C19th English novels overrated?
from Tanner Greer
So let’s inflict the internet with some additional bits of literary prejudice:
I think I devalue 19th century British novelists as a whole. This is all relative of course—despite yesterday’s controversy I genuinely enjoy Austen!—but I don’t think they speak to me the way earlier English literature does or even novels written in other languages around that time. I will always read the poets and playwrights of English Renaissance—Spencer, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Johnson, Milton, Dryden and all those little poets that orbit those times—with great relish. I do not know if it is their worldview, the questions they speak to, or the manner in which they speak of it that draws me toward them, but drawn I am. If I had to restrict my literary reading to one culture in one era that would probably be English literature written in the century between 1580 and 1680.
I can enjoy Dickens but he just doesn’t seem to tower like a Milton—or, for that matter, a Balzac or a Turgenev or a Tolstoy. And of all the novels written about the domestic life none come close to Dream of the Red Chamber. Not within a hairsbreadth.
The 19th century British novelists seems valuable to me less for his or her universal import than for his or her role in the English language literary tradition we are heirs to. This is probably where I stand. Though I can intellectually understand I do not easily sympathize with the disposition that sees authors in the vein of Austen or Dickens the pinnacle of artistic achievement.
I rate Austen and Dickens more than Tanner does, as regular readers will know, and I have not read Dream of the Red Chamber, but I cannot really dissent from this general attitude. English Literature really did peak in the period he describes, though I would like to take it to the 1770s to include Swift, Pope, and Johnson of course. Yes, yes, I know, Chaucer, and Wordsworth, and Sir Gawain, and this whole thing is just a parlour game. Austen is a phenomenally important English writer, essential to the development of the novel, and I love her very much, and I think Tanner and others probably don’t quite see her achievements because of the rubric they measure her work against, but there are many treasures in English Literature’s storehouse. Talking of a period taken as a whole, Tanner is right.
I can see a defensible case for saying that English literature in the period 1580-1680 is (as a whole) superior to that of the 19th century. It seems to me much less defensible to say that English literature in the 19th century is inferior to French or Russian literature in the 19th century - and I speak as someone who loves Balzac and Turgenev and Tolstoy! You didn't comment on that, and I would be interested to know what you think.
Tanner Greer is an interesting writer, but my impression--not from any firm basis, just as a casual reader of his--is that his worldview is very much centered on political and cultural "dominance contests". Uncoincidentally, perhaps, he also is a big Iliad enthusiast.
When I think of Austen and Eliot, their novels take a rather deflationary view of dominance contests. They valorize private virtue over public striving. So it does not surprise me that Tanner Greer does not find that era of writing as compelling, and maybe he has a point! There is something unambitious about private virtue.