Enlightenment in Ruins: The Geographies of Oliver Goldsmith (Transits: Literature, Thought & Culture, 1650--1850) - Hardcover

Griffin, Michael

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1611485053 ISBN 13: 9781611485059

Publisher: Bucknell University Press, 2013

Synopsis

Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774) moved between the genres and geographies of enlightenment writing with considerable dexterity. As a consequence, he has been characterized in wildly various ways by critical posterity. He has been a passive purveyor of enlightenment thought, a hackish translator and a purveyor of the French enlightenment for an English audience, or an only nominally Irish author slavishly consolidating facetious notions of national character. He is in prose an ideological lackey, or he is a subtle ironist; in poetry, he is a weak generic pastoralist or an engaged social critic. His career is as complex, and as sometimes as contradictory, as the intellectual currents across which he wrote. For all that, there is a consistent set of ideas operating in Goldsmith's oeuvre which can be isolated and addressed as a manifestation of his Irishness. Goldsmith was opposed to the new imperialism, and thought contemporary English notions of liberty, over-extended and corrupted in Ireland and beyond, pernicious. This study, thus, places Goldsmith in two contexts which are problematically related to each other. One context is that of the intellectual and political culture in which he worked as a professional author living in London. The other is that of his nationality and his as yet unstudied Jacobite politics. This study reveals a body of work that is compellingly marked by tensions and transits between Irishness and Englishness, between poetic and professional imperatives, between cultural and scientific spheres.

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Review:

Griffin (18th-century and Irish studies, Univ. of Limerick) offers a fresh look at the career of Oliver Goldsmith. Departing from the view that Goldsmith's dabbling in varied themes and genres renders his canon a 'sentimental foil to Swift, ' Griffin presents Goldsmith as representing complex political strands rooted in his Irish sympathies. This critical stance allows readers to appreciate the tensions between Enlightenment contexts and Jacobite politics. The study consists of four essays. The first chapters deal with Goldsmith's survey of human nature and examine contemporary theories. The second section concerns political landscapes and deals specifically with Irish themes and concerns. In the final chapter, Griffin's interpretation of 'The Deserted Village' gathers the considerations of the previous chapters and situates the poetic critique in an Irish context. This volume, part of Bucknell's 'Transits' series, devoted to 18th-century studies, offers a vital contribution toward understanding the work of an often underappreciated author. The extensive notes and bibliography support further study of Oliver Goldsmith by specialists in Irish and 18th-century literature. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.--CHOICE

Goldsmith might have something to tell us about what Michael Griffin in this very welcome book calls 'the destructive negligence of the rich'. . . .This book is a model of historically informed literary analysis, beautifully written and assiduously researched.--Times Literary Supplement

Enlightenment in Ruins offers a critical revaluation of Oliver Goldsmith's contributions to enlightenment thought, focusing particularly on elements that align with Irish strains produced by contemporaries such as Edmund Burke. Griffin asserts that Goldsmith has been too easily dismissed as a mawkish purveyor of simplistic nostalgia, when his imaginative works question cultural relations, parody fascination with the exotic, and critique the British imperial project.--Intelligencer

Griffin's new monograph, Enlightenment in Ruins: The Geographies of Oliver Goldsmith, extends this analysis to Goldsmith's entire career and offers a compelling picture of the self contradictions of Enlightenment culture at midcentury.--SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500-1900

About the Author:

Michael Griffin lectures in eighteenth-century and Irish studies at the University of Limerick, where he is Director of the Eighteenth Century Research Group. He has published widely on eighteenth-century studies, utopian satire, and Irish writing in English.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bucknell University Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1611485053
• ISBN 13: 9781611485059
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 226