The Eighteenth Century Is a Mess. And That’s Why It Is Important: Teaching Eighteenth-Century Literature in 2034, by Dr Adam J Smith

In January 2024 I was invited to speak on a roundtable at the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (BSECS) annual conference about the future of the eighteenth century. Each speaker was invited to share their aspirations for what they hoped a specific aspect of eighteenth-century studies might look like, before opening the workshop up for discussion about how we might work together to make these visions a reality. I was asked to speculate about the future of eighteenth-century studies from a pedagogical perspective. The following is based on my response to this question.  

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In terms of how eighteenth-century literature is taught ten years from now, I hope we will continue to see a move away from chronological survey modules that promise or promote, implicitly or explicitly, a completist account of the eighteenth-century as a literary period. In fact, the way “culture” is packaged, presented and consumed these days (though disconcerting in many ways) does perhaps equip students well for coping with the vast complexities of such a sprawling and self-referential age as the eighteenth century. 

How do Gen Z consume media? Through streaming, asynchronous cultural consumption and via sprawling multimedia franchises. They’ve grown up with the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe), the DCEU (DC extended universe), the SSU (Sony’s Spiderman Universe, which doesn’t actually contain Spiderman), the MonsterVerse, the Multiverse, the Metaverse, now also the Whoniverse. Yes, there are major problems with the way one one or two huge corporations have come to colonise the popular imagination, but one possible silver lining is that a student who can enjoy a film about an obscure superhero’s flying dog without worrying about how it might fit into the other prior 40+ films and goodness only knows how many TV shows, videogames, cartoons and escape rooms it’s connected to, can probably handle first encountering Alexander Pope by studying Anne Ingram’s ‘Epistle to Pope’, or gradually developing a sense of the significance of Samuel Richardson by reading Sarah Fielding, Jane Collier and Charlotte Lennox.  

The recently revised Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) Benchmark statement for English Literature doubles down on the continuity and persistence of disciplinary certainties (for instance, it states that literature is the “distinct analysis of discourse and meaning in communication, including aesthetics and rhetoric”) whilst also advocating a series of themes, which include Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. The statement models really well how it is possible to embrace urgent and emergent themes, approaches and considerations, whilst also maintaining our existing disciplinary procedures.   

 People often say studying literature promotes citizenship, empathy and kindness, and if that’s true, I can see how it would be the natural consequence of rigorous engagement with texts on a compositional level, because the text—especially the historical text—itself becomes an encounter with difference. It requires generative attentiveness: a consideration of the context, audience and meaning of each alien utterance. With the vast digital archives of primary materials at our disposal, increasingly diverse scholarship, and Broadview Press doing the genuinely heroic work of making lesser-known texts and the stories of their composition more and more available, there are so many new texts to teach and more and more ways to think about and teach them. And I think eighteenth-century literature is a particularly well-suited forum for exploring the kinds of questions relating to matters of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. 

First, because the eighteenth century is a mess. A huge, sprawling, self-referential, deeply intertextual, massively ephemeral mess. It is this mess of printed matter and the curious, contradictory, and often playful ways in which it promotes, applies, figures and resists concepts, paradigms and performances that makes the period endlessly fascinating. The messiness of it is a feature, not a bug, and something to be embraced. We can enter this maelstrom of ideas, opinions and representations from any angle – you’ll still feel the gravitational pull of Swift, the weight and ripples of Pope, the very long shadow of Dryden, the influence of Richardson, Fielding and Johnson, but you needn’t necessarily start there.  

 Second, the very same questions we are asking in our present moment—about who is and isn’t seen, who is heard, who is included and excluded and what we can and should do about this—are already there in eighteenth-century literature. The question of who is ‘hailed’ by the print within this public sphere draws attention to discussions that ring hauntingly prescient in our current moment. Whilst the dominant print culture might assume a white middle class reader similar to that of the authorial voice, there are texts which work hard to draw attention to this, to deconstruct it, and to find space for alternate voices and audiences.  

In the periodical The Parrot, for instance, Eliza Haywood writes as an involuntarily displaced green parrot who explicitly rejects the implied kinship of his readership, as is often assumed in periodical literature, insisting instead on unfamiliarity rather than familiarity as a means of deconstructing the homogeneity of the white masculine public sphere in which it exists.  These dynamics are often at work in the allegories and metaphors of the period. Arabella, the hero of Charlotte Lennox’s Female Quixote, for instance, invents a silent means of communicating in gestures as a way of resisting language prescribed by the dominant patriarchy. And of course, they’re there in the letters of Charles Ignatius Sancho: the complex subjectivities he inhabits, avoids, subverts or, just plays with. depending on who he addresses and why.  

‘The Parrot’, artwork by Lauren Fenton.

On my second year early eighteenth-century module on the English Literature programme at York St John University, which is called ‘Dawn of Print’, I frame the module as being about print culture and intertextuality. The whole thing is about the dialogic relationships between these texts (and actually quite a lot about the influence of Don Quixote). So, for these students, their tour of the eighteenth century went: John Dryden, Bernard Mandeville, Mary Leapor and Anne Ingram responding to Pope, Sarah Fielding, Jane Collier, Eliza Haywood, Charlotte Lennox, Ignatius Sancho, James Cook and Lady Mary Montagu, Jonathan Swift (Gulliver’s Travels) and Laurence Sterne. And I’m telling you this because over Christmas, an interesting thing happened.  

A meme began circulating on X and TikTok called “Classic Bookshelf”, which depicts a “classic map” of 57 titles, and readers are encouraged to colour them in as they read them. A lot of the viral tweets were students sharing the image – which presents a fascinating and deeply traditional vision of canonicity as understood by the public (I suspect it’s American)—complaining that they didn’t know what they were paying their tuition fees for because so few of these featured on the English degree reading lists.  

Figure 3. "Classic Bookshelf" viral meme circulated on X in Dec 2023. 
Figure 3. “Classic Bookshelf” viral meme circulated on X in Dec 2023. 

 

But then, one of the students from Dawn of Print, Maddison Warley, produced her own response—the “slayteenth century”—making the point that there are other ways of reading and, at the risk of sounding like a big humble bragger, I was so pleased and surprised by the texts she chose to include.  

Figure 4. Response posted on X by Level 5 York St John University English Literature student, Maddison Warley, shortly after completing the module Dawn of Print 

  

I wanted to end with this because it’s fun, but also because I hope this is the future. The eighteenth century has always been a conversable century and if we continue having difficult conversations, keep pushing the boundaries of how we approach this literature and whose voices we centre, I really do believe that in 2034, we can have it all. 

 

The Annual English Literature Research Showcase – 15th April 2024

English Literature Research Showcase – 15th April 5pm-7pm

The annual English Literature Research Showcase is an evening in which we learn about colleagues’ specialist projects. This is a chance to celebrate the rich and varied range of research that defines the department and shapes our teaching.

This year we will hear about Patti Smith’s punk queering of masculine spaces, Mark Lanegan’s destabilising of grunge myth, Medieval ghost stories, ‘good hating’ from Alexander Pope to Samuel Johnson, and critically controversial diagnoses of Charlotte Brontë’s pregnancy and death. 

Please join us in learning about the important work that Literature staff and research students are engaged with. There will some refreshments provided following the event and a chance for some informal conversation.

Please book your FREE ticket here

Words Matter Prize 2023

This year, the Words Matter prize is being awarded to two recipients. For the first time, the English Literature team are recognizing outstanding academic achievement by students completing the first year of their degree in both single honours and joint honours cohorts.

This year’s winners are English Literature student Maddison ‘Madz’ Warley and English Literature and Creative Writing student Amy Platt.

Level Four co-ordinator Dr Fraser Mann says:

“Madz and Amy are both superb students. Their dedication to the subject and their participation in university life are admirable. They have made rapid and remarkable progress and deserve real recognition for this success. They are both an asset to English Literature at York St John.”

On receiving news of the award, a delighted Madz said:

“I put off university for years over fears it wouldn’t be the right environment for me, so winning this genuinely means the world to me. It’s total Rory Gilmore vibes. The first year of university has truly been one of the best experiences of my life. The English Literature team have been so supportive and I’ve enjoyed every lecture and seminar. Thank you to every friend and lecturer that has supported me so far.”

Amy was equally happy and said:

“Receiving the Words Matter Prize is such an honour and something that I will treasure forever. I feel as though it is only fair that I express my gratitude to everyone who has made this journey possible. To every lecturer, tutor, peer, and friend, thank you for making my first year at university the most wonderful and rewarding experience.”

Madz and Amy will receive their awards during this year’s Words Matter Lecture. We would like to congratulate them on their success and wish them all the best for the rest of their degrees.

“Uncut Leaves”: On Literature and Its Uses – 2022 Words Matter Lecture on YouTube

The Annual Words Matter Lecture on YouTube

You might be interested to know that Dr Adam J Smith’s Words Matter lecture is available to view and listen on YouTube: click here!

Adam’s lecture in October last year considered the “uses” of literature as protest, propaganda and satire, and warned of the dangers of not reading the book. It was a fantastic event, so if you missed it, catch up – or if you’d like to relive the moment, watch again!

Words Matter 2022: “Literature and Its Uses” with Dr Adam J. Smith

Join us for the fifth annual Words Matter Lecture on Thursday 10th November, at 5pm.

Book here for a free ticket. The event is open to all, and includes a drinks reception.

The Lecture

 

Drawing on his research exploring the role played by print in mediating the relationship between citizens and the state throughout the long eighteenth century, Dr Adam James Smith (Associate Professor, English Literature) will consider the “uses” of literature. Adam will introduce a series of case-studies in which literature was “used” for the purposes of propaganda, protest and satire during the eighteenth century, before examining the ways in which this same literature was used (and perhaps also abused) by readers and critics. Tracing a brief history of reading, misreading, deliberate misrepresentation and the active avoidance of reading, Adam will argue that most valuable “uses” of Literature arise from a deep, careful and sincere engagement with the form and substance of texts. Finally, the lecture will investigate recent advocations for the “use” of Literature as a means of promoting citizenship, empathy and social justice.


Dr Adam J Smith

Adam James Smith is an Associate Professor of English Literature, specialising in eighteenth-century print culture. Adam has a PhD from the University of Sheffield, where he also completed an AHRC-funded post-doctoral project before joining York St John University full-time in 2016. He has published on the works of Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, Eliza Haywood, James Montgomery and Virginia Woolf, amongst others. He has co-edited three volumes – Poetry Conspiracy and Radicalism in Sheffield (Spirit Duplicator, 2016), Print Culture, Agency and Regionality in the Handpress Era (Palgrave, 2022) and Impolite Periodicals (Bucknell, forthcoming). He is also currently a series editor for People of Print (Cambridge University Press), a multi-volume collection of printer biographies documenting the lives of individuals who were integral to the print industry but who have been, historically, less well represented.

Adam is also co-director of the York Research Unit for the Study of Satire, co-host of the ongoing monthly podcast Smith & Waugh Talk About Satire, he sits on the executive committee for the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (BSECS) and is chief editor of Criticks, the online reviews site for BSECS. His recent writing examines the relationship between politeness and satire and the character of the satirist across the long eighteenth century.