The Little Professor

This Week's Acquisitions

• Joyce Carol Oates, The Gravedigger's Daughter (Ecco, 2007).  A family emigrates to America in order to evade capture by the Nazis, then tries to start over.
• Penelope Lively, Consequences (Viking, 2007).  Romance from the WWII era onward.
• Richard Flanagan, Death of a River Guide (Atlantic Books, 2004).  Drowning man remembers the twists and turns of his life.
• D. J. Taylor, Kept: A Victorian Mystery (HarperCollins, 2007).  Neo-Victorian mystery about kidnapping, murder--the usual things that happen on country estates.
• Monica Ali, Brick Lane: A Novel (Scribner, 2004).  A young Bangladeshi woman tries to survive London.

Is that a decaying corpse in the closet, or are you just happy to see me?

Chris Mooney and PZ Myers are both irritated by what Mooney calls "the skeptic conversion narrative" in supernatural films.  There is a "rationalist" tradition in Gothic, descended from the work of Ann Radcliffe, in which all of the spectral and gory horrors turn out to have perfectly reasonable explanations--the terrifying corpse in The Mysteries of Udolpho being one of the most notorious examples.  But this tradition has never been very popular; even at the time, readers like Sir Walter Scott complained that it was really much more effective, from a literary standpoint, to have the ghosts et al. be real.  (Scott's The Bride of Lammermoor, which tries to steer a middle ground between the post-Scottish Enlightenment historical novel and the "irrational" Gothic, inadvertently suggests the difficulty of doing both at once.  In a very astute review, the econonomist Nassau W. Senior pointed out that the novel's mental landscape, as it were, was entirely incoherent.)  Skeptic conversion narratives are especially popular in the Victorian Gothic tradition, although it's worth noting that such "conversions" do not necessarily do much good: while converting to the reality of the supernatural may help the skeptic remain alive, as opposed to becoming inconveniently dead, it doesn't necessarily solve the minor problem of having a ghost wandering about your house, killing people as it goes.  J. S. Le Fanu's great "An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street," which is explicitly a skeptic's conversion narrative--"I had never pretended to conceal from poor Tom my superstitious weakness; and he, on the other hand, most unaffectedly ridiculed my tremors. The sceptic was, however, destined to receive a lesson, as you shall hear"--suggests some of the narrative's complexities: the narrator, who is the "superstitious" one, nevertheless is also the character who apparently soldiers on with his medical studies, whereas Tom "preferred the Church, poor fellow, and died early, a sacrifice to contagion, contracted in the noble discharge of his duties."  The reader suspects that there's a connection between Tom's conversion to the supernatural and Tom's entry into the Church ("poor fellow"), but the narrator's own pre-existing "superstitious" leanings do not lean him towards a religious vocation. Indeed, if the narrator has anything in the way of religious sentiment, it's difficult to detect it in this tale. 

Return of bookcase blogging (without the bookcases)

Hooray! A burst of activity! The remaining old bookcases will all have departed by the end of today--either adopted (by an emeritus colleague) or donated (to the Presbyterians--I felt a surge of ecumenical sentiment coming on).  Even as I type, my handyman is sanding the floor in the library; the room should be all pretty by early next week, which is when (looks around, crosses fingers and toes) the new bookcases should arrive.

Unfortunately, also even as I type, there's an oak rolltop desk parked right in front of the bathroom door.  This is not an especially convenient place to stow a rolltop, I must say.  Meanwhile, neither Victoria nor Disraeli seem particularly appreciative of the sander-produced noises, although Vicki is handling the situation with reasonable aplomb.  (Disraeli is ensconced on top of one of the kitchen cabinets, looking glum.) 

Eight meme

I've been tagged.  We begin, as is logical, with the rules.  (I'm going to ignore rule #5.)

The Rules:

• I have to post these rules before I give you the facts.
• Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
• People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
• At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
• Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

1. The first dream I can remember is a nightmare involving myself (lying on a table), my mother (slowly disappearing), and a scary wall-hanging (looking, uh, scary).  I think I had it when I was about a year old.
2. According to my parents, I had a serious go at The Maltese Falcon when I was five years old.  Needless to say, I didn't understand much of it. 
3. Although I stopped collecting Breyer Horses when I was about twenty-two or twenty-three (they became too expensive, and I preferred accumulating books to accumulating horses at that point...), I still own the first one I ever bought, at age eight.
4. I decided I was going to be a professor when I was about seven--thanks to the paternal example--and knew that I was going to specialize in nineteenth-century British literature by the time I was a junior in high school. 
5. During my first two or three years of college, I used my father's hand-me-down KayPro II.  Despite the computer's  supposed "portability," it was so heavy that I had to call for assistance whenever I needed to move it. 
6. I attended kindergarten in Athens, Greece (if I remember correctly, the people who ran the school were English). 
7. Oddly enough, although I went to high school with a Tony-nominated singer/actress, I've never seen or heard  her professional work--I only remember her from school choir performances! 
8. Book #3 will probably be about Benjamin Disraeli. 

Tags: Acephalous, Siris, What Now?, New Kid, Pharyngula, The Salt-Box, Historianess, Blogenspiel.

Over-tolerant

Still sermonizing.  Once I've dispatched Walter Farquhar Hook, who is doing duty as the representative "Tractarian against Roman Catholicism," I'll be moving on to complaints about the culture of excessive toleration in Victorian Protestantism.  Our keywords today are "liberalism" and "liberality":

The Protestant Churches, in their fancied wisdom, gentleness, and liberality, have not only nearly ceased to call the Pope Antichrist and the Man of Sin, but in the doubtfulness of faith engendered by modern disputations, have almost ceased to view any longer Popery in its true scriptural character. Some, in the anticipation of a more open and temporary manifestation of wickedness (and I would not deny that the scriptures bear them out in this) lose sight of that past spiritual, but equally real and predicted, existence, which wickedness has had in Popery, and which appeared to our forefathers clearly to correspond to, and realize the prophecies of the New Testament; a wickedness which had been leavening the visible Church with its sour and hypocritical leaven for above 1200 years. Others again, not I believe in the sureness of scriptural knowledge, but in the uncertain theories of the liberalism of these days, think that Popery will be mended and not destroyed.  [1]

How solemnly does this record of our fathers’ faith condemn the whining affectation of that undistinguishing liberalism which neutralizes in our times the principles of the Reformation! [2]

While the Church of Rome is making unexampled efforts to regain her lost influence in this country, Protestant vigilance, it is to be feared, is fast degenerating into a spurious liberality, which seems ready to throw down every barrier which our forefathers interposed between the respective principles of the two systems. [3]

Anglicans usually argued against "persecuting" Catholics, by which they meant that Catholics should not be executed or subjected to unduly harsh penalties for their beliefs.  (If you were Hugh M'Neile, the second clergyman I quoted above, "should not be executed" did not necessarily extend to priests who heard confession! [4])  But they nevertheless firmly asserted that Catholics were not being persecuted when they were denied full civil rights; in fact, some evangelicals argued that in order to save Britain from God's wrath, the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 needed to be repealed.  Emancipation was corruption, not progress--a political act that fatally tainted the entire country.    

"Liberalism" and "liberality" are not being used very precisely here, but they do signify a misguided tendency towards ecumenical sentiments and an even more misguided tendency towards mincing words.   For clergymen like Bickersteth, there was nothing remotely insulting about calling the Pope the Antichrist; it was, after all, literal truth, easily understood by anyone who paid serious attention to Biblical prophecy.  If Catholics were annoyed or offended by the truth, then so much the worse for them.  As a writer for The Bulwark sweetly put it, "We would not unnecessarily do anything that might be regarded as discourteous, and we would willingly concede to them any designation they choose to assume, provided it was in itself accurately descriptive, and provided it did not countenance any unwarrantable assumption on their part, or any unwarrantable concession on ours. Now, we know of no single or compendious designation for the adherents of the Church of Rome that answers these conditions, except Papist or Romanist" [5].  True charity meant denouncing Catholicism for the greater good of the misguided Catholics, not making Catholics "comfortable." 

[1] Edward Bickersteth, The Present Duties of the Protestant Churches.  A Sermon... (London: G. Norman, 1837), 15.

[2] Hugh M'Neile, The Abominations of Babylon.  A Sermon... (London: For the [Continental] Society, [1826]), 25.

[3] J. Bowen, The Translation and Circulation of the Holy Scriptures, the True Cause of the Reformation: A Sermon..., in Sermons on Some of the Leading Points in Difference Between Protestantism and the Church of Rome, Delivered in the Parish Church of Newcastle-Under-Lyme (Newcastle: W. H. Hyde, 1836), 31.

[4] For M'Neile's (temporary) advocacy of execution for confessors, see Robert J. Klaus, The Pope, the Protestants, and the Irish: Papal Aggression and Anti-Catholicism in Mid-Nineteenth Century England (New York: Garland Publishing, 1987), 229. 

[5] "On the Use of the Names 'Popery' and 'Romanism,' and 'Papist' and 'Romanist,'" The Bulwark 1.1 (August 1851): 24.

Fraudulent

This news reminded me that one unsuccessful Victorian writer, "Osborn W. Trenery Heighway" (a.k.a. Gordon Trenery) was convicted on similar grounds for writing a fake Christian autobiography and peddling it as the real thing.  The publisher was unamused; in fact, Heighway/Trenery's Royal Literary Fund case file contains a letter from said publisher, noting that his wayward author had failed to pay up.  Another one of Heighway/Trenery's productions, Leila Ada, the Jewish Convert, still occasionally rates a mention from both evangelical Protestants and  Messianic Jews.  (Here is Trenery publishing under his own name--or, in any event, what purports to be his own name; in 1908, somebody wondered if Heighway was any relation to his own family.  A friend from graduate school, Larry Zygmunt, first pointed out Heighway's malfeasance to me while I was writing this article, in which Leila Ada--and this anecdote--puts in an appearance.)

This Week's Acquisitions

• David Lodge, Nice Work (Penguin, 1989).  Victorianist meets businessman; satirical hijinks ensue.
• Rick Moody, Right Livelihoods: Three Novellas (Little, Brown, 2007).  Includes a post-apocalyptic tale.
• Thomas Keneally, Victim of the Aurora (Harvest, 2001).  Expeditions to the South Pole, dangers of.
• Ann Harries, Manly Pursuits (Bloomsbury, 2000). Cecil Rhodes + ornithologist + South Africa + impending Boer War.
• Nicholas Mosley, Hopeful Monsters (Dalkey Archive, 2000).  Romance and the condition of Europe (intellectual and otherwise) post-WWI.
• Marjorie Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages: A Study in Joachimism (Notre Dame, 1993).  2nd ed. of this important study of Joachim of Fiore, who strongly influenced later Christian theories of history.
• J. C. S. Mason, The Moravian Church and the Missionary Awakening in England, 1760-1800 (Royal Historical Society, 2001).  Role of the Moravians in overseas missionary work and the influence of their example in England. 

Not learning from experience

Current length of Victorian anti-Catholic sermons article: 20 pages

Things left to discuss: inter-Protestant blame game; twin dangers of toleration and forgetfulness; how to "solve" the problem (at least another 8-10 pages)

(Mostly) not yet written: the introduction (3-4 pages)

Not yet written: conclusion (1 page)

Unedited list of primary works cited (this will be somewhat shorter once I've finished the article & deleted anything I didn't use): 10 pages, single-spaced

Not yet compiled: list of secondary works cited (who knows how long?)

Diagnosis: what is this--the Great American Article?    

This term does not mean what you think it means

I've been reading up on apocalyptics while working on the Victorian anti-Catholic sermons, which reminded me of one of the great stumbling-blocks of interdisciplinary work: terms that drastically change their meanings from one discipline to the next.   Right now, I'm nearing the end of an account of "historicism," which as a mode of Biblical exegesis has nothing to do with anything an English professor would recognize as "historicism" (or a historian, for that matter).  Catholic "Modernism" can also be something of a problem.  What others come to mind? "The most high-profile instance I can think of is "theory" in the sciences.  (Doesn't "random" also have a different meaning in mathematics than in the outside world, or have I misremembered that?)

Speaking of the apocalypse

In the course of graduate coordinator business, I was just checking a student's transcript.  Our campus information system grandly informed me that the student's information included dates from X "to the End of Time."

Now, that's impressive.