing as succession in Europe: "The intention, it seemed, of the pile was very different from that of the monuments of a similar kind that anciently were erected in various parts of Europe, though they very probably might have proceeded, in a more remote antiquity, from the same origin" (vol. 1, 108-109). Assuming traces of people is a delicate issue. As long as traces remain organic proofs of habitation, they do not have to be included in a map, so, for the cartographer, biological existence alone did not sufficiently legitimise the presence of the natives. Concentration on traces may also be a technique of depopulating or repopulating, since the very concept of the trace, even a recent one, does not entail a co-presence - be it in spatial or temporal understanding - but unavoidably a preceding presence, made visibly distinct from the present presence or the implied future presence. The present presence always belongs to the reader of traces, it does not need to belong to their maker. The aforementioned delicacy of the issue in a depopulated landscape in confrontation with a heap of stones refers to a very specific non-biological form of traces, namely that of ruins and graves. Ruins are

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extremely problematic because they seem to architecturally legitimise a preceding possession of the land by someone else. If included in the map, they hopelessly spoil the purity of the colonial project, unless they are museumised as monuments of people who no longer exist. For the colonial project to be successful, architectural ruins require, ideally, the annihilation of the descendants of the builders of the ruins. Mary Louise Pratt summarises this technique succinctly, "To revive indigenous history and culture as archeology is to revive them as dead" (134). Erecting heaps of stones (Fitzherbert and Shillinge), stone crosses (the Portuguese) or memorial stones (Col. Gordon) is already conducive, whether consciously or not, to making an initial cartographical gesture of demarcating boundaries. John Barrow, referring to Gordon's cross, expertly sees both of these functions as follows: [Governor Van Plettenberg] caused a stone or baakert to be there [the Sea-Cow river] erected, which he also intended should serve as a point in the line of demarcation between the colony and the country of the Bosjesmans. (Barrow, vol. 1, 255)

Incidentally, Van Plettenberg's "causing a stone to be erected" sheds somewhat different interpretative light on the act reported in Gordon's diaries where the Governor's order is presented by Col. Gordon as his own commemorative impulse. Yet, regardless of the complex interpretative dilemmas facing colonial cartographers, it would be natural, as it happened for example in America, that from this symbolic moment of cleansening the ground by building a heap of stones, mapping will start as an effort to record the welcome traces or a lamentable (but remediable) lack of them. After all, in America, the Biblical "city on a hill" meant in effect an introduction of an allegorical map which sanctified the progress of civilisation (Boelhower, 57). In South Africa, according to Barrow, for two hundred and fifty years nothing momentuous happened in the field of cartography. Apparently, neither the Dutch East India Company which came to colonise the Cape nor the Dutch settlers were interested in mapping the interior. One of the numerous reasons for this is that although South Africa rightfully belonged to the Southern Hemisphere, the label of the New World (America) or Antipodes (Australia) did not apply to it. Lady Ann Barnard, John Barrow's acquaintance and contemporary, imagined the colonialists' situation as that of "little mortals at the extreme point of Africa" (101) or at "the far end of the globe" (182). The extreme point of the known world or even its far end does not refer to the New Land. South Africa always represented rather, as J.M. Coetzee argues in White Writing, the farthest extremity of the Old World (2). Mapping the peripheries of the old world was doubtless seen as less urgent than mapping new lands. Accordingly, the shift from the nautical, coastline exploration to the exploration of the interior was being delayed. "A city on the hill" despite the encouraging heaps of stones remained devoid of meaning.

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4. Mapping Wild Gardens John Barrow - a more successful messenger of British rule - realising the significance of mapping for prospective colonisation, is rather indignant and surprised with belatedness of proper cartographical momentum: "no permanent limits to the colony were ever fixed under the Dutch government" (vol. 1, 8). Barrow, exploring a country of which he is totally ignorant (Lacour-Gayet, 46) deeply believes that lack of knowledge can be overcome through application of the deterministic and logocentric equation map = knowledge. He does not indulge in post-Camoensian metaphysical speculations on the topography of the Cape and Adamastor's legacy. He is convinced that a successful colonial arrival requires a plan. This conviction deepens his anger with the Boers because they scandalously betrayed the White Man's cartographic mission (meaning: scientific progress): "Having no kind of chart nor survey [the Dutch] possessed a very limited and imperfect knowledge of the geography of the remoter parts". The reasons for this neglect Barrow sees in low mercantilism and laziness of the Dutch in general. He accuses them of carrying on a lucrative trade with the natives instead of supplying "useful information respecting the colony." Barrow is, in effect, disgusted by the situation: "not one of them [the Dutch] has furnished a single sketch even towards assisting the knowledge of the geography of the country" (vol. 1, 8). Because of this inexplicable sloth of the unsettled settlers (J.M. Coetzee, 4, 29), the actual boundaries of the colony, were, in Barrow's view, simply "fixed on the spot" (9) by Governor Van Plettenberg and Col. Gordon, apparently the only two individuals in the years that elapsed between 1620 and 1789 who really seemed to care about lines of demarcation. This is in fact a spectacular error because both Gordon and others before him made efforts at cartographical recordings. But this intentional error is necessary for John Barrow's task to be justified as a pioneering project of utmost importance to prospective colonisation: "to complete the lines of demarcation", a task that he undertakes and executes with a view to determine officially "the extent and the dimensions of the territory" (vol. 1, 9). The utensils he brings - an artificial horizon, a pocket chronometer, a pocket compass and a measuring chain - stress not only the celebratory intentions, the belief that space is conquerable, recordable and erasable. They reflect a zeal for precise detail, a belief in direct and mimetic translatability of land into signs and an unshaken belief in the usefulness of colonial mapping. It is not a coincidence perhaps that geographical measuring instruments used at the end of the eighteenth century by cartographers like Barrow and Gordon have ambiguous names: "artificial horizon" introduces the idea of bogus findings, "spy-glass" suggests some covert military activity, "smoked glass" lack of clarity of vision, "pocket" instruments stress pocketing, i.e. appropriating, and a "measuring chain" echoes bondage more than geometry. Eventually, John Barrow, unlike Gordon, published his account of travels and measurements in 1801 and the exhaustive title of his work contains the following

addition: ... With a Map Constructed Entirely from Actual Observations Made in the Course of the Travels. Barrow, like other European explorers travelling or

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residing in South Africa for lengthy periods of time, English and non-English alike, looked at the land and the people, constructed, and then, in turn, by observing his own construction, frantically attempted to reinforce the essentialist view of the world as a coherent spatial system. The map became a projection of wishfiilfilment, a record of efforts to turn phantasies into reality. Barrow was followed by armies of ardent believers in the benefits of recording lines and signs. A believer may indeed believe that his observation leads to a neutral construct, but it is impossible in its very principle, as no observation and no resulting construct is neutral and cartography always depends on eliminating something and flattening the dimensions. Objective colonial cartography was, at best, an exercise in futility since neutral or innocently mimetic maps do not exist. In the same way as there are no innocent texts and no innocent pictures of distant places, there are no nonconfrontational and unmediated maps. They were always pseudo-mimetic and manipulative at the same time, always serving, explicitly or implicitly, an expansionist project. In complex progressivist colonial circumstances maps contain assessive elements and there can be no neutral cartographical signifiers. Even climatic phenomena are climactic. If mimetic theory of cartography assumes an ordered sequence of moves: first objective observation and then imitative drafting, a non-mimetic theory would rather assume a non-linear and not necessarily causal interrelation between observation and drafting, the resulting cartographic texts depending in each individual case on a specific set of selective and substitutive practices. No matter whether the selectors were "benevolent Europeans" (Passmore, 13), "passionate travellers", "sensitive travellers" (Camus, 42, 45) or simply actively wicked colonialists - presented as "the scourge of the terrestrial globe" (Penny, 43) - their maps of wild gardens created a grammar of the territories and people; not so much a narrative grammar, as a pictorial/narrative one. Early cartographers provided a language and a discursive point of reference, paradigms and subsequent rules to the required understanding of reality. These paradigms were a result of the desire to adopt the new locality and mark it off in such a way that it started generating its own "new history" or at least a "new story" eventually going down to history. They paved the way for creating the past through legitimising and familarising a selective tradition.

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Bialas

References Barnard, Lady Anne. "Letters Written from the Cape of Good Hope (1797-1801)." W.H. Wilkins (ed.). South Africa a Century Ago. London: Smith, Elder, and Co., 1901. (New York: Kraus Reprint Co., 1969). Barrow, John. An Account of Travels into the Interior of Southern Africa... . London: A. Strahan, 1801.

Boelhower, William. Through a Glass Darkly: Ethnic Semiosis in American Literature. New York: Oxford UP, 1987. Camoens, Luis de. The Lusiads (1572). Trans. Guy Butler, in: M. van Wyk Smith (ed.) Shades of Adamastor. 47-63. Camus, Albert. "Short Guide to Towns Without a Past." Trans. Philip Thody. Summer. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1995. 42-47. Coetzee, J.M. White Writing: On the Culture of Letters in South Africa. New Haven: Yale UP, 1988. Cullinan, Patrick. Robert Jacob Gordon 1743-1795: The Man and His Travels at the Cape. Cape Town: Struik, 1992. Greenblatt, Stephen. Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World. Oxford: Clarendon, 1992. Lacour-Gayet, Robert. A History of South Africa. Trans. Stephen Hardman. London: Cassell, 1977. Lichtenstein, W.H.C. Foundation of the Cape; About the Bechuanas. [German orig. 1811, 1807], Trans. Dr. O H. Spohr. Cape Town: A.A. Balkema, 1973. Passmore, John. "Europe in the Pacific." Quadrant, Sept. 1992. 10-19. Penny, Joshua. The Life and Adventures of Joshua Penny. (New York, 1815). Cape Town: South African Library Reprint Series, 1982. Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London: Routledge, 1992. Van Wyk Smith, M[alvern], Grounds of Contest: A Survey of South African English Literature. Kenwyn: Jutalit, 1990. - ed. Shades of Adamastor: An Anthology of Poetry. Grahamstown: Institute for the Study of English in Africa, 1988. Were, Gideon S. A History of South Africa. New York: Africana Publishing Company, 1974.

Martina Ghosh-Schellhorn (Essen)

Transitional Identity: Autobiography in South Africa

1. Some Remarks on the Literary Scene As there is an ongoing controversy regarding the function of literature in South Africa, it is perhaps compulsory to commence with a few comments on the issue.1 Without getting myself entangled in the question awaiting a satisfactory answer: what is South African literature and can it be adequately theorized within a racefree area of discourse using paradigms intended to be appropriate rather than appropriative, I would merely like to cite a few voices. The critic Njabulo Ndebele, speaking of black writing, sees autobiography's formal aspects as inherently related to journalism, i.e. as being "very close to exposition" (1991: 92), hence partaking of journalism's avowed mission of disclosing facts. Within the "specific conditions of South Africa", however, he sees the "personal testimony", with which he conflates autobiographies, as only "meaningfully understood" as examples of "political testimony". Black literature is for him a "literature of anticipated surfaces" (27), divested of aesthetic concerns through its orientation to the political. He is here referring to fictional writing, yet precisely those elements which he so admires in the oral narratives of the "storytellers" who enliven the tedium of commuting blacks, those "tragedies or comedies about lovers, township jealousies" (32) he fails to locate within the very context of black autobiographies where they certainly do exist. Ndebele's stance is symptomatic of consensual critical understanding of black South African autobiography in its emphasis on its non-fictional status, whereby it consistently treats it as historical evidence, and in the process, effects its subsumption under the testimonies of subalterns enabled to break their silence through the well-meaning intervention of academics.2 The preponderance of autobiography as the genre for black writing certainly allows room for speculation. According to Es'kia Mphahlele, "[a]utobiography, the short story, the sketch, and verse, come more easily than the novel to the South African black... You can get quickly to the point, pressure your language for a 1 2

For a critical state-of-the-art overview, see E. Reckwitz (1995) and André Brink (1991). As is the case, e.g. of the Nobel peace prize winner, Rigoberta Menchu's life-story. In S. Africa there are comparable examples: Suzanne Gordon (1985); Hanlie Griesel, E. Manqele & R. Wilson (1987); Caroline Kerfoot (1985); and with certain qualifications, Miriam Makeba (1988); Winnie Mandela (1985); and Nelson Mandela (1990 & 1994). It has even become necessary for S. African critics, like Judith Coullie (1991: 1-23), to remind others of what is meanwhile self-evident when discussing autobiography: of the fallacy of equating the writer of an autobiography with the narrator or protagonist positions within it.

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quick delivery of your anger" (53). "This is an aesthetic", he claims. The theme of dispossession runs through black autobiographies like Ariadne's thread, hence the voicing of protest.3 The protest is directed at those in power, or at the white majority in general, who, in the Manichean set-up of racism, are the oppressors. Literary discourse is thus resolved into binary oppositions, each unceasingly locked in confrontation with the other. "Much of the literature of white South Africans is guilt-laden and self-condemnatory", so Guy Butler reflects in the preface to his autobiography Karoo Morning (1977: ix). The first question to ask, therefore, is whether the only difference between white and black/coloured autobiography in South Africa is that of a clash between the self-assured, yet guilt-laden, individuality of the rulers as opposed to the belief in the strength of the collective spirit of the oppressed which critics inevitably discover in black writing?4 Felicity Nussbaum, following this line of thought, too, suggests that "perhaps reading South African autobiography is less a matter of defining what is uniquely South African than determining which texts will bring these texts into crisis and write large the predicament of individual identity on the nation" (1991: 28). What is the nation of South Africa? On being asked by Ampie Coetzee about the manner in which he "constructs] Africa", Breyten Breytenbach elaborates on Africa as a construct, when he replies that "it almost seems necessary for the non-Africans to see Africa as the unknown, the dark continent. Almost as a kind of testing terrain, a necessary underground, on which you can project all your passions and your magical needs..." (1994: 15). 2. A Possible Literary Model Transitional identity, a model I would like to propose as an alternative to the "resistance model" established by current colonial discourse theories,5 is closely related to the idea of ideology. Louis Althusser's development of Gramsci's theory of hegemony in conjunction with a Lacanian conceptualization of the Imaginary and Symbolic as constituents of the self, will form my point of departure. To the question regarding whose "interests" ideology supports within the context of colonial rule (to which S. Africa, as an example of internal colonization must be counted), the answer obviously points at the interests of the dominating group which thereby seeks to gain/maintain consent for itself. If, however, we are exposed to ideological interpellation, where then lies the possibility for any kind of agency within subjectivity? This is where the psychoanalytical conceptualization of

4

Even a commercially-oriented autobiography like the story Miriam Makeba tells to James Hall begins with this theme: "I have been denied my home. We have been denied our land" (1988: 1). Whether it is Olney (1973), or Egner (1990), who follows Bahn's (1984) basic argument with a more updated version of the same. A model I see as being essentialist, however variously it may be draped in the different sarees by the practitioners of this policy, viz. Edward Said (1978, 1993), Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1987, 1990), Homi Bhabha (1991, 1994) or even Aijaz Ahmad (1992), to name only the most famous.

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identity, particularly as posited by Jacques Lacan's stade du miroir6 comes to the aid of what would otherwise be an Althusserian impasse. During the Imaginary stage, the first image the mirror presents to the child is one of an illusory wholeness, an imago which comfortingly belies the child's selfperception hitherto as an uncoordinated, fragmentary self. Accordingly, this image is internalized and retains its power of conviction even into the Symbolic stage, where the child is initiated through language into its new, and henceforth permanent, role as a 'social animal'. This "imaginary" Gestalt "symbolizes the mental permanence of the I, at the same time as it prefigures its alienating destination" (Lacan 1977: 2). This, then, is the ambivalence at the core of our selfperception. Yet, paradoxically, it is this very belief, or rather, delusion, erroneously based on the ostensible 'proof of its own wholeness, which enables the self to act as if it were that autonomous being7 beyond the influence of language, hence, logically, of ideology. In acting according to this internalized image of itself, it can either allow itself to be interpellated by ideology, or can, equally plausibly, reject its address as misdirected. This site, not of resistance, but of free agency, could be called the "egocentre". "Transitional identity", then, refers to identity understood as a product of the agonistic co-existence of "ideology" and the "egocentre". This is as yet a universalistic model and needs to be specifically located in the anglophone world. Since the dominant group to whose interests transitional identity is exposed is colonial in character, this identity is peculiar to the former British Empire, where English-language education furthers colonial interests, regardless of the by now physical absence from the scene of the colonizers. S. Africa under apartheid, is, by contrast, an all too lively relic of this power set-up. As the "egocentre", by definition, must be aware of its interpellation in order to collude or reject colonial ideology, transitional autobiography as the re-presentation of the "imaginary Gestalt" of the self, is not the exclusive domain of the formerly-/oppressed, but can, for example, encompass equally well the writing of white regime-opponents in S. Africa. Where is the connection between transitional identity and autobiography? The psychoanalyst Ernst Kris argues that the process of memory retrieval within autobiography is impelled through the posing of the question ""how did it all come about?"" (1975: 299). However, since "our autobiographical memory is in constant flux, is constantly being reorganized, and is constantly subject to changes which the tensions of the present tend to impose", the identity thus dependent on memory must necessarily be a construct. This ontogenic construction of the self is, in effect, a teleological arrangement of life-history elements in the form of a narrative which corresponds to an internalized image of oneself, a "personal myth" (299). The

7

In what follows I shall be drastically summarizing complex concepts without being able to do justice to them for reasons of space. The image American cognitive psychologists support when they propose that the self acts like a scientist, testing hypotheses and acting accordingly, as in Self-Theory explanations (Epstein (1973), Marcia (1966)), while the psychological concept of "identity" owes its existence to Erikson (1959, 1968).

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enabling belief in the unity of the self is analogously applied as an ontological paradigm to life-experiences. In transitional autobiography, then, life is comprehended as a coherent unity, which manifests itself as an ultimately comprehensible narrative within which the self finds itself situated as agent, not subject. In what follows, two such autobiographies from the vast number of South African autobiographies will form the focus of attention. Of these Rian Malan's My Traitor's Heart is a fascinating example of a non-politically correct autobiography by a white liberal, while Mark Mathabane's two volumes of autobiography recount the hazards and strengths of a township upbringing and trace the effects on it when transposed to the United States. Both deal with life under apartheid conditions, yet treat of it in ways which could be seen as being peculiar to their position within the hierarchy of race which still determines life in South Africa. In apartheid South Africa, the dominant ideology, to borrow Nicos Poulantzas's idea of ideology itself being a field within which different ideologies exist and are subordinated to a single one (1976: 209 ff), is racial supremacy. However, the conditions which actually exist correspond to the power-relations within the classsystem. As Benedict Anderson has argued in Imagined Communities, "the dreams of racism have their origin in ideologies of class rather than in those of nation: above all in claims to divinity among rulers and to 'blue' or 'white' blood and 'breeding' among aristocracies" (1983: 136). Yet because of the dominant ideology and its praxis in apartheid society, attention is deflected from the economic to an obsessive querying of the basis of racial supremacy: are whites really superior, are blacks really inferior? Mathabane and Malan both set about finding a satisfactory answer to the South African poser, and here I think we can discern an interesting new development in South African autobiography. Black autobiography usually remains locked within the racialist framework and therefore seeks to prove, through personal testimony, that blacks are not inferior, going as far as to the extent of advocating regression to so-called "traditional values", such as African Humanism, as Mphahlele's case shows. Mathabane, to the contrary, particularly in his sequel, contrasts South Africa with the States, and critically examines the position of whites in both, thereby deconstructing the ideological assumptions of white superiority. Malan, on the other hand, returns from the United States to apartheid society to question his privileged place in it through the stratagem of literally investigating, in his capacity as a journalist, the hegemonic belief, not, as would be expected from a declared white liberal, the superiority of the whites; to the contrary, he questions the inferiority of the blacks in a failed attempt to deconstruct racial supremacy.

3. Transitional Identity: A Black Perspective My reasons for choosing Mark Mathabane's two volumes of autobiography as examples of transitional identity in South Africa need some explanation, when placed within the context of the richness of autobiographical writing in English undertaken by black/coloured/off-white South Africans in the second half of this century. Why not take the equally bi-volumed autobiography of a more established

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writer like Es'kia Mphahlele? 8 Or the prison memoirs of activists like Emma Mashinini or Ceasarina Makhoere, or Albie Sachs's diaries?9 Ellen Kuzwayo's testimony or Sindiwe Magona's exemplum to her children's children10 could have served my purposes, as would have other testimonies of struggle against apartheid, like Kgosana's or Bloke Modisane's memoirs, or of life in the townships, as depicted by Godfrey Moloi or Don Mattera. 11 In their combination of all these elements - and more - Mathabane's very contemporary autobiographies, allow for a comprehensive look at transitional identity from the black perspective. In Kaffir Boy, Mathabane projects an image of himself as someone, who from his earliest memories onwards, was not only exposed to the evils of ghetto life, but also overburdened by his role as childish caretaker of his siblings. His personal myth is of a near-miraculous transcendence of a preordained miserable existence in the ghetto through moral and mental rigour. Was there a reason, he asks, "that I should survive the nightmares of my childhood - hunger, police raids and beatings, poverty, suffering, death - and at eighteen should leave my family... everything and everyone I loved, to begin life anew in a strange land called America", "Was there truly a purpose to my life after all?" (7). His ontogenetic project is well on its teleological way. He offers the reader no less than seven epigraphs to his sequel, of which the one from Mary Wollstonecraft, "When weakness claims indulgence it justifies the despotism of power", is perhaps most pertinent to the narration of his personal myth. "In America" he writes, he had "expected to be judged" by his "imperfections and background" (1989: 19). Instead, he discovers to his disgust that drinking alcohol, smoking marijuana and attending sexually-permissive parties was de rigeur for black students, who were, not surprisingly, notorious for their lack of academic excellence. A nonconformist in Alexandra, he complains that while he had been "accused of trying to be white" (19) there, on account of his earnest studiousness and wish to succeed, even called an ""imitation white man"" (16), he cannot understand these accusations levelled at him by fellow-blacks, that is, precisely those to whom he is "affiliated", in Said's use of the term. He valorizes his obduracy: after having nearly been killed by a tsotsi gangmembers for defecting from them, after his close shave with the prostitution of malnourished boys at the men's hostels on the outskirts of the township, after the suicide attempt his mother had prevented in time, he had not gone to America to have a good time. Presenting himself thus, as a ghetto-hardened veteran of non-conformity, with his nearmiraculous transcendence of a preordained miserable existence in the ghetto through moral and mental rigour, he spins out his personal myth of survival despite the odds in America. Mathabane's resumé of his life in the concluding pages is revealing of his awareness of achievement. He has a house, a car, a white wife, he is, in fact, as 8 9 10 11

Es'kia Mphahlele (1971 [1959], 1984). Caeserine Kona Makhoere (1988); Emma Mashinini (1989); Albie Sachs (1990a, 1990b). Ellen Kuzwayo (1985); Sindiwe Magona (1990). Philip Ata Kgosana (1988); Godfrey Moloi (1987, 1991). Don Mattera (1987); Bloke Modisane (1963).

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near to having become that model of emulation for black South Africans: a well-todo Afro-American: "I am happily married, I own a lovely house, I'm supporting my family and putting my siblings through school... And I thank America for giving me, through an education, a second chance in life, a life I have dedicated to the struggle for justice" (292). Moreover, he perceives himself as a role-model for young ghetto-dwellers, whom he also helps materially to "come over to America to study" (292). In the course of his narration, it has become obvious that Mathabane no longer defines himself within the South African paradigm of race. In doing so, he has surprisingly, in consideration of the lowest rung of the hierarchy to which his colour had pre-fixed him, moved beyond this peculiarly South African epidermal preoccupation. The significance of Mathabane's writing of Kaffir Boy deserves special mention here. Not only is it the therapeutic activity John Sturrock argues it is (1993: 285ff), it could be regarded as a project of of achieving Lukacsian class-consciousness, a project of overwhelming relevance to the relation between black South African identity and its literature. Mathabane claims to have been inspired to do so by the example of Afro-American autobiographers: "I had to learn to write like them, to purge myself of what they had purged themselves of so eloquently" (1989: 79). In the process he develops from an idealistic crier-out against apartheid in the academic wilderness of North America into a campaigner for equity in a country where he still has to fight for the implementation of rights granted to him, and other blacks, in theory alone. But this is not to remain uncritical of Mathabane's valorization of what is ultimately the American bourgeois myth of individual effort: "Like most Americans, what the blacks have discovered", according to Lewis Nkosi, writing of his American years, is that "individual effort in America counts for far less than is widely supposed", this myth "of prodigious individual effort crowned by wealth and acceptance into society at large" to which Mathabane steadfastly subscribes, is "a vain and cruel hope to encourage", yet it is "indispensable to a system founded upon private enterprise", hence wields "seductive power over American people" (1983: 74). Education equals economic freedom equals emancipation from racial supremacy, is to put it very bluntly, Mathabane's message, by means of which he no longer allows definition of himself within the South African paradigm of race. Having recognized rather that class- as opposed to race-distinctions present no insurmountable obstacles in upwardly mobile society, he sets out to emancipate himself. If, by a conceptual leap, we equate the oppressed black with the proletariat of Lukacs' History and Class Consciousness, as those who find themselves as only part of a process, which they must then comprehend in order to understand themselves as part of it,12 then this could perhaps be regarded as the agenda for 12

"The historical knowledge of the proletariat begins with knowledge of the present, with the self-knowledge of its own social situation and with the elucidation of its necessity (i.e. its genesis)" (159). While not here endorsing Lukdcs' glorification of proletarian selfconsciousness as the only "true" one, his dissection of capitalist society nevertheless marks an 'uncannily' Freudian correspondence to the economic situation as it existed, and continues to

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black autobiography in South Africa.13 As Terry Eagleton has put it: "A true recognition of its situation will be, inseparably, an insight into the social whole within which it is oppressively positioned" (1990: 95).

4. Transitional Identity: A White Perspective14 This impression is strengthened when looking at white autobiography, for which Malan's words are exemplary: "I am a white man born in Africa, and all else flows from there" (18). Here we find precisely that lack of self-understanding which the bourgeoisie of Lukacs' scenario are blighted with. Pursuing their own self-interests, they are lulled into unquestioning acceptance of the economic situation. By an accident of birth Rian Malan find himself on the master's side of the fence separating the blacks from the whites. "You have to put the black man down, plant your foot on his neck, and keep him that way forever, lest he spring up and slit your throat" (18) is how Malan quotes the Afrikaner 'master narrative' to which he, as one of the masters, however liberally inclined, lawfully belongs. The master can only be master through the acceptance of the other, the slave, of him as master, and of himself as the slave that he is; the process must be dialectic. In his examination of racial supremacy, Malan attempts, in exemplary fashion, to attain to Hegelian "negative [critically constructive] thinking".1 Simultaneously trying "to conserve and to suppress", as Derrida has explained the term Aufhebung,16 particularly in the last section of his triply-divided book, he attempts what could perhaps be fruitfully understood as a conservatively Hegelian dialectic Aufhebung, which seeks to preserve the positive elements of a position, eliminate its negative ones and attain thereby to a better position. Accordingly, he structures his narrative, which is hermeneutically-oriented to an extreme, into what could be read as the three stages of his quest for enlightenment.17 The first section, "Life in This Strange Place" seeks to deconstruct

14

15

16

exist in South Africa, where the blacks really are the "oppressed". Hence my proposal of his insights as pertinent to S. African "struggle/resistance" literature. Annamaria Carusi (1991: 99) has criticized the "usefulness" of Marxist discourse within S. African literary discourse on grounds which do not stand up well to closer inspection. She conflates, it would appear, the Marxist idea of "class consciousness" with the Enlightenment idea of a sovereign consciousness peculiar to humans. Else how to explain her belief that the use of the term "consciousness" in its Marxist sense (left undefined by her) effects a "recolonization" of the subject perceived now as "humanist" rather than the formerly "imperialist" one. The subdivision of the chapter segments which follow into black and white compartments is undertaken in a spirit of subversion of the existing categorisation of South Africans according to epidermal characteristics alone. D.F. Malan, called "the architect of apartheid", is cited in a passage taken from his writings and which is a typical example of Hegel's "negative thinking". D.F. Malan praises socialism for having "turned its searchlight on the evils of the existing system" in order to enable "a better social world" (19). Derrida (1985: 130). This is not an exclusively Hegelian idea. cf. the Sankhara Upanishads tat tvam asti idea as

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the myth of the white liberal tradition as it exists in that "strange place", South Africa, by using Rian Malan as its case-study. In this process, the making of what he derisively calls the "generic" white liberal is described through Malan's autobiographical narrative, and he concludes Book One with his personal exploitation of North American liberal interest following the inevitable escape from the South Africa which exile alone could provide. His second section, "Tales of Ordinary Murder", harnesses journalistic detective work concerning some mysterious murders to the project of questing for the 'truth' about race-relations in a South Africa much changed during his eight-year absence. Most of the murderers he deals with, however, are blacks, a fact which points to Malan's attempt to find reasons behind the whites' (hence his) irrational fear of being murdered by those kept from indulging in their irrationally bloodthirsty activities. The last section, "A Root in Arid Ground", is the shortest of the three, and offers a possible solution to the problem preoccupying Malan, that of the whites' fear being justified due to an incompatibility of white and black mentalities. Like his ancestor, Dawid Malan who crossed over into Xhosa territory and returned disillusioned, Malan feels compelled to repeat this behaviour, and to undertake a journey to the 'heart of darkness', away from 'civilized' blacks in urban settlements, to a last white inhabitant of Zulu country. Malan's personal myth centres around himself as the white liberal pioneer who has rid himself of his former naive, what Breytenbach once called the "guilt-rotted" (1986: 202), liberal illusions. Imprisoned as he is, within the Hegelian dialectic of racism, his experience of South Africa can teach him no other lesson than that the white liberal must remain an anomaly. No "unnatural" alliances are permitted, no common enemy can be found to unite black and white in resistance: however much the master might feel obliged to fight for the slave's rights, as master he cannot potentially fight against himself. Should he however insist, his advocacy of the rights of the oppressed, made as it is from an utterly different, superior position, can only be interpreted by those on whose side he attempts to place himself, as a shamefaced effort, if not as outright mockery of their own struggle. Yet he puts the question to the reader in anticipation of a commiserative answer: "How did you fight apartheid and build a just society if the people you were doing it for stoned you because your skin was white" (144). The whites' fear of the blacks Vincent Crapanzano sees as being "pervasive" and he understands it to be a "primordial fear" which derives "from the absence of any possibility of a vital relationship with most of the people around one" (1985: 21). Dawid Malan's legendary story of transformation into an "Afrikaner" is re-told by one of his progeny as an exemplum of the metamorphosis that overtakes "all white men who went there [to the Africa beyond the colonial boundaries]" (12). Blacks are "inscrutable", but "loving natives was a very good investment", a maxim Malan holds to be "true to this very day", because, he points out, if "you were friendly, they lit up and laughed and returned your love a hundredfold" (emphasis added, analogous. The idea of the quest as a romance form (elements of which determine Malan's autobiography) is of course one of the literary archetypes Northrop Frye had posited in 1957.

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34). The image of dark faces "lighting up", becoming lighter in the process, hence less 'dark' and inscrutable, in conjunction with the elementary reaction of children, rather than adults, who 'laugh' out their incomprehension, betrays Malan's necessarily circumscribed approach to what Mary Louise Pratt has called the "contact zone" (1992: 6-7). As the untiring quester after the basis of racial ideology, Rian Malan visits Creina Alcock, the widow of a dedicated socialist who had been killed when intervening between warring Zulus after having dedicated his life to teaching the Zulus what he knew about making arid ground arable. For Malan, the Grail to which his quest had been leading is embodied in Creina Alcock's message: "Trusting is dangerous. But without trust there is no hope for love, and love is all we ever have to hold against the dark" (348). Whistling in the dark as a strategy for white survival in the face of black aggression? Elmar Lehmann has argued that the pattern for reconciliation between blacks and whites, within a fictional frame dating from the novel Mary Barton (1848), tends to follow a trebly-phased structure. It consists of the hightening of social antagonism which leads to a catastrophe, a crisis which leads to a transformation in the consciousness of the main antagonists, now greatly suffering, who now are, through this personal trauma, prepared to be reconciled with each other and work towards social reform (1989: 10-11). Malan could be seen, in his concluding section, as having availed himself of this South African fictional paradigm, which is plausible enough in fiction, but makes for less than plausible reading in an autobiography. It would, therefore, appear to be the case that Malan has not succeeded in resisting interpellation by an ideology which, apparently innocuous in its liberal, British-inspired paternalism, in actual fact veils a deeply negative definition of the blacks as arrested in their mental and moral development. Paternalism is supported by the psychoanalytic theory, of the "dependency complex" as typical for what Octave Mannoni calls "primitive people", who represent an arrested stage in the development of humans towards adulthood. Europeans, in the course of their development, can, if susceptible, become saddled with an "inferiority complex" following the aftermath of what the child experiences as "abandonment" by its parents. Under normal circumstances, however, this "abandonment" is experienced by the child as a release. As primitive people never evolve to this stage, they are incapable of self-sufficiency, hence are dependent on "pseudo-parents", first their ancestors and elders, and following the advent of the whites, by these superior parents. Colonial whites, therefore, need to dominate as compensation for misconstrued "abandonment", while the primitives must desire domination.18 Therefore, as regards racial supremacy, dominance is inextricably interwoven with fear: "the white man's image of the black man...reveals his secret self, not as he is, but rather as he fears he may be. The negro, then, is the white man's fear of himself." (1990: 200). But this was not the lesson Malan, trapped by apartheid ideology could learn. 18

We have here what amounts to a psychoanalytical rationalization of the pathological masterslave dialectic.

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Charles Taylor's comment on the Hegelian dialectic which ties in with the Lukacsian framework (within which I see the autobiographies as situated) perhaps best expresses the white dilemma contained by apartheid ideology: slave is forced to recognize master, but not vice versa. But for this very reason the upshot is of no value for the master. His vis-a-vis is not seen to be a real other self, but has been reduced to subordination to things. Recognition by him is therefore worthless...so that the surrounding world on which he continues to depend cannot reflect back to him a humanvisage. His integrity is thus radically undermined just when it seemed assured" (1975: 154).

5. By Way of a Conclusion In conclusion, it could be said that the dominant ideology of race in South Africa colours all autobiographical writing, regardless of the writer's colour, confession or creed. Malan's is exemplary for white autobiography, where we find precisely that lack of self-understanding which the bourgeoisie of Lukacs' scenario are blighted with. Not directly affected by the process of commodification, pursing their own self-interests, they are lulled into unquestioning acceptance of the economic situation. Dugmore Boetie has stated this case in his Familiarity is the Kingdom of the Lost, where he attributes "limited intelligence" to "the white man" who has this, what he calls "mental handicap" precisely because of a self-imposed blindness to racial ideology: They don't learn by mistakes, for the simple reason that they'd rather die than talk about their mistakes. Me, I learn by mistakes... Their pride is based on colour, and its on this pride that we blacks feed ourselves. Call him 'Baas' and he'll break an arm to help you. He takes advantage of his white skin, we take advantage of his crownless kingdom (1969: 62).

Boetie and Mathabane have emancipated themselves from this paradigm, and be it only through recourse to removal to another, less restrictive world. Apartheid has led to a state Dennis Brutus has poetized as that of being "alien in Africa and everywhere", hence, "only in myself' he writes, "occasionally, am I familiar" (1984: 121).

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References Ahmad, Aijaz. 1992. In Theory. London: Verso. Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities. London: Verso. Bahn, Sonja. 1984. "Autobiography as a Vehicle of Protest in South Africa". Autobiographical and Biographical Writing in the Commonwealth. MacDermott, Doireann (ed.) Barcelona: Sabadell. Bhabha, Homi K. 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. - 1990. "DissemiNation". Bhabha, H. K. (ed.) Nation and Narration. London: Routledge. Boetie, Dugmore. 1969. Familiarity is the Kingdom of the Lost. (ed. Barney Simon). London: Merlin Press. Breytenbach, Breyten. 1994. Interviewed by Ampie Coetzee: "Writers at Work". Southern African Review of Books (Jan./Feb.): 14-15. - 1986. End Papers: Essays, Letters, Articles of Faith, Workbook Notes. London: Faber & Faber. Brink, André. 1991. "Towards a Redefinition of Aesthetics". Current Writing Vol. 3, 1: 105-116. Brutus, Dennis. 1984 [1973]./! Simple Lust. London: Heinemann. Butler, Guy. 1977. Karoo Morning. Cape Town: David Philip. Carusi, Annamaria. 1991. "Post, Post and Post. Or, Where is South African Literature in All This?". Adam, Ian & Tiffin, Helen (eds.). Past the Last Post: Theorizing Post-Colonialism and Post-Modernism. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Coullie, Judith Lütge. 1991. "Not Quite Fiction: The challenges of Poststructuralism to the Reading of Contemporary S. African Autobiography". Current Writing 3 , 1 : 1-23. Crapanzano, Vincent. 1985. Waiting: The Whites of South Africa. New York: Random House. Derrida, Jacques. 1985 [1982], The ear of the other: Octobiography, Transference, Translation. (tr. P. Kamuf). New York: Schocken. Eagleton, Terry. 1990. Ideology, London: Blackwell. Egner, Hanno. 1990. "The tension between the 'First' and the 'Third' world as represented by South African Writing: A Comparative Analysis of 'Black' and 'White' Autobiographies". Mettke, Edith (ed.). Tensions between North and South: Studies in Modern Commonwealth Literature and Culture. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. Epstein, Seymour. 1973. "The Self-Concept Revisited Or a Theory of a Theory". American Psychologist (May): 404-416. Erikson, E.H. 1968. Identity: Youth and Crisis. New York: Norton. - 1959. "Identity and the life cycle". Psychological Issues Monograph Series (1). New York: International Universities Press. Gordon, Suzanne. 1985. A Talent for Tomorrow: Life Stories of South African Servants. Johannesburg: Ravan. Griesel Hanlie, E. Manqele & R. Wilson (eds.). 1987. Sibambene: The Voices of Women at Mboza. Johannesburg: Ravan. Kerfoot, Caroline (ed.). 1985. We Came to Town. Johannesburg: Ravan. Kgosana, Philip Ata. 1988. Lest We Forget. Johannesburg: Skotaville. Kris, Ernst. 1975 [1956], "The Personal Myth: A Problem in Psycho-analytic Technique". Selected Papers of Ernst Kris. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press. Kuzwayo, Ellen. 1985. Call me Woman. London: Women's Press. Lacan, Jacques. 1977 [1966], Ecrits. A Selection, (tr. Alan Sheridan). London: Tavistock. Lehmann, Elmar. 1989. "Katastrophe oder Versöhnung? Beobachtungen zu süd-afrikanischen Romanen der Gegenwart". Lehmann, E. & Reckwitz, E. (eds.). Current Themes in Contemporary South African Literature. Essen: Die Blaue Eule. Lukäcs, Georg. 1971 [1968] History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics, (tr. R. Livingstone). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Magona, Sindiwe. 1990. To my Children's Children. Cape Town: David Philip. Makeba, Miriam. 1988. Makeba: My Story. Johannesburg: Skotaville.

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Makhoere, Caeserina Kona. 1988. No Child's Play: In Prison Under Apartheid. London: Women's Press. Malan, Rian. 1990. My Traitor's Heart. London: Bodley Head. Mandela, Nelson. 1994. Long Walk to Freedom. London: Little, Brown. - 1990 (rev. ed.). No Easy Walk to Freedom. Oxford: Heinemann. Mandela, Winnie. 1985. Part ofMy Soul Went With Him. London: Norton. Mannoni, Octave. 1990 [1950], Prospero and Caliban: The Psychology of Colonization. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press. Marcia, James E. 1966. "Development and Validation of Ego-Identity Status". Journal of Personality and Social Pyschology 3, 5: 551-538. Mashinini, Emma. 1989. Strikes have followed me all my life: a South African autobiography. London: Women's Press. Mathabane, Mark. 1986. Kaffir Boy: The True Story of a Black Youth's Coming of Age in Apartheid South Africa. New York: Macmillan. - 1989. Kaffir Boy in America: Growing out ofApartheid. New York: Macmillan. Mattera, Don. 1987. Gone with the Twilight. London. Modisane, Bloke. 1963. Blame Me on History. London: Thames and Hudson. Moloi, Godfrey. 1987. My Life: Volume 1. Johannesburg: Ravan. - 1991. My Life: Volumes 1 and 2. Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball. Mphahlele, Es'kia. 1971 [1959], Down Second Avenue London: Faber & Faber. - 1984. Afrika My Music. Johannesburg: Ravan. - 1987. "The Tyranny of Place and Aesthetics: The South African Case". Malan, Charles (ed.). Race and Literature. Pinetown: Owen Burgess. Ndebele, Njabulo. 1991. Rediscovery of the Ordinary: Essays of South African literature and culture. Johannesburg: COSAW. Nkosi, Lewis. 1983 [1965], Home and Exile and Other Selections. London: Longmann. Nussbaum, Felicity. 1991. "Autobiography and Postcolonialism". Current Writing 3, 1: 14-29. Olney, James. 1973. Tell Me Africa: An Approach to African Literature. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, Poulantzas, Nicos. 1976 [1968]. Political Power and Social Classes, (tr. T. OHagan). London: New Left Books. Pratt, Mary Louise. 1992. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London: Routledge. Reckwitz, Erhard. 1995. "The rediscovery of the ordinary - Bemerkungen zu einer aktuellen Literaturdebatte in Südafrika", forthcoming. Sachs, Albie. 1990a. The Jail Diary ofAlbie Sachs. London: Paladin. - 1990b. The Soft Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter. Cape Town: David Philip. Said, Edward W. 1993. Culture and Imperialism. London: Chatto & Windus. - 1978. Orientalism. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1990. The Post-Colonial Critic, (ed. S. Harasym). London: Routledge. - 1987. In Other Worlds. London: Methuen. Sturrock, John. 1993. The Language of Autobiography: Studies in the first person singular. Cambridge: Cambridge'Univ. Press. Taylor, Charles. 1975. Hegel. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.

Bernd Schulte (Siegen)

Cultural Politics in Es'kia Mphahlele's Works

Post-Apartheid South Africa has begun to reorganize its political, economic, social, and cultural structures. Transition and transformation are the dynamic magical terms of the day that seem to promise more for the future than charismatic politicians alone can hold. Even integrative models no longer pursue all the egalitarian ideals that once had helped to synchronize opposition against the white racist regime. The capitalist framework under reconstruction will not let an egalitarian system emerge from the revolutionary process in the new South Africa. Instead the prerequisites for participating in other forms of social inequality and fluctuation may change, and so may the importance of differentiators. Traditional 'metaphysical' constructions of difference in terms of race, religion, ethnicity and gender seem to be either given a new function or simply replaced by material differentiators which promote a capitalist class system. In terms of a globalizing market economy and its allies, the media, concepts such as nation, race, ethnicity, religion, age and sex are mutating (in)to what one might call 'rotten differentiators', i.e. signifiers of difference that have been deprived of their semantic layers, with difference being reduced to a negligeable quality sliding over desemanticized surfaces that mainly foster an entertaining proliferation of cultural (and other) similarities. One may find it difficult to argue against the obvious advantages this kind of (temporary) appeasement of traditionally conflicting potentials of difference, but organizing a liberal integrative pluralistic multi-ethnic and multicultural system in South Africa might require a bit more than the mere adaptation of a partem et circenses ideology from the so-called metropolitan societies. *

Looking for intellectual resources and adequate media that might help to create alternative strategies for the productive use and a modernized construction of cultural semantics on (South) African terms, one cannot ignore Es'kia Mphahlele, a man whose personal experience of exile, discrimination, and cultural alienation by education under the apartheid regime has contributed to shaping his much debated pragmatically oriented philosophy of African Humanism. Some of the basic ideas Mphahlele put down in his books The African Image (1962) and Voices in the Whirlwind (1972), offer some help to understand better what it may mean to deal with cultural overlaps, ambivalence and alienation; what consequences there are to being "educated outside one's own culture", to living between "exiles and homecomings"... what advantages and disadvantages are entailed in his individual management of difference. His view of Africa in general and South Africa in particular shows a deeply rooted humanistic concern and profound understanding

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of the functioning of differentiation, that is, the construction of difference or - to put it in a postmodern way - of différance beyond xenophobic narrow mindedness. Some of Mphahlele's ideas, especially documented in his programmatic theoretical writings, are undoubtedly worth reconsidering and might be useful resources in the transformation process of formerly hyperideologized South African discourses. These ideas may not be very clear to see in all of his fictional works: the reader is quite often forced to carve them out of a whole mountain range of a very personal texture which sometimes includes a moralistic diction, heavily didactic at times; they are hidden within the thematic variety of his works, which integrate the fictionalized autobiographical with 'purely fictional1 material to form a jigsaw puzzle of the ('post'-colonial) sociocultural conditions. Yet one may find many valuable, humanistically grounded, almost structural anthropological rather than ideological attitudes expressing Mphahlele's understanding of an 'African condition' and the role of an individual striving for intercultural reconciliation. The basic ideas might easily be transferred to other cultural regions without losing much of their structural relevance. Political commitment is synonymous with writing for Es'kia Mphahlele, but he has always denied a monopolistic position to certain literary genres. His plea for combining political commitment and aesthetic creative writing was put down quite early. As early as the 1950s, Es'kia Mphahlele rejected the dominance of protest literature as the only literary medium in the historically necessary process of resistance. Protest literature, in his eyes, keeps the writer from writing about man as a human being: That's the trouble: it's a paralysing spur; you must keep moving, writing at white heat, everything full of vitriol; hardly a moment to think of human beings as human beings and not as victims of political circumstance. But one must crack up somewhere. Maybe this is for me. I'm sick of protest creative writing and our South African situation has become a terrible cliché as literary material... (Down Second Avenue, 1959:210)

Thus reading Mphahlele can best be done by combining fictional texts with his theoretical, documentary, and philosophically motivated texts. Mphahlele avoids theoretical jargon to a wide extent. His diction is chosen according to a kind of pragmatism that simply demands to consider 'first things first', i.e. to look after basic human needs before constructing complex theories about humanity and its deficiencies. Fairly often scholars tend to criticize him as being simplistic or sentimental, but then in, their analyses, they restrict themselves to only one part of Mphahlele's works and therefore underestimate him in one or the other respect. A few examples may illustrate my impression. In his essay "Es'kia Mphahlele. Man and a Whirlwind", included in the volume Perspectives on South African Literature (1992), Peter N. Thuynsma describes Mphahlele as "a literary and cultural commentator [rather] than ... a creative writer", but after a quite detailed documentation and analysis of his fictional works, the critical theoretical works that could have underlined or elaborated on this

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position are neglected to such an extent that the label attributed to Mphahlele remains relatively diffuse. Reading 'only' Mphahlele's short stories and novels, one may at first feel sympathy for Thuynsma's position which after all presents profound knowledge of Mphahlele's fictional work. Yet, by focussing mainly on the fictional texts, the essay bypasses some key concepts concerning Mphahlele's understanding of culture, literature, the author's self definition and his way of merging aesthetics, ethics and politics. Unluckily it is mainly the metaphor of the whirlwind adopted from Mphahlele's collection of essays Voices in the Whirlwind (1972) and its use as a kind of'biographistic' leitmotif in Thuynsma's approach that is somewhat misleading, as it narrows the reader's view and reduces Mphahlele's works to a 'struggle with his own life', thus causing the reader to connotate terms such as 'aestheticizing sentimentalist' or even worse, 'narcissist'. Interestingly enough, Mphahlele himself is the co-editor of this volume and does not seem to have raised his protest against this ambiguous characterization. In an interesting essay entitled '"Brother-mortals': Robert Burns and Es'kia Mphahlele" Hilary Semple (1989) undertook to compare the works of two writers who share neither time nor space, but who have much in common due to their subjective experience and the struggle of the individual with the surrounding collective mechanisms. Indeed there are similarities in the forms of social and cultural discrimination in Scottish and South African history; there are also comparable phenomena such as literary representations of cultural overlap in Burns and Mphahlele, but therein lies the deficiency of many comparative approaches: they actually fail to name any basic structural similarities in the history of these two nations. The most obvious common trait to be mentioned refers to the experience of being colonized by the same power, if one assumes that as a matter of fact there is a kind of inner British colonialism which is still having a strong impact on Scotland, Ireland and Wales. Like Burns, Mphahlele was raised in a period of cultural overlap with the key institutions being occupied by the cultural semantics of the colonizer. So both authors may be described as 'intercultural' writers whose personal prerequisites for the construction of identity and cultural 'home' include the structural lability of authenticity. Cultural 'alienation' by means of formal education and religious indoctrination brought with them "spiritual restriction", as Semple points out (1989: 31);but there is also in their works a critical distance towards the individual aspects of a syncretic cultural heritage, causing the two 'wanderers between the worlds' to strive for a permanently precarious equilibrium which one might call 'identity'. Semple's approach does not take into consideration that the literary consequences both writers drew from their experience must also encompass a visible tribute to a specific intercultural situation they were confronted with. Thus when reading Burns and Mphahlele as "Brothers-mortal" one may look for structures and poetic strategies that show a similarity of experience in culturally syncretic environments such as Scotland and South Africa. Both authors have acquired specific poetic/narrative perspectives derived from the necessity or possibility to speak from 'within' and 'outside of a cultural system at the same time. The experience of poverty as a sole criterion, or the chances to evaluate the

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significance of intertextual encounters, as Semple does, cannot do. A BurnsMphahlele-intertextuality could anyway only be described in terms of a one-way street. Semple draws the reader's attention to some almost 'structural anthropological' plausibilities to remind us of the similarities that may occur in spite of widely different contexts. In the case of Burns and Mphahlele, common features in experience resulted in attitudes and convictions remarkable for their resemblances despite the very great differences between Alloway in Ayrshire and Maunpaneng and Marabastad in the Transvaal." (26)

An interesting assumption, given only implicitly in the quotation, seems to be deconstructing the old European myth, postulating cultural homogeneity for European nations. In the meantime, the lability of such concepts should have become commonplace as is shown by the broad variety of publications in the field of cultural theory, and specifically about tendencies towards cultural desemanticization. Cultural alienation can be described as a mechanism that challenges seemingly stable traditional 'monocultural' semantics and causes an overproduction of (intercultural) "new symbolic goods" and a demand for people to handle them: Given conditions of an increasing supply of symbolic goods ... demand grows for cultural specialists and intermediaries who have the capacity to ransack various traditions and cultures in order to produce new symbolic goods, and in addition provide the necessary interpretations for their use. (Featherstone 1991:19)

Given the fact that there are such tendencies, the search for "new symbolic goods" and contextualising or 'resemanticizing' interpretations of these symbolic goods must needs be based on the new communicative situation. South Africa is just one case in point, but it seems the most interesting one at present. South Africa's attempts to define itself as an integrative liberal democratic system may also bring about a reconsideration of the hidden potentials of her philosophical and cultural theoretical production. At least some of Ezekiel Mphahlele's works seem to bear such a potential. In opposition to many 'Western' scholars whose critical work tends to lean on a specialized critical terminology, he writes from the personal perspective of a pragmatist who oscillates between describing his own experience and preformulating what he feels is necessary to bring about changes. Mphahlele himself will of course not cling to every position he had taken in the 1960s. For instance, he would most probably want to vary his demand for a homogenous black educational system that he once demanded in the context of cultural resistance against the apartheid regime. Anyway, there may be many reasons to criticize Mphahlele, but if we thoroughly re-read his essential cultural theoretical texts from a relatively 'de-ideologized' perspective looking for useful structures, a number of valuable ideas can be extrapolated. One such idea is Es'kia Mphahlele's pragmatic answer to the problems of alienation which consists of an attempt to cultivate a 'personal equipment' similar to that of "an African writer in an African setting" (Mphahlele 1972: 121) that

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enables people to deal with ambivalence in personal and collective cultural identities: It seems to me a writer in an African setting must possess this equipment and must strive toward some workable reconciliation inside himself, (ibid.)

And he adds that "It is an agonizing journey" to constantly oscillate between 'the worlds' and permanently manage the ruptures in the formation of overlapping or conflicting cultural semantic layers. The African Image is divided into two main chapters dealing with politics and literature as the forum for the interplay of aesthetics, ethics and commitment. This he related to African, not so much to especially South African situations, which would have to be differentiated according to the racist stratification of the state and the distribution of privileges. Mphahlele oscillates between two major strategies and models which do not exclude each other: first an integrative model of interculturalism with its smooth permeable boundaries and with a deliberate merging of cultural expression. This he claims for people like himself, not for the majority of Africans. I love the choral music of my people, generally the beautiful sense of harmony among the Bantu-speaking peoples. The Jazz of my people. I love Hugh Masekela's lively innovations, Malombo Jazz improvisations; Mankunka quartet. I love Nigerian opera and dance, Guinea's Ballets Africains, the urban guitar music of Tanzania and Zambia. I love Afro-American Jazz, Beethoven, Borodin, love Tchaikovsky, Baroque music, European literatures. But if I were planning educational and cultural programmes in an independent South Africa, for a nation, which will take into consideration an African majority, I could hardly assign an important place to European music and art in general. That would be a luxury whites and the few Africans who enjoy such things would have to pay for; that is whites who accepted certain conditions to live in the country." (p.33)

His plan seems to have been a reconstruction of African traditions by means of racial purification, which could on the one hand do away with the colour bar in a certain way, but erect a new one at the same time. In addition this would have brought about a kind of historically plausible protectionism in cultural fields. Again one might infer that he was not totally free from those old hermetic concepts of cultural authenticity which ignores the dynamics of cultures. If ever he may have followed or promoted a relatively clear cut counterdiscourse it is in the question of education. For his second model Mphahlele sketches out the function of basic structural determinants such as the cultural threat caused by Eurocentric education (The African Image, 21ff.) with its sole purpose to educate pupils for the bureaucracy of the civil service (ibid.). Mphahlele suggests establishing a philosophy ... "that will tie up education with other areas of life and give a new base to the national cultural institutions." (ibid.) He wants African culture to be at the centre of education : this way an educational philosophy will also be a philosophy of culture. From elementary school, a child will be taught African music and dance as part of his education. We ought to be writing history books for children in the form of entertaining stories of African

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civilizations, heroes and so on. The children ought to write their own stories from local history they hear from old people. (1962:21)

Mphahlele also documents the many disadvantages of being educated outside one's own culture (1962:29), which also plays a decisive role in many of his fictional texts, like for instance in his novel Chirundu (1979), in which there is an Irish teacher who warns the pupils not to adopt European ideas too uncritically: 'Do not be fooled,' Corkery would say, "by all these ideas Europe has continually been dumping in Africa. Europe has no use for them... They are bleached ideas and Europeans are trying to revive their own faith by transplanting it onto African soil, to see if it will germinate and justify their own sense of power, of superiority. Don't even trust me.' (1979:29)

This second model is based on Africanization that would be able to bring about a modernization on African terms. Mphahlele wants to give to schools and university a "black image" and he suggests that authorities should recruit "African, AfroAmerican and Carribbean teachers in the place of whites" (1962:32). He wanted to construct something similar to what he considered to be significant about Europe's cultural heritage: homogeneity and new forms of authenticity, although he should have known better .however, considering the problems of constructing authenticity on the basis of highly dynamic cultural syncretisms that seem to resist arrest in fixed systems over a longer period of time, and especially not in a democratic system. Eliminating everything white and importing black teachers, no matter where they may come from, no matter what their cultural background was, could only have helped to normalize 'blackness' as the dominant background of all kinds of relevant discourses in an African state like the Republic of South Africa. Would it have brought back 'authenticity'? Another crucial aspect of The African Image is Mphahlele's insistence on the emergence of an African humanism: His concept of humanism is far from being romantic or sentimental as Thuynsma describes it. Mphahlele wants this kind of humanism to deal with the problems of power, of a national army, of education, of arts, land house ownership, poverty, medical care and so on. Our humanism must bring about a second productive revolution. It is no use telling starving people that African culture is superior to Western civilization, or that it must make its presence felt in world affairs. It needs a trained and tough intellect and expertise, political stability and so on. Instead of shouting about African values, we should translate them into educational and economic planning. (36)

He complains about the constant and inevitable need to "maintain the equilibrium" between the two selves of a formerly colonized individual or cultural community. Later in Voices in the Whirlwind Mphahlele specifies advantages of the ambivalence he (rhetorically?) deplored in The African Image. The structural orientation clearly moves away from nationalism and Afrocentrism on cultural terms and it advances towards emancipation beyond national and cultural authenticity. Survival is more important to Mphahlele than insisting on the reconstruction of cultural authenticity. The priority is clearly given to "Man must live".

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*

If we define interculturalism in terms of cultural syncretism as the (positive or negative) result of culture clashes or overlaps (as I have done elsewhere)1 we may search for structures that pay tribute to the requirements of 'interfaces' of the multiple cultural heritages and the various offers made by cultural discourses to construct cultural knowledge and store it with the help of appropriate media and theoretical concepts. As I said before, it was also in the nineteen sixties that Es'kia Mphahlele formulated his personal 'programme' of intercultural management, namely the necessity to re-negotiate constantly one's position between the socio-cultural codes that formed part of a person's socialization and individuation. By defining his own situation Mphahlele also delivers psychological and cultural 'structural' aid to an intercultural (which may mean post-colonial) discourse. He simply describes his own personality structure as it has been coined by the multi-layered colonial/postindependence syncretic history: And so here I am, an ambivalent character. But I'm nothing of the oversimplified and sensational Hollywood version of a man of two worlds. It is not as if I were pinned on a rock, my legs streched in opposite directions. Education sets up conflicts but also reconciles them in degrees that depend on the subject's innate personality equipment. (1967, p. 121)

Alienation always implies loss or at least 'loosening' of traditional bonds; the circumstances of this loss were to be deplored at that time and the redemption of loss was one of the targets aimed at in Es'kia Mphahlele's political commitment. Despite his strong interest in politics, despite also his personal struggle against racism, colonialist presumptuousness and cultural alienation, Es'kia Mphahlele has always argued against functionalizing literature for purposes of mere propaganda2. Yet he would not claim a 'higher' or more privileged position for himself than being a writer whose personal equipment helps him to negotiate between cultural worlds and thereby empower/validate his suggestions about looking at 'the world' from a humanistic viewpoint. If a function of Es'kia Mphahlele's literature can be located, it must lie within the 'whirlwind' of cultural and political clashes from which emerges his productive management of ambivalence. There is not merely a commitment to preformulated ideologies like nationalism, Négritude or African Personality as a reaction to Négritude. Mphahlele pursues a committed idiosyncratic humanism (in a very positive sense of the term), apparently transcending traditional politically grounded boundaries, and constantly walking the tight rope in a no-man's land between seemingly clearly defined discourses. From an essentialist perspective one might even hold that Mphahlele has a lot in common with other authors: he is as much a South African as Naipaul is Indian or Ngugi has remained Kenyan, or James Joyce was Irish etc. They all share the exile3

2

See Bernd Schulte, Die Dynamik des Interkulturellen in den postkolonialen Literaturen englischer Sprache. Heidelberg: C. Winter Universitätsverlag, 1993. Martin Jarret-Kerr, CR, "Exile, alienation and literaure: the case of Es'kia Mphahlele", in African Writing Today 1st Quarter ,1986:27-35. Be it exile in the concrete sense of the term or 'exile in their own land' or the 'double exile'

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or expatriate experience which has provided them with various kinds of complex productive syncreticity, this being a powerful dynamism that enabled them to write their specific kind of intercultural literature despite or perhaps because of the hardships they all had (have had) to endure. I was brought up on European history and literature and religion and made to identify with European heroes while African heroes were being discredited, except those that became Christians or signed away their land and freedom, and African gods were being smoked out. I later rejected Christianity. And yet I could not return to ancestral worship in any overt way. But this does not invalidate my ancestors for me. Deep down inside my agnostic self I feel a reverence for them. (p. 122)

Mphahlele recognizes and acknowledges the merging parts of his own 'divided self and he realizes that it provides him with the characteristic qualities which 'intercultural writers' need for the construction of a distanced and participating narrative perspective that we also find in many authors with multicultural experience. The writer's position is that of a commuter between cultural worlds (Voices in the Whirlwind, 144; 151). 4 The writing process functions as a medium that expresses the very process of an individual's or a group's attempts at constructing a plausible and coherent 'cultural semantics of the moment', the structures of which may serve to mediate between the claims of different monocultural semantics, that are to be integrated and support the forming of identity. Traditions and the various manifestations of modernities merged in culturally syncretic literature: And so our writing becomes the very process by which we communicate with tradition, define ourselves by defining it. We do this by creating plots for our fiction in which characters are engaged, some in an identification with tradition, others in breaking away from it, others again in trying to reconcile in themselves and their fellowmen these opposing forces."

(Voices: 144)

Mphahlele's refusal to let his works and himself serve ideologies he cannot support contrasts with his willingness to employ his writing for a better management of difference on the basis of historical experience. If we want to use the term 'flmctionalize' we may do so to describe Mphahlele's commitment to a deescalation of the political strategies and counterstrategies as he saw them in the sixties. Much of this still holds true today and there are other authors who share Mphahlele's positions concerning a pragmatic modernization.

that Gareth Griffiths speaks of. See Griffiths, 1978 "Tradition lives alongside the present, and so we, the writers, commute between these

worlds." (Voices..., 144) "... Everywhere in Africa we shall for a long time to come continue to commute between tradition and the present. We shall be the vehicle of communication between the two streams of consciousness as they exchange confidences, knowledge, wisdom and dreams." (Voices..., 151).

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*

Cultural politics in Es'kia Mphahlele's works means intercultural politics which favours modernization on African terms before the reconstruction of imaginary authenticities the semantics of which can no longer be contextualized. His personal management of difference seems to hint at deconstructing traditional hierarchies on political as well as epistemological levels. His ideas are still based on the prerequisites of the important historical anti-apartheid struggle, but the way he tried to support it was pragmatic beyond immediacy. He objected to mere counterdiscourses and the 'romantic' back to the roots movement, but he also got trapped by the very same cultural discourses he cited as examples of successful construction of'homogenous' cultural semantics, with difference being more or less clearly defined. So perhaps Mphahlele has seen his own cultural ambivalence as a kind of transitional mode which could be changed once African modernization had been set going. New problems arise if we confront Mphahlele's ideal of a 'difference within a reduced form of hierarchy', as one might put it, with the ongoing global diversification of difference and flattening out of cultural semantics which in its very proliferation will most certainly not spare the new South Africa. What will happen, for instance, if cultural difference is no longer a problem related to semantic difference and thus need no longer be managed? The whole discussion about equality on such terms would be in vain! The globalizing economic system need no longer care about cultural semantics; it is no longer a decisive threat to a world economy whose protagonists have since long been developing strategies of intercultural marketing and a technology that may react in the most flexible way imaginable to the most eccentric demands of the consumer. Freedom is turning into the freedom to consume, liberation is almost equal to diversification strategies on a world market and the whirlwinds are conditioned by Heng Seng and Dow Jones or should we say Gates and Co.? The value of pluralistic cultural semantics might be reduced to ritual forms without any relevance for human ways of life. Es'kia Mphahlele's position has always been that of an interculturally raised sceptical individual whose clear view of the mismanagement of difference showed a particular sensitivity with a humanistic philosophy useful for attempts at coming to terms with cultural, ethnic, racial, sexual and other kinds of ambivalence. It may be held that Es'kia Mphahlele has always represented a more or less (non-African) individualistic position with regard to political activity, protest and the struggle against racial and other kinds of discrimination. He has rejected most of the radical ideologies that tried to decolonize Africa in order to go 'back to precolonial roots'. As we have seen, Négritude was a romantic concept in his view. Thus he implicitly, though at times inconsequently, questioned concepts of authenticity that had long been lost in the colonial past. From a consequent cultural theoretical point of view, their substantial representativeness in any cultural history (be it European, African, Asian, American or any other) cannot be clearly proved anyway. In Mphahlele's critical theoretical texts one may easily find ideas that could be applied in other cultural contexts as well. His "personal equipment"

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provides him with a 'commited distance' that enables him to focus o n intercultural interfaces/ transitional situations o f cultural ambivalence which constantly urges him t o renegotiate o n his o w n identity structures. N o matter whether w e share Es'kia Mphahlele's points o f view or not, his s o m e h o w idealistic African Humanism or his political stands, the cultural politics one may find in his w o r k s may still serve and ought to be respected as a source o f reconciliation among the ideologized potentials o f difference, despite the notoriousness that idealism may have. Es'kia Mphahlele's cultural politics, as they can be carved out o f his works might contribute to a certain extent to the n e w South Africa's attempts t o construct a liberal democracy o n a multicultural basis.

References a. Primary Works Mphahlele, Es'kia, In corner b. Short stories. Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1967, repr. 1972. - Down Second Avenue. London: Faber ,1969, repr. 1972. - Chirundu. Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1979. - The African Image. London: Faber ,1962, rev. ed. 1974. - African Writing Today. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967. - Voices in the Whirlwind. New York: Hill and Wang, 1967. - The Wanderers. New York: Macmillan, 1971. - Africa, My Music, An Autobiography 1957-1983. Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1984. b. Critical Literature Chapman, Michael/Colin Gardner/ Es'kia Mphahlele (eds.), Perspectives on South African Literature. Parklands: A.D. Donker, 1992. Griffiths, Gareth, A Double Exile. African and West Indian Writing Between Two Cultures. London: Marion Boyars, 1978. Jarret-Kerr, Martin, CR, "Exile, alienation and literature: the case of Es'kia Mphahlele", in African Writing Today 1st Quarter, 1986:27-35. Jolly, Rosemary, "Rehearsals of Liberation: Contemporary Postcolonial Discourse and the New South Africa", in PMLA, January 1995, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 17-29. Manganyi, N. Chabani, Exiles and Homecomings. A Biography of Es'kia Mphahlele. Johannesburg:Ravan Press, 1983. Semple, Hilary,"'Brother Mortals': Robert Burns and Es'kia Mphahlele", in Contrast: South African L

Frank Schulze-Engler (Frankfurt/M.)

Literature and Civil Society in South Africa 1

here / at the backyard of time •where people wait and wait and wait and time / like pain, will not go away multitudes stare with eyes as many as stars they are dead silent/in 1991 when the 21st century is here Mongane Wally Serote, Third World Express

If it is true - as Eric Hobsbawm has argued in his Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century - that "in the late 1980s and early 1990s an era in world history ended and a new one began" (5), South Africa has undoubtedly played a major role in this historical break. The demise of apartheid and the almost miraculous transition to democratic pluralism in a country that contains so many of the tensions and contradictions of global society within its own borders has been no less dramatic than the dissolution of the former Soviet Empire, and the historical break in South Africa has significant implications not only for Southern Africa, but for the African continent as a whole and for international politics. In South Africa itself, the drastic changes entailed by the democratic transition to majority rule that have affected so many aspects of society have also had a profound influence on culture, and particularly on literature. In his essaycollection South African Literature and Culture: Rediscovery of the Ordinary, Njabulo Ndebele has summed up the necessity for far-reaching re-evaluations of the scope, role and potential of literature in the following question: "with the demise of grand apartheid now certain, what are South African writers now going to write about?" (vii). This question, which has since been echoed by other South African writers in numerous speeches, articles and interviews could easily be supplemented by the no less acute query what South African critics are now going to write about, since their field has been no less drastically affected. The so-called "Albie Sachs debate" in 1990,2 the critical discussions on the significance of Postcolonial Theory in the South African context,3 the controversies over 1

2

This paper has also been published in Ariel 27.1 (1996) and is reprinted here with kind permission of the editors of Ariel, University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. See de Kok and Press, Spring is Rebellious, Brown and van Dyk, Exchanges: South African Writing in Transition and Bertelsen, "An Interview with Albie Sachs". The critical landscape has changed considerably since 1991, when Kenneth Parker drew attention to "the unwillingness to engage with postcolonial theory" in South Africa ("'Traditionalism vs. Modernism': Culture, Ideology, Writing" [41]). See, for example, Carusi, "Post, Post and Post", Clayton, "White Writing", Johnson, "Importing Metropolitan Post-

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"Literature and Democratization"4 and the renewed debates on the relationship between South African Literature and other African literatures and/or the oral tradition5 amply testify to this fact. Against this background, this paper suggests that an analysis of the role of civil society in South Africa (focussing on its suppression under the Old Regime and its emergence and growth in the terminal phase of apartheid and the transition to democracy) can throw some light on the development of literature and criticism alike: it also suggests that the problematic relationship between literature and civil society has been a long-standing concern of (both "white" and "black") South African writing. In order to grasp the ideological and political sea-change that South African literature and criticism is currently faced with, it is necessary to recapitulate some of the historical and political presuppositions in which discussions on the development of South African Literature were embedded during the apartheid era. One of these fundamental presuppositions was that the struggle against apartheid was necessarily a struggle against international capitalism. When, in 1983, Jacques Derrida - of all people - dared to suggest in a short essay on "Racism's Last Word" that the alliance between capitalism and apartheid might not be perennial and that "if one day apartheid is abolished, its demise will not be credited only to the account of moral standards (...) because, on the scale which is that of a worldwide computer, the law of the marketplace will have imposed another standard of calculation" (335), he was sternly taken to task by Anne McClintock and Rob Nixon for supposedly supporting investments in South Africa and evading the indissoluble nexus between capitalism and apartheid.6 What was implied in McClintock's and Nixon's argument was the assumption that the anti-apartheid struggle was necessarily a struggle against the capitalist world system and that it would be an anti-capitalist dynamic - presumably on a world scale - that would eventually help the South African liberation movements to topple apartheid and to create a non-capitalist "New South Africa". In the 1970s and 80s, this view was widely held not only by anti-apartheid activists outside, but also by an overwhelming majority of black intellectuals inside South Africa, where it had a decisive influence on contemporary perspectives on literature. The final passage of an essay by Don Mattera on "Literature for Liberation" provides a striking example of this outlook: And so must the spirit of this liberatory Literature - both Spoken and Written - march on with the world's other downtrodden but emerging proletariat. To bring into existence a

4

5 6

colonials", Jolly, "Rehearsals of Liberation", and the contributions of Attwell, Bethlehem and de Cock in the "Postcolonial Theory" Issue of Current Writing. See Kelwyn Sole, "Democratising Culture and Literature in a 'New South Africa"' and the critical responses to his theses by Willoughby, Hofmeyr, Cornwell and Nkosi in the same issue of Current Writing. See, for example, Mda, "Learning from the Ancient Wisdom of Africa". See McClintock and Nixon, "No Names Apart" and Derrida's response ("But, beyond ...") in Gates.

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dimension of Humanhood - the ultimate result of which must be the creation of a new world and a new South Africa, inhabited by a race of strong people. Colourless. Compassionate. And striving towards a New Nation (in South Africa). Rich injustice. Socialist in content. (5)

In its basic contours, this perspective of a socialist "New Nation" was shared by white writers like Nadine Gordimer, who in 1982, in her famous essay "Living in the Interregnum", formulated her views on this matter in the following terms: The fact is, black South Africans and whites like myself no longer believe in the ability of Western capitalism to bring about social justice where we live. We see no evidence of that possibility in our history or our living present. (...) As for capitalism, whatever its reforms, its avowed self-perpetuation of advancement for the many by creation of wealth for the few does not offer any hope to fulfil the ultimate promise of equality, the human covenant man entered into with himself in the moment he did the impossible, stood up, a new self, on two feet instead of four. (282/283)

As it happened, the old mole of history - as it is wont to - eventually emerged in a most unexpected way, undermining not only apartheid but also the belief in a global alternative modernity that had done so much to inspire the struggle against it. The context in which apartheid ended was not a global crisis of capitalism, but the demise of what the late Ernest Gellner (in a 7ZiS'-Essay entitled "Anything Goes") recently referred to as "Terminal Marxism", and the subsequent end of the Cold War. In these circumstances, the apartheid regime - which had been intolerable for its victims all along - became a political and economical liability for some of its internal and international perpetrators. Derrida (not necessarily in his role of poststructuralist philosopher, but as an acute political historian) had been vindicated; the revolutionary "big bang" creating a New Socialist Nation did not materialize. Instead, in the early 1990s South Africa went through a negotiated process of democratic transition. In 1992, in a Conversation entitled "The Future is Another Country", Stephen Clingman and Nadine Gordimer talked about this experience in the following way: SC: I think our sense of an ending in South Africa has changed. When you wrote July's People, there was a sense that, all right, we were living in the interregnum, to use the phrase that you adopted from Gramsci, but it would come to an end. There would be the big day, and then, somehow, the afterlife would begin. But I think what's happened since the unbanning of the organizations and the release of Nelson Mandela and the others is that the ending hasnt come about in that way. It's a much more protracted and complex experience. NG: When I wrote that book, we were poised like lemmings on the edge of a cliff, we were teetering on the edge of a cliff. Whether one could pull back from it seemed very difficult and unlikely at the time. SC: Perhaps we need a different sense of an ending, a different postapartheid view of the world, which may be something quite difficult to fashion. NG: Yes, in the back of our minds there was this apocalyptic feeling. And perhaps it was always self-fulfilling: we wanted there to be a kind of big-bang ending, because we didn't want to tackle it ourselves. But now it's so incredible and fascinating to see there's no end to the process. (139)

Since 1992, this process has continued to produce new, unforeseen realities, such as the election results in 1994 that for the time being isolated both the extreme

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right wing and radical groupings like the PAC,7 or the social and economic policies of the new government headed by Nelson Mandela that R.W. Johnson has recently described as "rubbing along in the neo-liberal way". How fast and thoroughgoing these changes have actually been can be fathomed, for instance, by taking another look at the famous "Albie Sachs Debate" in which numerous intellectuals, artists and writers took part in 1990. The central thesis that Sachs, a high-ranking ANC official, put forward in late 1989 in his paper "Preparing Ourselves for Freedom", originally presented at an ANC seminar in Lusaka, was that a re-evaluation of the relationship between culture and liberation was overdue: (...) our members should be banned from saying that culture is a weapon of struggle. I suggest a period of, say, five years. (...) it ill behoves us to set ourselves up as the new censors of art and literature, or to impose our own internal states of emergency where we are well organised. Rather, let us write better poems and make better films and compose better music, and let us get the voluntary adherence of the people to our banner (...) (19/28)

Today, looking at the wide and controversial response that his theses elicited, what seems most striking is the fact that the terms of this debate have shifted so radically. While the main issue raised by many respondents to Sachs's paper was indeed the question of how closely culture should or could be tied to the liberation struggle, it is the concept and perspective of the "liberation struggle" itself that has since become questionable and is rapidly withering away. Thus, in 1993, Mongane Wally Serote could quite casually remark in a Transition-Interview that the Albie Sachs debate had "petered out", since people had realized "that there are other issues on the table" (183). One of these issues that has come to play an increasingly important part in this transition turns on what might be called the politics of civil society. At first glance it might seem as if the debate on "civil society" is primarily a "Western" or indeed "Northern" preoccupation. Recent major publications on the topic such as John Keane's Democracy and Civil Society, Jean Cohen's and Andrew Arato's Civil Society and Political Theory and Ernest Gellner's Conditions of Liberty have all pointed out that the current revival of interest in the politics of civil society has its primary origins in the Eastern and Central European struggles against the stifling authoritarianism of "Terminal Marxism" that led to the historical break of 1989 and the demise of the "communist world". It was in this context that Civil Society was originally rediscovered as - to quote Gellner's definition - "that set of diverse nongovernmental institutions which is strong enough to counterbalance the state, and, while not preventing the state from fulfilling its role of keeper of the peace and arbitrator between major interests, can nevertheless prevent it from dominating and atomizing the rest of society." (5) Yet the debate quickly spread to other parts of the world. It was taken up in Western societies where the securities of high modernity were increasingly undermined by the modernization process itself and where it seemed imperative to 7

For a more detailed analysis of the political processes leading up to the South African elections of 1994 and their results see Southall (1994).

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defend and enlarge civil society as a counterweight to the growing pressures exercized above all by an economy busily creating new ecological and social hazards. It was also taken up in Latin America, where democratic movements opposing bureaucratic-authoritarian regimes faced problems that were in many ways similar to those experienced in Eastern Europe, as the extensive and varied Latin American debate that Cohen and Arato draw on amply testifies to. Since - in contrast to most Western societies - the structures of civil society were often lacking, the Latin American debate has often focussed on the necessity of "inventing" them in order to achieve the necessary changes, as this statement from Brazil makes clear: "we want a civil society, we need to defend ourselves from the monstrous state in front of us. This means that if it does not exist, we need to invent it. If it is small, we need to enlarge it. ... In a word we want civil society because we want freedom." (Cohen/Arato, 50). The debate was also taken up in many other parts of the so-called developing world, e.g. in Africa, where after several decades of "developmentalism"8 the paramount importance of civil democracy for economic, social and cultural development can no longer be denied. Peter Anyang1 Nyong'o has described the problem involved in the following terms: At the centre of the failure of African states to chart viable paths for domestic accumulation is the problem of accountability, the lack of democracy. The people's role in the affairs of government has dimished, the political arena has shrunk, political demobilisation has become more the norm than the exception in regime behaviour, social engineering for political demobilisation (i.e. repression) is the preoccupation of most governments; all this has come about to cement one notorious but common aspect of all African governments: the use of public resources as possibilities for viable indigenous processes of development is neglected or destroyed altogether. There is a definite correlation between the lack of democratic practices in African politics and the deteriorating socio-economic conditions. (19)

It is against this background, as Robert Fatton has pointed out in an essay on "Liberal Democracy in Africa", that "the democratic project or the process of redemocratizing African politics is (...) becoming the hegemonic issue in African Studies" (455) and that questions of civil society have been gaining an increasingly higher profile in the African9 and particularly in the South African context.10 e

9

10

Cf. Shivji, The State and the Working People in Tanzania: "The central element in the ideological formation in post-independence Africa has been, what we call, the ideology of developmentalism. The argument of this ideology is very simple: 'We are economically backward and we need to develop very fast. In this task of development we cannot afford the luxury of politics.' (...) Even marxist scholars and 'politicians' echo the ideology of developmentalism, albeit in their own vocabulary." (1/2). See, for example, Bayart, "Civil Society in Africa", Bratton, "Beyond the State", Chabal, Political Domination in Africa and Power in Africa, Diamond, "Introduction: Roots of Failure, Seeds of Hope", Fatton, "Liberal Democracy in Africa" and Predatory Rule, Nyang'oro, "Reform Politics and the Democratization Process in Africa", Osaghae, Between State and Civil Society in Africa, Rothchild, The Precarious Balance. See, for example, Mufson, "Toward a Civil Society", Friedman, "An Unlikely Utopia: State and Civil Society in South Africa", Fine, "Civil Society Theory and the Politics of Transition in South Africa", Mandaza, "The State and Democracy in Southern Africa" and van Wyk,

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These questions are particularly acute there, since under the apartheid Regime, civil society was ruthlessly suppressed and a racist authoritarianism ruled the day, impelling oppositional forces to transform themselves into liberation movements, to adopt an often enough necessarily clandestine politics of resistance and to pursue the capturing of the state as their ultimate goal. If civil society, as Jürgen Habermas has pointed out in his recent discourse theory of law, "is no substitute for a historically-philosophically designated grand subject that should bring society as a whole under its control and act legitimately for it at the same time" (450), 11 it can hardly come as a surprise that it remained notoriously underdeveloped in South Africa during the apartheid era. This, one might add, would also go a long way to explain the unprecedented levels of violence that marked the sudden transition from apartheid authoritarianism to a new democratic dispensation and the deeply disturbing fact that the struggle for democracy claimed many more lives among the black population than the struggle against apartheid.12 South African Literature has in many ways been shaped by this problematic. As Kelwyn Sole pointed out in an essay on "Democratising Culture and Literature in a "New South Africa': Organisation and Theory" that recently sparked off a heated controversy in Current Writing, "despite the fact that growth, change and interaction has taken place in South African cultural history - even between racial enclaves - the acceptance of a common civil society in this country was never accomplished, or even desired. This is now a task for a future dispensation." (2). While acceptance may still be a long way off, South African Literature has nevertheless attempted to address the problem with a wide variety of political and aesthetic strategies. Numerous examples for this could be found in the 1950s (for which Lewis Nkosi coined the term "the fabulous decade"), when the apartheid system was systematically subdueing those mainly urban rudiments of civil society encompassing both black and white, but had not as yet completely destroyed them. Black writers of the 'Drum'-generation could use these rudiments as a reference point in their struggle against the encroaching absurdities of apartheid (sometimes, as in Casey Motsitsi's famous 'bug stories', with a strikingly ironical perspective), 13 while white writers could draw on them as exemplary, though by no means

11

12

13

"Civil Society and Democracy in South Africa", as well as Chapter 8 ("Civic Associations and Popular Democracy") in Murray, The Revolution Deferred (167-178). Translated by the author; the original text reads: "Aber sie tritt nicht an die Stelle eines geschichtsphilosophisch ausgezeichneten Großsubjekts, das die Gesellschaft im Ganzen unter Kontrolle bringen und zugleich legitim für diese handeln sollte" (emph. in the orig.). Cf. Southall (633): "There were 2,450 fatalities from political violence between September 1984 and December 1988, at the height of a period of intense popular mobilisation against apartheid. In contrast, there were as many as 3,400 such deaths in 1990, 2,580 in 1991, 3,446 in 1992, and 4,398 in 1993, most as the outcome of fighting between supporters of the ANC and lnkatha in the PWV [Pretoria/Witwatersrand/Vereeniging, F.S.-E.] province and Natal. Violence then surged even higher in early 1994, when deaths in Natal ran at a level double the 1993 monthly average." For a more detailed analysis of Casey Motsitsi's "Bug Stories" in the general context of the "Drum-Generation" see Egner (85-88).

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unproblematical instances of a "common culture" (as Nadine Gordimer did, for instance, in A World of Strangers). This involvement of South African literature in the waning civil society of the day may well explain why there has been a growing interest in the literature and culture of the 1950s and early 1960s in the postapartheid transition.14 The focus of the following discussion, however, will be on two pairs of novels from the 1980s, by Nadine Gordimer and J.M.Coetzee respectively, that mark the beginning and the end of "terminal apartheid" and engage with the impotence and the growing strength of civil society in South Africa. The first pair, J.M.Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians (published in 1980) and Nadine Gordimer's July's People (published in 1981) were, to use Gordimer's term quoted above, written "on the edge of a cliff'. After the suppression of the Soweto uprising, the apartheid regime showed no signs of relenting, the abyss between black and white was widening and the perspectives for organized, civil change seemed bleaker than ever. Both novels focus on speechlessness, on the impossibility of communication with the "other". In Waiting for the Barbarians, the Magistrate's attempts to read the tortured Barbarian girl's mind through her body remain useless: "The body of the other one, closed, ponderous, sleeping in my bed in a faraway room, seems beyond comprehension" (42). When he finally manages to bring her back to her own people, no communication is possible: "I cannot make out a word. 'What a waste,' I think: 'she could have spent those long empty evenings teaching me her tongue! Too late now.'" (71/72). In July's People, Barn's and Maureen's attempts to communicate with their former servant July become increasingly absurd once the master/servant relationship that obtained in their liberal suburban household begins to disintegrate in the rural setting they flee to after the eruption of war between apartheid and its enemies. The new situation does not encourage mutual understanding; instead, the very concept of "understanding" is undermined beyond repair, when Maureen and July finally try to "talk it out": the only thing to be understood are the crumbling mutual constructions of otherness behind which there is nothing but unbridgeable difference: Suddenly he began to talk at her in his own language, his face flickering powerfully. (...) She understood although she knew no word. Understood everything: what he had had to be, how she had covered up to herself for him, in order for him to be her idea of him. But for himself to be intelligent, honest, dignified for her was nothing; his measure as a man was taken elsewhere and by others. (152)

This absolute breakdown of communication is compounded by the setting of these novels: in July's People an apocalyptic war where the "other side", though presumably engaged in a fight to rid the country of apartheid, is never seen and remains a faceless threat against all whites; in Waiting for the Barbarians an almost allegorical, timeless war between a vengeful, but crumbling Empire and its others, the unknoweable, but somehow victorious Barbarians. 14

See Egner (274-76).

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The second pair, Gordimer's My Son's Story and Coetzee's Age of Iron (both published in 1990) have a different story to tell. In the late 1980s, new networks of resistance had been built, broad political organizations like the United Democratic Front and the National Forum were working openly inside the country and increasingly powerful black trade unions challenged the economic status quo. In both novels, apartheid is still there, to be sure, and violence is ubiquitous, but both works enter into closer relationships with contemporary political discourses and explore painful questions that are related to the - however precarious perspective of civil society and the shape of a post-apartheid South Africa. Among the most striking features of My Son's Story is the fact that it is the first of Gordimer's novels to focus on black characters as the main protagonists. In the strained relationships that the "Coloured" teacher Sonny, his family and his white lover Hannah enter into, there is no easy model multiculturalism to be found, but the absolute abyss that separated black and white in July's People has gone. How much still separates them becomes obvious, for example, when white demonstrators join a rally in a black township and are jolted out of their "armchair idea of courage" by police brutality (116); yet, they do go there, not as teachers, but as apprentices in their own affairs. If July's People is a novel about growing speechlessness, My Son's Story is an exploration of the obstacles and potentials of civil communication. The novel is informed by a difficult and complex perspective for change that enables a white author to reflect on the strains that political struggles impose on black families - something quite unconceivable barely a decade before. It is probably because this perspective is so difficult and complex, that the novel makes use of a peculiar narrative inversion that, while not devaluing the affinities of literary and political discourse, undermines any claims to absolute historical authenticity: What is announced in the title as "My Son's Story" is actually the story of the father, Sonny, told by his son Will, whose last words in the novel jolt the reader out of the conventions of realist fiction: What he did - my father - made me a writer. Do I have to thank him for that? Why couldn't I have been something else? I am a writer and this is my first book - that I can never publish. (277)

While the protagonist of Age of Iron is white, this novel's intersections with contemporary political discourses and its engagement in the predicaments of civil society are no less striking. It is precisely because Elizabeth Curren, the elderly classics teacher dying from cancer, can by no stretch of the imagination be associated with the new dispensation that will emerge out of the apartheid endgame staged in the novel, that her - often enough drastically helpless and contradictory - observations can engage in a startling dialogue with the politics of township insurrection. She, too, goes to the black townships, to be confronted there with a violence that she can do nothing to stop. Challenged to comment on a massacre she has just witnessed, Elizabeth Curren admits to her impossible position:

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'These are terrible sights,' I repeated, faltering. 'They are to be condemned. But I cannot denounce them in other people's words. I must find my own words, from myself. Otherwise it is not the truth. That is all I can say now.' 'This woman talks shit,' said a man in the crowd. He looked around. 'Shit,' he said. No one contradicted him. Already some were drifting away. 'Yes,' I said, speaking directly to him - 'you are right, what you say is true.' He gave me a look as if I were mad. 'But what do you expect?' I went on. 'To speak of this' - I waved a hand over the bush, the smoke, the filth littering the path - 'you would need the tongue of a god.' (91) Yet, despite the presence of the inscrutable Verceuil, the vagrant Angle of Death, in her house, it is not simply the unfathomable "other" that Elizabeth is confronted with, and Age of Iron is not only concerned with deconstructing the apartheid order of things, but, like My Son's Story, also in exploring the possibilities of a dialogue that is bound to fail time and again but has to be attempted all the same. Elizabeth's conversation with Florence, her black house-keeper, about the schoolchildren fighting the apartheid machinery in the townships provides an impressive example: 'And when they grow up one day,' I said softly, do you think the cruelty will leave them? What kind of parents will they become who were taught that the time of parents is over? (...) They set people on fire and laugh while they burn to death. How will they treat their own children? What love will they be capable of? Their hearts are turning to stone before our eyes, and what do you say? You say, "This is not my child, this is the white man's child, this is the monster made by the white man." Is that all you can say? Are you going to blame them on the whites and turn your back?' 'No,' said Florence. 'That is not true. I do not turn my back on my children.' (...) "These are good children, they are like iron, we are proud of them.' (...) Children of iron, I thought. Florence herself, too, not unlike iron. The age of iron. (46) While Elizabeth clearly does not occupy a moral position from where her perspective could claim any special authority or truth, her observations nevertheless touch on vital problems that are relevant not only to the terminal phase of apartheid, but also to the resources of civility that a post-apartheid future will be able to draw on. The most striking example of this blending of fictional and political discourse is to be found in a conversation with Mr.Thabane, the black teacher, who tries to explain his views about the young 'comrades' to Elizabeth: (...) When you are body and soul in the struggle as these young people are, when you are prepared to lay down your lives for each other without question, then a bond grows up that is stronger than any bond you will know again. That is comradeship. I see it every day with my own eyes. My generation has nothing that can compare. That is why we must stand back for them, for the youth. We stand back but we stand behind them. That is what you cannot understand, because you are too far away. 'I am far away, certainly,' I said, 'far away and tiny. Nevertheless, I fear I know comradeship all too well. The Germans had comradeship, and the Japanese, and the Spartans. Shaka's impis too, I am sure. Comradeship is nothing but a mystique of death, of killing and dying, masquerading as what you call a bond (a bond of what? Love? I doubt it.). I have no sympathy for comradeship. You are wrong, you and Florence and everyone else, to be taken in by it and, worse, to encourage it in children. It is just another of those icy, exclusive, death-driven male constructions. That is my opinion. (136/137)

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In a similar move to that found in My Son's Story, Age of Iron also ends with a narrative paradox subverting the authenticity of the story, which, the reader is told in the beginning, is actually a long letter Elizabeth writes to her daughter in America. The last paragraph, still written by the first-person narrator, can actually be read as Elizabeth's final meeting with the Angel of Death, so that she literally dies in the narrative - rather than in "real life" outside, as the conventions of realist fiction would demand. Yet, given the other features outlined above, this selfreferentiality of the text can hardly be taken to prove that it is nothing but a selfcontained system of significations and that its "textual resistance" lies in its refusal to be attached to reality.15 Instead, it should rather be seen as part of a wider literary strategy that includes an affinity with and openness towards other discourses and is closely related to the emerging politics of civil society. There is a wide territory between the extremes of the autonomous play of the signifier in selfreferential texts on the one hand and essentialist constructions of potentially hegemonic master narratives on the other that literature can and does explore. While in Coetzee and Gordimer these explorations seem to move from a zero point of "otherness" towards a reconstruction of civil communication, they are shaped by a quite different dynamic in the works of black writers engaged in a startling reorientation towards perceptions of society beyond the often homogenizing and identitarian perspectives of the "liberation" phase. The roots of this reorientation go back far beyond the Albie Sachs debate, of course, with Lewis Nkosi pointing out the shortcomings of "Protest Literature" in the 1960s16 and Njabulo Ndebele calling for "Redefining Relevance" and warning against "Pamphleteering the Future" in the 1980s.17 Yet, understandibly enough, it was only after the break of 1989/90 that it gained full momentum, as can, for example, be seen in the case of Wally Mongane Serote. His long poem A Tough Tale, published in 1987, is not only shaped by the violence and oppression of Emergency apartheid, but also by a collective vision of a victorious people: I smile / for war shall have taught us and Africa shall have taught us / and the world shall have taught that equality of a people / is a firm foundation for progress. (...)

the masses, the workers, the students, the learned defend and built the ANC, Sactu and the SACP / with many painful days

15

16

While it is possible to see this textual "politics of refusal" at work in Waiting for the Barbarians and to credit it with some subversive potential in South African politics of the Apartheid Era (cf. Reckwitz, '"I Am Not Myself Anymore'" [3-10]), it is hardly convincing to posit the "auto-referentiality" of postmodern texts as "subversive" per se, let alone to set postmodern aesthetics in Europe and the USA as a politically advanced norm, against which the presumed "retardation" of South African literature can be measured (Reckwitz [20/21]). Cf. Nkosi, "Fiction by Black South Africans", Home and Exile (131-38). These are the titles of two of Ndebele's essays in South African Literature and Culture: Rediscovery of the Ordinary, see also "Beyond Protest: New Directions in South African Literature". In his own short stories (cf. Fools and Other Stories) Ndebele made a significant break with "protest literature" and initiated a literary "Rediscovery of the Ordinary".

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which / like the hour-arm on a clock / takes time to come and go, we organise ourselves / and so engrave hope and optimism on our future (47/48)

In Serote's Third World Express, published in 1992, the verities of this historically guaranteed progress have made room for a less certain and more questioning tone. The poem begins with an almost nostalgic, extended search for the lost collective vision of A Tough Tale ("In the heart of this time / it is simple things which are forgotten (...) What is it we need? / a thought to share / about the bread we broke and together ate / a song we shared, which left magic in our hearts", [1]) and ends on a politically ambiguous note; the approaching Third World Express is certainly not an inevitable train of progress, and it remains unclear whether the "here we go again" of the last line, attributed to the young men and women who died in the struggle against apartheid, refers to a vicious cycle or to a stubborn la luta

continua.18

If Serote seems only reluctantly to move away from an all-embracing vision of an alternative modernity, younger writers such as Lesego Rampholokeng, whose poems and raps in Talking Rain are saturated with the violence both of the final stages of apartheid and the transitional phase, mark a much more radical break with such visions: We spin in circles of terror / caught in cycles of a nightmare of judgement / where the mirror / of the present shows the face of error / in transition (...)

wailing around the burning tyre / we raise a sacrificial pyre songs of struggle turn quacks / in the quagmire in transition we wear our hearts / on the outside in t-shirt fashion trend style / colourful speeches popular talk of hypocrisy / by the graveside / in transition (...) thus we rush to the future / unless the wheel of time gets a puncture (17/18)

I would like to end with some observations on the current debate on the role of literature in a new South Africa. As Zoe Wicomb has remarked in an essay on "Culture beyond Colour? A South African Dilemma", South African society "remains umbilically linked to the matrix of apartheid so that parturition is a slow affair" (28). This is not only true of the economic and social fields, where tremendous tasks still lie ahead in overcoming the legacies of apartheid, but also in the cultural field where potentially authoritarian concepts derived from the era of the anti-apartheid struggle intermingle with pluralist perspectives based on the politics of civil society. In a recent essay entitled "Many Happy Returns? Repatriation and Resistance Literature in a New South Africa", Bernth Lindfors ends his deliberations on the future of South African Literature on a deeply pessimistic note: 18

Cf. Serote's own comments in "Stoking the Third World Express" (62/63).

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Disillusionment will set in, just as it did in postcolonial African states further north. Writers accustomed to serving as watchdogs of their society will bark their warnings and howl their displeasure. A fresh wave of protest writing will begin, this time aimed against leaders who in an earlier phase of the transformation of South Africa had been hailed as conquering heroes. (...) South Africa's Nkrumah's, Kenyatta's, Bandas and Kaundas will be seen to have feet of clay. And South African literature will have entered into another adversarial relationship with another unpopular, discredited regime. Writers will be locked up, dissent suppressed, censorship reimposed. South Africa will once again be at war with itself, and outspoken individuals will be early targets. (79)

While nobody would deny that such a development is indeed possible, one may well have second thoughts about its probability. To the north of South Africa, the democratization process remains on the agenda, and is likely to receive additional impetus from a successful democratic transition from apartheid.19 Inside South Africa, there is a growing debate on the dangers of new authoritarianisms and ethnic essentialisms; as Breyten Breytenbach has pointed out in a speech entitled "Democracy: The Struggle against Power", neither the unqualified affirmation of "difference" nor its negation are viable options: The opposition between republican democracy, rooted in citizenship and equality, and pluralist democracy, based upon cultural diversity and freedom, cannot be bypassed or even resolved, but must be accomodated or, at the very least, kept in balance. For us to ensure that these contradictions are fruitful and not pretexts for repression, we have to strengthen and expand civil society's fields of accountability. (63)

Thus, it would be misleading to conceive of the relationship between literature and civil society in terms of cultural identity. The creation of a unitary South African culture based on a common identity is a highly questionable notion, not only because of the legacy of apartheid, but also because, after the historical break of the late 1980s, an alternative modernity as source of such an identity is no longer at hand. Strengthening civil society thus amounts to establishing procedural rules and creating conditions of possibility rather than to furthering particular political or cultural agendas. It would be quite mistaken to expect something like a clearly defined or uniform "literature of civil society" to emerge in South Africa (or other post-colonial societies engaged in democratic transitions). What might be expected, however, is a multiform and varied literature that moves beyond a "Politics of the Other",20 explores and expands these new possibilities and displays 19

20

The dramatic developments in Nigeria in late 1995 are an indication of the historically ironic reversal of roles between Nigeria and South Africa. While Nigeria had been a long-standing supporter of the South African liberation movements as long as Apartheid lasted, it is now rapidly moving towards taking Apartheid South Africa's pariah role in international politics, with exiled intellectuals such as Wole Soyinka calling for the international isolation of the ruling junta. Following the cold-blooded judicial murder of Nigerian writer Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight of his civil rights co-activists in November 1995, Nigeria was suspended from the Commonwealth, while Nelson Mandela demanded international sanctions against the military regime. Cf. Reckwitz, "Südafrikanische Literatur und The Politics of the Other".

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a sensitive interface with the politics of civil society. The growth of such a literature, it seems, may well be an indicator for the dynamics of South Africa's democratic transition.

References Anyang' Nyong'o, Peter. "Introduction". Popular Struggles for Democracy in Africa. Ed. Peter Anyang' Nyong'o. London: United Nations University/Zed Books, 1987: 14-25 (Studies in African Political Economy). Attwell, David. "Introduction". Current Writing 5.2 (1993): 1-6. Bayart, Jean-François. "Civil Society in Africa". Chabal (1986): 109-125. Bertelsen, Eve. "An Interview with Albie Sachs", World Literature Written in English, 30 (1990): 96-104. Bethlehem, Louise Shabat. "In/Articulation: Polysystem Theory, Postcolonial Discourse Theory, and South African Literary Historiography". Current Writing 5.2 (1993): 25-43. Bratton, Michael. "Beyond the State: Civil Society and Associational Life in Africa". World Politics 41.3 (1989): 407-430. Breytenbach, Breyten. "Democracy: The Struggle against Power". Current Writing, 6.2 (1994): 161-164. Brown, Duncan and van Dyk, Bruno, eds. Exchanges: South African Writing in Transition. Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1991. Carusi, Annamaria. "Post, Post and Post: Or, Where is South African Literature in All This?". Ian Adam and Helen Tiffin, eds. Past the Last Post: Theorizing Post-Colonialism and PostModernism. Calgary: Univ. of Calgary Pr., 1990. Chabal, Patrick, ed. Political Domination in Africa: Reflections on the Limits of Power. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1986 [African Studies Series, 50], - Power in Africa: An Essay in Political Interpretation. New York: St Martin's Press, 1992. Clayton, Cherry. "White Writing and Postcolonial Politics". Ariel 25.4 (1994): 153-167. Coetzee, J.M. Waiting for the Barbarians. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982 [1980], - Age of Iron. London: Penguin, 1990. Cohen, Jean L. and Arato, Andrew. Civil Society and Political Theory. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992. Cornwell, Gareth. "Map-Making in the Missionary Position: A Response to Kelwyn Sole". Current Writing 6.2 (1994): 53-54. De Kock, Leon. "Postcolonial Analysis and the Question of Critical Disablement". Current Writing 5.2 (1993): 44-69. De Kok, Ingrid and Press, Karen, eds. Spring is Rebellious: Arguments About Cultural Freedom by Albie Sachs and Respondents. Cape Town: Buchu Books, 1990. Derrida, Jacques. "Racism's Last Word". Gates: 329-338. - "But, beyond ... (Open Letter to Anne McClintock and Rob Nixon)". Gates: 354-369. Diamond Larry, "Introduction: Roots of Failure, Seeds of Hope". Diamond, Linz and Lipset: 132. Diamond, Larry. Linz, Juan J and Lipset, Seymour Martin, eds. Democracy in Developing Countries, Volume Two: Africa. Boulder & London: Lynne Rienner Publ., 1988. Egner, Hanno. Genrewechsel: Zum Einfluß der Produktions-, Distributionsund Rezeptionsbedingungen auf die schwarze südafrikanische Literatur der Apartheid-Ära [Changing Genres: The Influence of Production, Distribution and Reception Conditions on Black South African Literature of the Apartheid Era\. Frankfurt/M: Lang, 1995.

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Fatton, Robert Jr. "Liberal Democracy in Africa". Political Science Quarterly 105.3 (1990): 455473. - Predatory Rule: State and Civil Society in Africa. Boulder & London: Lynne Rienner Publ., 1992. Fine, Robert. "Civil Society Theory and the Politics of Transition in South Africa". Review of African Political Economy 55 (1992): 71-73. Friedman, Steve. "An Unlikely Utopia: State and Civil Society in South Africa". Politikon 19.1 (1991): 5-19. Gates, Henry Louis Jr., ed. Race, Writing and Difference. Chicago, 1986. Gellner, Ernest. Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and its Rivals. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1994. - "Anything Goes". Times Literary Supplement. June 16, 1995: 6-8. Gordimer, Nadme. A World of Strangers. London: Penguin, 1962 [1958]. - July's People. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982 [1981], - "Living in the Interregnum". Nadine Gordimer, The Essential Gesture: Writing, Politics and Places. Ed. Stephen Clingman. London: Penguin, 1989 [1988]: 261-284. - My Son's Story. London: Penguin, 1991 [1990]. - "The Future is Another Country: A Conversation with Nadine Gordimer and Stephen Clingman". Transition 56 (1992): 132-150. Habermas, Jürgen. Faktizität und Geltung: Beiträge zur Diskurstheorie des Rechts und des demokratischen Rechtsstaats [Facticity and Validity: Contributions to the Discourse Theory of Law and the Democratic Constitutional State]. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1993 [1992], Hobsbawm, Eric. Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century. London: Michael Joseph, 1994. Hofmeyr, Isabel. "Kelwyn Sole, Postcolonialism, and the Challenge of the Local". Current Writing 6.2 (1994): 49-52. Johnson, David. "Importing Metropolitan Post-colonials". Current Writing 6.1 (1994): 73-58. Johnson, R.W. "Rubbing Along in the Neo-liberal Way". London Review of Books. 22 June 1995: 8-9. Jolly, Rosemary. "Rehearsals of Liberation: Contemporary Postcolonial Discourse and the New South Africa". PMLA, 110.1 (1995): 17-29. Keane, John. Democracy and Civil Society. London: Verso, 1988. Lindfors, Bernth. "Many Happy Returns? Repatriation and Resistance Literature in a New South Africa". Current Writing, 5.2 (1993): 70-79. Mandaza, Ibbo. "The State and Democracy in Southern Africa: Towards a Conceptual Framework". Osaghae: 249-271. Mattera, Don. "Literature for Liberation". Matatu, 3/4 (1988): 2-5. McClintock, Anne and Nixon, Rob. "No Names Apart: The Separation of Word and History in Derrida's 'Le Dernier Mot du Racisme"1. Gates: 339-353. Mda, Zakes. "Learning from the Ancient Wisdom of Africa in the Creation and Distribution of Messages". Current Writing 6.2 (1994): 139-150. Mufson, Steve."Toward a Civil Society". New Republic, July 1990: 20-25. Murray, Martin J. The Revolution Deferred: The Painful Birth of Post-Apartheid South Africa. London: Verso, 1994. Ndebele, Njabulo S. Fools and Other Stories. Johannesburg: Ravan, 1983. - "Beyond Protest: New Directions in South African Literature". Criticism and Ideology: Second African Writers' Conference Stockholm 1986. Ed. Kirsten Holst Petersen. Uppsala: Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, 1988: 205-218. - South African Literature and Culture: Rediscovery of the Ordinary. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994. Nkosi, Lewis. "The Fabulous Decade". Home and Exile and Other Selections. London: Longman, 1983: 3-24. - "Sole and the Symptoms of Nervous Breakdown". Current Writing 6.2 (1994): 55-59. Nyang'oro, Julius E. "Reform Politics and the Democratization Process in Africa". African Studies Review 37.1 (1994): 133-49.

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Osaghae, Eghosa, ed. Between State and Civil Society in Africa. Dakar: Codesria, 1994. Parker, Kenneth. '"Traditionalism vs. Modernism1: Culture, Ideology, Writing". The African Past and Contemporary Culture. Eds. Erhard Reckwitz, Lucia Vennarini and Cornelia Wegener. Essen: Die Blaue Eule, 1993: 21-41 (African Literatures in English, 8). Rampholokeng, Lesego. Talking Rain. Johannesburg: COS AW, 1993. Reckwitz, Erhard. '"I Am Not Myself Anymore': Problems of Identity in Writing by White South Africans". English in Africa 20.1 (1993): 1-23. - "Südafrikanische Literatur und The Politics of the Other". Anglistik: Mitteilungen des Verbandes Deutscher Anglisten 6.2 (1995): 35-50. Rothchild, Donald and Chazan, Naomi, eds. The Precarious Balance: State and Society in Africa. Boulder: Westview Press, 1988. Sachs, Albie. "Preparing Ourselves for Freedom". De Kok and Press: 19-29. Serote, Mongane Wally. A Tough Tale. London: Kliptown Books, 1987. - Third World Express. Cape Town & Johannesburg: David Philip, 1992. - "Black Man's Burden: A Conversation with Mongane Wally Serote and Andrew McCord". Transition, 61 (1993): 180-187. - "Stoking the Third World Express: The Politics of Cultural Transformation. Wally Serote interviewed by Jean-Philippe Wade". English in Africa 20.1 (1993): 49-63. Shivji, Issa G. The State and the Working People in Tanzania. Dakar: Codesria, 1985. Sole, Kelwyn. "Democratising Culture and Literature in a 'New South Africa': Organisation and Theory". Current Writing, 6,2 (1994): 1-37. - "Fear and Loathing in the Academy". Current Writing 6.2 (1994): 60-62. Southall, Roger. "The South African Elections of 1994: the Remaking of a Dominant-Party State". The Journal of Modern African Studies, 32.4 (1994): 629-655. Van Wyk, M.J. "Civil Society and Democracy in South Africa". Africa Insight 23.3 (1993): 13640. Willoughby, Guy. "A Meeting of Soles: Overhearing Democratising Culture and Literature". Current Writing 6.2 (1994): 38-48. Wicomb, Zoe. "Culture Beyond Color? A South African Dilemma". Transition, 60 (1993): 27-32.

Paul Goetsch (Freiburg)

Spatial Symbolism in Nadine Gordimer's None to Accompany Me

For over forty years, "apartheid" served as the key term in a racist ideology. It attempted to pass segregation off as natural and, in Derrida's phrase, "as the very law of the origin."1 It thus justified a regime that hoped to maintain white supremacy by using oppressive measures. These measures included attempts to separate various ethnic groups and make the "white" section the largest single "nation" in territorial terms; to keep the groups apart geographically, economically, and culturally; and to slow down urbanization and social mobility, developments that might lead to a more open, multicultural society and the loss of white hegemony. Though the failure of the apartheid doctrine had become obvious by the end of the 1970s,2 the demise of the regime did not occur until 1990, when various organizations of the opposition were legalized and the prisons were opened. Since the apartheid state relied to a large extent on both an ideology and a politics of space, 3 the treatment of space in contemporary South African literature often indicates how writers evaluate the political situation. Nadine Gordimer is a case in point. Early on in her career, she attacked the color bar and its consequences, especially the compartmentalization of life that prevented a "dialogue" between the races and ethnic groups. 4 As she wrote in 1961, "A sense of space seems to have oppressed us in our souls as well as in our bodies; w e have shut ourselves in."5 In the 1950s and early 1960s, she explored liberal attitudes in her fiction and focused on symbolic transgressions of the boundaries drawn by the state, on contacts between the races at multicultural parties, interracial friendships and love affairs, people's visits to forbidden territories, etc. 6 In the middle of the 1960s, she began to examine white liberal attitudes more critically and emphasized 1

4

5

Jacques Derrida, "Racism's Last Word," Critical Inquiry 12 (1985): 290-299, 292. See Stanley B. Greenberg, "Ideological Struggles Within the South African State," in Shula Marks, Stanley Trapido, eds., The Politics of Race, Class and Nationalism in TwentiethCentury South Africa (London, New York: Longman, 1987): 389-418. See Leonard Thompson, The Political Mythology of Apartheid (New Haven: Yale U.P., 1985); Dominic Head, Nadine Gordimer (Cambridge: CUP, 1994): 27ff.; Brian Macaskill, "Placing Spaces: Style and Ideology in Gordimer's Later Fiction," in Bruce King, ed., Later Fiction of Nadine Gordimer (London: Macmillan, 1993): 59-73. See Nadine Gordimer, "The Novel and the Nation in South Africa" (1961), in G.D. Killam, ed., African Writers on African Writing (London: Heinemann, 1973): 33-52, 52. Ibid.: 39. For Gordimer's works and their historical context, see Stephen Clingman, The Novels of Nadine Gordimer (London, Boston: Allen Unwin, 1986); for her entrapment in colonial discourse, see Kathrin Wagner, Rereading Nadine Gordimer (Indianapolis: Indiana U.P., 1994).

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the whites' lack of knowledge about other ethnic groups. Later, she extended her sympathies to characters who adopted radical politics or at least pondered the problems of such a political commitment. This meant that new spatial themes and symbols entered her fiction: underground activity, imprisonment, enforced or voluntary exile, the laager mentality of many whites, the deplorable conditions in the townships, the violence erupting there and elsewhere, and police surveillance and terror. In Burger's Daughter (1979), for instance, she dramatized the tension between the allure of exile and the urge to face the bleak reality of South Africa and to commit oneself to political action.7 The Black Consciousness movement and black hostility to white meddling in radical politics set Gordimer thinking about the place and the future of whites in South Africa and led her to reconsider issues first broached in the 1959 essay, "Where Do Whites Fit In?".8 In one of her best novels, The Conservationist (1974), she contrasts the "white" treatment of the land as property with the "black" acceptance of the land as home9 and suggests that whites have no future in South Africa unless they change. In the 1980s, Nadine Gordimer felt that South Africans lived in an interregnum, a time in which, in Antonio Gramsci's words, "The old is dying and the new cannot be born."10 Hoping to find her place in the new "order struggling to be born,"11 she wrote novels dealing with the white fear of revolution (July's People, 1981) or anticipating the successful establishment of a black majority government (A Sport of Nature, 1987). When the end of the interregnum came at last, Gordimer responded to it with None to Accompany Me (1994).12 The novel concentrates on events in 1990, but it also reviews forty years of life under apartheid by presenting the memories of the female protagonist and other characters. It takes up the themes of Gordimer's previous works again, reminds readers of the past, and, at the same time, makes them aware of the problems following in the wake of the dismantling of the old order. None to Accompany Me marks not only a return to the spatial themes and symbols of Gordimer's earlier fiction, but also a revival of the critical realism of Burger's Daughter and other works, a style which the author has defended by appealing to the authority of Georg Lukacs and Ernst Fischer.13 Once again, 7 8

9

10 11

12 13

See, for example, Daphne Read, "The Politics of Space in Burger's Daughter," in King, Later Fiction: 121-139. See N. Gordimer, "Where Do Whites Fit In?," The Essential Gesture: Writing, Politics, Travel, ed. Stephen Clingman (London: Jonathan Cape, 1988): 31-37. For Gordimer's treatment of the land and of landscapes, see John Cooke, The Novels of Nadine Gordimer. Private Lives/Public Landscapes (Baton Rouge, London: Louisiana State U.P., 1985); Liliane Louvel, Nadine Gordimer (Nancy: Presses universitaires, 1994); Kathrin M. Wagner, "Landscape Iconography in the Novels of Nadine Gordimer," in King, Later Fiction: 74-88. Gordimer, "Living in the Interregnum" (1982), Essential Gesture: 261-284, 263. Ibid:.21%. Page references in the text are to the Bloomsbury edition (London, 1994). See Gordimer, Essential Gesture: 277, 290; The Black Interpreters. Notes on African Writing (Johannesburg: Spro-Cas + Ravan, 1973). See also Head, Gordimer, 12f.; Kelly Hewson, "Making the 'Revolutionary Gesture': Nadine Gordimer, J.M. Coetzee and Some Variations

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Gordimer chooses her characters in such a way that they illustrate those social and political forces that she regards as important. Once again, she stresses the interpénétration of private and public life and demonstrates that individual fate is bound up with politics. As the female protagonist says about her own development, "Perhaps the passing away of the old regime makes the abandonment of an old personal life also possible" (315). The result is a rather schematic, tendentious narrative, which includes a host of minor characters whose main function is to shed light on social and political issues and a central character whose name, Vera Stark, indicates the presence of a truly strong and truthful heroine. Though not a good novel, None to Accompany Me is a timely, well-intentioned, and interesting book. It presents Gordimer's current views about the past, present, and future of South Africa and to some extent reiterates beliefs she had espoused in previous essays and novels. Since once again the author's message is chiefly expressed in terms of space, the following analysis will focus on the novel's spatial symbolism and the characters' attempt to find a place in life. "Baggage" Gordimer interprets the changes that took place in 1990 as a journey from the past into the future. Accordingly, she calls the three parts of her novel "Baggage," "Transit," and "Arrivals." Part One introduces the baggage theme on both the private and the public levels. While looking at photographs from 1945, Vera Stark recalls that she and her first husband made love for the last time after their separation, when he came back to the house because he had forgotten the keys to his suitcases. Since Vera does not know whether her son Ivan was conceived then or later, the memory irritates her. Perhaps, she tells herself guiltily, the house awarded to her in the divorce settlement was not the only "baggage" left to her from the first marriage. In the public arena, the key example of the baggage theme is the politics of space practiced in the past. From her work for the Legal Foundation Vera Stark knows "the plight of black communities who had become so much baggage, to be taken up and put down according to a logic of separation of black people from the proximity of white" (12). As the two examples suggest, "baggage" refers to what one carries along on the journey into the future: old photographs, suitcases, houses, and other objects, reminiscences, memories of inhumane, violent treatment. "Baggage" represents the burden of the past, both life under apartheid and the individual's private experiences, if the two can be considered separately. The rest of the novel shows that coming to terms with the past may be difficult and dangerous, but not impossible. "Transit" "Transit," the novel's longest section, demonstrates in various ways that "the old life comes to an end" (297). With the apartheid system in ruins, black politicians on the Writer's Responsibility," Ariel 19.4 (1988): 55-72; Judie Newman, Nadine Gordimer (London : Routledge, 1988): 35-39.

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and freedom fighters return from exile or from prison and prepare to take over power. Gordimer creates a vivid impression of their sense of victory and their newly gained self-confidence, but goes on to stress that their "euphoria," which is shared by Vera Stark and other white sympathizers, cannot last (5). Black politicians are faced with the social, economic, and political problems left behind by the old regime; they have to find ways to establish a new order and to cope with the high expectations raised by the political upheaval. In addition, they are confronted with black disunion, new and old factions and rivalries, and they must tread cautiously since their past underground activities may be used against them. The whites know that 1990 is the year of the last white parliament that would ever sit. This awareness causes both fear and hope. It drives some whites out of the country and makes others join right-wing groups that try to fight against change. Other whites move with the times and hope to profit from the economic and political situation. Still others - the heroine among them - sincerely welcome change and wish to help to establish a new multicultural society. Gordimer does not smooth over the difficulties involved in creating such a society. She illustrates them with Vera Stark's work for the Legal Foundation. Created under apartheid to give blacks at least some legal protection against the official politics of space, the Foundation fights, in 1990, for the rights of those who have been forced to leave their land and their houses by the Group Areas Act and other laws. This struggle, the novel shows, is far from easy. It leads to extended court quarrels and to violent acts by whites and blacks. Both Vera and her black assistant Oupa are attacked on one of their tours of the land; while Vera recovers from her wound, Oupa dies soon after.14 By the end of the novel, neither the land and housing problems have been resolved nor the other issues that Gordimer alludes to in passing. In keeping with the actual historical development of the country, Nelson Mandela has not yet been elected President, and the constitutional debate about the structure of the new South Africa has just begun (in real life, it was still not finished one year after the novel appeared, in 1994). Obviously, Nadine Gordimer is conscious of the fact that the transition from the old to the new is complex and time-consuming. Nevertheless, she is optimistic enough to point out many positive changes. One sign of change is the freedom of movement the characters now enjoy. In comparison with life under apartheid, their "topography of activity," to use a term applied to Mehring in The Conservationist, has been widened. This also implies an increased economic and social mobility, as the transformation of Johannesburg illustrates. In 1958, in A World of Strangers, Gordimer had depicted the city "as a conglomerate of separate countries, with secret passports, border posts and the noman's land between."15 In some of her later novels and stories, she drew upon the 14

15

For a discussion of the problems of housing and land, see Martin J. Murray, The Revolution Deferred: The Painful Birth of Post-Apartheid South Africa (London: Verso, 1994): 49-72. For violence in the transition era, see ibid.: 54ff., 73ff. Stephen Gray, "Gordimer's 'A World of Strangers,"' Ariel 19.4 (1988): 11-16, 11. For a historian's description of the metamorphosis of Johannesburg, see Murray, Revolution : 44-48.

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same imagery, occasionally projecting it onto other towns or the country in general. In None to Accompany Me, however, blacks move into areas formerly reserved for whites. Thus the notion of apartheid has been subverted, even if economic pressures continue to establish boundaries based on money and status. The transformation of Johannesburg is also signalled by other themes familiar from Gordimer's previous fiction. Vera Stark's multicultural parties and Oupa's housewarming are reminiscent of events in "The Smell of Death and Flowers" (Six Feet of the Country, 1956), A World of Strangers, "Open House" {Livingstone's Companions, 1972), Burger's Daughter, and A Sport of Nature. Mixed social events are, however, no longer dangerous symbolic actions against an oppressive state. Instead, they mark a return to normalcy in interracial communication. Similarly, it is normal that old friends such as Didymus and Sibilonge Maquamo stay as guests at Vera Stark's house for a couple of weeks; it was abnormal that Vera had to hide Didymus from the police in the same house in 1985. By contrasting the present with the past, Gordimer highlights the changes that have already taken place. At the same time, she gives a new twist to the theme of sheltering freedom fighters, which she had explored before. Taken together, these and other indications of change justify Gordimer's choice of the titles "Transit" and "Arrivals" for the second and the third parts of the novel: If not South Africa, at least some of the major and minor characters arrive at an important station on their journey into the future. They find places that define their relationship to the developing new order. "Arrivals" Three characters exemplify the hold the past still has over South Africans: Tertius Odendaal, Bennet Stark, and Didymus Maquoma. Odendaal, the grandson of a Boer general and the owner of three farms, feels betrayed by the government and is afraid of what the political changes may have in store for him. Since his land borders on a black homeland, he applies for permission to convert one of his holdings into a black township, hoping to turn the squatters' invasion of the land to profit (22). Meeting with the resistance of both the squatters and the Legal Foundation, he resorts to using force. After losing a court battle to the Legal Foundation, he is dismissed from the action of the novel as a reactionary, who, hopefully, will have no further say in the future of South Africa. Another character who continues "to live in the past" (223) is Vera's second husband, Bennet Stark. Originally a sculptor, Bennet has worked as a market consultant since the 1960s in order to support his family (105). Though he allowed one of Vera's black protégés, a leader in the Soweto uprising, to hide from the police in his office, he has maintained a great distance from his wife's political activities: In some blessed peaceful country, existing far away, an obvious moral contradiction in the activities of a man and woman might destroy the respect that goes with love. But here, for these two, while the great lie prevailed, it was part of a shackle of common experience of what was wrong but aleatory, could not be escaped. They were scarcely aware of its chafing. (29)

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Reminiscent of characters such as the businessman in "Something for the Time Being" (Six Feet of the Country), Bennet is a rather weak and ineffectual representative of the white middle class, which, whether consciously or not, has supported the apartheid system. One of his last business projects concerns luggage for promotional purposes. Since such luggage is apparently deemed superfluous by the author (28), Bennet goes bankrupt. Not knowing what to do next, he visits his son in England, and apparently does not intend to return to South Africa. Vera Stark, who has rejected his dependence upon her for a long time, hardly gives any thought to his departure (310) and regards it as a good riddance to part of her past (223). By expelling Bennet from the action of the novel, Nadine Gordimer avoids entering more deeply into the complexities of the South African economy and having to revise the anti-capitalist stance that she took in Burger's Daughter and other works. Her protagonist only concedes that the political left in South Africa might now use some elements of capitalism for its purposes (282).16 The third character who does not succeed in escaping the past is Didymus Maquoma. In 1990 he is welcomed back as one of the leaders of the black opposition. He expects to be elected a member of the executive council of the liberation movement and to be placed in charge of legal affairs, but his comrades vote against him.17 Since Didymus was involved in torturing white and black police spies and is regarded as a better man for "war" than for "revolution" (129), the movement does not consider it opportune to expose him to the limelight of the media.18 So he has to content himself with assuming the role of the elder statesman and the historian of past struggles. From his place on the sidelines, he observes with concern that he has also been left behind by other developments. His wife has a new Western outspokenness, she has become emancipated from the traditional African female role, and is successful in politics. Among those characters who move with the times and actively work for the new order are Sibilonge Maquoma, Zeph Rapulana, and Vera Stark. While Didymus Maquoma went underground, his wife lived in exile. Her London experiences have made her an independent woman, who, after her return, is "more suited to present roles" (238) than her husband. She is useful for the liberation movement as an organizer, a public relations officer, and, finally, as a special delegate to other countries. As her touching encounter with a black streetcleaner makes clear (5 if.), circumstances have allowed her to rise from the slums of Johannesburg to a leading position in the new South Africa. This rise is mirrored by the succession of places she lives in and by the self-confidence she displays on public occasions. Nadine Gordimer, who has sometimes been charged with neglecting the situation of the African woman and with prefering to treat relationships between white women and black men instead, grants Sibilonge the same kind of independence that Vera Stark has enjoyed for a long time. Both characters are represented as strong and successful women who do not rely on 16 17

18

The changing economic policies of the ANC are discussed by Murray, Revolution : 22-26. The theme of rejection by the party is anticipated in the story "At the Rendezvous of Victory" (Something Out There, 1984). For human-rights violations by the ANC's security section, see Murray, Revolution: 122f.

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their husbands as providers, mentors, or authorities and who gradually distance themselves from these men as companions and partners. Because Sibilonge is black, she is predestined to belong to the political elite of the new state and can thus be regarded as a successor to the much older Vera Stark. As remarkable as Sibilonge's career is that of Zeph Rapulana. He first acts as spokesman for the squatters on Odendaal's lands and cooperates with the Legal Foundation. He then becomes an adviser to a housing research project in Johannesburg and moves from the township to a backyard cottage in a suburb. Still later, he is appointed director of a bank and buys or rents a house, in a modestly affluent, formerly white suburb of Johannesburg.19 Rapulana represents the ideal black leader. While being educated, intelligent, and flexible, he never loses touch with his people (216). In the conflict with Odendaal, he tries to understand his opponent's position and offers him, as Vera Stark says in gushing admiration, the "gift of [...] tolerance, forgiveness" (26). When this gift is rejected and Odendaal resorts to violence, Rapulana responds promptly and takes the law into his own hands (152f). At the same time he is aware that the public attitude towards acts of terrorism makes it necessary to "produce" a "cover-up" (152). Somewhat bewildered, Vera Stark realizes that Rapulana's essentially tolerant and non-racist stance is one which he will defend using any means, including violence. His readiness to make unpleasant decisions is something she needs to acquire if she wishes to cut her ties with the past and to face old age and death. None To Accompany Me is, among other things, the story of Vera Stark, a woman in her late sixties who knows that she will have to travel alone during the final part of her personal journey. This dimension of the novel will be considered here only insofar as it is linked to historical developments and political issues. Vera Stark is a successor to the politically committed white heroines of Gordimer's earlier fiction.20 Married at the age of 17 before the outbreak of World War II, divorced and remarried in 1945, Vera awakened to the horrors of apartheid in 1960: one year after the birth of Annick, her second child, she saw pictures of "the baby shot dead on its mother's back at Sharpeville - an infant like her own" (18). This, she remembers, shook her out of her self-absorption and made her join the Legal Foundation, "not out of the white guilt people talked about, but out of a need to take up, to balance on her own two feet the time and place to which, by birth, she understood she had no choice but to belong" (20). Her legal work opens her eyes to the consequences of apartheid: She was accustomed to squatter camps, slum townships, levels of existence of which white people were not aware; the sudden illusion of suburbia, dropped here and there, standing up stranded on the veld between the vast undergrowth of tin and sacking and plastic and cardboard that was the natural terrain, was something still to be placed. (85) 19 20

See Murray's interpretation of such careers, Revolution: 21. See, for instance, the lawyer and political activist Anna Louw in A World of Strangers. See also Elisabeth Gerver, "Women Revolutionaries in the Novels of Nadine Gordimer and Doris Lessing," WLWE 17 (1978): 38-50; Via®**, Rereading, 71-114.

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In the course of time, Vera gradually develops from a liberal, who believes solely in legal measures, to a sympathizer of radical politics. Thus she reflects Gordimer's own development. She takes risks by sheltering black freedom fighters, but apparently does not get directly involved in acts of violence. When the apartheid system comes to an end, she belongs to that segment of the white population which Gordimer described in her essay, "Living in the Interregnum". She is preoccupied "neither by plans to run away from nor merely by ways to survive physically and economically in the black state that is coming", but rather by the question of "how to offer one's self."21 To the point of neglecting her family and her own health, she dedicates herself to the new tasks of the Legal Foundation. She then joins the committee established to draft the new constitution. Before she does so, however, she asks her black friend Rapulana for advice. As this fact indicates, she now begins to slip into the role that Gordimer herself has recommended to whites in the new South Africa. Though Vera had been accustomed to taking the initiative in her private life and at the Legal Foundation, she is often shown listening to Rapulana and echoing his opinions. She represses "the old impulses to leadership" that whites in South Africa like to indulge in22 and heeds the advice given by the poet Serote, which Gordimer quotes approvingly in her essay "Living in the Interregnum": "Blacks must learn to talk; whites must learn to listen [...].1,23 Though eager to help bring about the new order, she is content to act as a kind of expert24 in legal and constitutional matters. As Gordimer argued as early as 1959: It's hard to sit quiet when you think you can tell how a problem may be solved or a goal accomplished, but it may be even harder to give help without recriminations or, worse, smugness when it is sought. If we want to fit in anywhere in Africa, that is what we'll have to teach ourselves to do; answer up, cheerfully and willingly, when we're called upon and shut up when we're not.25

The final position Vera Stark arrives at is expressed in spatial terms, as usual. Throughout the first two parts of the novel, the protagonist clings to one of her pieces of baggage, the house she was awarded in the divorce proceedings. Apart from promising economic security in old age, the house is a reminder of her past. In addition, its location in a good residential area defines it as the place that a white family occupied during the apartheid regime. Vera Stark feels guilty about having acquired the house by betraying and then divorcing her first husband. By extension, as her work at the Legal Foundation tells her, it is questionable whether whites have a right to own such places in South Africa at all. From this perspective, Vera's sudden decision to sell her property and live in the annexe of Rapulana's house is symbolic: the former white mistress moves into that part of a house where the black servants used to stay. To put it differently, Vera sheds her old identity, 21 22

24 25

Gordimer. Gordimer. Gordimer, Gordimer, Ibid.

"Living "Where "Living "Where

in the Interregnum": 264. Do Whites Fit In?": 34. in the Interregnum": 267. Do Whites Fit In?": 35.

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breaks with her husband and her former lifestyle and is content to be accepted by Rapulana, the coming black leader, as a friend, not a dependant. The fact that she has moved, so to speak, from the center to the margin of a residential home seems to illustrate Gordimer's early dictum," [. ..] if we're going to fit in at all in the New Africa, it's going to be sideways [...].1,26 The last scenes of the novel have other functions as well. Vera's nightly encounter with Rapulana's black girlfriend, her awareness that her sexual life is over, her lonely meditation in the dark and cold garden - all this suggests that there will be none to accompany her on the last stage of her journey. In a way, her death is anticipated by the imagery of the last scenes. But the chilling end, which at least one reviewer criticized,2 can also be interpreted as the symbolic death of the old self that precedes rebirth. At the end of the novel, Vera resembles the protagonist of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man (1952). 28 As a white woman, she becomes, as it were, invisible and - to apply Ellison's term to the wintry scene of the novel's close - prefers to 'hibernate' a while before surfacing again in a multicultural society, one "non-racial but conceived with and led by blacks." 29 Ellison defines hibernation as "a covert preparation for a more overt action." 30 In this sense, whites will have to wait until they are accepted and asked to act by the new state. The severity with which Nadine Gordimer presents this message is modified by the fact that Vera, Sibilonge, and Rapulana have proven themselves capable of moving with the times and becoming friends. There are other signs that a multicultural society will perhaps be established in the future.

Glimpses of a Multicultural Society One encouraging sign is the attitude of the members of the younger generation. Like Athol Fugard in his recent play Valley Song, Nadine Gordimer seems to tell young South Africans, "You're free to escape the past." 31 Vera's grandson Adam adjusts easily to life in South Africa. He moves around freely and does not seem to have any racial prejudices. From the little the reader learns about him he appears to be an interesting variation upon a character type familiar from colonial literature, the problem youth sent from England to the colony to rehabilitate himself It remains open, however, whether or not he will stay in South Africa. For Vera's daughter Annick, 1990 means a liberation in a very personal sense: she comes out as a lesbian and decides to live with her friend. Whereas in The 26 27

28

29

Ibid.: 32. See Michael Wood, "Free of the Bad Old World," The New York Review of Books, 1 Dec. 1994: 12f. See Hillela's remarks on being white in Africa (A Sport of Nature') and the comments by Wagner, Rereading: 141. Gordimer, "Living in the Interregnum": 278. One could also argue that Vera comes to resemble the artist, about whom Gordimer once said, "The tension between standing apart and being fully involved, that is what makes a writer." Quoted by Cooke, Novels: 29. Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972): 15. Athol Fugard, '"You're Free to Escape the Past"' (Interview), Newsweek 21 Aug. 1995: 56.

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Conservationist the theme of homosexuality is associated with white decadence and infertility, it is given a positive interpretation in None to Accompany Me: The lesbian couple adopts a black orphan and demonstrates that the old racial barriers matter as little as prejudices about homosexuality do. A potential third representative of the future is Mpho, Didymus' and Sibilonge's daughter. Born in exile, she has received an excellent education. When she returns to South Africa at the age of 16, she freely moves between her parents' home and the houses of her grandmother and the Starks. She begins to learn Xhosa and Zulu, her father's and her mother's native languages, respectively. Unhampered by the past, she makes contacts easily and, like Adam, is without racial prejudices. When she becomes pregnant by Oupa, she turns to her grandmother for help, but then decides in favor of abortion and rejects her grandmother's notions about what African women should and should not do. For Vera Stark and Nadine Gordimer, Mpho combines "the style of Vogue with the assertion" of Africa. Laying it on thick, the author claims: Mpho was a resolution - in a time when this had not yet been achieved by governments, conferences, negotiations, mass action and international monitoring or intervention - of the struggle for power in the country which was hers, and yet where, because of that power struggle, she had not been born. (49)

Gordimer's thesis that Mpho is "a mutation achieving happy appropriation of the aesthetics of opposing species" (49) may be indebted to Homi Bhabha's concept of hybridization. Her assertion links the character to another mutant, Hillela in A Sport of Nature, a white woman who is both cosmopolitan and very African and who, because of her sophistication, power, and independence, moves beyond even Sibilonge and Vera. 32 In aesthetic terms, however, Mpho is nothing but a cardboard character, incapable of sustaining the burden of meaning heaped upon her. The fact that she leaves Johannesburg to study at New York University raises the question of whether she will ever settle in South Africa. Like many liberal multiculturalists, Gordimer seems to believe in the importance of education in a multicultural society; like liberal-left multiculturalists, she is also in favor of creating conditions of social equality.33 But unlike some critical multiculturalists, she plays down cultural diversity and the various traditions of the ethnic groups. Mpho, it appears, needs only to acquire a smattering of two native languages and a nodding acquaintance with her ethnic origins to qualify as a member of an educated global elite and a potential representative of the future South Africa. 34 32

33

34

For a critique of the political implications of Gordimer's characterization of Hillela, see Wagner, Rereading: 3. For types of multiculturalism, see David Theo Goldberg, éd., Multiculturalism: A Critical Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994); Berndt Ostendorf, ed., Multikulturelle Gesellschaft: Modell Amerika? (Munich: Fink, 1994). Gordimer's idealization of blacks and her adoption of the "Black is beautiful" concept do not necessarily betray a deep interest in black cultural traditions. See Wagner: Rereading: 97, on Gordimer's tendency to idealize the black world at the expense of the white one.

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As an old opponent of racial discrimination, Nadine Gordimer is chiefly interested in transcending racial barriers. Accordingly, she focuses attention on the friendship between Rapulana and Vera. From her early novels on, love across the color bar has served as key symbol of racial harmony. The difference in age between Rapulana and Vera and, perhaps, Vera's decision to "hibernate" until the new order is ready to accept whites seem to preclude a sexual relationship. Emotionally, however, Vera feels, "[...] they belonged together as a single sex, a reconciliation of all each had experienced, he as a man, she as a woman" (123). In a blend of feminist and anti-racist concerns characteristic of the author, the androgynous union of a man and woman expresses the ideal relationship between the races and vice versa: It was accepted tacitly that when he spoke of 'our' people it was as a black speaking for blacks, subtly different from when he used 'we' or 'us' and this meant an empathy between him and her. They continued to accept one another for exactly what they were, no sense of one intruding upon the private territory behind the other. It had come to her that this was the basis that ought to have existed between a man and a woman in general, where it was a question not of a difference of ancestry but of sex. (282)

No doubt such a vision deserves respect. But one may well wonder whether Nadine Gordimer has succeeded in bringing it to life, aesthetically. As a German reviewer quipped, None to Accompany Me seems to have been written by the winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace rather than for Literature.35 Be this as it may, ambitious books like None to Accompany Me or Günther Grass's Ein weites Feld, books that try to cover and interpret many aspects of revolutionary change, are bound to draw criticism from many, if not all sides.

35

Andreas Isenschmid, "Starke Absichten," Die Zeit 7 Apr. 1995: Literatur 15.

Manfred Görlach (Köln)

English - The Language of a New Nation The Present-Day Linguistic Situation of South Africa1

1. Introduction When in 1820 Lord Somerset planted his settlers - impressively 'monumented' on a hill overlooking Grahamstown - and imported churchmen and teachers in the Cape Province to stabilize the hold on a country then only recently conquered from the Dutch, he may not have dreamt of the linguistic consequences of his move. The acquisition of the colony was one of the more obvious instances of English linguistic imperialism (cf. Phillipson 1992); it made English the only official language in the Cape and thus forced it on the Dutch settlers. In later stages of the country's history, British imperialism was restricted to arms, economy and political power, a policy that culminated in the Boer War. There was no explicit aim, in the 19th or 20th centuries, to spread the English language by the British colonial administrators - the British took the leading role of English for granted and relied on its attractiveness as one of the main determinants of social upward mobility. And, true enough, the mass of non-English-speaking immigrants streaming into the new industrial and commercial centre of Johannesburg from the 1870s onwards adopted English within a very short time - the rural form of Dutch, later to be standardized, raised in prestige and renamed Afrikaans in a remarkably successful case history of language planning (cf. Roberge 1993), presented no reasonable alternative. So the knowledge of English increased by gaining large numbers of second-language speakers mainly among the Afrikanders/Boers and the Coloured populations and by language shift of the Indians, who were imported during the 19th century as workers on the Natal plantations. The last 120 years were a period of rapid growth of the population, particularly in the English-dominated towns. Their centres grew through immigration from Europe, and a slow internal migration of the Boers; also, slums of black workers exploded on their outskirts (later ethnically segregated and named townships). When the tables were turned in 1948 with the National Party rising to power, the functions of Afrikaans were drastically increased under a regime that has given the world the best-known and most hated word of the language, apartheid. One effect of the pro-Afrikaans language policy was that bilingualism in the two white languages increased to an unprecendented degree - among the white and the Coloured populations, the Indians becoming more and more monolingual in English, and the black majority

1

This survey was written for the South Africa section of the Anglistentag at Greifswald, 24-27 Sept., 1995. The historical introduction owes much to the survey by Lanham (1982).

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left to communicate in a great variety of Bantu languages2 plus inadequately learnt (because inadequately taught) English and the generally disliked Afrikaans - one remembers that the Soweto riots of 1976 were at least partially sparked off by the introduction of Afrikaans as an obligatory school language to be used as a medium for half of the school subjects. Another consequence, legally based on the Bantu Education Act of 1953, was that eight years of schooling (primary and part of secondary education) were to be in the mother tongues. Whereas even UNESCO support could be adduced for this enlightened principle, it was in fact created to stabilize white rule by excluding the Black majority from higher education and well-paid jobs.

2. The present-day linguistic situation3 When the great change came in 1990-94, the South African society was left with a difficult heritage - threatening ethnic conflict, economic crisis, emigration, rightwing obstruction - and educational and linguistic problems. Before entering into a discussion of the forms and functions of English it will be useful to state a few demographic facts: 1. South Africa is a multilingual country; the number of its languages of its 38 to 40 million inhabitants is disputed. There are at least 24, but the recent constitution of the new state provides for eleven official languages:4 Afrikaans, English, isiNdebele, SeSotho sa Leboa, SeSotho, siSwathi, Xitsonga, Setswana, Tshivenda, isiXhosa and isiZulu (quoted in the official spellings). The formula that legislation is to work for "The creation of conditions for the development and for the promotion of the equal use and enjoyment of all South African languages" (§9a) is wishful thinking at best - it is still quite uncertain how the article is to be implemented. 2. The major written languages, English and Afrikaans, are spoken natively by 9.5% and 11.5% of the population respectively; the largest speaker groups are the Zulus (23.5%) and Xhosa (18.5%). 3. The degree of individual multilingualism is unique among nations; some 80% of the white and Coloured populations master both English and Afrikaans; the use It might well have been possible to create two standard languages, Nguni (including Zulu and Xhosa) and Sotho (including Tswana and N and S Sotho), from the closely related dialects — which would have covered some 44% and 24% of the total population respectively — but the divide-and-rule policy saw a point in standardising various dialects (cf. the creation of various Turkish languages in the former Soviet Union). There is no adequate survey on 1995 conditions available; the 39 chapters in Webb (1995) cover many relevant aspects but describe the state of afFairs in 1990-91. A reliable description of more recent situations is expected in de Klerk's (1996) collection of papers. The ANC first supported a predominant role of English, but later opted for a more democratic solution.

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o f both 'white' languages, and usually a few other languages or dialects is common (some 50% each) among black speakers - though often at low levels o f proficiency. 5 4. The frequency of language contacts o f all imaginable types and in all possible situations has led to various complex forms of 'diglossia' in which certain languages are preferred or expected for certain functions, but has also resulted in all kinds o f borrowing. Code-switching is common and can involve up to five languages in townships (Finlayson 1995), degrees o f mixing (especially in 'totsi' languages) which are not recorded from any other speech community. For every kind o f language planning, attitudes are crucial. It is therefore important to point to the most comprehensive survey after independence: although the official policy has since changed from almost unqualified support o f English as the major school and national language to the eleven-language formula, the attitudes elicited in 1990 permit a prognostication of long-term developments if it proves impossible (as it certainly will) to implement the eleven-language solution. Young's report (1991, here summarized from Smit 1994:76-8) is based on the Western Cape, some o f the major results include: In general, the majority of the informants favoured a trilingual situation at school with English, Afrikaans and Xhosa used together. The most intolerant respondents to other L i s were to be found in CED, i.e. White schools. Similarly, the issue of official language was looked at from a pluralistic perspective by most informants who favoured the use of more languages including one or more African languages, while the most intolerant attitudes were found among White and Coloured pupils. They supported a continuation of the status quo. The strongest single proposal was to use English as sole official language, and was argued for by a third of all respondents. The informants agreed that Afrikaans would survive in the future, that English was essential to one's personal life; that every South African must learn to speak an African language, and that the shared knowledge of one national language would be crucial in the future. The proposals for the future official language and language in education policies revealed an interesting strong pattern of convergence on the choice of English as both MOI [= medium of instruction] and national language [...]- a weight of choice far greater than that evident in individuals' responses to the 'think sheet' question. This can probably be explained in terms of peer group pressure conformity in groups and the predictable power of strong personalities in each group. Young et al. (1991:26-30, quoted from Smit 1994:77) (De Klerk & Bosch 1993 provide a certain control on Young's findings because their investigation was based on the strongly English-centred community o f Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape as was Smit's 1994 study). 5

Very high rates for bilingualism among whites were claimed as early as the 60s; graphs based on census data in Spolsky & Cooper show a steady decrease of monolingualism (Table 2, 1978:170-9). Lass (1987:303) reports for the mid-1980s the expected high rates of competence in the other white language — 77+% of Afrikaans among Anglos, 87% of English among Afrikanders — but adds that only "9.6% of first-language speakers consider themselves fully bilingual, while 13.5% of Afrikaans speakers do."

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The leading role of English is therefore a long-term certainty. This is so although attitudes are divided: However, the role of English during the years of apartheid has been controversial. For the majority of South Africans, the experience of English as an official language has been one of poverty, low wages, selective justice, and biased media [...] On the other hand, during the last decadefs], English has become the carrier for discourses of democracy and freedom and a way of achieving solidarity across different language groups in the liberation struggle. (Kerfoot 1993:432)

3. Ethnic varieties 3.0. Different cultures, different mother tongues and, as a consequence of segregated schools during the time of Bantu education from 1953 on, also different ways of language acquisition, have produced a great complexity of linguistic variation, as far as competence in individual languages, including English, is concerned. In March 1994 I watched on South African television a panel discussing the restitution of land to black farmers who were expropriated by the apartheid regime. The discussion was fascinating because of the topic, but even more so because of the disputants' Englishes: the former landowner (Zulu/BIE), the representative of the local administration (Anglo-English), the present 'owner' (AfkE) and the talkmaster (black) whose English, surprisingly for his job, was the least comprehensible of all ideolects represented. How far were these (which were immediately classifiable) typical of ethnic varieties? Are there any such entities that can be distinguished by the linguist - and does this classification agree with the perception of other users?6 Can in phone-calls in South Africa the speaker be immediately allocated to one of the groups, and if so, on the basis of what features? What are the attitudes involved if value judgments are made purely on the basis of linguistic characteristics (for instance, using matched guise tests)? It is both the scarcity of research and the fact that developments in the field are so rapid - after a state of comparative fossilization under the old regime - that makes statements on the existence of ethnic varieties very tentative in 1995. Mesthrie & McCormack warn us: "The impression should not be gained that SAfE is made up of discrete dialects, neatly divided along ethnic lines" (1993:39). It is one of the apparent failures of the apartheid regime not to have achieved this linguistic division. However, for want of a better alternative my subsequent survey will be organized along ethnic lines. 3.1. Anglo-English The history of the forms and functions of native-speaker English in South Africa and their evaluation have been thoroughly documented and analysed by Lanham (1982). Even though certain details of his interpretation were corrected by Lass & 6

Research by Smit in 1993 (Smit 1994) showed that speakers identified ethnic varieties of English with success rates of between 70 and 90%.

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Wright (1985) and Jeffery (1982), the main trends are undisputed. The early development can, then, be broken up into three stages (also cf. Mesthrie & McCormick 1992) which are still vital for the proper understanding of present-day varieties and attitudes toward them: 1. The early settler English in the Cape developed into a dialect that was somewhat stigmatized because of the lower-middle-class origins of most of its speakers - and because it formed the input for second-language speakers of AfkE; the dialect in its broad form is fast receding and no longer sociolinguistically relevant. 2. The more middle-class variety of Natal English, influenced by a large proportion of retired officers etc., and strong cultural and emotional links with Britain which developed from the mid-19th century. 3. The spread of Natal English blended with the BrE of recent arrivals in the newly opened industrial centres in the interior, mainly around Johannesburg, from 1870 onwards. (These three areas still form the centres of ESSA (= English-speaking South African) majority, cf. Map 1). Similar to speakers' attitudes in Australia and New Zealand, ESS As felt to be representatives of the European mother country in a faraway and often hostile continent; in contrast to Australia and New Zealand, however, they were in a minority, now representing some 37% of the five million whites. Even when the Indians and the 10% native speakers among the Coloured population are added, the number of native speakers of English is well below 10% of the total population of the new South Africa. 7 This minority position, and the high prestige attached to 'correct' English among the educated throughout the 20th century, may have contributed to a longer and more rigid adherence to BrE norms than is found in, for instance, modern Australia.8 Significantly enough, SAfE has a language academy which has tried to regulate on questions of correctness (and runs a telephone service named 'grammar-phone') - such an institution has never been created for Britain and the United States in spite of attempts starting in the 17th century, or for any of the other former colonies. There is a long list of books dealing very critically with peculiarities of English in South Africa, ranging from Pettman's verdict who said in 1913

8

Older statistics are biased by the separate counts of speakers in semi-independent homelands. Whereas figures for native speakers are halfway reliable, those for multilingualism and competence in further languages widely diverge and have therefore to be treated with great caution. The ties with Britain were of course loosened under the apartheid regime. Nor should it be overlooked that the self-confidence expressed in an independent norm for AusE dates to the past fifty years — a period which has been the most difficult for ESSAs, and least encouraging for the emergence of a new standard.

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It gives an Englishman, who loves the sentence that is lucid and logical, a shock to hear his native tongue maltreated by those who are just as English in blood as himself, (p. 1)

to Beeton & Dorner's dictionary of 1975 in which the authors pontificated on correct usage by reducing the options to the binary choice of acceptable vs. not acceptable. As is to be expected in a sociolinguistic situation as the present one, there are two positions as far as the future of English is concerned. While all informed commentators appear to agree that English will be the dominant language in the years to come, its future norms are much debated. A conservative faction, represented by the English Academy (cf. Young 1993), believes in keeping the wells of English undefiled by the mud and decay threatening from non-native, less educated and predominantly non-white speakers.9 It is claimed that the language, not to risk a development towards internal disintegration, frequent miscommunication and, above all, international stigmatization, ought to retain the high standards represented by the best South African schools and universities. A more lenient and realistic attitude would rely on the social prestige of 'correct' English but allow for much more variation within the ('modified') standard. Smit (1994) reports that there was a great amount of readiness among all ethnicities to consider the emergence of a new norm which takes into account the majority of users of English, viz. Black L2 speakers. It might indeed be good to look abroad and learn from the linguistic experience of other African and Asian countries: while South Africa is in an incomparably better position than most other nations - having so many native speakers of English and an adequate educational system - it is also clear that realistic aims should be formulated to effectively teach the type of English that is in reach of the learners. This stress on the instrumental functions of English may even result in an internal norm (with the lingua franca uses and intelligibility stressed), and an international standard. 3.2. Afrikaans English It has always been questionable how far we can speak about a well-defined entity 'AfkE' (the broad forms of which are popularly known as 'Anglikaans') and it has apparently become much more doubtfUl in recent years. While Afk-accented English is very noticeable (and stigmatized) among older and less educated speakers, all observers agree that the quality of English among younger educated Afrikaans speakers is such that it is increasingly difficult to identify their mother tongue. The research by Watermeyer (1996) has shown that in a smaller Afrikaansdominated town of the Western Cape there are quite a few regular features, mainly in pronunciation, marking speakers as members of a non-English community. However, many of the characteristics commonly associated with AfkE are confined

A large international conference devoted to language planning in South Africa, and the forms and functions of English in the new society, was held in Cape Town in 1992 (= Young 1993), another in Grahamstown in September 1995.

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to interlanguage forms due to inadequate acquisition; they are concentrated in phonetic peculiarities (Afrikaans [r] and vowel qualities transferred to the pronunciation of English) and a smaller number of syntactic features many of which are shared with other ESL varieties. All of these seem to be recessive, and they are certainly no longer supported by any overt prestige (if they ever were): with a political motivation to stress the Afrikanderdom quickly declining there is certainly little point left for speakers to cultivate ethnic stereotypes.10 3.3. Indian English Thanks to the research of Mesthrie (1982a, b, 1996) the English spoken by Indians has been described fairly comprehensively and with sociolinguistic sophistication. However, the main question remains - is there an entity sufficiently characterized by features not shared by other speakers, and of sufficient stability, that allows us to speak of 'IndE'? The first generations of Indians were obviously quite loyal to their ancestral languages (and also used a fair amount of Fanagalo as a lingua franca), and their English was characterized by a great amount of interference. Mesthrie has shown that the present English used by Indians cannot be a straightforward descendant of these 19th-century forms; rather, it consists of innumerable ideolects identified by personal competence in English on a cline of bilingualism. There are a few persistent phonetic or grammatical features, and some of these are handed on to younger speakers who themselves do not speak any Indian language. But they do not seem to be shared in any regular, predictable way, nor do the 800+ lexical items collected in Mesthrie (1992a) appear sufficient to constitute a variety proper, being mainly foreignisms relating to Indian culture. This impression is confirmed by sociological data which show the Indians as eager to accommodate once they have decided on a language shift to English - which they have done with great rapidity in the past few years.11 Even the apartheid years, with segregated schools and universities, do not appear to have firmly established a stable ethnolect that is cultivated as a marker of Indian identity. 3.4. Black English The designation 'B1E' is apparently becoming meaningful for present-day South Africa. Educational discrimination, which, through the hated system of Bantu education, effectively barred native speakers of English from teaching Black pupils for many years, has caused the English of Black speakers to deviate from that of native speakers modelled on pronunciations of Black teachers and written texts it has drifted more and more away from prescribed standards, especially in pronunciation (including stress and intonation) - but without so far focalizing in a 10

11

Smit (1994:101) found that an Afk accent was judged most negatively in Grahamstown in 1993 — certainly encouraging speakers to drop such stigmatized features that are quickly losing their former identificational value. That there must be some covert prestige in the ethnic variety is expressed by the fact that it is considered not good style to use English too close to St E — an attitude reported from many countries around the world, including India.

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new norm. Deviances in pronunciation concentrate in certain problem sounds and clusters, such as a much reduced vowel inventory and mergers or non-distinction of various consonants, like [1/r, b/v, 0/d/t] confusion, as illustrated by an experience I had myself some 25 years ago (admittedly with students coming from Zambia):12 One of them explained to me that his group was not responsible for the mess about the rubber-trees. I had not seen any such trees in the hostel and consequently was at a loss. It was only after a few minutes that it dawned on me that he was talking about lavatories - a mispronunciation and mishearing which involved at least four sounds articulated in a way that made misinterpretation possible or rather inevitable: [1/r], [ae/a, A], [v/b] and [i/I], An anecdote (reportedly a misunderstanding based on fact) deals with a properly South African situation. An advertisement in a 1992 Johannesburg paper (apparently phoned in) is claimed to have read as follows: Villa for sale. Four bedrooms, two garages, swimming-pool, [and ending with the words] seven squatters.

It took some linguistic sophistication to explain that a combination of nonrhoticity, conflation of various vowels and misanalysis of the word boundary had produced the - all too possible - seven squatters instead of the intended servants' quarters. Linguists have been concerned about the reduced intelligibility of English spoken by Black South Africans for a long time, and Lanham's research has for years concentrated on making speakers aware of deviances which lead to miscommunication.13 There is some hope that the new government will see the need for determined efforts towards improved ELT, and will devote their energy to the most urgent problems to raise the quality so as to ensure comprehensibility. (Attitudes being what they are there is little danger that broad features of the English of the Black majority will be carried over to other Englishes, and establish a new norm). In 1987, W. Branford wisely refrained from making any allocations of lexical items to 'B1E', or define this entity in any way. He said that ethnic varieties "flow into one another" and that "labelling of this kind is likely to be counter-productive if any kind of'General SAfE' is ever to come into being" (1987: xiiif.). In fact, recurring features more likely to occur in the speech of Black South Africans exist which make the identification of a Black speaker comparatively easy. Apart from the phonological traits mentioned (mainly the transfer of the five-vowel system of Nguni and seven-vowel system of Sotho languages, differences in consonantal clusters, word stress and intonation) they are most distinctive in grammar - but they are found much more seldom in educated Black speech, which indicates that they are more typical of class than of ethnicity. Gough (1996) lists among others resumptive pronouns and gender conflation, lack of concord, topicalization, misuse 12 13

The texts are also used in Gôrlach (fc ). For the complex problems arising mainly out of different vowel sets and deviance in prosodie phonology (stress, pitch levels and contours) and suggested solutions cf. Wright (1996).

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of progressive aspect, and various overexplicit features (use of the demonstrative for the article, duplicated conjunctions, etc.). Some of these are carried over from native languages, while others are more typical learners' errors shared with other ESL varieties (cf. Piatt etal. 1984). 3 .6. Coloured English The history of the Coloured population is closely connected with the early Dutch colonial society in the Western Cape; in a way they can be said to have 'invented' Afrikaans - so it does not come as a surprise that almost 90% still report it as their mother-tongue.14 However, some shift to English is reported from Cape Town and bilingualism with English is nearly as widespread as with the white population, and without an ethnic mother-tongue of their own, the English is predictably close to that of AfkE. Further generalizations are difficult because only Cape communities have been investigated in some detail, but it seems noteworthy that Coloured speakers are reported to be critical of their own English (McCormick, p.c.). Mesthrie & McCormick (1992:37-8) report the following characteristic features, some of which are shared with other ESL or non-standard varieties: 1) Inconsistent marking of tense; 2) use of dative of advantage; 3) use of unemphatic did to mark recent past; 4) double negatives; 5) non-standard subject-verb concord. However, the English used differs in the same area, or even the same family. Political changes in the last fifty years have produced a complex age-related situation: the older generation acquired English in mission schools as a second language for written/formal functions; their children were forced into mothertongue Afk education under apartheid, with much less English taught; and as a consequence of this negative attitude towards school Afk, parents then switched to English as a home language to secure English-medium education for their children - which for them was of a poorer quality than for their grandparents (p. 38).

4. Characteristics of SAfE on individual levels 4.0. The existing variation as sketched in the previous chapter makes it difficult to list individual features common to, or characteristics of, all varieties of English in South Africa. It is also difficult to say which of these are perceived as typical of 14

The varieties of Afrikaans are not my concern here. However, it is good to remember that about half of its speakers use 'standard Afk1, mainly in the centre of South Africa, whereas the other half, predominantly Coloureds, in the Western Cape speak a much stigmatized broad (historically early) form of the language (Cluver 1993a). This difference has to be taken into account if research into Coloured English spoken in the Western Cape is generalized to include other members of the Afrikaans community.

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SAfE, and if so, how this identification affects the evaluation of the relevant features. It is likely that the norms of the educated elite are still very much BrEoriented, so that characteristic features of SAfE are considered to be not only deviances, but mistakes. 4.1. Pronunciation SAfE shares certain features of'Southern hemisphere English' with AusE/ NZE,15 in particular, 'r-lessness' in car and cart, raising of /e, ae/ and backing of /I/ - which leads to mishearing vowels in bit, bet, bat and pin, pen, pan, retracting of fU before IV in fill: full, bill: bull. Long vowels are similar to Cockney; note retraction of /a:/ so that park : pork, department : deportment can be confused by non-South Africans. Diphthongs (as in nice house) tend to monophthongization - as they do in some types of RP and a few American dialects. The phoneme /x/ is an addition from Afrikaans (in loanwords and placenames). (For stereotypical features selfcritically and jocularly seen as part of SAfE see Malan 1972.) Although predictions are exceptionally difficult and risky it seems fair to say that two developments are likely in the next few years: the range of pronunciations heard in public (e.g. on television), and accepted by the listeners, is going to increase, with the possibility of ethnic markers emerging, especially among Black speakers - because they are coming to see such features as having identificational value ('black is beautiful') or because inadequate education leads to forms shared by so many Black speakers that they become part of an (informal) norm. By contrast, differences between Anglo and Afrikaans speakers of English, and less dramatically peculiarities of Indian and Coloured speakers, are likely to be recessive - all depends on how such features are interpreted sociolinguistically in the new South African society. 4.2. Grammar How far are deviances found in the speech of non-standard speakers of SAfE likely to continue? Features claimed to be part of Anglikaans are so high on the level of awareness that they now occur mainly in facetious, stereotypical uses. Even among Black teachers, according to Gough's (1996) pilot study, "a fairly traditional norm of'correctness' continues to act as a model." They accepted pleonastic prepositions (discuss about, refuse with) and wrong plurals (a luggage, efforts) fairly widely and in this view were in full agreement with ESL speakers elsewhere in Africa and Asia (cf. Piatt et al. 1984:81-5, 46-52), but wrong uses of progressive aspect were consistently marked as mistakes. Even if 'a lowering of the standards of correctness' were to happen in SAfE, there is some consolation in the fact that the admitted features do not concern semantic contrasts, but express overexplicitness and greater symmetry - developments which may even help increase communicational efficiency. 15

These features were typical of Cape English and Natal English respectively, but the distinction is probably no longer watertight as far as the features listed are concerned.

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4.3. Lexis SAfE shares with other ex-colonial Englishes the tendencies a) to reduce the lexis no longer needed because referents are lacking in the new surroundings, b) to re-use old words for new referents, and c) to expand the lexis by loanwords, caiques and independent coinages. (For the same tendencies in early AmE cf. the classic account in Webster 1828.) The long and intimate coexistence of the two white languages has, unsurprisingly, resulted in much greater contact-induced consequences in SAfE than in AmE or AusE. Branford's collection of SAfE lexis (1987) is useful for estimating these influences because he aimed at a descriptive synchronic account of the common words of SAfE. He found that of the exclusively SAfE items, more than half (52%) are loanwords from Afk/Dutch, 18% are English (apparently caiques as well as independent coinages) and 11% from Bantu languages. There is not a single ex-colonial variety similar to SAfE's composition: CanE has only a very small number of loans and caiques from French, and AmE and AusE have fewer than 1% loanwords from native Indian and Aboriginal languages - which contrasts with the much larger number of Bantu and Khoisan loanwords in SAfE. Moreover, whereas most of these 'native' loans are quickly becoming obsolete in AmE and AusE, and hardly any new items are borrowed, the process continues in SAfE, and has, for obvious political reasons, become even more pronounced in the past few years. Language has been a loaded weapon in South African society for generations, but increasingly so in the past twenty years. Many of the terms and new meanings coined by the apartheid system have happily no referents left in the new South Africa and are accordingly described as 'hist.' or 'obs.' in recent editions of dictionaries: to ban (an author or a book), Book of Life, classification, homeland, location - and, of course, apartheid and its English translation, separate development,16 Other terms are so offensive that new coinages have become necessary - as has happened to many plant names containing Kaffir (cf. the entry in Branford 1987). Uncertainty is still connected with the terms Coloured, Black, and Bantu: for some words, there is no neutral term available, or the 'white' meaning not adequate, or it is not clear which word form should be lemmatized (cf. the names of the nine official African languages mentioned above). 'Political correctness' is thus becoming an important factor in lexical innovation; it is significant that satirical uses of such new terms are part of the political situation, but not frequently found. Thus, the new slogan 'affirmative action' (working for racial equality, mainly in employment, and itself borrowed from AmE) sparked off 16

Note that Branford (1987: xx) included two labels referring to objectionable terms, and did so eight years ago: "D (= disputed) indicates a use that, although widely found, is still the subject of much adverse comment by informed users; R (= racially offensive) indicates a use that is regarded as offensive by members of a particular ethnic or religious group."

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'black humour' in form of coinages like affirmative shopping for 'looting'. The fascinating field of lexical change in rapidly developing new political and social structures still awaits thorough scholarly documentation.17

5. The future of English The constitution mentions English as one of eleven official languages, but it is quite clear that in the new society English will be more equal than others, and what the regulation really means is that Afrikaans is on the decline (cf. the insightful analysis by Cluver 1993a). There is no doubt that the numbers of speakers of English will rise especially in the Black population (for which the 1991 census gave 31% proficiency), and that the quality of the English used will be closer to whatever is perceived as standard. Realistically, after the failure to standardize Nguni and Sotho, there is no alternative among the African languages to fulfil the role of a national language. So, whatever may happen to these and to Afrikaans, English is there to stay, supported by a) high prestige, including the positive attitudes connecting it with the fight for freedom; b) the decision of the neighbouring countries which have all opted for English (apart from lusophone Angola and Mofambique)18; c) the eminent usefulness of English in international contexts; d) (whether the fact is openly admitted or not) the advantage that English is a convenient link language where the option of one of the native languages might be divisive (cf. the situation in Nigeria or India); and e) the fact that South Africa has the largest English native-speaker community of Africa - two million white people, one million Indians and increasing numbers among the other groups, especially the Coloured community. All these factors combined make the opposition against English look ephemeral however deeply felt it may be for some: there is still a substantial faction of the South African intelligentsia that is inclined to see English as a language of the colonizers and of the socially privileged and rightly claims that the perpetuation of English also means a stabilization of the existing class structure. In market research undertaken by the South African Broadcasting Corporation in 1990 (Hanekom 1994, Smit 1994:89) it was reported that all the ethnic groups had 90+% reading capacity in English at the complex level - except Blacks who scored only 34%. While this latter figure appears still quite low, the rise within four years from 19% in 1989 is drastic and indicates the trend in a convincing way. 17

A new edition of J. Branford's dictionary is certain to contain fascinating evidence of this — as the earlier editions (' 1970, 4 1991) have reliably documented earlier changes. The teaching of Afrikaans had more or less ceased even in the semi-independent homelands when the apartheid regime was still in power (Cluver 1993a); Namibia, against expectations, opted for English as the sole national language (Cluver 1993b) — a decision that Lesotho, Botswana, Swasiland, Zimbabwe and Zambia had taken many years ago (cf. Schmied 1991).

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However, preferences of language choice 19 in different environments continue to be quite marked: Almost two thirds (62,9%) of adults in South Africa prefer to use English in schools; this finding validates the earlier findings of the high incidence of proficiency in English due to the usage of English as a language of instruction. 41,9% prefer to read print media in English, it is important to note that the bulk of the printed media in South Africa is published in English. This percentage decreases considerably for radio listening as only 20% of the total universe prefer to listen to radio in English. 91% of the black universe prefer to listen to radio in a vernacular, only 9% indicated that they want to hear radio in English. It is important to note that the radio is the only mass medium that caters for each of the 11 main language groups in South Africa. The latter findings underline the fact that language choice is dertermined by the availability of material in the respective languages. (Hanekom 1994) The more important question - still too early to answer - is what standards will finally emerge. In this respect uncertainty remains as it did for W. Branford eight years ago, in spite of all the political changes that have happened in the mean time. He stated: Under a happier social dispensation, it is possible that something in the nature of a 'General SAfE1 [...] might ultimately emerge. One prerequisite for this would be a society very much better integrated than our own. In the South Africa of 1987 there are formidable communication barriers between different population groups. There still are in 1995, but it is obvious that the people, and their Englishes, are moving closer together. However, it is also clear that proponents of a rigidly BrEoriented standard are fighting a losing battle. There will have to be much more tolerance for linguistic varieties, as there already is for colour and religious persuasions. It will be one of the fascinating developments, still largely unpredictable and waiting for sociolinguists to document in detail, how there will emerge from the present sociolinguistic laboratory an interethnic standard of English, e pluribus unum. It would certainly be an indication of national maturity and self-confidence if South Africa came to accept and implement national norms of English, as Australia, New Zealand and Canada (and of course the United States) have done. Hacksley, responding to conservative ideas of linguistic norms for SAfE, rightly asks: - Is the British 'standard' Received Pronunciation to be preferred to all other varieties of spoken English? - How much deviation from the 'norm' is acceptable (and to whom)? After all - When much of the fare dished up for our television entertainment is presented in a variety of transatlantic accents, though with significant side-dishes from deep Down-Under, AND - When several of the most popular local TV offerings are in broad Sowse-effricun and Anglikaans, AND 19

Figures quoted by Smit from the same survey show that competence reported among Africans was almost identical (51.8% English, 50.5% Afrikaans), but of these, 34.1% reported Afrikaans competence only for 'less complex structures'.

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- When the local English-language radio stations are increasingly being staffed by presenters whose English is characterized by unmistakable African accents, stress-patterns, intonation and phrasing surely one must ask: is it realistic for us to insist on 'the King's English' in South African schools? (1994:34)

Various of my remarks above have made it plain that the future of English in South Africa, and the variety chosen as a norm, will depend on attitudes, which will in turn be the basis for political decisions which will have their most pervasive effects in the implementation in the schools. Most of the ethnic variation there is in present-day South Africa is a consequence of ELT after World War II, and the acceptance of norms, and the degree of homogeneity and interintelligibility of SAfE will largely depend on the quality of language teaching. This applies in particular to the teaching to Black speakers who have been especially underprivileged. Wright (1996) rightly says: Despite its official prestige in Africa, the English language is in difficulties in much of the continent as a medium of effective communication for sectors other than the Western-oriented and educated elites. The potential for replicating this situation exists in South Africa. Indeed, unless the will to tackle the educational problems involved is mustered, it may already be too late. South Africa may have to content itself with relatively competent standard English usage at tertiary and equivalent levels in society (obviously existing side-by-side with less formal dialects), a cline of increasingly divergent, non-native varieties entrenching themselves elsewhere in black urban social groupings, and the rural communities remaining highly dependent on regional vernacular languages and less able to participate in national life. This scenario bodes ill for key democratic issues like equality of opportunity, empowerment of the marginalized poor, the creation of a truly national polity, and the healing of a fractured society.

He formulates the aims for ELT as one of "language cultivation, how to encourage the evolution of a variety of Black SAfE in the schools which will satisfy the demand for intercomprehensibility without stripping the language of its social function as a marker of identity and solidarity" (1996). However, even if 'remedial' education directed at improving intelligibility especially in the elementary discrimination of phonemes and stress patterns is successful for Black speakers, other problems remain. If speakers come to regard such forms of English as second best, then the conclusion that good English is good for the whites (plus Indians and Coloureds?), but Black speakers are fobbed off with second-rate English which is good enough for them, in an attitude interpretable in neo-colonialist terms, may become almost unavoidable. If such concerns are valid for ESL nations like India or Malaysia (cf. Wong 1984) then they are much more relevant for nations like South Africa in which various forms of English coexist largely along ethnic lines and are likely to continue for some time to come. Finally, the parallel of B1E in the US springs to mind - as a model and a warning. The recognition of a different form of English spoken by Black Americans has contributed a great deal to their self-confidence, identity and solidarity. However, to cultivate such 'deviant' English, whether standardized or

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not, to the exclusion of national or international St E would mean to deliberately exclude your speech community from educational development and, in a way, implement neo-apartheid policies. The answer can only be, I think, to tolerate as much variation, including ethnic varieties with covert prestige, and be distinctively South African English and a member of the international community of English speakers at the same time. How much room there will be left for the other ten constitutional languages remains to be seen.

References Bailey, R.W. & Manfred Gorlach, eds. 1982. English as a World Language. Ann Aibor: University of Michigan Press. Beeton, D R . & Helen Dorner. 1975. A Dictionary of English Usage in South Africa. Cape Town: Oxford University Press. Branford, Jean. 41991. A Dictionary of South African English. Cape Town: Oxford University Press. Branford, William. 1987. The South African Pocket Oxford Dictionary. Cape Town: Oxford University Press. Cluver, A.D. de V. 1993a. "The decline of Afrikaans". Language Matters 24:15-46. - 1993b. "Namibians: linguistic foreigners in their own country". In Karel Prinsloo, et al., eds. Language, Law and Equality. Pretoria: University of South Africa, 261-75. de Klerk, Vivian, ed. 1996. Focus on South Africa. (VEAW, G15). Amsterdam: Benjamins. - & Barbara Bosch. 1993. "English in South Africa: the Eastern Cape perspective." English World-Wide 14:209-29. Finlayson, Rosalie. 1995. "Til meet you halfway with language' - code-switching within a South African urban contact". Paper Duisburg, to be published in Martin Piitz, ed. Proceedings. GiSrlach, Manfred. 1991. "English in Africa - African English?" [1984], In Manfred Gerlach. Englishes. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 122-43. - fc. "Linguistic jokes based on dialect divergence." In Festschrift for Jacek Fisiak. Gough, David. 1996. "Black English in South Africa." In de Klerk, 53-77. Hacksley, Malcolm. 1994. "Whose language is it anyway?" Crux 28 (3), 31-32. Hanekom, Retha. 1994. "The status quo of English in South Africa - results of a tracking study 1989-1993". Unpublished research paper. Jeffery, Chris. 1982. "Review of Lanham & Macdonald 1979". FLH3:121-33. Kerfoot, Caroline. 1993. "Participatory education in a South African context. Contradictions and challenges." TESOL Quarterly 27:431-48. Lanham, Len W. 1982. "English in South Africa." In Bailey & Gorlach, 353-83. - 1985. "The perception and evaluation of varieties of English in South African society." In Sidney Greenbaum, ed. The English Language Today. Oxford: Pergamon, 242-51. Lass, Roger. 1987. The Shape of English. Structure and History. London: Dent. - & Susan Wright. 1985. "The South African chain shift: order out of chaos?". In R. Eaton, et al., eds. Papers from the 4th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Malan, Karen. 1996. "Cape Flats English." In de Klerk, 125-48. Malan, Robin. 1972. Ah Big Yaws? Claremont, Cape Pr.: David Philip. (31978). Mesthrie, Rajend. 1992a. A Lexicon of South African Indian English. Leeds: Peepal Tree. - 1992b. English in Language Shift. The history, structure and sociolinguistics of South African Indian English. Cambridge: University Press.

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1996 "Language contact, transmission, shift: South African Indian English." In de Klerk, 7998. - & K. McCormick. 1993. "Standard and non-standard in South African English sociolinguistic perspectives." In Young, 28-45. Pettman, Charles. 1913. Afrikanderisms. London: Longman. Phillipson, Robert. 1992. Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford: University Press. Piatt, John, et al. 1984. The New Englishes. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Roberge, Paul T. 1993. The Formation of Afrikaans. (Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics 27). Stellenbosch: University. Schmied, Josef. 1991. English in Africa. London: Longman. Silva, Penny. 1996. "Lexicography for South African English." In de Klerk, 191-210. Smit, Ute. 1994. "Language attitudes, language planning and ecucation: the case of English in South Africa." Ph.D. dissertation, Vienna. (To be published in Wiener Studien, 1996). .Spolsky, B. & R.L. Cooper, eds. 1978. Case Studies in Bilingual Education. Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House. Van der Walt, Christa. 1993. "ESL or SAE? How about a new English?" Journal for Language Teaching 27:290-304. Watermeyer, Susan. 1996. "Afrikaans English". In de Klerk, 99-124. Webb, Victor N., ed. 1995. Language in South Africa. An input into language planning for a post-apartheid South Africa. (The LiCCA [SA] Report). Pretoria: University. Webster, Noah. 1828. American Dictionary of the English Language. New York: Converse. Wells, J.C. 1982. Accents of English. 3. Beyond the British Isles. Cambridge: University Press. Wong, Irene F.H. 1982. "Native-speaker English for the Third World today?". In John Pride, ed. New Englishes. Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House, 259-86. Wright, Laurence. 1996. "The standardisation question in Black South African English." In de Klerk; 149-62. Young, Douglas N., et al. 1991. "Language planning and attitudes towards the role and status of languages, especially English, in Western Cape secondary schools." Cape Town: University, unpubl. report (here quoted from Smit 1994). - ed. 1993. Access to English in Post-Apartheid South Africa? Proceedings of the English Academy of Southern Africa Conference 1992. Cape Town: EASA.

SECTION V : VARIA

Workshop: Teaching Utopian Fiction A Contribution to Cultural Studies Organization: Jochen Achilles (Mainz) Participants: Uwe Böker (Dresden), Raimund Borgmeier (Gießen), Josef Pesch (Freiburg), Hermann Josef Schnackertz (Bielefeld).

Jochen Achilles: Introduction This workshop, the first of its kind on the occasion of an Anglistentag, consisted of five ten-minute presentations which will in the following be summarized by the respective speakers. These presentations, which were followed by lively discussions, address different aspects of teaching Utopian fiction as a contribution to cultural studies. Taken together, they provide complementary suggestions for teaching methods as well as for topics worth teaching. Raimund Borgmeier's paper emphasizes the affinities of Utopian fiction and cultural studies. Based on his teaching experience and in view of the limited time and equally limited reading assignments for which the seminar format allows, he addresses the question of how to introduce students to the wide-ranging Utopian tradition to which individual Utopian fictions respond. His answer is the teaching of

a core corpus of works, supplemented by a larger corpus, by means of a combination of plenary and group discussions. Uwe Boker's paper focusses on the question of a Utopian tradition in drama as well as on the intersections between such dramatic and non-fictional Utopias. The often overlooked aspect of genre has a didactic function in that its consideration might extend course materials in an inspiring fashion, allowing for hitherto unexplored combinations of texts. The interplay of Utopian discourse and dramatic structures is a particularly fruitful field of study, which might even trigger the experiment of dramatizing a Utopian novel.

Hermann Josef Schnackertz pinpoints the culturally relevant concepts of progressivism and evolutionary optimism in the wake of Darwin's theory of evolution. In The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds, Wells's prototypes of science fiction, these evolutionary models are critiqued and subverted in the mode of imaginary visualizations. Wells's scientific romances bridge the gap between scientific theory and artistic vision and thus transform culturally relevant abstractions into emotionally penetrating images, a process which is of didactic import. My own contribution suggests a course on regressive Utopias from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth century which includes one of the texts discussed by Hermann Josef Schnackertz. I call such fictions regressive Utopias which present fantasies of regression as desirable. Among the aspects which I find relevant for

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class discussion are: the connection between the Victorian dystopian imagination and colonialism, a renewed interest in metaphysics, the illustration of non-linear concepts of time, and, perhaps most importantly, the psychological, childhoodoriented turn of Utopian thinking. Josef Pesch begins where I stop. He discusses two recent dystopian fictions, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and William Gibson's Neuromancer. These texts are recognizable specimens of the dystopian tradition but they also modify it in ways which highlight their sensitizing capacity with regard to problems of totalitarianism and computerization. These social and political issues are immediately relevant in the present. These texts are, therefore, particularly suggestive for class discussion. The transition through total annihilation, on which both novels are based, also seems to ask for a reconsideration of the dystopian genre as such which seems to have developed into a more dynamic form of postapocalyptic writing. Whereas Raimund Borgmeier focusses on the problem of making the complex and, historically as well as geographically, extensive tradition of Utopian and dystopian writing accessible within the framework of the seminar format, Uwe Boker discusses a broadening of the subject by the inclusion of the tradition of Utopian drama. The contributions of Hermann Josef Schnackertz, Josef Pesch and myself address different aspects of the dystopian tradition from late Victorianism to the present.

Raimund Borgmeier: Utopia and Dystopia - Insight and/or Survey? I should like to concentrate on my own teaching experience and to quite simply report about one particular proseminar which I held three years ago. I have repeatedly offered seminars on Utopian fiction, and I have always found this a very popular subject with our students. From the 60s, when, of course, "utopian" was a favourite keyword in the current debates, to the present time, these texts have in no way lost their power of attraction and potential topicality. This time again I had more than fifty students in my proseminar. Part of the attraction of this subject is due, I think, to its very affinity with cultural studies. Utopian fiction does not, in the first place, deal with individual lives, but depicts the life patterns of a society. It works out, in greater or lesser detail, the model of a social world with its dominant values and problems. And although this model is presented, in its ideal or less than ideal nature, as a static and timeless system, Utopias always mirror their particular time and country. They refer to basic issues of their age and deal with values and concepts that are fundamental for a certain society. For example, in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four one finds not only, at the centre of the novel, the general situation of the individual in an anonymous, threatening world but at the same time unmistakable traces of the austerity economy in post-war Britain. Even the form of Utopian texts mirrors characteristic discourse patterns of their particular time, as one can observe early on very clearly in the genre paradigm of More's Utopia with its witty humanist dialogue. So, I would say, Utopian fiction offers a very concrete and concentrated

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way of studying essential cultural aspects, and this explains, to some extent, its popularity. In my case, the popularity entailed a didactic problem. Student participation, which is the essential characteristic of a seminar, would be jeopardized by the size of the class. It was to be expected that the seminar discussion would be carried by only a small group of students. So, I would have to institute study groups, in which all the students would find an opportunity for their individual activity. Another major problem, in my opinion, was presented by the subject matter. Utopian fiction is a relatively old genre. There were periods of fruition in the 17th, 19th and 20th centuries, and a comparatively great number of popular and influential texts appeared. Moreover, these texts very often show a striking relatedness with each other. It is not without reason that Burgess, for example, calls one of his Utopian novels 1985. Thus he makes it clear for the reader that he wishes to give a kind of critical review in fictional terms on Orwell's outstanding novel. In a similar way Orwell himself relates to Huxley, and Huxley to Wells. The literary tradition of Utopian fiction is more real and far less a construct contrived by literary historians than in the case of other genres. The most remarkable aspect in the history of the genre is, of course, the fundamental change from Utopia to dystopia at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. A great deal of this fascinating history of the genre would be lost or remain unconsidered, I had to realize, if I were to deal with merely a small selection of texts, the three novels or so that form the customary limit of the textual corpus for a seminar at a German university. As a way out I decided to use a dual method and to try to combine insight and survey, intensive and extensive textual analysis, plenary discussion and group work. I prepared two corpora of Utopian or dystopian texts: One smaller core corpus consisting of about three works, which all the students were expected to read and which should be discussed by all; and one larger, additional corpus consisting of about a dozen further texts, which, in each case, only the members of one particular study group were supposed to read and present to the plenum of the class. Each seminar meeting was divided into two parts. In the first 60 minutes the class discussed one of the core works, which - it was to be hoped - all had read. In the following 30 minutes there was a presentation by a group of four or five students - "the experts", as I called them - , who introduced an additional text of Utopian fiction, one of the titles from the additional corpus, for which they had volunteered. Participation in a group was required of all participants. The presentation included a brief introduction to the author's life and background, a general plot outline with particular emphasis on the Utopian elements and a selected specimen page of the novel in question. For the core corpus, I chose the paradigm or pilot work of the genre, Thomas More's Utopia (1516); for practical reasons I used a German translation of the Latin original (and because of this and because of its shortness I left this text out of the account of the three titles admissible). As central, I chose Brave New World (1932) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), the two classic Utopias by Huxley and Orwell, and Ursula LeGuin's interesting and complex novel The Dispossessed

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(1974). In the original subtitle this novel is called "an ambiguous Utopia", and, indeed, it combines the characteristics of a Utopia and a dystopia in the two opposed worlds of Anarres and Urras. Among other things, we examined in what way the individual work conformed or clashed with the conventions of the genre, what particular emphasis the author had given to the Utopian or dystopian world, and in what way he or she referred to non-literary phenomena. I noticed that the students were particularly interested in the latter aspect. I came to the conclusion that the special emphasis on modern or even contemporary works was justified. In the additional corpus there was also a predominance of works belonging to the 20th century. At the same time the famous Utopias of the 19th century were also fully represented. The additional corpus consisted of the following works: Francis Bacon, New Atlantis (1627), Samuel Butler, Erewhon (1872), Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward (1888), William Morris, News from Nowhere (1890), H.G. Wells, The Time Machine (1895) and A Modern Utopia (1905), Jack London, The Iron Heel (1908), Y. Zamiatin, We (1920/52), B.F. Skinner, Walden Two (1948), Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (1953), Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange (1962), Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle (1963). Criticizing my own didactic approach, I must say that the additional programme left certainly less time for the main work, at times it proved to be more or less superficial, and because of the different methods and styles of the study groups it tended to be heterogeneous. But on the other hand, the presentations by the different study groups as a whole opened wider contexts for the participants of the seminar and drew their attention to various works beyond the narrow confines of the core corpus. The individual contribution that each student could and even had to make in this way was a positive asset in the programme of this seminar.

Uwe Boker: Utopian Drama - A Forgotten Genre Utopian drama is a genre that doesn't exist, at least in the thinking of some professors of German, French, or even of English and American literature. Existing data collected during the past few years allow, however, different conclusions. As Howard Brenton's preface to Greenland (1987) indicates, there is at least one author, namely, Brenton himself, who is aware of the tradition of Utopian playwriting (cf. also: Klaic 1991 and Willingham 1994). A lack of information about the genre, however, gives teachers the opportunity to introduce students to the problems of addressing on-going research as well as to the pleasures of pursuing in-class analysis of the structures of two little-known literary genres (utopian non-fiction and Utopian drama), in order to find some points of intersection. 1) The first step in teaching such material would be to define the term Utopia. The concept of Utopia has, at least during the course of the twentieth century, introduced a fundamental category of thought and also a discourse that aims at finding solutions for urgent political and social problems by means of imagining possible or even impossible alternatives on a rational basis. Using this broad definition as a starting point, one should distinguish generally between Utopian

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philosophy or Utopian discourse, on the one hand, and Utopian communities, which aim at putting into practice the solutions arrived at in Utopian discourse, on the other. Finally, there is Utopian literature, either of the more discursive/abstract or of the more imaginative/fictional variety, which is the vehicle for conveying Utopian ideas and models. For our approach to Utopian literature, we could start with Darko Suvin's definition. It is the "verbal construction of a particular quasi-human community where sociopolitical institutions, norms, and individual relationships are organized according to a more perfect principle than in the author's community, this construction being based on estrangement arising out of an alternative historical hypothesis" (Suvin 1979: 49). Utopian literature in this narrower sense may be considered a fundamental means for reacting to social, economic, or political problems by inventing narrative fictions to embody alternatives that have been arrived at by rational means. Utopian literature is clearly to be differentiated from other modes of writing, e.g. from science fiction and fantasy. A comparison between SF, fantasy, and Utopian narratives would show that the bases of these three genres include vastly different cultural presuppositions concerning the nature of reality (cf. Wünsch 1991). Among these bases, the Utopian mode reflects a) a certain attitude towards the world/reality and b) a text-producing principle that is restricted neither to narrative nor to dramatic texts. 2) After defining Utopia and Utopian drama, students would have to examine the structural features of the literary genre as well as the historical reasons for the suppression of Utopian discourse and the rather late appearance of Utopian drama. Utopian writing had, with Thomas More and others, come into being during times of historical crisis, that is, during the period of transformation from feudalism to ecomonic individualism (Davis 1981). At that time, the newly emerging humanist intellectuals like Thomas More (cf. Elias 1982), though mostly unable to change their princes' power politics, were beginning to imagine models of society that were to be established on a more rational and orderly basis. What they wanted was to guarantee more efficiency and harmony in social and political relationships. Utopian texts had to be structured according to a discursive logic that depicted a new world of geometrical order devoid of contingency and change, it had to be a more or less plotless counterworld that was, needless-to-say, without much interest for a dramatist. The radicalization of Utopian discourse by political and religious dissent, however, had, some important historical repercussions, most importantly the Stigmatisation of Utopian projects. Traces of such a ban on Utopian developments can be seen fairly early, as in Shakespeare's The Tempest or in Jonson's court masques, which ridicule, for instance, the Rosicrucians. Later on, the censorship of theatre put a ban on plays that could be interpreted as political, and it favoured more popular and non-political genres like the melodrama and the well-made play. The reasons for the development of Utopian drama at the beginning of the twentieth century, however, include a deep sense of political, cultural, and economic crisis among intellectuals as well as the emergence of socialist and

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anarchist countercultures. G.B. Shaw and J.B. Priestley were the first well-known, popular playwrights to produce plays that may be called Utopian in the narrower sense. But it was not until the 1950s that British authors began to produce plays that brought Utopian discourse into the newly subsidized (and therefore more independent) theatres, and, in addition, into playhouses that, in 1968, witnessed the end of censorship and the proliferation of the so-called fringe of experimental and radical theatre. 3) The next step in teaching a course on Utopian drama would be to point out the problems resulting from the transformation of Utopian discourse into dramatic structures. These problems are connected with the history of the Utopian novel. In the course of the Utopian novel's emergence, Utopian non-contingency was gradually eliminated by the introduction of various narrative devices of space, time, character and plot. The result of such developments, that is, of the "novelization" (or "Episierung", as it has been called by some scholars) of Utopian writing, can be seen as a "reduction of Utopian totality" (cf. Pfister/Lindner 1982). But, whereas the novel can have a narrator who is free to comment upon Utopian reality and to make clear its metonymic status, dramatic texts lack such a mediating voice (at least by the norms and conventions dominant during the last four or five centuries). The predominance of dialogue in modern drama (that is to say, the predominance of speech acts) has demanded different techniques to compensate for the loss of discursive reasoning. Thus, playwrights have found various other means to compensate for the absence of a mediating agent: a) Dramatic characters themselves have been given explanatory functions. On the one hand, they obviously belong to the reality presented on stage, but on the other hand they are definitely used as spokesmen for an author's overall Utopian vision (this is the case in Shaw's Utopian plays, above all in his Back to Methuselah, 1922). b) Techniques of epic theatre have been introduced in Utopian drama, which is a more satisfying solution to the problem. This is effected either through the use of characters who narrate and/or comment, but who do not, from an ontological point of view, belong to the Utopian world deliniated in the play (cf. J. Saunders' Island, 1975, or Burgess' A Clockwork Orange, 1987, 1990), or through techniques employing parallel and contrasting scenic development. c) The presentation of two contrasting worlds, one of them representing the audience's empirical here-and-now, the other being chronologically removed and vastly different from the immediate present, represents a different method of outlining the Utopian reality's systematic order, ideality and totality. In studying such texts as H. Brenton's Thirteenth Night (1981) and Greenland (1988), students would have to analyse carefully the metonymic function of the signs used in these works. This has to be done above all in cases in which playwrights have used the predominantly dialogic status of Utopian discourse. As

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has been pointed out by various scholars, Utopian or dystopian essays or novels are mostly to be understood as definite answers to questions left open in preceding works or by preceding authors (consider e.g. the relationship between Bellamy and Morris or Orwell and Burgess). Thus, short cuts can be taken, especially in Utopian drama, by using certain intertextual references to Utopian ideas, concepts, or traditions prevalent in one period or another (that is, references such as "brave new world", "1984", "New Jerusalem", as well as quotations from writers who belong to the traditions of Utopian discourse). In studying such texts as C. Churchill's Light Shining in Buckinghamshire (1978), Priestley's They Came to a City (1943) or Wesker's Their Very Own and Golden City (1966), the semantic (intertextual) implications have to be examined, as well as the imperative that an audience reactivate whole segments of their common cultural knowledge. Students should also look at plays that do not outline an alternative Utopian otherness but that use models from history to show present-day problems by means of characters hovering between past, present and future. This is the case in Brenton's Bloody Poetry (1984), in which the Utopian nature of Shelley's political thought is brought to the foreground, or in C. Churchill's Light Shining in Buckinghamshire, a play about sixteenth-century religious radicals - anticipating present-day political problems. Furthermore, teachers should not forget to include plays that do not belong to the genre as such but are part of the anti-utopian or dystopian discourse in a wider sense. In a play such as Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part II, the character Jack Cade is criticized and ridiculed as being dangerously radical; the same is the case with Ben Jonson's masques or a Restauration play such as Edward Howard's The Six Days Adventure, or The New Utopia (1671) and Aphra Behn's The Emperor of the Moon( 1687). In conclusion, a teacher could even consider dramatising a Utopian novel in the classroom, taking as a model Peter Hall's stage version of G. Orwell's Animal Farm (1984) or Anthony Burgess's own adaptation of his novel A Clockwork Orange (1987 and 1990) for the theatre.

Hermann Josef Schnackertz: Evolutionary Models in H.G. Wells's "Scientific Romances" The so-called scientific romances by H.G. Wells such as the The Time Machine (1895), The War of the Worlds (1898) and The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896) deserve particular attention both as a medium for studying Victorian culture and as prototypes of the popular genre of science fiction. First of all, they are interesting as prototypes, because they employ literary techniques of extrapolation, inversion, and analogizing, techniques that have become conventional science-fiction devices for the imaginative construction of possible futures and alternative worlds. Furthermore, the scientific romances allow us to examine the interrelations between science and literature, in particular the active role played by fiction in reacting to the "Darwinian Revolution" and to the impact of evolutionary biology on nineteenth-century culture. The scientific romances do not simply illustrate

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Darwin's ideas, but function as a medium of exploring and problematizing the new evolutionary concepts of man, nature, history and society. Darwin's revolutionary idea of the continuous modification of species and its strictly mechanical explanation gained widespread popularity amongst Victorians, because it seemed to confirm that progress is a law of nature. Darwin's Origin of Species ends on a note that seemed both to share and to boost a pervading sense of optimism: "...we may look forward with some confidence to a secure future of great length ... as natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress towards perfection" (Darwin, OS, 402/403). Evolution seen as gradual, irreversible, inevitable change in time seemed to ensure the prospect of a brighter future. Many popular writers, intellectuals and even scientists took it for granted that scientific advancement, progress and moral improvement were inextricably linked. All previous historical developments were viewed as culminating in Victorian civilization, which was nevertheless regarded as only a transitory achievement, because the ongoing evolutionary process implied the promise of further continuous perfection. For H.G. Wells, this kind of unbroken evolutionary optimism is not justified by scientific evidence. It is seen as wishful thinking, resulting from a rather onesided, dogmatic interpretation of Darwin's theory. The evolutionary scenarios of his scientific romances therefore establish a kind of counterdiscourse that give us - in the words of Wells - "a glimpse of the future that ran counter to the placid assumption of that time that Evolution was a pro-human force making things better and better for mankind." (HGW, "Preface") Wells turns Darwinism itself into a means of speculative anticipations by using such Darwinian ideas as degradation, degeneration, retrogression, devolution and extinction to construct hypothetical models of the future that subvert the complacency of optimistic evolution. Perspectives of devolution and retrogression are envisaged by using the same language of biological speculation that is employed by an allegedly scientific discourse to prove the inevitability of evolutionary progress. The devolutionary counterfate that is evoked in the Time Traveller's successive speculations adhere to the same logic of "biological science" that Wells's contemporaries were advertising as mankind's vindication and saviour. Wells's subversive use of Darwinism thus takes advantage of a state of scientific research, which he characterizes as follows: "...our knowledge is in a very pleasant phase; enough to stimulate the imagination, and not enough to cramp its play" (Wells, EW, 174). It is the imaginative and speculative character of texts such as The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds, their artful combination of science and romance, that recommends them to students of English literature and culture. The romances reflect upon or call into question the fundamental assumptions, hopes and beliefs of late Victorian society, but they do not do this in the abstract way of an essay or dissertation. In The Time Machine, for example, the reader is not told about the problematic applicability of biological concepts to the fields of culture and history, but experiences the shortcomings of an approach such as Social Darwinism by getting involved in the protagonist's process of personal disillusionment.

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Science and romance are linked in such a way that it is an integral part of the Time Traveller's adventures to come to terms with the new and strange world of the distant future. In his attempts to understand and to explain an alien surrounding he draws upon a wide range of ideas taken from evolutionary biology, Social Darwinism, Marxism, the tradition of Utopian thinking as well as from Lord Kelvins's Laws of thermodynamics and Thomas Henry Huxley's essay Evolution and Ethics. The course of events in The Time Machine requires a gradual modification and revision of the hypotheses formulated by the Time Traveller. The reader becomes involved in these successive conjectures, thereby experiencing the interpretative and partial character of widely held views about seemingly "natural" relations between Man and Nature and between social classes. The shocking possibility of a socio-biological retrogression and a permanent species differentiation - resulting in the symbiotic relationship of Eloi and Morlocks as predators and prey - undercuts the placid Victorian assumptions about science, progress and class relations. Evolution could easily convert progress into something very like its opposite, and scientific advancement could be selfdefeating. The idea of an earthly paradise, such as William Morris's pastoral Utopia, turns out to be as naive an illusion as the scientific predictability of a classless society.

Jochen Achilles: "Back to the Future" Late Victorian and Twentieth-Century Regressive Utopias 1. A Selection of Texts: My argument for a course on regressive Utopias, texts which differ from dystopias either by their positive view of civilizational regression or by embedding Utopian enclaves in dystopian developments, is based on the following works of fiction: Richard JefFeries, After London (1885); Herbert George Wells, The Time Machine (1895); Grant Allen, The British Barbarians (1895); James Graham Ballard, The Drowned World (1962); Doris Lessing, The Memoirs of a Survivor (1974); Ian McEwan, The Child in Time (1987). Five topics and aspects emerge as issues common to all or some of these texts. They deserve discussion in class as well as treatment in research papers. 2. Indeterminacy of Genre - The Ambivalence of Utopia and Dystopia. Fundamentally dystopian settings are counterbalanced by the Utopian dimension of the return to a nature less distorted by the influence of civilization and industrialization. This Utopia within dystopia is presented as a deceptive Edenic garden in Wells's The Time Machine, as an aquatic paradise in the circumference of a burnt-out London and as a shepherd society in the wilderness in JefFeries' After London, as lethal paradises of the sun in Ballard's The Drowned World, as a romanticized vision of farm life, a dream of layered gardens, a myth of fertility and a nearly human catlike dog in Lessing's The Memoirs of a Survivor, as a myth of procreation and as the private jungle and tree house of a hopelessly regressive yuppie in McEwan's The Child in Time. As grotesque as some of these visions may seem, they converge in the demands of limits to industrial growth, a

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reconsideration and redirection of what is considered to be societal progress, and a reconciliation with nature. 3. The Critique of Imperialism - The Victorian Dystopian Imagination and Colonialism: The horrifying aspects of the reprimitivization of England in both The Time Machine and After London - the invasion of a serenely green England by the idistic brutality of the Morlocks and the merciless aggressiveness of JefFeries' British barbarians who are threatened by invasions from the Celtic fringe - link up with Grant Allen's The British Barbarians, a critique of Victorian civilization and British colonialism which is as sentimental as it is satirical. They can also be related to Conrad's Heart of Darkness, notably, to Marlow's comparison of the colonization of the Congo and the colonization of England by the Romans and to Conrad's demonization of both primitive cultures and the Belgian colonial project. This opens up the perspective of an exploration of the colonialist dimension of late Victorian dystopian fiction and, conversely, the possibility to explore Utopian and dystopian aspects of fictions of empire by Kipling, Forster, Haggard and others. 4. Search for Meaning - The Metaphysical Turn: The trend towards the internalization of Utopian hopes results in somewhat disquieting metaphysical manifestations of perfectibility. Ballard's suggestion of the dissolution of the self in the nirwana of the collective unconscious and Lessing's and McEwan's fertility symbolism point in the direction of dangerously irrational and sectarian hopes of societal improvement. 5. Cyclicity and Anti-Progressivism - Non-linear Concepts of Time: The tendency, common to both late Victorian and contemporary regressive Utopias, to question the conventional acceptance of the linearity of time, on which the notion of progress is based, is part of the imaginative subversion of the foundation-stones of modern civilization. This questioning of linear time links regressive utopianism with modernist conceptions of time by William James and Henri Bergson which subvert linearity more radically. Wells's and JefFeries' futurity which resembles different aspects of the distant past, Ballard's Jungian terminus ad quern of what he calls the "myriad-handed mandala of cosmic time" (Ballard, DW, 61), Lessing's simultaneity of the childhood behind the wall of the female narrator's apartment and the adulthood before it, and McEwan's manifold experiences of staying the progress of time are persistent reminders that to break through perceptual conventions may be the first step to a more humanly adequate reorganization of society. 6. The Interest in Childhood and the Trend towards an Internalization of Utopia: In the course of each text, the dystopian settings and Utopian perspectives of the works discussed increasingly reveal their visionary character. Utopian fiction tends to merge structurally with the psychological novel as in Lessing's The Memoirs of a Survivor or McEwan's The Child in Time. This psychological emphasis affects the substance of the Utopian and dystopian visions. Regression is being discussed

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as a return to instinctual roots within rather than as a return to an unadulterated nature without. If viewed from this psychological perspective, the fear and the lure of regression in its diverse forms unfold their both existential and social relevance. Wells's nightmarish visions of the divisiveness of the class struggle in the conflict between Eloi and Morlocks in The Time Machine and Jefferies's indictment of the loss of ecological balance in the grandiose image of a colourfiilly imploded London in After London can then be appreciated as diagnoses which are not only interesting as hyperbolic assessments of the social problems of Victorian England, but also as expressions of a mentality and imagination which are themselves essential elements of late Victorianism. The exploration of childhood becomes a common denominator. Wells's childlike Eloi and JefFeries' puerile Felix Aquila are the predecessors of Lessing's wild children in The Memoirs of a Survivor and of Stephen Lewis's and Charles Darke's complex explorations of childhood in McEwan's The Child in Time. The parallel between the reprimitivization of the civilized world and the psychological return of Kerans to the basis of the collective unconscious in Ballard's The Drowned World demonstrates a coalescence of outer and inner realities similar to Lessing's spatialization of the unconscious in The

Memoirs of a Survivor. Lessing's The Memoirs of a Survivor is perhaps the most suggestive text among the fictions discussed. Multiple utopias develop out of the inner regression to childhood traumata and the outer reprimitivization of Lessing's complex assessment of an urban world out of joint. Agrarian utopianism in the sense of a return to a healthy rural lifestyle is not presented as a blueprint of society to be put into practice but rather as a lingering desire, an ecological vision of a renewed partnership with nature. Lessing's utopia within dystopia chiefly consists in the exploration of the chances for a restructuring of social and psychic composition which might lead to a non-violent multicultural coexistence. This potentially realistic perspective is reinforced, however, by a mythical vision of universal harmony whose irrationalism is disquieting rather than reassuring.

Josef Pesch: Beyond Dystopia - Post-Apocalyptic Writing Willi Erzgráber ends his study Utopie und Anti-Utopie (2/1985) with a discussion of Huxley's Brave New World {1932) and Orwell's 1984 (1948). These prototypical dystopias had become set-texts in schools in the seventies. As Erzgráber shows, both texts are products of their time, and although the celebrations of Orwell in 1984 and the Huxley centennial in 1994 produced renewed interest, they may perhaps not be as relevant for teaching dystopia in classrooms of the 1990s and beyond as they were in the immediate post-war era. Experiences of totalitarian and centrally controlled societies are extremely remote for most of my students today. Their reality is not prescribed by a centralized and ideologically strict big brother state which normalizes and stabilizes all aspects of life. On the contrary, they are part of a culture which has become radically open, a society which gives them a wide variety of choice. Literature in general - and dystopic writing in particular - will only be of interest and

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importance to them, if it connects to their perception and experience of media; in short: if it is relevant to their lives. The novels I am presenting here - Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (1985) and William Gibson's Neuromancer (1984) - would be unthinkable without Huxley and Orwell, yet they reflect important aspects of political and social developments in the 70s and 80s: in particular, the return of religious fundamentalism and the rapid development of computers and computer-assisted information networks. Furthermore, their view of history is not linear and static as classic dystopia generally is, but dynamic and cyclical. Because of the limited space available, I will use the role of memory to exemplify this. Despite having been brain-washed, the handmaid Offred uses her nights to store the memories of her past in her mind by telling and re-telling them to herself. These memories of the pre-Gilead bourgeois life of a post-feminist woman with mild disdain for her radical feminist mother, link the protagonist even more to our everyday reality. They provide a perspective on the horrors of Gilead, which is later supplemented in the "Notes". After her escape, Offred records her "Handmaid's Tale" orally on cassettes. The possession and recording of such memories for posterity is seen as a criminal act in a society like hers which even wipes out its own computers and destroys its own written records in order to obliterate the past. Yet, her subversive use of technology is but one step in the chain which made the publication of her story possible: her records have to be transcribed and edited by scholars before they become the story which we have read. In presenting the scholarship as transcript, Atwood levels one formal difference between 'oral' story and 'written' scholarship: both are oral, both are subject to the same process of transmission; neither can formally claim superiority over the other. Mediation of memories - and the possibilities for manipulation at every step in this mediation - were discussed at this point in class, especially as Ofired's narration presents us with three different versions of one event so that you cannot be sure which is the 'right' version (Atwood, HMT. Cps. 40 & 41). From the mediation of memories it is but a short step to history: I used the discussion in class to introduce Linda Hutcheon's concept of "historiographic metafiction" (1987), particularly because it is a curious fact that the type of near-future fiction I am presenting here, seems to be more interested in 20th century history than Brave New World or 1984.

Case, the protagonist of Gibson's Neuromancer, is a memory thief. He enters the virtual reality of cyberspace, where he breaks into the memory of corporate computers and steals information from corporate data banks. As a result of his work, the 200-year-old heads of a large Swiss corporation (Gibson, N: 184), whom the artificial intelligence (AI) Neuromancer had to wake up periodically from their deep-frozen sleep, find eternal rest, while their two AIs Neuromancer (a pun on neuro- and necromancer) and Wintermute (the AI responsible for sleep) are set free. This is a serious crime in a society where AIs - as well as everything else are controlled by large multinational corporations. But the AIs are not too trustworthy either: described as "DNA in silicone" (N: 203), they are not

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particularly interested in human beings (N: 131-2); at best, the human body is just a "sea of information" (N: 239) to them; at worst, they are only interested in manipulating humans into serving the AIs' very long-term interest. Set free, the AIs start their own interstellar communications network with other AIs out there. Case, on the other hand, is rewarded with money, a new job, a girl-friend and a place to live. Unlike the protagonists in Brave New World and 1984, Offred and Case survive. The high-tech handling of memory widened the discussion in class: from personal memories via stories to the writing and importance of history, to the control of memory stored in vast data banks which are now available on the internet, and beyond that to the kind of information which private multinationals and military agencies control and try to protect at all costs for economic or political reasons. All these will become increasingly important in the future - and have an enormous potential even now for generating a multinational totalitarianism that is smooth and prefers to remain invisibly in the background, pulling strings. As Gibson puts it: Power, in Case's world, meant corporate power. The zaibatsus, the multinationals that shaped the course of human history, had transcended old barriers. Viewed as organisms, they had attained a kind of immortality. You couldn't kill a zaibatsu by assassinating a dozen key executives; there were others waiting to step up the ladder, assume the vacated positions, access the vast banks of corporate memory (N\ 203).

This tied in well with our discussion of the shaping of history in the much criticized "Notes" which conclude Atwood's novel. In the notes, Atwood takes things further by showing that the totalitarian system her protagonist escaped from was overcome and replaced by a more liberal society (like ours): history is here presented as cyclical rather than linear. In the "Notes" Atwood answers all the questions which scholars usually put to dystopian novels like hers. She thus preempted the usual generic research strategies and angered scholars and critics who chose to attack her for not being dystopian enough, for being too didactic in trying to bring her dystopic message across, or for being too unpolitical. Some of these points were also made by students. Only a few critics (or students) realized that in producing a novel which presents a cyclical rather than a linear concept of history, Atwood clearly sets out to challenge the steady-state mode of Utopian and dystopian thinking, and thus subverts conventions of a genre which are used by most critics to attack her. In the worlds presented in Atwood's and Gibson's novels everything is constantly changing - and will be - for better and for worse. The radical shift in narrative perspective in the "Notes" generated a lively controversy in class about all the issues reflected in the novel. After pointing out the similarities of the "Notes" to our times, students quickly introduced the references the book makes to the Holocaust. Critical questions were asked about how the suffering of Offred is presented by the scholars - and about how we represent the suffering of the Holocaust or respond to suffering in contemporary totalitarian regimes like Iran. The debate then focussed on the seeds of totalitarianism in 'liberal' societies like the U.S. or ours. The political dimension and

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sensitizing capacity of dystopian writing became very apparent. This brought dystopian writing as a genre back into the debate. Although both novels use elements of dystopia, it was my contention that they should not be classified as dystopian, for they are consciously placed beyond the static conception of society which is central to dystopian writing. To me, they are part of a post-apocalyptic tradition of writing. According to Peter Freese, postapocalyptic writing "examines what might come after the cataclysm, [... it] begins with the very end and tries to sound out the possibilities of a new beginning" (Freese: 410). In both novels, the world as we know it has vanished in a secular apocalypse. The "Angels of the Apocalypse" (HMT. 78) are still engaged in mopping up operations in The Handmaid's Tale. In Neuromancer, there are several references to the ruins in "the radioactive core of old Bonn" (N: 97, 84, 210). In both novels the old worlds are replaced by new worlds and new cities which are not heavenly (even though Gilead sees itself in the millenial tradition of the Bible - and Freeside is a giant space-station city orbiting earth). The new worlds Atwood and Gibson present are not static, but highly dynamic. They thus come much closer to the type of society we live in at our millenium. The dynamism seems so persuasive that by now even the last totalitarian ('evil') empire which served as a model for Huxley and Orwell has succumbed to it. Perhaps dystopian thinking along their lines is no longer as credible as it used to be: a sequel to Erzgraber's book needs to be written now which includes novels like The Handmaid's Tale and Neuromancer, for both novels enable teachers to present aspects of dystopian thinking which are not remote, but meaningful in the environment of students at our turn of the century. The topical content and the dynamic narrative structures of both novels should enable teachers and students, at university and at school level, to discuss problems not (only) of our totalitarian past, but of our post-apocalyptic yet highly dynamic present - and future.

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References Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid's Tale. Toronto: McClelland-Bantam, 1986. [1985]; HMT. Ballard, James Graham. The Drowned World. London: Dent, 1983; 1st ed. 1963; DW. Darwin, Charles. The Origin of Species. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976; OS. Davis, James C. Utopia and the Ideal Society. A Study of English Utopian Writing: 1516-1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Elias, Norbert. "Thomas Morus' Staatskritik". In: W. Voßkamp, Ed. Utopieforschung. Interdisziplinäre Studien zur neuzeitlichen Utopie. 3 vols. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1982. vol. II. 101-150. Erzgräber, Willi. Utopie und Anti-Utopie. UTB 1071. 2. Auflage. München: Fink, 1985. Freese, Peter. "Exploring the Post-Apocalypse: Bernard Malamud's God's Grace." Amerikastudien/American Studies 32.4 (1987): 407-430. Gibson, William. Neuromancer. New York: Ace, 1984; N. H. G. Wells. London: Heineman, n.d.; HGW. Hutcheon, Linda. '"The Pastime of Past Time1: Fiction, History, Historiographie Metafiction." Genre 20.3-4 (1987): 285-305. Klaic, Dragan, The Plot of the Future. Utopia and Dystopia in Modern Drama. Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press, 1991. Pfister, Manfred, and Monika Lindner. "Alternative Welten: Ein typologischer Versuch zur englischen Literatur". In: Manfred Pfister, Ed. Alternative Welten. München: Fink, 1982. 1138. Suvin, Darko. Metamorphoses of Science Fiction. On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979. Wells, Herbert George. Early Writings. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975; EW. Willingham, Ralph. Science Fiction and the Theatre. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1994. Wünsch, Marianne. Die fantastische Literatur der frühen Moderne (1890-1930). Definitionen denkgeschichtlicher Kontext - Strukturen. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1991.

Willis Edmondson (Hamburg)

Subjective Theories of Second Language Acquisition

1. Introduction The purpose of this brief paper is to outline the goals and procedures of a research project being carried out at the University of Hamburg, and to sketch some preliminary results which have so far emerged, and which specifically concern the teaching and learning of English inside the German educational system.

2. The Data Over the last four terms, incoming students of Sprachlehrforschung at the University of Hamburg have been asked to write a "foreign language learning autobiography", as part of the course requirements for the Introductory Seminar Einführung in die Sprachlehrforschung, which is an obligatory course, usually taught by the author. The brief given is very open, and has roughly the form "Please write down your recollections of what has influenced your own language learning positively and negatively so far". I f , as commonly happens, students ask for more specific instructions, they are simply told to decide for themselves what seems to them retrospectively (or currently) to have particularly influenced their language learning success or failure. It is further stressed that there are no marks involved in this assignment, no "correct" answers, and that the results will be handled anonymously (though I insist on an original identification, as a small safeguard against trivial responses). Two single-spaced pages is suggested as an appropriate length. This data is to be submitted as a computer file by the fourth week of term. The resulting statements (with the authors' names deleted) are actually distributed and worked with in the course of the seminar by the students for various analytic and didactic purposes. These learning biographies thus often serve to demonstrate that what has been established in the literature by painful empirical research is in fact reflected in students' own collective experience. When the student's consent has been obtained, this data is taken over as the empirical basis for the project to be reported on here. Table 1 details the relatively modest amount of data collected so far. The projections concerning statement length are based on a sample of 10 statements from each course, and the number of bytes taken up by the individual statements in text format. The specified longest and shortest texts are extremes: observation suggests a clear weighting around the mean; in other words, it is hypothesised that the standard deviation in length would be much less than the highest and lowest figures suggest.

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43 34 34 32 143

quantity of text Longest statement: 2325 words Shortest statement 200 words Avarage statement length: c. 860 words* Current size of corpus: c. 123000 words* (* Projections)

Table 1: Learning autobiographies data quantified The project based on the analysis of this data is concerned with learners' subjective theories of language learning, as my title implies. This data will thus be analysed in order to gain a better understanding of the nature of foreign/second language learning - in other words, the ultimate goal is to make a small contribution to a theory of foreign/second language acquisition. More specifically, the data will be used to deduce some central aspects of the subjective language learning theories of this group of subjects.

3. The status of subjective data The focus of interest in the learning autobiographies is thus the subjective data, i.e. statements whose truth-value cannot readily be established other than by reference to the feelings and/or opinions of the subject producing the statement. Thus, the fact that student X visited his Scottish grandmother at the age of three - in theory a verifiable objective claim - is in itself of no interest whatsoever. However, the fact that the student remembers this event, and why, and what effect if any this early memory may have had on the student's later attitudes towards the learning of English - all this is of potential interest in contributing towards a view of the nature of language learning. And such views are of course subjective. We are then it seems to me prompted to ask what validity subjective data have, and what status if any such data may have inside empirical research into language learning. I shall therefore briefly address these methodological issues. Inside research into L2 language learning, the use of various kinds of subjective data1 (including various kinds of "introspective" data) now has a respectable place. One original impetus for the use of such data came from psychology, specifically the work of Ericsson & Simon (e.g. Ericsson & Simon 1984). The first application inside L2 research was in the field of classroom observation, or more precisely the interpretation of observed classroom interaction. The basic and initially doubtless naive insight here was that if one wished to know what if anything pupils had learnt 1

It is not necessary for my purposes in this paper that I should distinguish carefully between 'introspective data', Verbal reports', and 'think-aloud protocols' - to give the most frequently encountered terms used in the literature. I shall, however, in the interests of some degree of accuracy, use all three terms in this paper, while "subjective data" will be used as the umbrella term.

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from a specific lesson segment, or interactional sequence, why not ask them? (see e.g. Allwright 1988, 248-258). Equally widespread is the use of think-aloud protocols, collected while a specific language task is being executed, or retrospective interpretive accounts, in which the subject is confronted with his/her behaviours after task completion - for example a video recording of a language lesson is replayed and discussed by the participants, either collectively or individually. Such subjective data has been used for the procedural exploration of various language tasks, such as translation, composition, or different testprocedures such as the C-test (see for example Faerch & Kasper 1987, Stemmer 1994). Further, much work on learning strategies and/or communicative strategies has made use of learner interviews and various kinds of subjective data (see e.g. Cohen 1984, Poulisse, Bongaerts & Kellerman 1987). Such established uses of subjective data are clearly to be seen as complemetary or additional data sources. In other words, inside such research projects, different language behaviours - the overt classroom interaction, the resulting translated text, and so on - have been recorded on film, tape or computer disk: subjective accounts - volunteered or solicited by the subjects - are designed to supplement and maybe interpret such primary data: the "objective" is thus to be explained by reference to the "subjective", the "product" is to be accounted for in terms of underlying "processes" (cf. the title of Neumann 1995). The focus in the project reported on here is rather different. Instead of collecting individual subjective data in order to validate/interpret individual language behaviours, the subjective experience of a large number of learners is to be analysed for its own sake. To the best of my knowledge, there is little parallel work that one can use for comparative purposes. For example the "diary-studies" (see Bailey & Ochsner 1983 for an overview) were used for quite different purposes, and the data is qualitatively different, as the focus in the diary studies is on unreflected affective responses to immediate learning experience, rather than reflections gathered in reviewing one's own accumulative language-learning history. Reports of research which attempts to derive subjective learning theories from learner data thus appear to be difficult to access - I have in other words not been able to find any (but see Kallenbach 1996). Grotjahn 1991 is one of the few internationally known articles dealing with subjective theories, but is, as its title indicates, programmatic - it constitutes a plea for future research, rather a report on research which has been conducted. There is, however, an established literature concerning language teachers' subjective theories of learning. Such work has been largely carried out inside Education and/or Language Pedagogy (e.g. Wagner 1984; 1987, Mandl & Huber 1983), and thus serves a different purpose from the research reported on here. It is however of interest to note that such research suggests that a major source of language teacher's subjective learning theories is their own learning experience - this in itself seems to provide a sound rationale for looking at learners' subjective learning theories, especially if such learners are potential future foreign language teachers. So even if there is little work directly parallel to that to be reported on here, the use of subjective or introspective data is familiar in language learning research. The

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status of such data remains, however, a matter of dispute. A first question that might be raised for example concerns the validity of subjective reports, and partly thereupon rests the question of their theoretical relevance. In the context of the research reported on here, for example, it is clearly possible that individual students may present aspects of their own foreign language learning experience using various distorting strategies.2 The three major strategic options would appear to be addressee-oriented, self-oriented, or norm-oriented. Thus while presenting a learning autobiography, a student may wish to flatter, impress, or indeed antagonise the teacher asking for such an account (the addressee filter operates); or students may disguise or suppress their real experience in the interests of selfesteem (the self-defensive filter operates); thirdly, they may reproduce clichés heard at home, at school, or elsewhere, having themselves no other insights or recollections to offer (the fall-back norm filter is at work). Doubtless further psychological ploys might be construed, though I hypothesise that these are the three major strategy types. Certainly, it might be argued, the possibility of such strategic filtering casts doubt on both the validity and the reliability of the data obtained via written learning autobiographies. The possibilities mentioned above are of course real ones. The conclusion that the data lack reliability and validity seems to me less plausible. In fact, although there is in fact quite an extensive literature on the validation of subjective data (see Grotjahn 1991, 199-203), for the purposes of the research project we are concerned with here, the issue of data validity seems to me relatively insignificant. The primary goal of the project is to arrive at a plausible descriptive account of learners' subjective theories. From this perspective, the use of "distorting strategies" is itself a valid part of the data, and can also offer insight into the subjective theories of the learners in question. Thus, one can theoretically argue that addressee-oriented accounts are themselves of interest, giving insight into subjective theories concerning the expectations associated with the role of university teacher of Sprachlehrforschung. Similarly, if self-oriented strategies are employed, the outcome reveals in principle what subjective concept of the good language learner the subject holds. A similar argument holds for fall-back strategies: which norms one falls back on would seem to be good indicators of one's subjective theories. Of course, the above argumentation simply claims that the use of such distorting strategies is itself relevant data. The question still remains open as to whether one can identify such strategies, in order to be able to interpret them as such. To this I wish to say simply that the question as to why students hold and/or communicate the views they do is an additional issue, independently of the descriptive one. Let us therefore first take the data at its face value, and simply describe it. Clearly, subjective data is not to be seen as replacing or invalidating carefully collected experimental data. A basic hypothesis underpinning the collection of data of both kinds must be that there has to be some parallelism or compatibility between subjective and so-called objective findings. If, however, the parallelism 2

I make use of the fashionable word strategy here in a rather vague sense: the term is chosen to embrace goal-directed behaviours, which may be either conscious or controlled, or indeed both.

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were perfect, then it would clearly be pointless to duplicate data collection. In the majority of cases, however, we may, other things being equal, expect the subjective data to address issues that are not easily susceptible to verifiable experimental enquiry. Thus the questions covered by the two research strategies may not be identical, as suggested above via the product/process distinction. If, however, there is an overlap, and if there is a contradiction or discrepancy in the results - between for example what individual learners themselves perceive as their learning motives or learning goals, and what experimental research discovers or claims to be their learning motives - then we surely have a highly interesting and potentially fruitful discrepancy. My view in such a theoretical case would be that if the "objective" research results are to be taken seriously, then researchers putting forward such results must also propose a theory which accounts for the discrepancy.3 There are thus grounds for believing that subjective data of the kind I have been collecting have a valid role to play in the total research undertaking. On a purely pragmatic level, it is self-evident that the views of the consumers (the learners) should be taken seriously, in redesigning the product (the teaching).

4. Research procedure The raw data was first made more accessible for later analytical purposes. To this end, the individual student statements were broken down into topic-focussed chunks, assigned specific key-words, and read into a textual data-bank. Currently circa 1490 chunks of text are in the data-bank. Of these, roughly 457 specifically concern learners' experience in learning English. Twenty three key-word categories are currently employed. The key-word categories are not mutually exclusive, such that multiple assignment is possible, and indeed in practice normative. The categories of assignment - the keywords - have been developed on a fairly ad hoc basis, using both top-down and bottom-up procedures. In other words, we4 decided a priori on some things we were interested in on the basis of learning and teaching theory, and applied appropriate categories to the data (a top-down procedure), while other categories have emerged from the data itself, and have been used therefore post eventu (bottom-up). The categories currently implemented, together with glosses and frequency counts for English are displayed in Table 2.3

5

A case where this criterion might apply is the Learning/Acquisition hypothesis of Krashen. The hypothesis claims, amongst other things, that explicitly learnt rules of the grammar of the target language have no long-term or short-term effect on spontaneous effective performance in L2 (see for example Krashen 1982). For many people, this hypothesis jars with their own learning experience (see e.g. Gregg 1984), but the discrepancy between theoretical claim and subjective experience has to the best of my knowledge never been addressed by Krashen. Dr. Klaus Schneider, Uta Weis and Johannes Eckerth have been working with me on this material It is worth noting perhaps that the figures given in this paper hold for the data available in the summer of 1995. As data-collection is ongoing, these figures may well be superceded in future publications.

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Table 2: Aspects of learning English: Thematic categories (Figures indicate frequency of occurrence) 119 EMT = External motivation: What external factors motivate(d) me? 113 TEA = Teacher: impact of teaching personality/skill on classroom outcome. 92 SLA = Second Language Acquisition : Second Language exposure: effect of year abroad, first visit etc.. 92 IMT = Internal motivation : Why do/did I do it, or not? 65 CON = Conversation: Views on the primacy or otherwise of "using" L2. 63 GRA = Grammar: Positive/negative effects of grammar teaching/learning 56 ANX = Anxiety: Classroom anxiety, its causes, effects and removal. 50 VOC = vocabulary: Views on the role of lexis in language learning/acquisition. 42 TAS = Task : Views on the selective effect of different types of learning task/activity/exercise. 40 MED = Media: Opinions on the use of video etc. 30 NL2 = "Nur L2" : Views on the exclusive use of L2 in the FL classroom 29 DIF = Difficult: Views on what is "easy" in FL learning, and on what is not. 27 TEX = Text: Views on the selective effect of teaching materials, specifically texts (e.g. literary texts) 25 AGE = Age: Views on the relevance of this factor in determining or affecting learning/motivation. 20 PRE = Pressure : Views on the effect of "discipline", "Arbeit", "pressure". 19 KIU = Keep it up : Views relevant to the retention of acquired knowledge/skills 17 CIR = Circumstances: Views on the relevance of external learning circumstances. 16 LST = Learning strategies : Remarks concerning learning strategies discovered, dismissed, exacted.. 16 INH = Inhalt: Views on content (i.e. subject matter handled in FU, other than language itself). 15 VAR = variety: Effect of variety (text, teacher, tempo etc.) on classroom outcomes. 14 ETC = Dustbin: "Interesting" views that do not seem to be covered by any other category. 8 REG = Register : Notions of "good" English, slang etc. 6 FOR = Foreign: Remarks on "das Fremde", i.e. the attraction or bewilderment caused by the realization of linguistic/social/cultural differences.

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For the purposes of this paper it is not necessary to examine all of these categories. It is of interest, though, to note en passant that the categories VAR and KIU are data-derived. Thus the view seems to be widespread amongst the student population sampled that foreign language skills quickly disappear if not practised regularly: there is also some support for the interesting claim that a variety of learning activities and tasks is more conducive to learning success (possibly via the intermediary variable motivation) than a didactic focus on a particular type of learning task or exercise. Assigning segments of data to one or more of these categories is itself perhaps somewhat subjective. The members of the research group have therefore sought to establish inter-rater reliability, and we follow the general strategy that overannotation is to be preferred to its opposite. As each item in the data-bank contains an index to its source, it is always possible to go back to the original statements, and derive more co-text if required for later interpretation. Following this categorisation of the primary data, the general research programme will be then to seek out generalisations inside the individual categories, and to compare these with the available research findings on the issue in question. At this level too one may be confronted with marked individual and /or group differences, and may be tempted to postulate explanatory hypotheses for them. It is further possible that language-specific features are discernible at this first stage of analysis. The next stage then is to investigate inter-relations between these categories, before finally positing some general features of learners' subjective learning theories. At all these levels, as I say, the major interest must be the correlation or confrontation between, as it were, the literature and the learner, between external research findings and internal experiences and beliefs.

5. Motivation In this paper a small start is made on this research agenda. I can only hope to suggest the potential of the approach by offering some tentative and provisional findings for English only. I want to focus on the issue of motivation, though as this topic is itself very broad indeed, various sub-themes will be developed in handling it. The central issue to be addressed is then what language contact experiences are reported on as having particularly positive or particularly negative motivational consequences. The construct "motivation" is itself complex enough to take up the remainder of this paper. Rather than attempt an overview of the literature, I shall therefore restrict myself to three general introductory remarks, to be followed by two pretheoretical distinctions. My three remarks, which together serve as - or rather substitute for - a definition, are as follows: a. Degree of motivation is to be understood here as the degree to which the individual is prepared to invest time, effort and other external and internal resources in order to attain or approximate to a particular goal - in this case the learning of English.

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b. Motivation in this sense is a complex, comprising various motives or orientations (i.e. reasons for wanting to learn), and various attitudes towards and beliefs about the learning process itself, about the target language, its speakers and their culture. c. Inside fully-fledged motivational theories - ethnolinguistic identity theory, acculturation theory, Gardner's socio-educational model and so on - different aspects of self-perception are also relevant to the assessment of an individual motivational index (for an introduction to such views, see for example Edmondson & House 1993, 188-194). Relevant socio-psychological factors are one's own social status within one's peer group, the status of that peer group within the target culture, and perceptions of how members of the target culture support or fail to support one's own social group's learning and using the language. The third remark above clearly derives from second language acquisition research rather than from research into classroom-based foreign language learning. However, the theoretical claim that such socio-psychological factors are also relevant for the instructed language learning context - a theoretical claim I wish to uphold - receives some indirect empirical support from the data we are dealing with, specifically as regards the role of the teacher, who is both the socially dominant member of the learning sub-culture called the language classroom, and at the same time, the - or at least a - primary representative of the target culture. Finally by way of introduction, two non-technical distinctions are to be made. Firstly, I propose to distinguish between External and Internal Motivation (cf. Table 2). In the first case, the motivational source is an external one, in the second it stems from the learner. Clearly the distinction is not clear-cut, and lacks logicality, in that presumably motivational effects will in every instance be based on an interaction between external and internal factors. The proposed distinction is however useful. It allows one to distinguish for example between the case in which a learner says of an English teacher that "Er brachte auch Cassetten mit englischen Gesprächen und Musik mit in den Unterricht und motivierte so die Klasse zum Lernen" (S94Sub25Unit6)

- a case of external motivation, and the further case in which a learner says "Der Unterricht war sehr anregend fur mich, weil ich mich damals auch sehr für englische Musik interessierte" (S95Subl8Unit 9).

This is a case of internal motivation. The distinction concerns then how different factors are reported in the data. A second distinction I wish to make is between short-term and long-term motivational effects. Clearly, in terms of ultimate language attainment, the long-term motivational factors are of more significance. On the whole, I shall show that external motivational sources tend to have shortterm effects, while internal factors may be more long-term.

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6. Motivation and the learning of English We may now turn to the data. I shall begin this preliminary analysis with a consideration of the motivational force of the teacher. The English corpus of 457 entries contains 113 references to the teacher. As we can see from Table 2, references to the effect of the teacher's personality and didactic skills on learning outcomes are very frequent - only the broad category of "external motivation" is catalogued more frequently (119 units as opposed to 113), though we can be sure that very many of the references to the teacher are also assigned to the category External Motivation. Of these many references to the teacher, some are positive: EXTRACT 1 Mein Interesse wurde zusätzlich von einer jugendlichen, coolen Englischlehrerin motiviert, die den Unterricht spielerisch gestaltete. (S94Sub26Unit3)

Unhappily however the majority of references are negative: EXTRACT 2 Im letzten Schuljahr bekam unser Englischkurs den langweiligsten und konservativsten Lehrer der Welt. Der konnte und wollte mich auch nicht motivieren mehr zu arbeiten. (S94Sub2Unit7)

In general the motivational effect of an individual teacher is necessarily a shortterm one, i. .e the positive or negative attitudes induced by one teacher may well be overriden by the next one. There is unhappily a noticeable tendency for negative experiences at the hand of an individual teacher to have more long-term effects than positive experiences: EXTRACT 3 Ich freute mich sehr darauf, Englisch in der fünften Klasse am Gymnasium zu erlernen. Diese Freude wurde mir jedoch von meiner ersten Englischlehrerin, an die ich mich auch heute noch besonders gut erinnern kann, genommen: anstatt ihre Schüler zu motivieren und das Interesse für diese Fremdsprache zu erwecken, schüchterte sie ihre Schüler ein, indem sie häufig über Fehler lachte und Personen vor der ganzen Klasse bloßstellte. Durch dieses Verhalten waren wir sehr eingeschüchtert, so daß niemand mehr den Mut besaß, sich zu melden, um ihre Fragen zu beantworten, worauf sie sich bei unserem Klassenlehrer über uns beschwerte, da wir uns überhaupt nicht am Unterricht beteiligen würden. (W93Subl4Unitl)

For nearly all the subjects producing these self-reports, English is positively valued as a subject before it is taught in school. Time and time again students refer to looking forward to learning the language. Unhappily this positive attitude is more often than not not reinforced, but rather destroyed by classroom experience. Extract 3 documents such an experience, as does the following:

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EXTRACT 4 Als der Englischunterricht dann in der 5.Klasse begann, war ich höchst motiviert am Unterricht beteiligt. Endlich durfte ich die Sprache lernen, die das Zentrum der Jugendkultur meiner Generation darstellte. Ich fühlte mich erwachsener, als ich meine Eltern mit den ersten Brocken Englisch beeindrucken konnte. In den darauf folgenden Jahren (6.-10.Klasse) stellte sich bei mir ein Motivationstief ein... (S95Sub25Unit2)

Extract 4 also introduces a theme that is very commonly mentioned - the importance of English language for young people as a key to Youth Culture, particularly in the sphere of popular music. The significance this has or had is described by one subject as follows: EXTRACT 5 Durch den Englischunterricht kam es, daß sich nach und nach die vielen Angloamerikanismen in der Umgangssprache, aber auch Liedtexte aus den Hitparaden ihrer Bedeutung nach erschließen, d.h. die Fremdsprache blieb nicht Mittel und Zweck des Unterrichts, uns Schülerinnen wurde der praktische Nutzen der Fremdsprache bewußt. Aus dem bloßen unreflektierten rezipieren des Unterrichts, entstand das bewußte praktizieren, das Lernen erfuhr eine motivationssteigernde Aufwertung (S95Sub09Unit4)

This extract in fact encapsulates the central finding that comes out of my preliminary examination of the English data. It is simply that the major source of positive long-term motivation is the realisation that the English language is needed for purposes outside the classroom. In this sense we are dealing here in the terms of Gardner & Lambert 1972 with an instrumental as opposed to an integrative orientation. In this case, however, the motivation can assume many guises. Clearly, the relevance of English for Pop Culture is only one relatively ephemeral instance. The general point is that English is as it were perceived not as something "foreign", but as directly relevant for the learners, both for their current interests and needs in Germany and also as a World Language. This point is put across in various forms, see for example the extracts 6 and 7: EXTRACT 6: Die englische Sprache ist dagegen ein Teil unseres Lebens geworden, mit der wir täglich konfrontiert werden - in den Medien oder in der Musik. Französisch dagegen hat nicht diesen Stellenwert. (S94Sub28Unit 8)

EXTRACT 7: ..außerdem hatte auch ich irgendwann erkannt, daß Englisch zu lernen nicht unbedingt ein Nachteil sein muß. Ein wichtiger Faktor ist zudem noch das man zwangsläufig über mehrere Jahre hinweg mit der Sprache konfrontiert wurde und sie auch außerhalb der Schule nutzen konnte und teilweise auch mußte. (S95Subl3Unit 9)

For some learners contact with native-speakers on their home-ground triggers the realisation that the English language is both useful and relevant. Extracts 8 and 9

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offer relevant data. Such experiences need not be in an English-speaking cultural environment, but may occur in an environment where English functions as a lingua franca inside a multicultural group, for example in a Kibbutz in Israel. EXTRACT 8: Erst mit einem neunmonatigen Aufenthalt in englischsprachigen Ländern (USA, Australien, Neuseeland, Singapur) gelang es mir, Sprach- und Sprechbarrieren abzubauen... Von dem Zeitpunkt an sah ich Sprache nicht mehr als Hindernis zwischen verschiedenen Kulturen, sondern als Chance und Bereicherung. Die Befähigung, mit fast allen Personen kommunizieren zu können, begeisterte mich. Mein Interesse für Sprache war geweckt und bestimmt bis heute meinen (akademischen) Werdegang. (W94Sub 7Unit 3)

EXTRACT 9: Englisch blieb lange Zeil mein Lieblingsfach, und mit großer Selmsucht erwartete ich den Austausch mit einer schottischen Schule in Edinburgh. Die Begegnung mit einer anderen Kultur hat nicht nur meinen Horizont erweitert, sondern mir auch über lange Zeit hinweg die ersten Freundschaften mit anderssprachigen Gleichaltrigen geschaffen, ich lernte den praktischen Wert der Sprache kennen, und hatte so einen Bezug zur "realen Welt". Dies wirkte sich natürlich positiv auf mein Lernverhalten aus. (W94Subl8Unit 2)

A last word on the exchange visit, or vacation-stay. The main positive effect I have already mentioned : the realisation that there is as it were Life associated with the Language outside the classroom. When, as is generally but not always the case, the stay-abroad is viewed positively, the gains mentioned are generally attitudinal/motivational in nature. Where linguistic gains are referred to, they are positively evaluated simply because they lead to increased success and selfconfidence in the language classroom upon return. There is a lot of further data which supports the "Success leads to positive Motivation" hypothesis, and indeed the hypothesis is well substantiated in the research literature. It seems to be the case, though, that it is not the quality of the contact that affects long-time motivation, it is not appreciation of the culture, of the literature, of the people or way-of-life. Even though such positive reactions are doubtless supportive and do occur, the important breakthrough is the simple realisation that one has contact via language with non-Germans.6 This realisation is of course in the terms I introduced earlier an "internal" one, as opposed to an "external" motivational factor, but it is equally clearly based on external facts, which can as it were trigger the internally motivating perception. In other words, the motivational insight should in theory be learnable and teachable. As English does pervade youth culture, is an integral part of our everyday experiences, whether we are Anglisten or not, and further is the foremost world language, it would appear that these facts could be exploited in the teaching of English, and that the issue of motivation might well appear in a different light for I cannot resist pointing out at this point that there are five references to English Literature in my corpus, of which only two are positive. There are on the other hand twenty-five references to English pop-music, and all of these are positive.

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other foreign languages conventionally taught inside the German school and university system (cf. for example extract 6 above) . On the basis o f the data at my disposal, I hypothesise that this is the case. The development o f this hypothesis, and its empirical testing must however be the topic o f a future paper. The central point that has emerged from the discussion above is that as regards English, learners may be prepared better to accept the rigours and indeed the inbuilt unevenness o f classroom teaching, if they perceive a use for English outside the classroom for themselves here and now.

References Allwright, R. (1988) Observation in the Language Classroom. London: Longman. Bailey, K.M. & R. Ochsner (1983) "A methodological review of the diary studies: windmill tilting or scial science?". In K.M. Bailey, M. Long & S. Peck (eds) Second Language Acquisition Studies, Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House, 188-198. Cohen, A. (1984) "Studying Second-Language Learning Strategies: How do we get the information?". In Applied Linguistics 5, 101-112. Edmondson, W.J. & J. House (1993) Einflihrung in die Sprachlehrforschung. Tiibingen: Francke. Ericsson, K. & H.A. Simon (1984) Protocol Analysis. Verbal Reports as Data. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press. Faerch, C. & G. Kasper (eds) (1987) Introspection in Second Language Research. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Gardner, R.C. und W.E. Lambert (1972) Attitudes and Motivation in Second Language Learning. Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House. Gregg, R. (1984) "Krashen's Monitor and Occam's Razor". In Applied Linguistics 5/2, 79-100. Grotjahn, R. (1991) "The Research Programme Subjective Theories: a new approach in Second Language Research". In Studies in Second Language Acquisition 13/2, 187-214. Kallenbach, C. (1996) Subjektive Theorien - Was Schüler und Schülerinnen über Fremdsprachenlernen denken. Tübingen: Narr. Krashen, S.D. (1982) Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Pergamon. Mandl, H., & G.L. Huber (1983) "Subjektive Theorien von Lehrern". In Psychologie in Erziehung und Unterricht 30, 98-112. Neumann, G. (1995) "Laut Denken und Still Schreiben. Zur Triangulierung von Prozeß- und Produktdaten in der L2-Schreibprozeßforschung". In Zeitschrift für Fremdsprachenforschung 6/1, 95-107. Poulisse, N, T. Bongaerts & E. Kellerman (1987) "The use of retrospective verbal reports in the analysis of compensatory strategies". In Faerch & Kasper 1987, 213-229. Stemmer, B. (1994) What's on a C-test taker's mind? Mental processes in C-test making. Bochum: Universitätsverlag Dr. N. Brockmeyer. Wagner, A. C. (1984) "Conflicts in consciousness: Imperative cognitions can lead to knots in thinking". In R. Halkes & J. K. Olson (eds.) Teacher Thinking. A new perspective on persisting problems in education, Lisse, The Netherlands: Swets & Zeitlinger, 163-175. - (1987) '"Knots' in teacher's thinking". In J. Calderhead (ed.) Exploring Teachers' Thinking, London: Cassell, 161-178.

Angelika Bergien (Leipzig)

A Text-Based Approach to the Study of English Punctuation

1. Punctuation as an art? In the preface to his article "Die Englische Interpunktionslehre" published in 1894, the German linguist Otto Glöde explains and justifies his undertaking against potential critics: Man könnte mit recht einwenden, daß eine genaue und endgültige darstellung einer solchen feinheit des sprachlichen lebens nur von einem Engländer geliefert werden kann. Ich gebe das ohne weiteres zu, habe aber bis jetzt noch keine genügende darstellung in englischer spräche gefunden. Dafür habe ich die englische Interpunktion häufig mit gebildeten Engländern, gelehrten und kaufleuten, mündlich und schriftlich durchgesprochen. Die ansichten der einzelnen individuen gingen noch mehr auseinander als bei den Deutschen. (Glöde 1894: 207)

What Glöde laments is the lack of any obligatory punctuation norm and, related to this, a large variation as far as punctuation practice is concerned. Glöde's view is shared by all those who - a century later - are in one way or other confronted with English punctuation practice. It must, however, be taken into consideration that Glöde's demand for a detailed analysis and strict regulation of English punctuation was put forward at a time when German punctuation rules were beginning to be codified. In the light of this he concludes that what is possible for one language should easily and successfully be transferable to another language. The basis for this view lies in the common belief that English and German punctuation are only different representations of an underlying universal punctuation norm. This belief is supported by the assumption that punctuation forms a separate and finite system whose elements are, like ornaments, only added to already existing structures (for instance sentences) and whose application is governed by predictable rules. Although Glöde also admits that English punctuation is more dependent on sense than German punctuation, it is not surprising that he advises English people to pay more attention to grammar. However, does the fact that English punctuation is not primarily syntactic imply that it is therefore "sorglos und lässig", as Kainz (1969: 221) points out? One could indeed argue that even in German punctuation by far not all is subject to regulation. For illustration let me quote Friedrich Heynatz' advice from 1782 concerning the use of full stops: [...] man setze den Punkt sobald der Verstand aus ist, und ein ganz neuer Satz anfängt. [...] Wer nicht beurtheilen kann, wo der Verstand aus ist, und ein neuer anfängt, dem ist weiter nicht zu helfen, (quote in Günter 1988: 191)

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The problem is that punctuation does not exist as a general phenomenon: it only occurs concretely in specific practices. A possible explanation for the great variety in English punctuation practice can be found in a book called You have a point there. A guide to punctuation by Eric Partridge. After its appearance in 1953, it went into many editions and was revised several times; it is still considered one of the most detailed books on the subject and is usually taken to settle any argument about punctuation practice. Partridge writes: In punctuation, grammar represents parliament, or whatever the elected body happens to be called: logic represents King or President: but the greatest power of all is vested in the people or, rather, in the more intelligent people - in good sense rather than in commonsense. Commonsense can and often does produce a humdrum, barely adequate, wholly unimaginative punctuation: good sense (another name for wisdom) can and sometimes does produce a punctuation that is much superior to the barely adequate. (Partridge 1964: 7)

However, considering all of these factors - grammar, logic, and sense - Partridge ends up with a vast number of rules, exceptions, and sample sentences. This is partly due to the fact that logic (or 'King') and sense (or 'people') are not so easily bound by prescriptive norms. In order to improve punctuation practice, it is certainly no solution to add another 10 or 20 rules to already existing lists. Indeed, what is badly needed is a clearer characterisation of the nature and linguistic status of punctuation. It thus appears most promising to start looking for a linguistic motivation of punctuation. Using the terms suggested by Partridge (1964: 7), I would not question the parliamentary status of grammar in punctuation. However, I would challenge the part played by the people, for it is not only their good sense but their ability to communicate via written texts which forms the necessary background for establishing and applying rules and conventions of punctuation. Good texts are characterised by both sense and logic, otherwise the text producer would fail to realise his intentions. This approach offers at least one advantage: Partridge's third category - 'King' (logic) - does no longer have an independent status, but is united with the 'people' (or sense) in the text. In the following, I want to show how the two principles - grammar and text - can be described and what possible conclusions for the linguistic treatment of punctuation can be drawn. A closer examination of text books on English, style manuals and grammars which include a chapter on punctuation reveals that correct punctuation is more often attributed to taste or common sense than any other linguistic element (e.g. vocabulary, word order, or grammatical categories). "The social function of the rule is not arbitrary," writes Deborah Cameron (1995: 12), and she goes on to say that "rules of language use often contribute to a circle of exclusion and intimidation, as those who have mastered a particular practice use it in turn to intimidate others." With regard to punctuation, there are at least two reasons for this phenomenon. Firstly, there is obviously the lack of any consistent model of the nature of punctuation, which calls for a high level of intelligence on the side of the user. A second reason can be found by considering that according to their form and information values, punctuation marks can be clearly set off from other symbols of the written text. Indeed, at first sight it appears that they form a relatively stable

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and independent system of elements whose uses are wholly predictable for a given syntactic structure and whose application can thus be learned. This characterisation as additional elements has supported the general view that punctuation serves merely to map syntactic structure into a visual mode and that it should only be used if other elements fail to provide the necessary information. As Zimmermann points out: Grundsätzlich ist die Frage zu stellen, ob der Informationsgehalt, den das betreffende Zeichen im Einzelfall besitzt durch andere Elemente der Sprache (z.B. Wortarten, Wortstellung, Wortund Satzbedeutung) bereits (mit-)geliefert wird. Wenn eine derartige funktionelle Übereinstimmung festgestellt ist, d.h. genügend andere Sprachelemente die Aufgabe der Satzzeichen (mit-)übernehmen, ist die Verwendung des Zeichens nicht als notwendig anzusehen. (Zimmermann 1969: 10)

And Howard goes even further when he argues that [...] punctuation is made for man, not man for punctuation; a good sentence should be intelligible without the help of punctuation in most cases; and, if you get in a muddle with your dots and dashes, you may need to simplify your thoughts, and shorten your sentences. (Howard 1984,172)

Since the time when Alford warned readers of The Queen's English of a so-called "commatose treatment" (1906: 74) of linguistic structures and when Fowler condemned the "spot plague" (1965: 589; 1st ed. 1926) in his book Modern English Usage, there has been an overriding concern with light punctuation as an expression of good taste. It should be noted that the term 'light punctuation' was coined decades before all kinds of light products started to flood the market. However, whether light food or light punctuation, the results do not always come up to expectations. Warnings concerning the overuse of punctuation are especially addressed to non-native speakers. And when asked which punctuation rules they know, many students name rules-of-thumb such as 'If in doubt, leave it out'. This is the sort of advice teachers usually give students to help them with punctuation. Yet when students follow advice like this example carefully, they often produce sentences without any internal punctuation mark.

2. Historical background Where does the fear of too many punctuation marks come from? The reason lies in the historical background of punctuation. As Alford commented in 1906 (73), "Punctuation was always left to the composers, indicated without the slightest compunction, on every possible occasion." This is certainly not the whole story; yet I do believe that the essential precondition for this neglect was and still is uncertainty as to the linguistic status of punctuation. Indeed, compared to the alphabet, punctuation is a relatively late invention. From the beginning and up to the 15th century, punctuation was considered merely an incidental means to improve oral performance of a written text. The marks of punctuation thus had a double status: according to their form, they were elements of the written text; according to their function as pause marks, they clearly belonged to the spoken

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medium. Like ornaments, they were often added after the text had been written. Overlappings of syntactic and prosodic boundaries were accidental. In 16th and 17th century grammar books, this prosodic tradition is still recognisable. A few examples are given in Table 1. Table 1. Description of punctuation marks in selected grammars (term and definition) Mulcaster (1582)

Puttenham (1589)

Butler (1634)

Hodges (1644)

of distinction

of caesura

of points

of reading and writing

M l stop

period (perfect sentence, full breath)

periodus full pause (perfection of speech, full pause)

period (perfect sense, falling tone)

period (make a full stop)

colon

colon (after full branches or half of the sentence)

colon (larger length of unit, twice as much time as comma)

colon (perfect sense imperfect sentence, falling tone)

colon (stop somewhat longer than with the semicolon)

_

semicolon semicolon (imperfect sense, (stop somewhat colon pause, in longer than connection with the with conjunctions) comma)

comma (piece of speech cut off, shortest pause)

comma (more imperfect sense, shortest pause)

semicolon

comma

comma (after smaller branches, rest and little breath)

comma (stop a little)

From the evidence in these texts it can be seen that it was not only the terminology of the earlier system that survived, but also a recognition of the primacy of breathing as a determinant of punctuation. However, it was also convenient and necessary to place the breath pauses, and consequently the punctuation marks, wherever they did not interfere with the content. The first allusions to the relationship between punctuation and syntactic-semantic structures (e.g. in connection with conjunctions) can be found in Butler's English Grammar, written in 1634. Finally, in 1644, Hodges points out that breath marking has to be established in connection with the content, "for the neglect thereof will pervert the sense" (Hodges 1644: 99). In the light of this it is interesting to note that at about the same time in 1665, John Evelyn, secretary of the Royal Society, demands [...] that there might be invented some new periods and accents, besides such as our grammarians and critics use, to assist, insprit, and modifie the pronunciation of sentences, and to stand as markes before hand how the voice and tone is to be govern'd, [...] ( quote in Gorlach 1978: 222).

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It is not quite clear whether Evelyn's demand for new and in particular prosodic marks results from the tendency to grammaticalise existing punctuation marks in the 17th century. Indeed, with the development of writing as an autonomous system, punctuation was linked more and more to the semantic and syntactic criteria of sentences. At the beginning of the 20th century, for instance, Fowler (1926; 1965), referring to the use of the colon in connection with adversative and consecutive relations, points out that "the time when it was second member of the hierarchy, full stop, colon, semicolon, comma, is past" (Fowler 1965, 2nd ed.: 589). It is also striking to observe that the growing association of punctuation with units of the written rather than the spoken text has given way to a much lighter system of punctuation.

3. Rules and principles Although the syntactic and semantic basis of punctuation has not been challenged seriously since Fowler, the ghost of the prosodic tradition still persists in advice such as the following by Friederich, which is especially addressed to German students of English: "Man sollte beim Lesen festzustellen versuchen, ob eine gedankliche Pause gut zu passen scheint und, wenn ja, ein Komma setzen." (Friederich 1971: 25) A possible explanation for this phenomenon lies with the assumption that punctuation is a collection of rules and exceptions. I am not claiming there is anything negative about rules per se, but the rules are generally expected to be reasonable. However, prescriptive, instructional texts often refer to prosodic features of punctuation, especially if syntactic-semantic criteria of a particular sentence (which is often considered in isolation) fail to explain the use of a punctuation mark sufficiently. Apart from this, they reveal a number of other shortcomings. First of all, it is not always possible to discuss motivating factors of punctuation within the boundaries of constructed and isolated sentences. What is more, there is a tendency to differentiate between syntactic, semantic, and prosodic factors, although punctuation is not simply syntactic, semantic, or prosodic. It rather involves the complex interaction of all these factors (cf. Meyer 1987: 9). In fact, the only rule which is primarily syntactic is the one that prohibits punctuation within the syntactic minimum of a sentence. Another disadvantage is that these instructional books start from a finite list of punctuation marks and discuss them individually in different sections. It is thus almost impossible for the user to see fine distinctions between the marks and to observe them in their interplay. Finally, these prescriptive texts aim at regulating something - as the term 'punctuation' (German 'Zeichensetzung') implies - which is the process and result of language use in texts. Apart from Partridge, who has added a special chapter with the title "Orchestration" (Partridge 1964: 179fF.) to his presentation of marks, discussions of the complexity and interrelation of all linguistic forms (including punctuation) in a text arise only incidentally. In order to show this complexity, Meyer (1987: 114) distinguishes between "rule" and "principle" and explains the difference as follows: "[...] rules specify the permissible places in the written text where marks of

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punctuation can be placed and principles the particular marks that would be most appropriate in those contexts." Quantitative and qualitative aspects of the use of punctuation marks have so far mainly fallen into the province of stylistics. Stylistic investigations reveal a variety of attitudes and they mostly concentrate on expressive uses of individual punctuation marks, which are taken as indicator of the author's style. For instance, in a book review published in 1935, Du Bois includes a passage on punctuation and sex differences: Hardly any other writer makes one more conscious than Miss Millay that she is a woman. The reasons are many and immaterial. Other women are feminine rather than womanly - I mean they are somewhat artificial, affected, de-sexed - not because they always try to write like men but because they still write like neither man nor woman. Miss Millay is feminine too. She can be artificial. And she uses dashes (-'s) as only feminine writers of either sex do, stream-ofconciencelessly. When they are driven to the point of being actually male or female, men and women alike put periods, not dashes, to their sententiousness. (Du Bois 1935: 89)

Some disputes reflect general prejudices against specific marks of punctuation. This is obviously the case when William Safire laments in the International Herald Tribune: "Too many writers, who ought to know better, are using dashes (which God knows! - we could do without) too often." (quote in Vanovitch 1984: 263) Evaluative judgements like this one are notoriously vague and need to be more explicit in order to be able to account for stylistic variation. However, the question still is why the text and not the sentence should be considered as a domain of punctuation practice. In recent years, some corpus-linguistic approaches to the study of punctuation (e.g. by Quirk et al. 1985, Meyer 1987, Bergien 1993) have revealed interesting tendencies, which cannot be explained within the boundaries of isolated sentences. This, of course, includes the marks beyond sentence level (e.g. paragraph indentations), but it also holds for those marks which are traditionally described as sentence-internal, i.e. colon, semicolon, comma. The following examples (NSM and UES) may serve as an illustration. I have used fragments of text mainly for reasons of space. NSM [...] initiatives designed to reduce smoking, la + b On the positive side, Maughan wants to provide information to evaluate the role of 2 exercise in maintaining health. "Only if it can be clearly established that the advantages of regular physical exercise outweigh the possible risks and disadvantages can the promotion of exercise be justified to those who find it inherently distasteful. This then leads to thequestion of how much exercise, how often and at what intensity." 3 UES [...] expensive experimental and analytical apparatus, la + b For the heads of departments, the task of compiling a bid is proving monumental. 2 The UGC requires detailed completion of a 5 5-page questionnaire, with information ranging from the age of academic staff to five years' worth of publication and citation 3 data. Academics are complaining that faced with such a daunting task, routine research and teaching is suffering.

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Examples NSM and UES refer to the punctuation of adverbials when they occur initially in a sentence. If the adverbial is a clause, syntactic considerations affect punctuation insofar as the adverbial clause will always be set off from the main clause by a comma. If the adverbial is a phrase, it is punctuated much less frequently than adverbial clauses. Semantically, their status as adjunct, disjunct or conjunct determines the degree of integration into the clause. However, these principles seem to be repealed if the sentence in which they occur initially introduces a whole paragraph. In NSM the comma after On the positive side indicates that the adverbial has as its domain the whole of the following paragraph and not only the sentence in which it occurs. Moreover, at the same time it helps to signal a concessive relation to the preceding paragraph, in which less positive aspects are discussed. A similar explanation can be given for the comma after For the heads of departments in UES. According to their textual function, the units set off from the rest of the sentence can be compared to subheadings. The textual dimension thus overrules the grammatical structure of the sentence. Example WMA illustrates the tendency to use weaker marks in the final parts of paragraphs. This is closely related to NSM and UES. Towards the end of a paragraph writers sometimes avoid full stops and use marks (e.g. semicolons or commas) which signal anaphoric reference. WMA la + b In the past, most research has been concentrated on the influence of latitude and isolation in controlling biological diversity, together with the effects of major climate and environmental disturbances such as the onset of glaciation. There is evidence for a 2 general decline in richness of species from the tropics to the tundra, creating an overall latitudinal gradient in diversity; isolated locations (from peninsulas to islands) also 3a + b exhibit declining species richness. In Europe, the depauperate state of the tree flora has been related to the generally east-west arrangement of the main mountain systems of 4 this continent, the Pyrenees and Alps; these cut off the migration routes of tree species moving south as and may have led to the extinction of some taxa that survived in the New World because of the north-south alignment of mountain chains there (the Rockies and the Appalacians). However, this picture is complicated by factors such as habitat [...]. 5

In the example under discussion (WMA), it is the semicolon in after Alps (4). This is what Beaugrande (1985: 206) calls the "lookback principle" in text production. Thus punctuation contributes to the coherence of the whole paragraph and at the same time the cut between this paragraph and the next one (introduced by However) is made more prominent. Examples NOT and CAF show a so-called 'violation' of the traditional hierarchy of punctuation marks. NOT la In the treatment of marked and unmarked theme reference has been made to both lb mood and information structure; but the relation of theme to transitivity has not so far 2 been considered. This concerns particularly the passive, which can be regarded as [...] CAF la Full technical details of the operation of CAFS are beyond the scope of this paper: a

472 lb 2

Angelika Bergien brief summary may however be of interest to those not to intimidated by technology. The CAFS engine comprises four distinct processors, [...]

From a syntactic point of view, the major punctuation marks form a hierarchy whose structure is determined by the particular unit that a mark of punctuation is used to separate or enclose: the sentence, the clause, or the phrase (cf. Meyer 1987: 17). The semicolon thus occupies a position between full stop and comma. It is, however, interesting that in NOT the superordinate boundary is not signalled by the full stop but by the semicolon. In this case it is clearly the above mentioned anaphoric orientation of the semicolon which overrules its position in the traditional hierarchy of punctuation marks. It thus helps to relate the following stretch of text to the preceding one. The full stop after considered is rather neutral as regards its orientation value. Furthermore, semantically the unit after the full stop only refers to the part after the semicolon (lb). A similar example is provided in CAF, where the colon signals cataphoric reference to the following part. Another argument in favour of a text-based approach - though it is impossible to cover this within the confines of the present paper - is the fact that punctuation choices are also subject to norms and conventions relevant to a given text type or genre (cf. Bergien 1993). These few arguments and examples show that punctuation is no independent system which is added to the text; rather, it is part of the text formation process from the very beginning. What is more, the choice is not necessarily determined by the sentence in which the marks occur, since sentences do not build up texts, but are the result of text formation. In order to understand punctuation practice fully, it is necessary to understand the nature of text formation. As Sinclair points out, "text is much more determined than is naturally supposed. [...] Many linguistic choices have a tendency to co-occur with each other, and so the presence of one is valuable evidence for the existence of another" (Sinclair 1984: 204f.).

4. Punctuation as part of a system of choices To consider punctuation as part of a system of choices rather than as a set of prescribed rules does of course not automatically solve the problems connected with punctuation practice, but it opens a new perspective for the description of something that has caused little attention as an integrated part of the text. Beaugrande calls punctuation a "textual sub-system" which "can signal text structures as well as the writer's intentions about how such structures should be organized and utilized" (Beaugrande 1984: 192). What is the advantage of such an approach? Like all textual sub-systems, punctuation (i.e. the concrete forms and their functions) has been subject to constant change. This view allows for the inclusion of marks beyond sentence level, for instance paragraph indentations. Also, in the printed text there are a number of graphical features that are traditionally described in more or less intuitive terms. That is, texts may display different type-faces or have marks such as bold-face stops to signal changes in the text content or square dots to signal text

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ends. They may also be organised in columns, and otherwise show features that have an important place in a structural description. However, most prescriptive approaches concentrate on the basic forms only, starting with the hyphen as wordlevel mark and ending with a description of the full stop. But even the basic forms may have equivalents, as Klockow (1980: 10) convincingly demonstrates. He describes, for example, 10 equivalents of quotation marks, including italics, underlining, and space. A wider approach, which starts from the assumption that the marks form an open list, makes it even more difficult to give a clear definition of punctuation. A starting-point could be to contrast punctuation marks to other elements of the written text. Their special status is characterised by the fact that they are not independent from their reference units and that they can thus not build up sequences of their own. Their use presupposes the existence of grapheme sequences, and their potential and actual value can only be described with regard to these sequences. Semantically, it would perhaps not be overstating the case to compare them to conjunctions or prepositions. They have a certain meaning potential which is made explicit by the concrete context in which they occur. The basic function of the major marks of punctuation is to separate grapheme sequences, and doing so they not only signal the degree of separation, but also determine or help to determine the relation between the parts set off from one another. It is especially the latter aspect which can only be described with regard to the text in which the mark is used. The question of whether punctuation merely provides a visual marker for inherent relationships or of whether it defines these relationships is crucial. It is, for instance, an interesting observation that today the semicolon is only rarely combined with conjunctions in order to signal contrastive relations. But it is, in fact, difficult to decide whether it is the semantic value of the mark or contextual information that is responsible for the communicative content of a particular mark. This leads to several questions which are worth considering. Firstly, is there any tendency, especially in times of language economy, for punctuation marks to acquire a semantic status similar to that of grapheme sequences? And is Ballmer right when he treats them as "full-fledged linguistic entities" and "special kinds of morphemes or words" (Ballmer 1978: 73)? Secondly, if there is such a tendency for at least some marks not only to indicate semantic relations but also to reveal semantic content themselves, what is their relation to nonverbal text elements? And is, for example, the 'added' meaning brought in by a change in colour the result of punctuation, or is colour-print considered a relatively independent nonverbal text element? All these questions deserve further consideration. In addition to the basic functions of punctuation, which according to Quirk et al. (1985: 1610) can be described as "separation" and "specification", punctuation is an essential factor in the reading process which requires the 'chunking' of text into units organised at a linear and hierarchical level. Some marks (e.g. semicolon, comma) indicate anaphoric, other marks (e.g. colon, dash) cataphoric reference. In addition, a third principle should be mentioned: it is the principle of foregrounding and backgrounding parts of the written text, which is, for instance, signalled by

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double marks (such as commas or dashes), type-face or space. The stretches thus set off have a kind of autonomous status and the punctuation marks assign what Beaugrande (1984: 200) calls "heaviness" or "non-heaviness" to that part.

5. Textual implications of punctuation practice A text-based description of punctuation principles leads to a practical problem. The question is which reference unit to choose. A linguistic model of text must provide a characterisation of the linguistic units which recursively combine to form the surface structure of text. I have tried to show that not all principles of punctuation, especially those which are not syntactic in nature, can be described within the boundaries of a single sentence. It follows that another reference unit has to be found. Some authors (e.g. Christensen 1969, Beaugrande 1984) have suggested the paragraph as an adequate unit. Christensen writes: "Punctuation should be by the paragraph, not by the sentence." He furthermore explains that "paragraph punctuation usually involves the choice of whether to make compound sentences or not" (Christensen 1969: 50). To take the paragraph as the reference unit would certainly help to explain the above examples, but it also implies several problems. The paragraph is first of all an orthographic unit whose boundaries are formally indicated by indentation and alinea, and it signals only a certain linear structuring of the text. However, text can be neither reduced to a sum of orthographic sentences, nor to a sum of orthographic paragraphs. Moreover, there seems to be a tendency whereby the original paragraph structure is later changed for reasons of the layout only and without the slightest consideration of content. As a result the logical sequence of a text may be obscured. Example UES illustrates this. UES After extensive consultation, modifications to the Oxburgh report were agreed, where two types of department would be created. Type A departments would be involved in research and honours degree teaching, and would not normally have less than the equivalent of 180 fulltime students, and a staffstudent ratio of about 1:9; there would probably be fewer than 20 Type A departments. Type B departments would be contained within other departments, such as physics, and would not normally be equipped to teach single honours. Superimposed on the two-tier system would be equipment centres within a limited number of the larger departments, concentrating expensive analytical equipment. The UGC initially implied that there would be about five such centres, and that their locations would be designated before universities invited to submit bids to operate either Type A or Type B departments. [...]

The cut after Type A departments at the end of the first paragraph is purely formal. Semantically, the next following sentence starting with Type B departments belongs to the preceding paragraph. The superordinate boundary occurs after that sentence (before Superimposed). The consideration of the meaning side clearly helps to detect the violation of conventions, caused by the misplaced paragraph boundary. One of the core tasks therefore is to provide a systematic and explicit description of a unit which accounts for the semantic aspect of punctuation. This is

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not simply a matter of choosing orthographically marked text segments, for these segments do not adequately reflect the complexity of textual organisation. A more promising approach to the study of punctuation is that which does not begin with surface features but with the content structure of the text. The constraints of such an approach are clear as well: the description of text meaning is always a description of text understanding, which involves a consideration of communicative factors, e.g. intentions and other textexternal features. As van Dijk (1990: 147) points out, text "does not have meanings, but is assigned meanings by the speakers or hearers". And for Hoey text is "the result of the interpretative process of reading" (Hoey 1984: 30). For the present study on punctuation, it has proved useful to examine texts in terms of the patterns of content organisation described, for example, by Hoey (1983); Hoey and Winter (1986). These patterns are based on the concept of clause relations which are proposed as a process by which a reader or writer interprets the meaning of a clause or sentence not as a separate independent entity but in the light of other clauses. Hoey admits that The name is misleading in that relations may exist equally between sentences, groups of sentences, and parts of clauses. The two 'bits' of language related are referred to as members of the relation. (Hoey 1983: 30)

Graustein and Thiele call the combinations of these 'bits' "configurations" (1987: 49). These configurations (e.g. GENERAL - PARTICULAR, PROBLEM SOLUTION, CAUSE - CONSEQUENCE, STATEMENT - COMMENT, TOPIC - DEVELOPMENT) are described by a number of parameters, such as proposition, illocution and sequential and hierarchical positions in the text. For a descriptive analysis of punctuation practice, it is necessary to identify these patterns in the text and to find out which punctuation marks are used to realise them. As a second step, punctuation should be related to the other linguistic features relevant in a given segment. An identification of regular patterns could then lead to conclusions and generalisations. For my own analysis, the work with configurations has proved to be useful for at least two reasons. Firstly, their scope is not restricted to concrete sentence or paragraph boundaries and they reflect different levels of text organisation. Secondly, they occur in almost every text and thus allow a comparison of punctuation practice in different genres and text types. It must however be emphasised that this approach is not simply a matter of adding semantic to syntactic considerations, or, in other words, of restricting semantic considerations to what goes on beyond sentence level. As I have tried to show, the content organisation of text does, in fact, sometimes overrule the internal structure of a sentence. The diagrams of the above text fragments signal hierarchical as well as linear relations in and between configurations and they show the positions of punctuation marks. The diagrams of NSM and WMA serve as an illustration. In WMA, the two TOPIC structures, represented by prepositional phrases (In the past and In Europe) refer to DEVELOPMENT parts, which in both cases consist of a more general and more specific element. However, different

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punctuation marks (full stop and semicolon) are used to indicate the different hierarchical levels on which the configurations occur. In addition, the semicolon between STATEMENT (3b) and SPECIFICATION (4), which occurs at the end of the paragraph, substantiates anaphoric reference. The analysis shows that many different factors interact in the decision for one or the other mark of punctuation. It is indeed likely that other factors are relevant beside those that I have illustrated. Although the approach is far from being complete, it should nevertheless be clear that a description which starts from the meaning side indeed reflects what Partridge (1964: 7) and others call 'sense' or 'logic' in punctuation. Moreover, it enables a fresh look at the different forms and functions of punctuation. This could then find its way into manuals and prescriptions for the user.

A Text-Based Approach to the Study of English Punctuation NSM concessive

STATEMENT (preced. paragr.)

COMMENT (1-3) (On the posit, side,)

descriptive

TOPIC (la)

DEVELOPMENT (lb-3)

(On the pos. side)

(comma)

explicative

GENERAL (lb)

SPECIFIC (2-3) (filli stop)

WMA concessive

STATEMENT (1-4)

COMMENT (5-12) However,

descriptive

• DEVELOPMENT (lb-4)

TOPIC (la) (In the past)

explicative

GENERAL

PARTICULAR (3-4)

(lb-2) full stop

descriptive

TOPIC (3a) (In Europe)

DEVELOPMENT (3b-4) comma

explicative

STATEMENT (3b)

SPECIFICATION (4) semicolon

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References 1. Sample texts CAF "CAFS: a new solution to an old problem", Literary and Linguistic computing 2 (1), 1987, 7-12. NOT see Halliday (1967). NSM "Unhealthy row over 'smoke money"1, Running Magazine, Nov. 1984, 37. UES "University Earth scientists are preparing for reorganization", Nature 330, 17/12, 1987, 593. WMA "What makes a forest rich?", Nature 329, 6/8, 1987, 292. 2. Literature Alford, H. (1906): The Queen's English. - London: Bell. [1st ed. 1863] Ballmer, T. (1978): Logical Grammer. - Amsterdam: North-Holland. Beaugrande, R. de (1984): Text production. - Norwood: Ablex. Bergien, A. (1993): Synchronisch-diachronische Untersuchungen zur Zeichensetung in englischen Texten. - Egelsbach und Köln: Hänsel-Hohenhausen. Butler, C. (1634): see Eichler 1910. Cameron, D. (1995): Verbal hygiene. - London: Routledge. Campagnac, E T., ed. (1925): Mulcaster's "Elementary". - Oxford: Clarendon. Christensen, F. (1969): "A generative rhetoric of the paragraph", in G.A. Love and M. Payne (eds.): Contemporary essays on style. - Glenview, 36-51. Du Bois, A.E. (1935): "Edna St. Vincent Millay". - In: The Sewanee Review 43, 80-104. Eichler, A. , ed. (1910): Charles Butler's English grammar. - Halle: Niemeyer. Fowler, H. (1965): A dictionary of Modern English Usage (2nd ed. revised by Sir Ernest Gowers) -Oxford: University Press, [lsted. 1926] Friederich, W. (1971): Englische Interpunktion und Orthographie. - München: Hueber. Glöde, O. (1894): "Die englische Interpunktionslehre". - In: Englische Studien 19, 206-245. Görlach, M. (1978): Einfllhrung ins Friihneuenglische. - Heidelberg: Quelle & Meyer. Graustein, G. and W. Thiele (1987): Properties of English texts. - Leipzig: Enzyklopädie. Günter, J. (1988): "Muß es achtunddreißig Kommaregeln geben?". - In: Zeitschrift für Germanistische Linguistik 16 (2), 183-192. Halliday, M.A.K. (1967): "Notes on transitivity and theme in English, Part 2". - In: Journal of Linguistics 3, 199-244. Heynatz, F. (1782): quoted in Günter 1988. Hodges, R. (1644): The English primrose. - Ed. H. Kauter (1930). - Heidelberg: Winter. Hoey, M. (1983): "Three metaphors for examining the semantic organisation of monologue". In: Analysis Quaderni di Anglistica 2, 27-53. Hoey, M. and E. Winter (1986): "Clause relations and the writer's communicative purpose". - In: B. Couture (ed.): Functional approaches to writing. - London: Ablex Pub. and Frances Pinter. Howard, P. (1984): The state of the language. - London: Hamish Hamilton. Kainz, F. (1969): Psychologie der Sprache, Bd. 5, 2. Teil: Psychologie der Einzelsprachen II. Stuttgart: Enke. Klockow, R. (1980): Linguistik der Gänsefußchen. Untersuchungen zum Gebrauch der Anführungszeichen im gegenwärtigen Deutsch. (Diss.-schrilit). - Frankfurt/M. Meyer, C.F. (1987): A linguistic study of American punctuation. - New York: Lang. Mulcaster, R. (1582): see Campagnac 1925. Partridge, E. (1964): You have a point there. A guide to punctuation. - London: Hamish Hamilton. [1st ed. 1953]

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Puttenham, G. (1589): The arte of English poesie. - Ed. E. Aiber (1869), English Reprints 7. London: A. Murray. Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., Svartvik, J. (1985): A comprehensive grammar of the English language. - London: Longman. Sinclair, J. McH. (1984): "Naturalness in language". - In: J. Aarts and W. Meijs (eds.): Corpus linguistics. Recent developments in the use of computer corpora in English language research. - Amsterdam: Rodopi, 203-210. van Dijk, T.A. (1990): " The future of the field: Discourse analysis in the 1990s". - In: Text 10 (1/2), 133-156. Vanovitch, K. (1984). "Dots and dashes". - In: Fremdsprachen 4, 263-264. Zimmermann, H. (1969): Zur Leistung der Satzzeichen (= Duden-Beiträge 36). - Mannheim: Bibliographisches Institut.

Ingrid von Rosenberg (Duisburg)

English Literature in Germany - German Literature in England: An Analysis of a Lopsided Bicultural Exchange Abstract

The paper dealt with the current policies of publishing houses concerning the transfer of English and German literature, concentrating on contemporary fiction, both high and popular, as the numerically largest field of exchange. While "German" included Austrian and Swiss authors, "English" or "British", in accordance with the rules for the awards of the Booker prize, meant works written either in Britain or in one of the Commonwealth countries. The exchange turned out to be alarmingly lopsided though both countries produce approximately the same number of books per year (in 1994 around 80,000). Of the 10,000 fiction titles published in Germany in 1994, 3,291 were translations from the English language (including American novels; figures taken from Buch und Buchhandel in Zahlen 1995, ed. by Borsenverein des deutschen Buchhandels, Frankfurt/Main, 1995). Of the 8,500 novels published in Britain in the same year, on the other hand, only 500 were translations from all languages (figures taken from The Bookseller 24 February 1995), German novels forming only a fraction (for 1993, 70 were counted by the Goethe Institute). The paper traced the history of publishing policies in both countries since World War II, moving on to discuss possible reasons for the development up to the present situation. Findings were based on a number of interviews with British and German publishers as well as on catalogues and bibliographies. While the realist English fiction of the immediate post-war period, in contrast to American, was no great success in Germany, fanciful, experimental postmodern British fiction since the seventies has met with ever increasing interest. Editors named as a reason the British talent for story-telling, which is said to surpass that of native authors. Certain types of fiction have proved to be in particular demand and can be found on most publishers' lists, e.g. texts by young, witty authors, feminist and Commonwealth writers, while certain other types of literature are ruled out such as fiction dealing with Irish politics or Germany's Nazi past and genres considered typically British such as travel writing, biographies and novels of British humour. The greatest bulk of fiction coming to Germany, however, is popular (detective stories, science fiction and romance), which, today, is no longer only published by the big paperback producers such as Heyne or Goldmann. A trend was discovered which might lead to indistinguishable publishing lists in the future: While mass producers slip in ever more high literature under flashy covers, the quality houses finance risky titles of literary value by popular bestsellers (e.g. Rowohlt makes 15% of its profit with Rosamund Pilcher).

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The presence of German literature on the British bookmarket, by contrast, has permanently deteriorated since the sixties when most of the then famous contemporary German authors (Boll, Grass, Lenz, etc.) were translated, often by emigrants. Today, only a minority of those earlier titles are still available, and the houses traditionally interested in German literature, meanwhile all bought up by big companies, hardly dare to publish the odd new German novel. Small independent publishers (e.g. Serpent's Tail, Dedalus), mostly founded in the eighties and catering for a specialist readership, struggle to counterbalance the trend to some extent. Yet many writers considered representative for German postwar-literature by native readers are missing altogether, for example Hans Henny Jahnn, Botho Strau8, Peter Riihmkorf, Heiner Miiller, while others are represented only by minor works (Gottfried Benn, Arno Schmidt, Ingeborg Bachmann). Asked for the reasons, editors either blamed the authors for being boring, "just not a good read", or the British readership for insular thinking. The few German books that did have an impact do not deal with German social reality, but have international settings and topics such as, for example, Patrick Siiskind's Perfume, which became a bestseller. Finally, the paper briefly tried to discuss the wider cultural conditions of the situation as well as to assess possible consequences for the mutual understanding of both cultures. While Germany, after the war, was willy-nilly steeped in AngloSaxon culture, the British interest in German culture, never very keen, cooled down to near zero as a result of the war, Naziism and, particularly, the Holocaust. The after-effects are still to be felt: while 93 % of German secondary school children learn English, only 20 % of the English learn German and if so, usually as a third language. Thus there is not a great reading public interested in German literature, and even editors able to judge German literature as well as competent translators have become rare. As a result, the chances to become familiar with one's neighbour's culture are very uneven, which does not seem the best precondition for progress in European spirit. As a last point, the paper reported on endeavours of governmental cultural institutions in both countries to further translations from German into English. The paper was part of a longer study which discusses the exchange of classical literature as well. A full length article, including all references, will be published in Anglia in 1997.

Bianca Ross (Marburg/Lahn)

Food in English Literature

Research on "Food in English Literature" up to n o w has mainly concentrated o n either such giants as William Shakespeare and l a m e s Joyce, or those authors w h o s e interest in the topic is obvious and palpable. Thus, w e have articles that are concerned with Jane Austen and English society or Swift and the culinary tract 1 , while other studies deal with more general subjects usually centering o n psychology or feminism or both, as for example o n w o m e n and food, esp. in relation to eating disorders 2 such as anorexia nervosa or bulimia, or more general and with a wider perspective, on sex and food - in all the shades o f meaning. This subject, again, has been treated in connection with yet another dominant feature in discussions o f f o o d in literature, cannibalism. 3 And, o f course, one should not forget the importance o f food as an indicator o f social position. Instead o f more obvious examples one might here mention Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer ( 1 8 7 6 ) and Tom's depiction o f the W i d o w Douglas w h o m he 1

2

3

Cf. Maggie Lane, Jane Austen and Food, London-Rio Grande, Ohio: The Hambledon Press, 1995 and Eileen Sutherland, "Dining at the Great House: Food and Drink in the Time of Jane Austen", Persuasions: Journal of the Jane Austen Society of North America 12 (1990), 88-98. One, of course, could also point to Swift and his obsession with defecation, as for example shown by Ashraf H. A. Rushdy in "A New Emetics of Interpretation: Swift, His Critics and the Alimentary Canal" (pp. 1-32 in Diet and Discourse: Eating, Drinking and Literature, ed. by Evelyn J. Hinz, Mosaic 24, 3-4 (1991)). For discussions on food in detective fiction cf. for instance, Constance Hammet Poster, "H. C. Bailey: The Case of the Culinary Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", Clues: A Journal of Detection 4:1 (1983), 67-77; Jerome V. Reel Jr., "Hold Up a Mirror" Clues: A Journal of Detection 5:2 (1984), 97-110. Linda V. Troost discusses food imagery, politics and the treatment of Puritanism in "Poetry, Politics, and Puddings: The Imagery of Food in Butler's Hudibras", Restoration: Studies in English Literary Culture, 1660-1700 9:2 (1985), 83-92. Food in relation to power is discussed by Mervyn Nicholson in "Food and Power: Homer, Carroll, Atwood and Others", Mosaic 20,3 (1987), 37-55 and Ann Caroline Christensen in her dissertation on "Private Supper/Public Feast: Gender, Power, and Nurture in Early Modern England" or cf. Michael C. Schoenfeldt, '"The mysteries of manners, armes, and arts': 'Inviting a Friend to Supper' and 'To Penshurst"', pp. 62-79 in "The muses common-weale": Poetry and Politics in the Seventeenth Century, ed. by Claude J. Summers and Ted Larry Pebworth, Columbia: Univ. of Missouri Press, 1988 on the relationship of food to the social structure. One should, of course, also mention Ruth Morse's contribution "Unfit for Human Consumption: Shakespeare's Unnatural Food", Jahrbuch der Deutschen Shakespeare Gesellschafi West 1983, 125-49. With Virginia Woolf as the most famous example, others of which include Christina Rossetti (cf. Deborah Ann Thompson "Anorexia as a Lived Trope: Christina Rossetti's 'Goblin Market'", pp. 89-106 in Diet and Discourse). Cf. e.g. Mervyn Nicholson, "Eat - or Be Eaten: An Inter-disciplinary Metaphor" (pp. 191-210 in Diet and Discourse).

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supposes to be able to indulge in ice-cream regularly (Chapter XXIX). This is not only, as one might suppose, a reference to the cravings of a child, but a direct comment on the widow's wealth, because ice-cream was not only the most popular dessert, but also very difficult to make, even though the invention of the Johnson Patent Ice-Cream Freezer by William G. Young in 1848 and that of the patent freezer by Nancy Johnson in 1845 had considerably improved the situation.4 Food and eating have, thus, usually been treated as symbols or metaphors and only few studies have devoted themselves to their influence on narrative structuring.5 In order to illustrate this point, I would like to refer to a study on Jane Austen and Food, which concludes that for a character "[t]o take an interest in food in a Jane Austen novel is to be almost certainly condemned as frivolous, selfish or gross." That this is a conscious technique by the author is validated by the subsequent statement that there "is more food in the Juvenilia than in any other of Jane Austen's fiction before Emma", which is ascribed to her "not mentally editing out the mundane as in work intended for publication" as well as "the clash between the wholesome enjoyment of food at Steventon Rectory and the treatment of female incorporality in literature which struck her as a fruitful source of ridicule."6 Austen is then linked with Fanny Burney and Charlotte Bronte who are depicted to be "as concerned as Jane Austen - indeed, perhaps more so, being less committed to realism - to present their heroines as free from earthy appetites."7 This concept of linking food and realism, i.e. the equation of realism with appetite, convincing as it may sound, cannot be said to hold true at least with regard to Charlotte Bronte, whose Jane Eyre provides us with an excellent example of food being employed as both a means of creating realism as well as having a bearing on narrative structure. Current views as stated by Helena Mitchie agree that in Victorian literature in general food is employed as a symbol of male dominion and Mitchie explicitly points to Rochester and the scene where he is eating with Blanche while Jane has to contend with the food she finds in the kitchen as an example for his being in complete control of her body. Hunger for food in the second half of Jane Eyre is 4

Before these inventions, which made ice-cream more readily available to the general public, ice-cream had to be made by the so-called "pot method", which meant that the ingredients had to be vigorously stirred in a tin pot or pail for an hour or more, while at the same time shaking the small pot up and down in a larger one containing salt and pounded ice or snow, which usually would have been saved from winter either buried in the earth or stored in some other cool place. But the new patent freezer did not take out all the drudgery from the preparation, because one had to turn the crank for about twenty minutes, increasing the speed during the last ten. Icecream thus remained a special treat for equally special occasions. Cf. Allison Kyle Leopold, Victorian Frozen Dainties: Authentic Recipes for Ices, Ice Creams, and Sherbets from America's Bygone Era, New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1993; esp. pp. 13-7. For an exception cf. Timothy D. O'Brien ("The Hungry Author and Narrative Performance in Tom Jones", Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, 25:3 (1985), 615-632), who maintains that "the food imagery serves as a solid standard of judgment about the novel's characters." Maggie Lane, Jane Austen and Food, London: The Hambledon Press, 1995; pp.78-9. Maggie Lane, Jane Austen and Food; p.78.

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then equated with a hunger for passionate love with Jane's return to Rochester standing for her acceptance of her physical desires.8 Food in this interpretation is again seen only as a symbol. In the beginning of the novel especially food is mainly used as an indicator of social position9, and we notice that throughout the novel, food is employed as a symbol to indicate Jane's emotional state, as for instance when towards the end of Jane's stay at Gateshead Hall, Bessie's softening towards her finds its expression in her wish to order cook to bake Jane a little cake and by wrapping her some biscuits when she refuses her usual breakfast of bread and milk before the journey that is to take her away from the hated house. Food is also used as a means of punishment and reward.10 Jane's life as a grown-up woman begins with her becoming a governess. After the kind reception illustrated by the offer of a hot negus and cut sandwiches, life in Thornfield is in the beginning characterized only by references to eating, but not to any of the foods consumed, domestic tranquility finding expression in Mrs Fairfax making jelly. This food imagery, however, also serves to illustrate women's dependance and limited access to action, when their talents are expected to be restricted to making puddings and engaging in other work concerning the domestic sphere.11 Apart from these symbolical interpretations, which undoubtedly constitute one important layer of meaning, a closer look at the novel itself will however reveal that food also has an influence on the structure of the novel. More exotic food, so to speak, thus serves to authenticate the scene where Mr Rochester describes to Jane his discovering Adele's mother and her lover, the unexpectedness of this underlined by him sitting in an armchair in Paris, smoking a cigar and nibbling sweets while waiting for the return of his lover: "I liked bonbons too in those days, Miss Eyre, and I was croquant - (overlook the barbarism) - croqucmt chocolate

10

11

Helena Mitchie, The Flesh Made Word: Female Figures and Women's Bodies, New YorkOxford: Oxford University Press, (1987) 1989; pp. 23-5. Mitchie tries to prove her contention that "[f|emale hunger cannot be acted out in public" by rather unconvincing examples from Jane Eyre. Even though she does not speak out loud, it is not correct to say that "Jane Eyre chokes down her burnt porridge in silence" (p.23), because Jane apparently only eats a few spoonfuls of her porridge and to maintain that "Jane has to sneak to Miss Temple's room for toast and seed cake" hardly tells the whole story. By ordering tea for Jane and Helen, even though the request is denied, Miss Temple turns the meeting into a less secretive affair. Cf. e.g. the scene where Master John tells Jane that it is inappropriate for her to "eat the same meals as we do" (p.42). As for example when Helen Burns is punished by a dinner of bread and water or when Jane is humiliated in front of the whole school for allegedly being a liar and Helen Burns brings her coffee and bread, which Jane is unable to eat. Only after she has been comforted is she able to think about food again. But food loses its importance as soon as Jane is fully rehabilitated and starts to enjoy her life at Lowood: "That night, on going to bed, I forgot to prepare in imagination the Barmecide supper, of hot roast potatoes, or white bread and new milk, with which I was wont to amuse my inward cravings." (p. 106) The only person whose eating habits are discussed at this point is Grace Poole, especially her preference for little food and lots of porter, which she partakes in the privacy of her own room.

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comfits and smoking alternately" (p. 172). The usage of French here serves to create authenticity which is one of the main features I would like to concentrate on later on in this article. That this is a deliberate ploy by the author becomes more obvious when studying other novels by Charlotte Bronte, such as Villette and The Professor which are set in Brussels. But for the moment I would like to return to other features in Jane Eyre in order to illustrate the different ways the author employs food in her narrative. Jane is wary of Rochester and even declines to dine with him at Thomwood before they are married, the act of eating thus acquiring a sexual undertone. Later she agrees to join him but refuses to eat.12 Unwilling to become his mistress, she leaves the house in the middle of the night, taking only some water and some bread which she later eats with a handful of ripe bilberries she has picked on the heath: "My hunger, sharp before, was, if not satisfied, appeased by this hermit's meal." (p.350) The same can be said to hold true for her emotional state now that she has escaped the temptation of giving in to Rochester's - and her own - wishes. The reference to the meal being fit for a hermit indicates her rejection of her body and its desires, which is fittingly underlined by her ending the meal with her evening prayers. The next days are spent in a tired and exhausted stupour, and it is only on the fourth day after she has come to the Rivers that she regains some strength which enables her to react to the kindness extended to her. Hannah has brought her some gruel and toast, good food, as Jane tells us, and she rises and makes her way to the kitchen. She finds Hannah baking bread, and she offers to pick some gooseberries for a pie - a structurally significant offer only reluctantly agreed to by Hannah, but an offer that changes their relationship fundamentally because Hannah has to admit that her impression of Jane had been false. The scene after the return of the family from a walk evokes the image of life at the Bronte's own home, with the girls in the kitchen with Tabitha Akroyd. Charlotte herself described such a scene in her "History of the Year 1829" when she was thirteen.13 In Jane Eyre, Jane is not included in this domestic scene, as a visitor the kitchen is not the place for her to be: "'[...] Mary and I sit in the kitchen sometimes, because at home we like to be free, even to licence - but you are a visitor, and must go into the parlour.'" (p.370) They make her comfortable and return to the kitchen to get the tea ready: "'[...]: it is another privilege we exercise in our little moorland home - to prepare our own meals when we are so inclined, or when Hannah is baking, brewing, washing, or ironing.'" (p.370) While preparing 12

13

The night before the intended wedding, she agrees to join him for supper but tells him she cannot eat and the same goes for the next day, when she has found out she will not be able to marry Rochester because of his previous commitment. Cf. Julian Gardiner, The World Within: The Brontes at Haworth: A Life in Letters, Diaries and Writings, London: Collins & Brown, 1992; p.46. See also p.69 with the reference to Charlotte making apple pudding in the first diary reference from November 24, 1834, written jointly by Anne and Emily and a letter by Charlotte to Ellen Nussey from December 21, 1839, where Charlotte refers to Tabby absence due to illness and her and Emily's management of the house, with Emily attending to the baking and the kitchen in general and Charlotte looking after the ironing and keeping the rooms clean as well as black-leading the stoves, (pp.80-1).

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tea, Diana, one of the sisters, brings Jane "a little cake, baked on the top of the oven" because she has had nothing to eat since breakfast. Jane accepts the for her unusual hospitality with enthusiasm (p.371). This kindness Jane later repays in like kind when she expresses her feelings and shows her new position in the family by pampering the ones she cares for, and, as has happened before, food loses its importance in the course of the happenings, and only regains its position for narrative structuring when Jane is reunited with Rochester and the turmoil of their mutual feelings is, once again, expressed in terms of food and eating. Finally their quiet and secret wedding is fittingly first made public to the servants with Mary in the kitchen "basting a pair of chickens roasting at the fire", thus indicating that true happiness has arrived. Even though the sexual connotations associated with food and eating in these scenes cannot be denied, it would definitely be a limitation to restrict their importance to this single layer of meaning. We must here clearly distinguish between the author's conscious and deliberate structuring of the narrative and subconscious psychological features, as we do not know whether the author was at all aware of their implication. I would now like to turn to a quite different series of texts in order to further illuminate my thesis that food and the description of the act of eating have a structural influence on literary texts. Where else but in the depiction of times gone by and countries visited can the conscious employment of food serve the author as a means of authentication and point of reference. I will start by dealing with a historical period, the Middle Ages. The problem about food in medieval England consists in the meagre evidence we have. The earliest surviving recipe books date from the end of the 14th century, the most famous perhaps being The Forme of Cury from 1390, written at the request of Richard II. In addition to such texts, the little we know of medieval food and cookery can be derived from official and private documents, as for example government and church regulations or account books, books on table manners and diet, illustrations, pictures and literary texts such as Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.14 Now, the depiction of food in literature dealing with medieval England can be basically discussed from two different angles. One from a contemporary point of view and I have already pointed out that literary texts like Chaucer's Canterbury Tales or Langland's Piers Plowman have had a great importance for our knowledge of what people in the Middle Ages ate - , or for that matter the Shepherds play in the Chester cycle. The other approach would be via historical novels of later times which are set in the Middle Ages and purport to give a contemporary view of the time in question. Here the employment of food would, again, serve as a means of authentication with the authors having to choose between what at their time was known about the eating habits of the period as well 14

Cf. e.g. Maggie Black, "Medieval Britain", pp.95-136 in A Taste of History: 10,000 Years of Food in Britain, London: British Museum Press, 1993; p. 97 and especially Curye on Inglysch: English Culinary Manuscripts of the Fourteenth Century (Including the "Forme of Cury"), ed. by Constance B. Hieatt and Sharon Butler, Early English Text Society SS; 8, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.

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as having to accord to the preconceptions and expectations of the audience he or she is trying to convince of the authenticity of the situation. This latter observation shall now be illustrated by some examples from Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe. Margaret Atwood has said that she first realized the connection between literature and eating when she read Ivanhoe at twelve, wondering what Rebecca had to eat when she was shut up in the tower.15 Although this is one of the obvious questions, I would like to concentrate on the relation between food as depicted in the novel and what we know about food in the Middle Ages. In his "Dedicatory Epistle to the Rev. Dr. Dryasdust" the ostensible author, Laurence Templeton, points out that in order to interest the reader for the story "the subject assumed should be, as it were, translated into the manners, as well as the language, of the age we live in." (p.xix) On the other hand he believes that "the opinions, habits of thinking, and actions, however influenced by the peculiar state of society, must still, upon the whole, bear a strong resemblance to each other." And concludes: "Our ancesters were not more distinct from us, surely, than Jews are from Christians", (p.xxi) Nevertheless, there obviously are differences, because the author is required to "introduce nothing inconsistent with the manners of the age" (p.xxii), a very difficult enterprise indeed, as he himself has found: It may be, that I have introduced little which can positively be termed modern; but, on the other hand, it is extremely possible that I may have confused the manners of two or three centuries, and introduced, during the reign of Richard the First, circumstances appropriated to a period either considerably earlier or a good deal later than that era. (p.xxiii)

And once more the reader is brought into the discussion and dismissed: "It is my comfort, that errors of this kind will escape the general class of readers". We know about Scott's awareness of his position in the publishing market and his interest in the economic aspects of his profession, which was the basis of his popularity and appeal among the wider public.16 He, therefore, had to cater to the tastes of the audience he intended as readers. Readers, he would not have been interested in antagonizing by references to issues that did not fit in with preconceived ideas. In order to illustrate this perception about the relationship between the author's intentions and the considerations he feels compelled to fulfil in the interest of the reader - and his own if he wants to be successful - , I shall now focus on two scenes from the novel. The first is the banquet given by Prince John for the benefit of the Norman nobility and gentry as well as to impress a few of the more important Saxon and Danish families. This means an abundance of food prepared in the most imaginative ways and from different cultures. The ordinary dishes of every-day life are prepared in such ways as to make them unrecognizable, a practise which reminds the narrator of his 15

Margaret Atwood, "Introducing The Canlit Foodbook", pp.51-6 in Literary Gastronomy, ed. by David Bevan, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1988; p.51. Marinella Salari, "Ivanhoe's Middle Ages", pp. 149-60 in Medieval and Pseudo-Medieval Literature, ed. by Piero Boitani and Anna Torti, Tübingen: Narr/Cambridge: Brewer, 1984.

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own time. These dishes are, however, not mentioned by either name or ingredients. Besides these there are specialties from overseas and the narrator specifically mentions the rich pastry, as well as "simnel bread and wastel cakes, which were only used at the tables of the highest nobility." The only dish to be described in greater detail is "a large pasty composed of the most exquisite foreign delicacies, and termed at that time a 'karum pie'", which Athelstane in his ignorance takes to be made of "larks and pigeons, whereas they were in fact beccaficoes and nightingales".17 Now the name for the dish constitutes a bit of a problem, but it seems likely that Karum pie refers to garum18, the catsup of the Romans. Garum was used both as a spice and a condiment and could command fantastic prices. English catsup in the seventeenth century was, by the way, produced similarly, although more in concordance with modern tastes as to the preparation.19 The change from initial gto k- does not prove too much of a problem when one bears in mind N.F. Blake's proposition that "Scott evidently felt that he ought to archaize in order to give the correct tone to the novel, but he realized that if he did so too extensively he ran the risk of being both unreadable and unintelligible" and that he "never forgot what he read and he mingled words from different periods and social origins together quite unashamedly." Blake also adds that Scott's "linguistic colouring was based on no scholarly foundation. "20 As a reader of Smollett, Scott would have come across the references to garum in Smollett's Travels through France and Italy21 and, of course, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle22 and its famous scene of a ridiculous dinner in the manner of the Romans, which seems to have had an influence on Scott's depiction of the banquet.23 This view can be reinforced by a comparison of the Karum pie with a medieval recipe for a "grete pye"24 or a contemporary eighteenth-century recipe by 17 18

19

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Sir Walter Scott, Ivanhoe, Chapter XIV. According to Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat (A History of Food (1987), transl. into English by Anthea Bell, Oxford: Blackwell, 1992, pb. 1994; p.373) garum "was a sauce made of the intestines of mackerel and anchovies, macerated on salt and then left out in the sun until the mixture had completely decomposed, or rather had digested itself by the action of the fish's own intestinal microbes. Carefully calculated amounts of concentrated decoctions of aromatic herbs were added. Then a very fine strainer was plunged into the vessel containing the mixture to collect the syrupy, strongly flavoured liquid. The garum was ladled out and left to mature." Cf. Eliza Smith, The Compleat Housewife (1758), repr. London: Studio Editions, 1994; p. 116. For the recipe cf. APPENDIX I. Cf. N.F. Blake, Non-Standard Language in English Literature, London: Deutsch, 1981; p. 142. Tobias Smollett, Travels through France and Italy, ed. by Frank Felsenstein, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979; Letter XXXIX, p.326 annotation to 'Tunny ofAntibes" (APPENDIX II). Tobias Smollett, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle in which are included Memoirs of a Lady of Quality, ed. with an introduction by James L. Clifford, London: Oxford University Press, 1964; p.239f. Tobias Smollett, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle; Chapter XLVIII. Cf. Maggie Black, The Medieval Cookbook, London: British Museum Press, 1992; p. 118-9. The recipe is from Harley 4016, a fifteenth-century manuscript (APPENDIX III).

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Eliza Smith for a "Battalia" or "Bride Pie"25, which includes small young chickens, quails, young partridges, larks, and squab-pidgeons. These recipes ought in turn to be compared to that for a "Patina ä la Apicius"26, which included chicken and beccaficoes, while bearing in mind that the name of Apicius is connected with a recipe for nightingales' tongues. The nightingales in the pie serve to stress the specialness of the dish. Pies were very popular in eighteenth century England, and were usually served as main dishes.27 This, of course, links our scene with contemporary practise insofar that the food presented would not have appeared too strange to an eighteenth-century reader. Antiquity is created by a difference in preparation and, not to forget, table-manners. The scene as a whole serves to contrast the Norman nobles who - with the notable exception of Prince John - are described as temperate with the gluttony and drunkenness of the vanquished Saxons who are not accustomed to the etiquette of a banquet of this kind.28 The evening meal prepared for Cedric in Chapters III and IV is in contrast much more austere and is meant to highlight the simplicity of the Saxon period. The importance of food as a means of depicting social status, or rather for distinguishing Saxons and Normans, and as a message for a later period, has been pointed out by Marinella Salari who observed the frequency of references to meals and comes to the conclusion that "Scott helped to spread this picture of a happily hungry and splendidly satisfied Middle Ages, in which food is shared by master and servant at the same table." This, she thinks would have been a solace to people in nineteenth century England feeling threatened by the problem of poverty who longed for an England of the past "seen as pastoral, rural and prosperous."29 Having been informed about his unexpected Norman guest, Cedric is keen on furnishing him with the best drink30 and food available, although he feels the obligation to refer to it as "homely fare".31 25

28

30 1

Eliza Smith, The Compleat Housewife; p. 148 (APPENDIX IV), for another recipe cf. p.35. Margaret Dods' "Bride's Pie" is a much simpler and basically a mincepie with a ring hidden inside and decorated. Cf. Mistress Margaret Dods, The Cook and Housewife's Manual: A Practical System of Modern Domestic Cookery and Family Management (1829), London: Rosters, 41988; p.385. [Apicius], Das Kochbuch der Römer: Rezepte aus der 'Kochkunst' des Apicius, ed. and transl. by Elisabeth Alföldi-Rosenbaum, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1970, "1994; pp.48-9 (APPENDIX V). Lorna Sass, Dinner with Tom Jones: Eighteenth-Century Cookery Adapted for the Modern Kitchen, s.l.: Eastern Press for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1977; p.22. Sir Walter Scott, Ivanhoe, Chapter XIV. Cf. Marinella Salari, "Ivanhoe's Middle Ages", pp. 149-60 in Medieval and Pseudo-Medieval Literature, ed. by Piero Boitani and Anna Torti, Tubingen: Narr/Cambridge: Brewer, 1984; pp.156-7, quotations from pp. 156 and 157 resp. On p.159 Salari quotes Northrop Fiye's Anatomy of Criticism : "In every age the ruling social or intellectual class tends to project its ideals in some form of romance, where the virtuous heroes and the beautiful heroines represent the ideals and the villains the threat to their ascendency." Scott, Ivanhoe, Chapter III. Scott, Ivanhoe, Chapter IV.

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The scene between the disguised Richard Lionheart and the character who is better known as Friar Tuck is another instance of illustrating the relationship between Normans and Saxons and their difficulties. Posing as a hermit, Tuck is very reluctant to offer his unwelcome guest even a platter of two handful of parched pease and some cold water and it is only after his guest has convinced him that he does not believe in his poverty that he is willing to share his fare of exquisite wine and "a large pasty, baked in a pewter platter of unusual dimensions" made of venison; illegally shot, of course. An offer which reflects the growing trust and respect the two men have for each other.32 This stress on food can also be substantiated by the interest Scott is supposed to have taken in food in general and particularly breakfast, which was his chief meal, and, it has even been said that he "might also have held a retainer from some 19th century tourist board, so frequently and lovingly did he detail in his novels the breakfasts of his characters."33 I will return to Scott later, but for the time being I would first like to compare the rather fanciful descriptions of medieval food in Scott with those in a medieval text. Without elaborating on this point, Carol Fewster has pointed out that the author of Havelok the Dane "uses devices of careful layering, which move its developing king figure through all strata of society (as symbolized by progressive and detailed upgradings in his food and weapons)".34 This view shall in the following be validated and qualified by examples from the text. To begin with, the reader, or rather listener, is addressed by the narrator who indicates he is going to tell the story of Havelok and demands a cup of ale before he proceeds further. Wine being reserved for the benefit of guests of higher standing, ale here would be the appropriate drink for the story-teller. The narrative itself relates the story of Havelok, a Danish prince, who is cheated of his throne by his guardian Godard. When Havelok complains of hunger Godard hands him over to Grim to kill him. Grim decides to save his life, however, and when Havelok asks for bread he is rewarded by a sumptuous meal considering Grim's means and which besides bread, the staple food of medieval diet, consists of butter, milk, pasties and flans as well as meat.3 Considering the basic diet of a peasant mainly consisted of barley and oats in the form of bread or ale - or, if there was no possibility for baking bread as ovens were rare, as porridge or in broths - this meal seems rich indeed, especially in view of the fact that meat and eggs were in short supply in the thirteenth century: "It seems 32

33 34

35

The role of food for the structure of the novel and the depiction of Scott's intentions becomes even more obvious by comparison with William Thackeray's ironical continuation of the story of the protagonists of Ivanhoe in Rowena and Rebecca, where food is not as important for the author and rather reflects contemporary practise. Annette Hope, A Caledonian Feast, Edinburgh: Mainstream, 1987; p.215. Carol Fewster, Traditionality and Genre in Middle English Romance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987; p.31. I would like to thank Professor Erich Poppe for drawing my attention to this example. The Lay of Havelok the Dane: Composed in the Reign of Edward I, about A.D. 1280, ed. by Walter W. Skeat, London: Triibner & Co., 1868; 20.643-49.

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likely that many of the real poor usually ate little more than bread and onions, and perhaps a green vegetable such as cabbage, washed down with water. Richer villagers, probably over half of the total, kept a cow to provide them with dairy produce."36 Thus butter and milk as well as meat would be an appropriate fare for a guest. The additional items pasties and flans, the latter presumably the flawnes described by Chaucer, "a dish composed of new cheese, eggs, powdered sugar, colored with saffron and baked in small tins called 'coffins'"37, represent dishes we would expect on the table of a town dweller or a very much richer personage. Their inclusion here speaks for the respect accorded Havelok by his host. Havelok, having finally ended up as the king's cook, becomes famous for his strength and is married to Goldborough, the daughter of /Ethelwold, the old king. Havelok and his new wife go to Grimsby and are made welcome by Grim's children, who, just like their father had done earlier, treat Havelok and his wife as honoured guests and provide them with goose and chicken, wine and ale.38 The stress here lies on the special meat, and Havelok's new position as husband of a princess is reflected in his being given wine, which was only reserved for the highest of guests. This meal is and can only be bettered when he is invited by the Danish Earl Ubbe to dine with him and his wife, i.e. Ubbe's wife is to eat with Havelok and Goldborough with Ubbe, thus indicating their equal status. The story-teller expressively stresses the fact that this is a meal worthy of a king or emperor and only mentiones a few of the delicacies served. These include cranes, swans, venison, salmon, lampreys and sturgeon, which are to be washed down with spiced wine, claret as well as white and red wine.39 One may note the absence of ale and any of the lesser foods. This invitation which secures Havelok's status cannot be bettered and as a result subsequent feasts are only referred to in general, the fare is not mentioned because 36

37

38 39

P.W. Hammond, Food and Feast in Medieval England, Stroud/Dover NH: Sutton, 1993; pp.26-30, quotation from p.30. In the Shepherds play in the Chester cycle bread, bacon, onions, garlic, leeks, butter and fresh cheese, ale, meat, some kind of pudding, an oat cake and a sheep's head in ale and curds are listed as food for the shepherds. A poor character in Langland's Piers Plowman is said to have fresh cheese, curds and cream, an oat cake, bran bread, beans, parsley, leeks and cabbage but cannot afford to buy pullets, eggs or salt meat and the poor widow and her two daughters in Chaucer's Nun's Priest's Tale have milk, brown bread, bacon and an occasional egg but their fare would have been supplemented by the livestock they owned. This is Skeat's explanation for the term in Chaucer's Romaunt of the Rose, line 7049. Skeat himself quotes Liber Cure Cocorum (ca. 1450, i.e. after the composition of Chaucer's Romaunt of the Rose), p.39 as his source. This example is also quoted in Kurath/Kuhn's Middle English Dictionary. The dictionary also gives an example from a fourteenth century source (1381, pp.91-122 in The forme of curry, ed. by S. Pegge in 1780, the quotation is from p. 120; cf. also "II: Diuersa Servicia", recipe 86, p.78 in Curye on Inglysch: English Culinary Manuscripts of the Fourteenth Century, Early English Text Society; S.S.8, ed. by Constance B. Hieatt and Sharon Butler, London: Oxford University Press, 1985). Cf. APPENDIX VI. Havelok, 38.1240-4. Havelok, 47.1722-35.

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this could only diminish Havelok's newly acquired status, in that he himself either would appear stingy or in the case o f his bettering the feast described above, in diminishing the honour accorded to him on the occasion. F o o d and its description, or in this case, rather the omittance o f details, can here be said to have been deliberately employed as a means o f making the story more convincing and have as such left their mark on the structure o f the text. A s time is limited, I would n o w like to return to Scott and his interest in food. One o f the characters o f his novel St Ronan's Well, M e g Dods, became famous as the ostensible author o f The Cook and Housewife's Manual (1826), an influentual and popular work by the writer Isobel Johnston meant to remedy the perceived decline in the standard o f cooking, which includes a chapter on Scottish national dishes. 41 Scott knew o f Isobel Johnston's fashioning her pseudonym o n the cook in his novel, and refers to the work in question in a note to a later edition o f St Ronan's Well42 But there seems to be a further parallel between the cookery book and the novel, which both reflect different ways o f mirroring the present, in that the cookery book is said to have the first reference to the famous Scots Eggs - hardboiled e g g s surrounded by forcemeat and then deep-fried - , a recipe which is closely related to an Indian dish, Nargisi Kofta and one of the main characters o f St Ronan's Well is a nabob, one o f those Englishmen w h o had become rich in India in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and had returned to Europe. 4 3 40

42

One might compare these scenes with the mock feast described in the "Prima Pastorum" of the Towneley Cycle (The Wakefield Pageants in the Towneley Cycle, ed. by A.C. Cawley, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1958, repr. 1979; 34.208-35.239) which is washed down with lots of ale. In this scene, as Peter Meredith has expressed it, "the most exotic words of aristocratic cookery are laid side by side with mock French and comic English", as in the description of "calf liuer skorde with the veryose", i.e. sliced and served with vequice, as well as in expressions like "oure mangyng" from the French manger or "foder/Oure mompyns", i.e. feed our faces. One can readily perceive the fun this scene must have created for a contemporary audience with its mixture of references which, as in the case of Ivanhoe, are mainly meant to anticipate and meet the audience's expectations regarding an aristocratic banquet. Or as Peter Meredith says: "Words also create situation. The idea of a mock feast is good fun, the audience sees bread and ale (or maybe water) while it hears the words of medieval haute cuisine, but it is only the choice of those words that can give a reality to the aristocratic meal or create the kind of image that will make it parallel to the poverty of the stable embodying the royalty of the King of Kings." Cf. Peter Meredith, "The Towneley Cycle", pp.134-62 in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre, ed. by Richard Beadle, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994; p. 152. The mock aspect of the meal is stressed by the absence of wine. Olive M. Geddes, The Laird's Kitchen: Three Hundred Years of Food in Scotland, Edinburgh: HMSO - The National Library of Scotland, 1994; pp.88-9. Sir Walter Scott, St. Ronan's Well, London: Black, 1897 (Victoria Edition of the Waverly Novels; Vol. XVII), p.435 (APPENDIX VII). Scott is also said to have had a copy of Elizabeth Cleland's A New and Easy Method of Cookery (1759) in his library at Abbotsford. Cf. Olive M. Geddes, The Laird's Kitchen; p. 59. Annette Hope specifically cites Scott's novel as an example that it "is conceivable that the idea [for making Scotch eggs] was brought to Scotland from India, just as Kedgeree and curry

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Instead of dwelling on this example, I would prefer to present the last set of texts I chose to illustrate the way the depiction of food is employed as a device for narrative structuring and authentication, i.e. in the depiction of life in foreign countries and its function of making narratives of this kind more realistic. I have already referred to this phenomenon in passing when talking about the Bronte sisters, but other examples may serve to make this point more obvious. Scott having set our point of reference, we might as well remain in India and concentrate for the time being on Kipling's Kim, the story of the white boy born in India and his search for identity and his role within the two cultures. One of the most illuminating instances in the novel is perhaps Kim's emphatic revulsion at English food, a particular dinner at school being referred to as "a most unappetizing meal" (p. 151). This attitude is underlined by the frequent references to Indian foodstuffs and the telling lack of such descriptions of English food, apart, of course, from Kim's deliberations concerning the quality of life in the two cultures with its telling distinction between the sensuousness of the Indian way of life and the rigidity of the English: Kim yearned for the caress of soft mud squishing between the toes, as his mouth watered for mutton stewed with butter and cabbages, for rice speckled with strong-scented cardamoms, for the saffron-tinted rice, garlic and onions, and the forbidden greasy sweetmeats of the bazars. They would feed him raw beef on a platter at the barrack-school, and he must smoke by stealth. But again, he was a Sahib and was at St Xavier's, and that pig Mahbub AH ... No, he 44 would not test Mahbub's hospitality - and yet..." (p. 173)

Kim's conflict of being torn between the two cultures and his yearning for the unattainable other is clearly evinced here. He does not and cannot belong to either society, his sub-conscious yearns for the animal pleasures of life - and I deliberately chose this expression here - whereas the rational side seeks a place in the colonial hierarchy. This imperialist view of Indian society also permeats E.M Forster's A Passage to India, with the one difference, that Forster differentiates more within these cultures and particularly attacks colonial society. Forster employs food in a more ironic manner, and what better way could he have chosen to state his views on colonial society: And sure enough they did drive away from the Club in a few minutes, and they did dress, and to dinner came Miss Derek and the McBrydes, and the menu was: Julienne soup full of bullety bottled peas, pseudo-cottage bread, fish full of branching bones, pretending to be plaice, more bottled peas with the cutlets, trifle, sardines on toast: the menu of Anglo-India. A dish might be added or subtracted as one rose or fell in the official scale, the peas might rattle less or

44

were, by the nabobs returning with their wealth in the early 19th century." Cf. Annette Hope, A Caledonian Feast p.241. We know that Kipling knew something about cookery from his reference to Hannah Glasse s The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy by a Lady (1767) in "His Gift", Land and Sea Tales for Scouts and Guides, Leipzig: Tauchnitz, s.d.; p.97. His interest in food can also be seen in this story as well as in that following, "Prologue to the Master-Cook's Tale", a parody of Chaucer's cook, albeit a very modern one, though the language purports to be Middle English.

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more, the sardines and the vermouth be imported by a different firm, but the tradition remained: the food of exiles, cooked by servants who did not understand it.(p.67)

The fact that Foster is deliberately employing food preferences for characterization becomes even more obvious when one compares this scene to others, like the description of Aziz's preparations for the picnic. The mixed company requires mixed food, as his subsequent deliberations during their expedition show: He ran over the menu: an English breakfast, porridge and mutton chops, but some Indian dishes to cause conversation, and pan afterwards, (p. 162)

I am well aware that my reading of these passages does not provide any new interpretation to these scenes, it does, however, support both the, so to speak, conventional interpretations as well as my own views. Authentication thus can be said to provide the link between narrative structuring and realism. Having presented a number of different examples ranging from Charlotte Bronte, Sir Walter Scott, medieval romance to colonial literature, I would now like to turn to the genre that comes most readily to mind when discussing food in literature: detective fiction. The importance of food in detective fiction, where food is often used as a means of murder, is palpable even to the most superficial reader.46 But even here we can find examples of food being used for narrative structuring, as for example when Kate Baeier, the protagonist of Gillian Slovo's Catnap in an attempt to put off having to read her mail turns to cooking. At first, in an attempt to stall for time, she tries to make up her mind whether to take a shower of have some food. Remembering the mail, which she feels she must deal with soon, she decides to eat first. The scene shows that obviously she is doing all she can to prolong the process. The reader is thus treated to a detailed account of the preparations: 45

46

Forster's rather wry way of dealing with the matter of food and employing it to his ends is independent of his description of a foreign culture, however, as one example from an earlier novel, Howard's End, might illustrate: "To all his moods Jacky remained equally indifferent. When supper was ready and not before - she emerged from the bedroom, saying: 'But you do love me, don't you?' They began with a soup square, which Leonard had just dissolved in some hot water, it was followed by the tongue - a freckled cylinder of meat, with a little jelly at the top, and a great deal of yellow fat at the bottom - ending with another square dissolved in water (jelly: pineapple), which Leonard had prepared earlier in the day. Jacky ate contentedly enough, occasionally looking at her man with those anxious eyes, to which nothing else in her appearance corresponded, and which yet seemed to mirror her soul. And Leonard managed to convince his stomach that it was having a nourishing meal." (p.66) What is perhaps more striking is the amount of alcohol indulged in by the various detectives, surprisingly so especially in novels by female authors, a practise which might be adduced to different reasons. For one, there is the model of the hard-boiled detective and alcohol often seems to be employed as a means of making the detective appear tougher, on the other hand, drinking gives the detective something to do while the reader gets to know about his or her thoughts about the case. Food or in this instance drink is once more used as a means of authentication. Detectives, therefore, also seem to be either good cooks or show an striking interest in food, and the reader is continuously acquainted with the food they consume.

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I put a pot of water on the stove and, while it was heating up, I concentrated on making a marinara. I skinned garlic, threw it into hot olive oil, and followed through with some roughly chopped tomatoes, a pinch of dried basil, some salt and fresh ground pepper, before turning down the heat. The water was not yet boiling.

She is still stalling for time, and has to turn to some other distraction, as her subsequent actions show: I decided on antipasti. I took the raw ingredients - salami, an assortment of cheeses, olives and some greens - from the fridge and laid them on the counter. The plan was to arrange them beautifully on one of Pam's bone China plates. I even started doing this, managing in the process to hum a few bars of a song I thought I'd long forgotten.

We are now obviously nearing the moment when she notices that she can no longer put off what has to be done: "But stopped abruptly. All this activity, just to avoid what I would eventually have to face." This mental activity is immediately followed by a physical reaction: "Laying down my knife I turned off the sauce." 47 She finally turns to her letters. There are two of them. Holding one in each hand, she decides to read the one that seems less threatening, the one she does not know what it contains. It is of no great interest as expected. She hesitates about opening the other envelope, and considers leaving it on the kitchen counter, stowing it at the bottom of her suitcase, or even throwing it away unopened. She feels trapped and does not know what to do. Having decided not to open the letter, she again turns to the preparation of her food - but not for long: "I threw tagliatelle into the water, now boiling, and reheated the sauce. After that I turned, walked three paces forward, picked up the envelope and, using a kitchen knife, slit it open." 48 I have quoted this example in such detail, because I think it convincingly illustrates what I perceive as food having an impact on narrative structuring. The preparation of the meal, the concentration on detail reflect her mental turmoil, but it is the choice of this particular meal which makes the action so convincing. Food and eating can thus be said to be used in fictional narrative both as a technique more or less consciously employed by the author as well as a result of other, e.g. psychological influences. The number of pronouncements we find on the subject throughout the centuries proves that authors have always been interested in the subject of food. Recently published collections49 on the subject only underline this observation. The utterances range from comments on healthy food such as Shelley's "A Vindication of Natural Diet" (1813) to introductions to different kinds of what in the widest sense might be termed cookery books as those to the CanLit Cookery Book by Margaret Atwood and to M.F.K. Fisher's The Art of Eating by W.H. Auden 50 or works like Defoe's list of what is actually eaten in his Review of 47 48 49

50

Gillian Slovo, Catnap (1994), London: Virago, 1995; pp.40-1. Gillian Slovo, Catnap; p.41. Cf. e.g. The Faber Book of Food, ed. by Claire Clifton and Colin Spencer, London-Boston: faber and faber, 1993 and Food: An Oxford Anthology, ed. by Brigid Allen, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. M.F.K. Fisher, The Art of Eating, with an Introduction by W.H. Auden, publ. in America 1954, London: Faber and Faber, 1963. Auden stresses the literary value of the book and

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the State of the English Nation (1709) and Swift's Direction to Servants (1745). Just as Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland needs the mushroom to make Alice's changes of size more plausible, thus in some way creating a more realistic scenery, the mushroom episode might also be read as an illustration for the changes in Alice's mental state of mind as well as - if we should choose a sexual interpretation - a reference to Lewis Carroll himself and his deep interest, I would not like to call it an obsession, with his - in the true sense of the word - girl friend. This example shows how restricting a single interpretation of the phenomenon of food and eating in literature might prove. I would therefore prefer a more multifacetted approach to the question of phenomena such as food and eating concentrating on the different voices of author, narrator and the different characters in the text as well as the noise to be discerned by an analysis of the historical period and social background of both the author in question and that of the setting he or she has chosen for the narrative presented. The concept and terminology used here are in analogy to the stochastic resonance51, a phenomenon observed in physics, biology and engineering by which random background fluctuations - noise - can amplify weak signals - voices. My approach is not meant to be simply eclectic, but constitutes an attempt at presenting a fuller and more rounded picture of the literary text under consideration. The need for such an approach becomes apparent when studying the often rather limited or better limiting results of studies that restrict their interest to a single theoretical dogma. Helpful and necessary as these studies definitely are, they cannot and, as I believe are not supposed to, give us an answer to all the aspects of a certain feature in literature and are therefore in danger of laying too much stress on the phenomena perceived in a literary text and are thus prone to overinterpretation. Nirad C. Chaudhuri in a study on Kipling's Kim once said No great writer ever looks for a subject, collects details for it, or lays on local colour. He has to experience the particular and the local colour before he has even a feel of the subject. So he builds up his books by an elimination of all details besides those which will force their way in, and not by sprinkling them on the theme from his notebook.

This statement must, of course, be qualified, insofar as this sprinkling on is as necessary as icing on a cake. Therefore the study of food in literature is bound to prove not only interesting but also a worthwhile subject for research. By comparing reality or rather imagined reality with its fictional representation, we can arrive at a deeper understanding of the text in question and the narrative structures along which it was created.

51

favourably compares Fisher's style with that of Colette. His references to cookery as an art is turned into an artistic statement which may have been influenced by Fisher's work in "Grub First, Then Ethics - Brecht (For Margaret Gardiner)" from 1958. See Frank Moss and Kurt Wiesenfeld "The Benefits of Background Noise", Scientific American 273, 2 (August 1995), 50-3.

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Eliza Smith, The Compleat Housewife (1758), repr. London: Studio Editions, 1994; p. 116: To make English Katchup. Take a wide-mouth'd bottle, put therein a pint of the best white wine vinegar, putting in ten or twelve cloves of eschalot peeled and just bruised; then take a quarter of a pint of the best langoon white wine, boil it a little, and put to it twelve or fourteen anchovies washed and shred, and dissolve them in the wine, and when cold, put them in the bottle; then take a quarter of a pint more of white wine, and put in mace, ginger sliced, a few cloves, a spoonful of whole pepper just bruised, and let them boil all a little; when near cold, slice in almost a whole nutmeg, and some lemon peel, and likewise put in two or three spoonfuls of horseradish; then stop it close, and for a week shake it once or twice a day; then use it; it is good to put into fish sauce, or any savoury dish of meat; you may add to it the clear liquor that comes of mushrooms. The reference to mushrooms points to the further development of this condiment. In her Modern Cookery for Private Families originally printed in 1845 Eliza Acton only has recipes for mushroom catsup (repr. with an introduction by Elizabeth Ray, Lewes: Southover Press, 1993; pp.139-41). II Tobias Smollett, Travels through France and Italy, ed. by Frank Felsenstein, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979; Letter XXXIX, p.326 annotation to "Tunny of Antibes": The famous pickle garum was made from the thynnus or tunny as well as from the scomber, but that from the scomber was counted the most delicate. Commentators, however, are not agreed about the scomber or scombrus. Some suppose it was the herring or sprat, others believe it was the mackerel; after all, perhaps it was the anchovy, which I do not find distinguished by any other Latin name: for, the encrasicolus is a Greek appellation altogether generical. Those who would be further informed about the garum and the scomber, may consult Caelius Apicius de re coquinaria, cum notis variorum. III Maggie Black, The Medieval Cookbook, London: British Museum Press, 1992; p. 118-9: A Grete Pye Grete pyes. Take faire yonge beef, And suet of a fatte beste, of of Motton, and hak all this on a borde small; and caste therto pouder of peper and salt; and whan it is small hewen, put hit in a bolle, And medie hem well; then make a faire larg Cofyn, and couche som of this stuffur in. Then take Capons, Hennes, Mallardes, Connynges, and parboile hem clene; take wodekokkes, teles, grete briddes, and plom hem in a boiling pot; And then couche al this fowle in the Coffyn, And put in euerych of hem a quantité of pouder of peper and salt. Then take mary, harde yolkes of egges, Dates cutte in ij peces, reisons of coraunce, prunes, hole clowes, hole maces, Canell and saffron. But first, whan thoug hast cowched all thi foule, ley the remnaunt of thyne other stuflur of beef a-bought hem, as thou thenkest goode; and then strawe on hem this: dates, mary, and reysons, &c. And then close thi Coffyn with a lydde of the same paast, And putte hit in the oven, And late hit bake ynough; but be ware, or thou close hit, that there come no saffron nygh the brinkes there-of, for then hit wol neuer close.

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Eliza Smith, The Compleat Housewife (1758), repr. London: Studio Editions, 1994; p. 148 (for another recipe cf. p.35). A Battalia Pye, or Bride Pye. Take young chickens as big as black-birds, quails, young partridges, larks, and squabpidgeons, truss them, and put them in your pye; then have ox-palates boiled, blanched, and cut in pieces, lamb-stones, sweet-breads, cut in halves or quarters, cocks-combs blanched, a quart of oysters dipt in eggs, and dredged over with grated bread and marrow: sheeps-tongues boiled, peeled, and cut in slices; season all with salt, pepper, cloves, mace, and nutmegs, beaten and mix'd together; put butter at the bottom of the pye, and place the rest in with the yolks of hard eggs, knots of eggs, forc'd-meat balls; cover all with butter, and close up the pye; put in five or six spoonfuls of water when it goes into the oven, and when it is drawn pour it out and put in gravy. V [Apicius], Das Kochbuch der Römer: Rezepte aus der 'Kochkunst' des Apicius, hrsg. und übersetzt von Elisabeth Alfoldi-Rosenbaum, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1970,111994; pp.48-9. PATINA ä la APICIUS (Patina Apicianam) Man nimmt in Stücke geschnittenes gekochtes Schweineeuter, entgräteten Fisch, Hühnerfleisch, Feigenfresser oder gekochte Brust von Turteltauben und was man sonst noch an guten Dingen im Hause hat. Alle diese Zutaten mit Ausnahme der Feigenfresser werden sorgfältig gehackt. Dann verrühre man rohe Eier mit Öl. Daneben stampft man im Mörser Pfeffer und Liebstöckel unter Zugießen von liquamen [= gr. garum], Wein und passum [a special kind of apparently very sweet wine used for cooking], erhitzt diese Mischung in einem Topf und dickt sie mit amulum [something used like cornflour] an. Zuvor gibt man alle oben genannten gehackten Zutaten hinein und bringt sie zum Kochen. Wenn die Mischung gar ist, nimmt man sie mitsamt der Sauce vom Feuer und gibt sie schichtweise, vermischt mit Pinienkernen und Pfefferkörnern, in eine Kasserolle, und zwar in folgender Art: unter jede Schicht legt man als Grundlage einen flachen ölfladen und auf jeden gibt man einen Schöpflöffel voll von der Fleischmischung. Zuletzt legt man einen Ölfladen auf, den man mit einem Rohrstengel durchlöchert hat. Bestreue das Ganze mit Pfeffer. Bevor man aber das gehackte Fleisch mit der Sauce in den Topf gibt, muß man es mit den Eiern binden. VI Kurath/Kuhn's Middle English Dictionary: For flaunes. Take new chese and grynde hit fayre, In mortar with egges ... Put hit in cofyns ... And bake it forthe. "II: Diuersa Servicia", recipe 86, p.78 in Curye on Inglysch: English Culinary Manuscripts of the Fourteenth Century, Early English Text Society; S.S.8, ed. by Constance B. Hieatt and Sharon Butler, London: Oxford University Press, 1985: For to make Flownys in Lente. Tak good Flowr and mak a Past and tak god mylk of Almandys and flowr of rys other amydoun and boyle hem togedere .. wan yt is boylid thykke, take yt up and ley yt on a feyre bord so that yt be cold; and wan the Cofyns ben makyd, tak a party of and do upon the coffyns and kerf hem in Schiveris ... and do yt to bake.

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Sir Walter Scott, St. Ronan's Well, London: Black, 1897 (Victoria Edition of the Waverley Novels; Vol. XVII), p.435: Nay, Meg Dods has produced herself of late from obscurity as authoress of a work on cookery, of which, in justice to a lady who makes so distinguished a figure as this excellent dame, we insert the titlepage: 'The Cook and Housewife's Manual: A Practical System of Modern Domestic Cookery and Household Management. Cooke, see all your sawces He sharp and poynant in the palate, that they may Commend you: look to your roast and baked meats handsomely, And what new kickshaws and delicate made things. BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.

By Mistress Margaret Dods [Mrs. Christian Isobel Johnstone], of the Cleikum Inn, St. Ronan's [Edinburgh, 1826].' Though it is rather unconnected with our immediate subject, we cannot help adding, that Mrs. Dods has preserved the recipes of certain excellent old dishes which we would be loth should fall into oblivion in our day; and in bearing this testimony, we protest that we are no way biassed by the receipt of two bottles of excellent sauce for cold meat, which were sent to us by the said Mrs. Dods, as a mark of her respect and regard, for which we return her our unfeigned thanks, having found them capital.

Hans-Jürgen Weckermann (Münster)

Being True to the Story: Myth, Identity, and Art in Momaday's The Ancient Child

In the preface to In the Presence of the Sun, a collection of his stories and poems, N. Scott Momaday says about the vital importance of language to his life and to his own conception of himself: "In a sense, a real sense, my life has been composed of words. [...] Words inform the element in which I live my daily life" (1992: xviii). At first glance this may not seem a surprising statement, coming as it does from somebody who has devoted the greater part of his career thus far to the writing of poems, stories, and novels and, therefore, can be expected to be professionally preoccupied with language. However, beyond such an obvious reference level Momaday's comment points to a fundamental assumption underlying his view of the linguistic medium which forms the material basis of his art. To him, language creates existence; naming a thing means conferring being to it; or, as he says in The Way to Rainy Mountain. "A word has power in and of itself. It comes from nothing into sound and meaning; it gives origin to all things" (1969: 33). Given this assumption, language turns out to be as vital to human existence as air, literally becoming the element in which our daily lives are lived, since without the lifegiving breath of words neither a thing nor a person can be perceived or, more precisely, be said to exist. In this basic and radical sense, then, "we are all made of words; [...] our most essential being consists in language" (Momaday 1975: 96).1 In adhering to such a concept of language, Momaday aligns himself with a typically Southwestern, Native-American tradition. Though born on the Kiowa Reservation in Oklahoma, he spent the formative years of his youth in various places of the Southwest, among them the Navajo Reservation and Jemez Pueblo. As he relates in his autobiography The Names, he truly came into his own during the period he lived in Arizona and New Mexico, finding "an old home of the spirit" in the sacred places and rituals of the Navajo and experiencing at Jemez "a climate of the mind in which we, my parents and I, realized ourselves, understood who we were, not perfectly, it may be, but well enough" (1976: 120, 152). An essential aspect of the identity that Momaday began to conceive for himself concerns the function of language and his own relation to it. According to Pueblo and Navajo mythology, the world was thought into being. Leslie Marmon Silko draws on this belief when she has her novel Ceremony open with a song in which Ts'its'tsi'nako, Spider Woman or Thought-Woman, "is sitting in her room / and whatever she thinks about / appears" (1977: l). 2 Similarly, in his essay "The Man 1 2

Cf. also Schubnell 1985: 40-62. For this idea cf. Boas 1925-28:1, 7-8, and Handbook 1983: 503-504, 572-574.

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Made of Words," Momaday is able to call the old Kiowa woman Ko-sahn into being by a creative act of the imagination and a concomitant process of naming that compels her to step out of and recede back into the language which is the source of her existence (1975: 98-99). Thinking - imagining - and speech naming things - thus become closely related, complementary aspects of creating and defining reality, with speech an "externalization" or "extension of thought" (Handbook 1983: 574) that is needed for an idea "to be realized completely" (Momaday 1975: 97). Ultimately, this leads to a concept in which, as Gary Witherspoon has said about the Navajo view of the world, "language is not a mirror of reality; reality is a mirror of language" (Handbook 1983: 575). This has important implications for an understanding of Native-American myth, ritual, and storytelling in general. In his study of Navajo prayer acts, Sam D. Gill has shown that the prayers spoken in Navajo healing ceremonies must be seen as '"performative utterances', that is, as groups of words the utterance of which is actually the doing of an action" (1977/78: 143). By virtue of this quality they, in fact, create the condition they describe, making the one-sung-over, the patient, over into the image of the mythical hero/ine in whose adventures the ceremony originates, and in the process of this re-creation restoring the afflicted person to health. Since language evokes into reality the things and persons it names, the word and the object designated by it are related to each other somewhat like inward force and outward manifestation of the same phenomenon. Thus, words can stand for and, by virtue of their creative energy, actually be what they signify; as Momaday himself has said with respect to the story of the arrowmaker, his favorite illustration of the power of language and the imagination, "there is no difference between the telling and that which is told" (1975: 108; also 1988: 8-9, 12).3 This observation about language squares with other characteristics of NativeAmerican ceremonialism, notably the notion that ceremonies are not so much renditions as re-occurrences of mythic events. According to Mircea Eliade [e]very ritual has the character of happening now, at this very moment. The time of the event that the ritual commemorates or re-enacts is made present, "re-presented" so to speak, however far back it may have been in ordinary reckoning. (Eliade 1958: 392)"

This means that what happens in the course of a ceremony is the ritual reenactment of the events that led to the establishment of the ceremony in question; its protagonist not only represents, he literally embodies a mythical personage; therefore, what the participants are witnessing is the original, mythical story itself unfolding anew and rendered a contemporary event in each ritual re-creation. Something very similar goes on during the process of storytelling. Within the oral tradition, which for its continuity has to rely absolutely on the power of language to preserve through re-creation the memories essential to the selfconception of the community, an act of retelling involves a process of representation: the mythical or historical past is propelled into the presence of the 3 4

Cf. also Hogan 1983, esp. 175-176. Cf. also Eliade 1959: 68-72, 85-91 and Allen 1986: 117, 147.

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listeners so that, in conflating the different time levels of myth and contemporary actuality, it can be transformed into an integral part of their present experience. That is why in the "Prologue" to The Way to Rainy Mountain Momaday can claim that "[t]he journey herein recalled continues to be made anew each time the miracle comes to mind" (1969: 4); the same idea also underlies his imaginative retelling of the myth of the ancient child in the novel of that title. What is more, together with the story, as Momaday explained in an interview, the storyteller also creates his listener and him/herself anew (Givens 1985: 81).' Storytelling, then, can be seen as a way of conceiving one's own identity, similar to the process in healing ceremonies as a result of which the one-sung-over is restored to wholeness and thus re-created as a new being, or just as, in "The Man Made of Words," the arrowmaker achieves "consummate being" by "imagining] himself, whole and vital," in language (Momaday 1975: 109; also 1988: 13).6 However, storytelling is necessarily a communal activity, presupposing for its efficacy not only the interplay of narrator and listener but just as much the common reference system of a shared language, that is, shared assumptions and traditions. For lack of such a common reference system the arrowmaker's enemy in that story does not acquire a name, an identity, life; even the arrowmaker himself will survive only as long as there is a tradition to commemorate his being in language. Another story about a little boy in a Piegan camp teaches the same lesson: the boy babbles something to the tribe members in an unintelligible language and disappears again without having acquired a name, a recognizable identity, for them so that afterwards his existence can be denied by explaining his short visit as that of a bear. As the story suggests, achieving identity via language or obtaining a name in the context of a story depends on being perceived by others, on a communal framework such as the oral tradition provides where language confers meaning and one's being is preserved in a story.7 In this sense Set, the artist-protagonist of Momaday's The Ancient Child, may be regarded as a person who is looking for the proper medium in which he will be able to realize himself completely, or as a character in search of a story in which his name may acquire full meaning. The text in which his life is inscribed is the Kiowa origin myth of Tsoai or Devil's Tower which recounts how, when playing with his sisters, a little boy was transformed into a bear while the tree by means of which his sisters escaped into the sky became Tsoai, rock-tree. 8 Fragments of this story punctuate the description of Set's life in the novel, much in the manner that various myths and ceremonies are interwoven with Tayo's individual history in Silko's 5 6 7

8

Cf. also Momaday 1975: 104 and 1988: 11. Cf. Schubnell 1985: 58-59. For the story of the boy in the Piegan camp see Momaday 1992: 29 and especially 1990: 118122, 266. Momaday comments on it in Woodard 1989: 88-89. Subsequent references to The Ancient Child will be cited parenthetically in the text. Since this story furnishes the mythical background of Momaday's own Indian name, Tsoaitalee (cf. Momaday 1976: 1), he has incorporated it in virtually all of his writings. See Momaday 1968: 131, 1969: 8, 1976: 55, 1990: Prologue. Variants of it are recorded in Parsons 1929: 9-11 and Boyd 1981-83:1, 10-11 and II, 88-93.

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Ceremony. That way, a close connection is established from the very beginning between the myth of the ancient bear-child and Set's personal destiny, a connection whose implications can be perceived only vaguely and dimly at the outset but become ever more sharply defined as the parallel lines converge. Set himself is totally unaware of his being involved in the ancient myth since, literally and symbolically orphaned, he remembers scarcely anything of his Kiowa background and in the course of a successful career as a painter has increasingly compromised his artistic integrity by accommodation to the demands of white society (36-38). As a result, he is "in danger of losing his soul" (36) or, as a perturbing dream suggests to him: "I didn't know clearly who or where I was. It seemed that I was trying to find myself, that I had lost my self." (140). The subsequent search for a true self is triggered off by the news that grandmother Kope'mah is dying, a piece of information which makes Set realize how little he knows about his family and his cultural background. During a short visit to the Kiowa Reservation he meets Grey, a girl of mixed Kiowa and Navajo descent, who, because she is a shamanic visionary, already knows that it will be her task "to bring him [sc. Set] to his destiny" (229). As a first step on that road she hands him a bundle with bear medicine when he leaves again to resume his position in white American society. This gift proves to be the catalyst of a wide variety of disturbing and contradictory feelings: it emits a sacred energy that Set experiences as both holy and evil; on account of its bear power it is associated with nature, the earth, and the wilderness but also with wildness, instinctive animality, and unknown mysteries of the unconscious; it sets loose in Set a potential both for (self-)destruction and creative vitality. Above all, however, it serves as an unconscious reminder to Set of his connections with "the past, maybe the remote past." It makes him try "to bring some crucial memory, deeply buried, to the surface of [his] mind" (140). In the context of The Ancient Child, what is implied by this memory, for which Momaday elsewhere likes to use the term "racial memory,"9 is Set's attempt to remember something his father once told him about his name: "It lay on the farthest edge of his memory. He had not yet begun to believe in names" (58). Indeed, Set's name is the clue to his identity. Short for Setmaunt, Walking Bear, it places him in a venerable line of Kiowa warriors and chiefs whose names also bore witness to the bear power animating them (35, 222). Besides, its Anglicized variant, Setman, gives a first hint at the conflicting poles, sei/bear and man, between which Set's life is going to unfold; at the same time it points to the central motif of the transformation which Set is destined to undergo, as, for that matter, does his first name Loki, which links him with the protean god from Germanic mythology. In all these respects, it illustrates the belief attributed to the storyteller Pohd-lohk at the beginning of The Names "thai a man's life proceeds from his name, in the way that a river proceeds from its source" (Momaday 1976: unpaginated, before p. I).10 Apart from asserting once again the power of names to 9 10

Cf. Woodard 1989: 20-22, 52-53 and Schubnell 1985: 52-56. Cf. Schubnell 1985: 49-50, 175-177.

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confer being and identity, this statement also implies the conviction that a name already defines the way in which that being will be realized in the proper manner (cf. 271). In other words, even though Set is not aware of it at first, his name determines the broad outlines of his life, a fact that he has come to realize and accept by the end of the novel when he comments on his impending transformation into a bear with the words: "Yes. I am set" (312). Thus, the task confronting Set is one of self-realization, of realizing what self befits his name, in which way his identity will be expressed most perfectly. In that respect, Set's case is a specific illustration of the general idea on which Momaday's essay "The Man Made of Words" focuses: "We are what we imagine. Our very existence consists in our imagination of ourselves. Our best destiny is to imagine, at least, completely, who and what, and that we are" (1975: 103). Shifting the metaphor, this act of self-imagining may also be described as a process of storytelling, an act of living and, thus, (re-)telling the story that is inextricably connected with one's name or identity. In one of the episodes which Grey includes in her "Strange and True Story of My Life with Billy the Kid" she creates an old cowboy who perfectly illustrates this point: "The old man's real existence was at last invested in his stories; there he lived and not elsewhere. He was nothing so much as the story of himself, the telling of a tale to which flesh was gathered incidentally" (190).11 This remark can serve as a key to the entire Billy the Kid material incorporated in the novel. As Grey - and, through her, Momaday - imagines this legendary Western type, first in her visions and later in her written account of him, he is presented as a man who has conceived a certain idea of himself and devotes his life to living up to that idea. In a very real sense, therefore, Billy creates his being by creating his own legend (cf. 181-182). With his identity realized in the story of himself, his continued existence is ensured; in the very moment of death he lays bare the essence of his being and thus achieves pure self-realization and a mythical timelessness: Now that he is dead he bears upon the vision merely, without resistance. Death displaces him no more than life displaced him; he was always here. (234)12

11

12

The Billy the Kid material which forms Grey's "Strange and True Story" was first published by Momaday in the Santa Fe New Mexican and has now been republished in Momaday 1992: 43-69. Cf. with this version the interspersed poems and stories in Momaday 1990: 163, 175201. See also Woodard 1989: 22-27. The supreme example in the novel of this kind of self-imagining is the historical Kiowa chief Set-angya, Sitting Bear, who, in making a doomed attempt to escape from captivity, managed "to set up his own death" (224).

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As Set discovers and Grey has known all along, the story which defines his being and therefore offers him the best opportunity to invest and preserve himself in an appropriate context of ideas is the myth of the ancient bear-child.13 According to the pattern established by the mythical model Set's life is to be shaped; in order to find his place in an all-encompassing design, "he must be true to the story at all costs. To fail in this would be to lose himself forever. He must be true to the story. He must be true to the story" (216; cf. 248). Set's life, then, can be understood as a modern reenactment of the old myth, just as ceremonies retell mythical stories and by doing so render them contemporary events. Slowly, but inexorably the bear power from the medicine bundle takes possession of him so that more and more he comes to resemble a bear in his appearance, in the way he moves, and in his occasional inarticulateness. In the final scene of the novel his life actually merges with the myth when he assumes the identity of the bear and again chases the mythical sisters up the tree that, in the shape of Tsoai, commemorates this story, which by now has become his story as well.14 Due to the mythical character of Set's experiences the events frequently take on an air of timelessness; they constitute, as the title of one of Set's paintings aptly phrases it, a "Venture Beyond Time," stages in a ritual passage "from time into timelessness" (159). The title of the novel, with its paradoxical juxtaposition of "ancient" and "child," already points to this conflation of different time levels, and right after his "pilgrimage" to his ancestral home Set senses that what he has become involved in is "something that began a long time before" his journey (136). Ritual elements, such as the purging of the self in a sweat lodge ceremony (297298) and in a kind of ritual emesis (276), the importance of running (295-296) familiar, in a slightly different context, from Abel's running in House Made of Dawn, or the ceremonial dance by means of which Set is prepared for his task of mythical proportions (286-288), corroborate the general impression that, particularly in its last phases, Set's life increasingly imitates the pattern of a (healing) ceremony and therefore assumes that quality of timelessness typical of ceremonies and the myths on which they are based (cf. 248-249). Significantly, when at the end Set literally embodies the mythical bear-child, the faces of the girls he is chasing appear to him like masks. This fact leaves no doubt about the timeless, ceremonial nature of what is happening, for during an earlier visit to a Navajo ceremonial dance the infusion of mythical timelessness into the historical present had been indicated in the same way: "the dancers were invisible behind the masks, and the gods were visible in them. The gods were real and they had come from another world. They were the shapes of immortality" (304).15 Thus, in 13

14

15

Cf. Momaday 1990: 217 and Momaday's comment (1975: 104) that storytelling is a process "in which man invests and preserves himself in the context of ideas." Cf. Momaday's comment in Weiler (1988: 124): "The book I'm writing now lsc. The Ancient Child] is itself a legend, not only a kind of investigation of the legend-making process, but is itself the legend-making process." Cf. also Momaday 1990: 176. For the idea that the holy beings are present in their masked impersonators see Handbook 1983: 546, 764-771, 776.

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reenacting the myth of the ancient child, Set finally realizes his true identity, achieving - as his grandmother Kope'mah did when she, too, was on the verge of death - "a state utterly without distraction, in which time had no function," and therefore a state in which he can truly become his own being (31). 16 This does not mean, however, that the moment when mythical story and individual history merge is a moment of unqualified triumph. Rather, it appears a tragic experience which, while making fulfillment possible in one area, necessarily requires renunciation in another. Thus, Set's reenactment of the ancient myth is, of course, the final step in, and the supreme expression of, his return to his NativeAmerican roots. For him, finding a place in the story becomes a symbol of finding a meaningful place within his Native-American culture. In this context he is able to heal his former, inauthentic life, which was characterized by "an incomplete idea of himself' (52), and to achieve a sense of wholeness that puts him in perfect harmony with his environment. 17 On the other hand, his new concern with imagining and expressing himself truly also makes him self-centered, not only in the sense that now, for the first time, he possesses a steady center to which his self is firmly attached as to an anchor, but also in the sense that increasingly he becomes a prisoner within the walls of his own self (236). That is why throughout the novel and even in the moment of transformation the fate awaiting him is described as a loss of contact, "an act of renunciation," "a loneliness like death" (229, 314; cf. also 135). Depending on the perspective one chooses it may be said that Set actually creates himself by conceiving of his role for the first time in its proper terms; seen from a different angle, the novel may also be said to end with his annihilation as a person and a human being. What, on one level, can be considered as a regenerating return to the elemental simplicity of a child - which is why Set experiences his visit to the Kiowa Reservation as "his genesis" causing him to look for "the child he once was" (64) - can, on another level, be interpreted as a regression to the wild, untameable, potentially destructive animality of a bear. In contrast to his initial compromises with white civilization Set's bear status, it is true, also connotes his reawakened perception of natural things, in fact, his immersion in the natural order, as is made clear by the enlarged range of his sharpened senses after the metamorphosis: ... he heard things he had never heard before, separately, distinctly, with nearly absolute definition. [...] And the thin air smarted in his nostrils. He could smell a thousand things at once and perceive them individually. He could smell the barks of trees and the rot of roots and the fragrances of grass and wildflowers. (313; cf. Givens 1985: 82)

Yet simultaneously he loses his individuality and, what is more, his humanity since as a bear he becomes inarticulate, lapsing back from the - in Momaday's universe 16

17

Cf. Eliade 1958: 430: "Anyone who performs any rite transcends profane time and space; similarly, anyone who 'imitates' a mythological model or even ritually assists at the retelling of a myth (taking part in it), is taken out of profane "becoming1, and returns to the Great Time." In other words, his condition is transformed from one of becoming to one of being. For the idea that only through the imitation of mythic precedents is true humanity achieved, cf. Eliade 1959: 99-104.

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all-important, life-saving level of speech to "some profound and primitive helplessness" (73). Ultimately, Set's paradoxical achievement can perhaps best be compared to the "cold pastoral" of Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn." With that poem - and, for that matter, with Faulkner's story "The Bear," which, like Momaday's novel, alludes to Keats in its exploration of the mythic dimensions of a bear - it shares the unresolved tension between a state of mythic or ideal permanence in which time and death are overcome, and a state of cold, irredeemable isolation that can look very much like death.18 The parallel to Keats's poem suggests that by imagining himself as the ancient child Set has transformed his own life into art. On one level, this is true because all self-imagining is a creative and, to that extent, artistic activity. As Momaday says in "The Man Made of Words": The state of human being is an idea, an idea which man has of himself. Only when he is embodied in an idea, and the idea is realized in language, can man take possession of himself. In our particular frame of reference, this is to say that man achieves the fullest realization of his humanity in such an art and product of the imagination as literature - and here I use the term "literature" in its broadest sense. (1975: 104)

Although Set is a painter and not a writer, this statement applies to him as well. Imagining himself proves to be the fullest realization of his artistic talent; no wonder that many of his best pictures are self-portraits, and that his painting improves in quality - if not in terms of commercial success - after Grey's medicine bundle has started him on the road to true self-realization. Just as for Set such selfrealization consists in conforming to - and, thus, becoming - the destiny that is cut out for him in his name, true art, too, is defined in the novel as "affirmation" (55). Foremost among the lessons of his art instructor Set recalls the words: You begin with the fifth line, remember that. You have to be always aware of the boundaries of the plane, and you have to make use of them; they define your limits [....] you have to proceed from what is already there - defined space, a plane. [And, with reference to a model:] then you can - maybe - conform your hand to your eye in such a way as to affirm her being on the picture plane. You can - maybe - describe a shadow that is worthy of the substance. (55)

The process described here exactly outlines the way in which Set's life takes shape within the structure of the novel. From Book I, entitled "Planes" - which defines the space within which the work of art is going to unfold - to Books II and III, called "Lines" and "Shapes" respectively - where the drawing receives more distinct outlines and gradually gains shape - to Book IV, "Shadows" - where a pictorial rendition is achieved that gives a true spiritual image of the physical 18

This idea lies at the core of the poem on the death of Billy the Kid in Momaday 1990: 227. The above quote from the "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is taken from Allott 1970: 537. The famous line "Beauty is truth, truth beauty" from Keats's poem is alluded to in Momaday 1990: 269. For Faulkner's use of Keats in "The Bear" see, e. g., Gelfant 1969, Sams 1976, Ford 1981. The bear as a symbol of death and rebirth is discussed in Shepard/Sanders 1985: 56-57, 68-71.

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substance portrayed19 - the novel describes Set's story in terms of the construction of his life as a work of art. For that reason Grey, his guide and mentor during this task, can conceive of her own role as that of a traditional Native-American artist who weaves a blanket containing Set's story, with Set himself "in the center of her design" (248), or she can envisage Set's life as a kind of sandpainting when she "draw[s] lines on the red earth, describing where she and her man must go" (260). The task is performed, and the work of art completed, when Set has accepted the burden of his name and confirmed his identity by reenacting the myth of the bearchild. At this point, the work of art that is Set's life has attained its full power of affirmation. At the same time, by finding his place in the story Set has also found his proper place in the cosmic design of which his life is a part.20 When during his transformation into the bear he pronounces the words "I am set" (312), he thereby not only affirms his bear identity, but also indicates that finally he has found the place where he belongs. Though not without its tragic aspects, the closing scene of the novel shows Set in perfect rapport with his environment, literally a part of the natural order. By acting properly the part assigned to him in the grand design, he has himself become both whole and beautiful again and has contributed to the beauty and harmony of the universe. He has thus affirmed the central Navajo concept of hozho, which, though difficult to capture in all its nuances, means a state of beauty and happiness in harmony with the entire cosmos (Reichard 2 1963: 45-47; Handbook 1983: 572-573). In this sense, too, his life has become a work of art, an act of affirmation. All of this sheds significant light on Momaday's idea of himself as a writer and artist. The autobiographical background to certain aspects of Set's characterization cannot be overlooked; for instance, Momaday, like Set, has won acclaim as a painter and, what is more important, in a number of places he has stressed his own connection with the myth of the bear-child via his Indian name Tsoai-talee, rocktree boy, the same name that is also applied to Set at one point in the novel (291).21 To the extent, therefore, that Set can be regarded as a projection of certain aspects of the author's image of himself, Set's act of self-imagining describes Momaday's own endeavor to form and express a true conception of himself. In accordance with his statement that "man achieves the fullest realization of his humanity in such an art and product of the imagination as literature," Momaday's novel represents his own attempt at perfect self-realization. This also explains why so much of Momaday's art is autobiographical in nature; to him, embodying oneself in language is, by implication, an act of self-creation. Set discovers that his self is best expressed through the medium of the ancient myth in which his identity is embedded; in a similar manner, Momaday seeks true self-expression in the medium of literature by telling Set's story. In a sense, then, Momaday is both the performer 19

20 21

For the association of shadow with spirit, and of substance with physicality, cf. Momaday 1990: 247. Cf. Momaday 1990: 63, 271, 296 and Allen 1986: 117. For Momaday's own connection with the myth of Tsoai see Momaday 1976: 55-57; Givens 1985: 82-83; Woodard 1989: 13-18.

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and the patient of the "ceremony" which Grey arranges for Set in the novel.22 In other words, there is no difference between the teller and the subject of the story; symbolically and literally, Set's life has been transformed into a work of art.23 As far as the relation between the creative acts of writing and self-conception, between authorship and authoring oneself, is concerned, what Momaday says in the novel about Grey telling "The Strange and True Story of My Life with Billy the Kid" applies just as much to himself telling Grey's story: ... once in a while she would write something that pleased her, that seemed very close to what she wanted, and that satisfaction was like no other that she knew. It was the satisfaction of having done what it was in her to do, of having reached the best that was in her, of having been true to her purpose, to herself. (186)

This parallel points to the fact that, no less than Set, the medicine-woman Grey can be understood as a projection of facets of Momaday's self-image. Like Momaday, she is of mixed Indian descent - in her case, of Kiowa and Navajo ancestry; because of her fascination with the legend of Billy the Kid she imagines episodes from his life, first in dream visions and later on in a series of poetic vignettes that reproduce almost verbatim Momaday's own treatment of that subject; above all, however, as a shamanic visionary she is an imaginer even before she also becomes an author. Like the author-artist, she is endowed with the capacity to conceive her own being in a truly imaginative act: "To dream - that was at the center of life, hers anyway. [...] She was becoming a medicine woman because it was in her to do so; it was her purpose, her reason for being; she dreamed it" (173). Unlike Set, Grey is firmly rooted in her Native-American background. From the beginning she has never any doubts as to "who she was and [...] what her purpose was" (228). Especially when riding a horse, she looks the perfect embodiment of the Kiowa horse culture, presenting, in the image of the centaur, another illustration of the fusion of human being and animal that also underlies Set's transformation into a bear.24 However, her firm hold on Native-American traditions does not prevent her from embracing elements of Western culture whenever she finds them of any help. Thus, she has read the Bible, Homer, Shakespeare, and Emily Dickinson as well as cowboy authors like Will James and Walter Noble Burns (17); on her trip to the Navajo Reservation she loads her pick-up truck with ceremonial paraphernalia, but also with an ice chest containing Coca-Cola and Earl Grey and Red Zinger tea bags. In her capacity as a shaman she appears to Set as "an intermediary, a medium" that crosses the boundaries between worlds (102). As a person who unites in herself "two kinds of American Indian, [...] with no doubt 22

23

24

Cf. Linda Hogan's comment (1983: 169) that "[t]he author, like the oral poet/singer, is 'he who puts together' a disconnected life through a step-by-step process of visualization." Cf. the comment on the self-reflective nature of art in Momaday 1990: 132 and the old cowboy who is "nothing so much as the story of himself' (190). For the centaur image, with its unity of horse and rider, as a symbol of man's harmony with nature see Momaday 1990: 12, 25-28, 160-161, 164-169 (incorporating a passage from Momaday 1976: 130-131), 278-281, 285-287. Momaday comments on Kiowa culture as a horse or centaur culture in Momaday 1964: 35-36; 1969: 61, 70-71; 1976: 28, 50, 155.

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not-too-distant infusions of Mexican and French Canadian and God knows what Scotch-Irish-English blood," she "know[s] something about the world from at least two remarkable and valid points of view" (269). Therefore, she - like Momaday, about whom much the same could be said25 - is in an ideal position to act as a mediator between different worlds and cultures. Significantly, as Patricia Riley has observed in an article on "The Mixed Blood Writer as Interpreter and Mythmaker," the Lakota word for mixed blood, iyeska, "embodies the concept of one who not only interprets between the red and white worlds, but between the world of spirits and of human beings as well" (1992: 231). This definition aptly encompasses both Grey's "hybrid vigor" (273) and her shamanic power. At the same time it can serve as a fitting description of Momaday's own intermediary position as a NativeAmerican who has spent the greater part of his life in white American society, as a man who, through his bear power, feels closely connected with the animal world,26 and as a writer who weaves the Western cowboy legend of Billy the Kid and the Kiowa myth of the ancient child into mutually illuminating stories of true selfrealization and the myth-making process.27 In a fashion that combines the properties of shaman and storyteller, he is, in Linda Hogan's words, the man "who puts together," who, by means of the creative power of language and the imagination, is able to blend the worlds of physical substances and spirits and to infuse contemporary reality with the timelessness of myth.

25

26

27

Cf. Woodard 1989: 36 and Momaday 1976: 60. In a non-racial context Momaday says about himself as a boy that he "moved more easily across the dividing line, back and forth, than did most of my fellows" (1976: 88). Cf. the remark in Shepard/Sanders (1985: xviii) on the bear as "a guide to the movement between worlds." For other examples of Momaday's use of Western traditions see, e. g., Momaday 1990: 18 (the Callisto myth), 74-75 (allusion to beowulj), 147 (allusion to a watercolor by Emil Nolde), 161 (allusions to Kafka). Western literary influences are discussed in Schubnell 1985: 44-47, 5152, 60-62. For Momaday's own, universalist view of his writing see King 1983: 68 and Weiler 1988: 118.

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References Allen, Paula Gunn (1986). The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions. Boston: Beacon. Allott, Miriam, ed. (1970). The Poems of John Keats. London: Longman. Boas, Franz (1925-28). Keresan Texts. 2 vols. New York: American Ethnological Society. Boyd, Maurice (1981-83). Kiowa Voices. 2 vols. Fort Worth: Texas Christian UP. Eliade, Mircea (1958). Patterns in Comparative Religion. London: Sheed and Ward. - (1959). The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. Trans. Willard R. Trask. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Ford, Daniel G. (1981). "Mad Pursuit in Go Down, Moses." College Literature 8:2, 115-126. Gelfant, Blanche H. (1969). "Faulkner and Keats: The Ideality of Art in 'The Bear'." Southern Literary Journal 2:1, 43-65. Gill, Sam D. (1977/78). "Prayer as Person: The Performative Force in Navajo Prayer Acts." History of Religions 17, 143-157. Givens, Bettye (1985). "A MELUS Interview: N. Scott Momaday - A Slant of Light." MELUS 12:1,79-87. Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 10: Southwest (1983). Ed. Alfonso Ortiz. Washington: Smithsonian Institution. Hogan, Linda (1983). "Who Puts Together." In Paula Gunn Allen, ed. Studies in American Indian Literature: Critical Essays and Course Designs. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 169-177. King, Tom (1983). "A MELUS Interview: N. Scott Momaday - Literature and the Native Writer." MELUS 10:4, 66-72. Momaday, N. Scott (1964). "The Morality of Indian Hating." Ramparts 3, 29-40. - (1968). House Made.of Dawn. New York: Harper & Row. - (1969). The Way to Rainy Mountain. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P. - (1975). "The Man Made of Words." In Abraham Chapman, ed. Literature of the American Indians: Views and Interpretations. New York: New American Library, 96-110. - (1976). The Names: A Memoir. New York: Harper & Row. - (1988). "The Native Voice." In Emory Elliott, ed. Columbia Literary History of the United States. New York: Columbia UP, 5-15. - (1990). The Ancient Child. [1989] New York: Harper Perennial. - (1992). In the Presence of the Sun: Stories and Poems. New York: St. Martin's. Parsons, Elsie Clews (1929). Kiowa Tales. New York: American Folk-Lore Society. Reichard, Gladys A. (21963). Navaho Religion: A Study of Symbolism. [1950] Princeton: Princeton UP. Riley, Patricia (1992). "The Mixed Blood Writer as Interpreter and Mythmaker." In Joseph Trimmer and Tilly Warnock, eds. Understanding Others: Cultural and Cross-Cultural Studies and the Teaching of Literature. Urbana, 111.: National Council of Teachers of English, 230-242. Sams, Larry Marshall (1976). "Isaac McCaslin and Keats's 'Ode on a Grecian Urn'." Southern Review 12, 632-639. Schubnell, Matthias (1985). N. Scott Momaday: The Cultural and Literary Background. Norman: U of Oklahoma P. Shepard, Paul, and Barry Sanders (1985). The Sacred Paw: The Bear in Nature, Myth, and Literature. New York: Viking. Silko, Leslie Marmon (1977). Ceremony. New York: Viking. Weiler, Dagmar (1988). "N. Scott Momaday: Storyteller." Journal of Ethnic Studies 16:1, 118126.

Woodard, Charles (1989). Ancestral Voice: Conversations with N. Scott Momaday. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P.