Prophets, Publicists, and Parasites: Antebellum Print Culture and the Rise of the Critic

Adam Gordon’s Prophets, Publicists, and Parasites: Antebellum Print Culture and the Rise of the Critic examines the emergence of the literary critic and the significance of critical forms in early nineteenth-century America as illustrated by such writers as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Rufus Griswold, Edgar A. Poe, Margaret Fuller, and Frederick Douglass. According to Gordon, antebellum America witnessed the growing prominence of “a new sort of cultural figure,” that is, “the professional literary critic,” whose writings contributed uniquely to “the expanding print culture” of the period and assumed various forms to suit their aims and their modes of publication (2). Gordon’s central argument is that we, as literary scholars, should expand our definition of “literary criticism” to encompass “the diversity of critical forms and practices that collectively made up antebellum critical culture” (3–4). To that end, he traces the enterprise of literary criticism during this period of enormous growth by focusing our attention on some of the most noteworthy practitioners through the lenses of the critical forms that they developed and used as well as the types of publications in which their writings appeared.The volume includes five chapters, each of which functions as a case study of an author whose reputation was predominantly associated with a particular critical form, preceded by an introduction, and followed by a coda. Adopting this organizational structure, Gordon attempts to avoid producing a single, linear narrative in favor of “foregrounding simultaneous competing narratives given material shape through the various print forms that served as both catalyst and focal points for debates over criticism” (32). Each chapter, then, can stand on its own as a study of an author/critic and a specific form of criticism. Collectively, the chapters offer a critical examination of antebellum American criticism itself. The book culminates in a reflection on the state of critical forms in twenty-first-century American culture, and it looks ahead to the future of criticism in its diverse manifestations.In his introduction, “The Critic in the Age of Industrial Print,” Gordon brings the “critical spirit” of the age to the fore by examining the expanding role of the literary critic, the critical enterprise, and the various forms of criticism and print publications during this time. Gordon provides key definitions throughout and suggests a recalibration of our approach to antebellum American print culture that reinforces four central claims: that we should read literary criticism in terms of the critical forms it takes; that literary critics of the period were aligned as much with their adopted critical forms as they were with political, social, or literary/aesthetic movements, thus warranting the same level of consideration; that debates over criticism during the period “anchored themselves in conversations about the relative capabilities and risk of the critical forms” (2–3); and that we should broaden our definition of criticism to account for the range of forms and practices and recognize that it is hard to define at this time because it was in the process of defining itself as it struggled to come into its own (4).Gordon’s study begins with an examination of the role of quarterly reviews in antebellum American intellectual culture, a form that simultaneously “[spread] knowledge and provid[ed] a check on it” (38). In chapter 1, “Cutting Corners with Emerson: Quarterly Reviews and Intellectual Culture,” Gordon focuses on Emerson, who in the 1830s and 1840s “checked out volumes of more than twenty periodicals [at a time] from the Boston Athenæum” as a way to more quickly gain, or to give the impression of possessing, a “familiarity with a wide range of subjects in a society that placed a high value on such shows of intellectual refinement” (45). He “was an idealist in philosophy,” and in his literary and cultural criticism, according to Gordon, he was “a materialist in practice since thought could not communicate itself without form” (55). For Emerson, it was in the “Prospectus” to The Dial that he communicated “his vision of criticism in its most idealized form” (55). However, the reviews published in The Dial reflected the range of the reviewers writing them; the publication featured a wide range of forms, sometimes hybrid in nature, and often quite lengthy when penned by “ministers and scholars” (57). For Emerson, the ideal critic was “the man of letters” or, as he regarded such as figure, “the scholar,” whose ideas could be conveyed to a larger audience for the improvement of society (57). An important aspect of that improvement was, through critical theory, to inspire individuals to “live for [them]selves,” to “cast off tradition,” and free them from the “thrall of retrospect,” Gordon concludes. Unlike other critics treated in the volume, Emerson’s criticism sought to “unburden Americans from the weight of tradition” (69).In chapter 2, “Anthology Wars: Rufus Griswold and the Compilation as Literary History,” Gordon shifts his focus to America’s first professional anthologist, the notorious gatekeeper of American poetry known best to Poe scholars for his ignominious (mis)treatment of Poe’s life and alteration of his personal letters. Nevertheless, Griswold was less concerned with the past, according to Gordon, than he was with “harness[ing] it for the needs of the present” (69). Griswold effectively built upon America’s literary past not only to illustrate the progress of American belles lettres but also to showcase the nation’s “westward march of learning and culture, which though not yet ascendant was both immanent and inevitable” in the future (71). Gordon correctly notes that beginning with such publications as The Poets and Poetry of America (1842), Griswold “gave material shape to the desire of a national literature through his investment in the genre of the literary compilation, a form that began the task of canon formation through its material codification of an American literary past” (73). Gordon calls anthologies “not merely cousins” to “the culture of criticism,” but “a second incarnation of the same enterprise” as they made order out of disorder and constructed a critical narrative out of emerging history of American literary productions (74). Griswold’s anthologies proved to be popular, and profitable, and he thus became the first to make his living as an editor of anthologies in the United States. The anthologies themselves, which were refined, and sometimes lavishly bound, publications intended to stand out among more cheaply produced volumes and publications, conferred upon their owners a sense of both intellectual refinement and material wealth. Accusations of regional bias and favoritism against the editor notwithstanding, the success of Griswold’s anthologies is evidenced by their multiple editions and revisions throughout the period and the influence exerted by their inclusion or exclusion of authors upon their popular literary reputations.In chapter 3, “Reviewers Reviewed: Poe, Monthly Magazines, and the Critical Vocation,” Gordon shifts from the macrocosmic consideration of American literary history as anthologized and codified by Griswold and other anthologists to a microcosmic look at individual works of literature, or poems, in the form of the magazine review. The most famous, or notorious, practitioner of that form was Poe, who came to be known as the “Tomahawk Man” for his often unnecessarily ruthless verbal eviscerations of other writers’ works in the service of his larger design to elevate the standards and status of American literature not only for an increasingly literate American audience but for the consideration of readers worldwide. A “magazinist,” Poe the critic serves as the case study for this chapter, and this chapter serves as the centerpiece of Gordon’s book, at least for our purposes. The importance of the literary critic’s role in effecting an elevation of literary tastes notwithstanding, Poe was aware of the potential pitfalls of the critical vocation competing with, or even undermining, the poetic vocation. Poe was increasingly concerned throughout his career with what Gordon identifies as a “tension” between “critical explication” and what Poe called “the folly of explaining what, if worth explanation, should explain itself” (119).Based on his reading of “The Philosophy of Composition,” scores of his reviews, and the Marginalia, Gordon highlights a contradiction in Poe between his “concern as to the deforming effect of literary criticism upon art” and “the urgent need for criticism, arriving at the sober conclusion that the ‘plain-speaking’ of critics is a commodity upon which nothing less than the fate of American literature depends” (120). However, he argues that “Poe was nothing if not self-aware” and “highly attuned to the contradictions in his critical practice,” such that he occasionally “turned his famous tomahawk on himself” (121). He offers “The Philosophy of Composition” as the prime example of this, reading Poe’s critically controversial analysis of the process of composing “The Raven” as a “satire” or “burlesque” on the “arrogance of criticism, an arrogance of which Poe was himself knowingly guilty” (145). Gordon suggests, finally, that Poe was simultaneously fashioning his own critical persona in “The Philosophy of Composition” to reinforce the serious role of the critic and promoting criticism itself as “a form of entertainment in its own right” (146). This argument seems plausible given Poe’s many fictional metanarratives that call attention to the deliberate construction of space, such the opening paragraphs of “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Also relevant are Poe’s writings on the American stage and his appreciation of the talent of stage actors, most notably his mother Elizabeth Arnold Poe, convincingly to assume various personae. Gordon ends this chapter with the fittingly “perverse” assertion that “The Philosophy of Composition” both “unite[s] the antithetical cultures of criticism that Poe struggled to navigate throughout his career” and offers “a fearless, honest criticism of himself as critic . . . in a moment when he and other critics were . . . assuming a greater prominence on the American cultural stage” (160).From Poe, Gordon turns to the one author in this collection for whom the Tomahawk Man seemed to have some genuine respect for her critical acumen, at least for her candid review of Longfellow’s poems. In chapter 4, “Black, White, and Read All Over: Margaret Fuller and the Newspaper Book Review,” Gordon casts Fuller alongside Poe as one of the most prominent critics of the period. However, Gordon notes that Fuller, unlike Poe, “took pains to avoid drama” and “took no pleasure in cutting an author down, seeing such severity as a necessary means of improving the writer” (162). Perhaps best known today as the editor of the Transcendentalist publication The Dial, Fuller left New England in 1844 to assume the editorship of Horace Greeley’s New-York Tribune, a post that Fuller occupied for eighteen months. During that time, argues Gordon, Fuller transformed the long-disparaged newspaper book review, considered by many as the lowest form of criticism, into a respected venue for literary criticism and social reform. Fuller expanded the readership and reach of the newspaper to become one of the most highly recognized critics of the period. Despite her success in this medium, though, Fuller’s critical legacy suffered because of the ephemerality of the form.In chapter 5, “Slavery Reviewed: Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Frederick Douglass, and the Politics of Critical Reprinting,” Gordon calls attention to three long-neglected literary forms—pamphlet reviews, critical companion volumes, and reprinted reviews in periodicals—in his case study of Douglass’s political appropriation and reprinting of negative criticism of Uncle Tom’s Cabin to combat advocates and apologists of slavery in the United States. Whereas previous chapters in this volume discuss better established and more respected forms of criticism, this chapter focuses its attention on critical forms that Gordon identifies as having low critical authority but high cultural influence in terms of advancing antislavery sentiments and promoting positive social change. This chapter offers a unique and illuminating reading of Douglass’s project, that is, his use of “critical forms” to achieve his desired ends. As Gordon writes, “[T]the critical response to Uncle Tom’s Cabin reveals in dramatic fashion the role that print forms play in the mobilization of literary criticism as an agent of social change” (213), and “Stowe’s novel provided a platform for the development of African American literary criticism by legitimizing the novel form within the black press” (215). Gordon argues that for Douglass, “both literature and criticism were valuable to the degree that they were ‘useful’ and dispensable when they weren’t”; indeed, much of the criticism that Douglass included in his paper privileged political utility over aesthetic evaluation” (243). Douglass’s own critical opinions and authorial voice were difficult to discern, and they were not the point. Frederick Douglass’s Paper advanced its antislavery cause by reprinting reviews of Stowe’s novel that extracted political gains for the antislavery movement at the expense of slavery apologists.In his coda, “From the Steam Press to Amazon.com: Critical Forms for the Twenty-First Century,” Gordon reflects on the role of American literary criticism and critical forms in the wake of the digital revolution. For example, he observes that consumers, in this age of Amazon.com, “seem to have lost sight of what exactly criticism is, or what it is for, of what functions it serves,” or how a film review in the New York Times “might differ from a blog rant or a Metacritic rating” (267). Regardless of how it may be used by “critics” today, however, Gordon asserts that “criticism” is a “participatory” activity, “a stay against isolation” and “the de facto diary of the twenty-first century” (273). Under these circumstances, he suggests that “we should simply remain open to the multiplicity of criticism’s uses” and admit the possibility that it has “new, emerging, and as yet unimagined roles still to play” within our culture (277). If nothing else, then, the coda offers a foundation for the ongoing chronicling and study of criticism and critical forms in American culture.Although Gordon limits his study to five authors, each case study reveals new insights into the authors, their criticism, and their use of critical forms, challenging us to view the role and reach of these critics from a new perspective. The chapters are well researched and informed by relevant studies on their respective topics. In the case of Poe, for example, Gordon engages with and contributes to ongoing research on the role of the literary critic by such scholars as Terence Whalen, Jonathan Elmer, Sandra Tomc, Kevin Hayes, J. Gerald Kennedy, Jerome McGann, and Scott Peeples and the development of antebellum print culture by scholars such as Meredith McGill and Eliza Richards. If there is a weakness, it is perhaps the author’s constant repetition of his argument and his justification for his methodology. This, however, could be the result of ensuring that each part of the book can stand on its own, which may be helpful to scholars consulting the book primarily for what it has to say about Emerson, Griswold, Poe, Fuller, or Douglass as literary critics. Gordon’s study encourages us to consider Poe in the context of other significant writers of his period in respect to their forms of literary or cultural criticism expressed through media best suited to their ends and intended audiences.Clearly the product of long consideration and engagement with the topic, this book is well researched, argued, and accessible to multiple audiences and disciplines. Read alongside such recent collections as J. Gerald Kennedy and Scott Peeples’s Oxford Handbook of Edgar Allan Poe (2019) and Emron Esplin and Margarida Vale de Gato’s Anthologizing Poe (2022), Gordon’s Prophets, Publicists, and Parasites expands our understanding of the multiplicity of critical forms that emerged during this period, the means of their production and dissemination to an increasingly diverse reading public, and the central role of the literary critic in antebellum American culture. I therefore recommend this work to graduate and advanced undergraduate students studying the period as well as to researchers interested in taking a closer look at print culture with an emphasis on literary critics, criticism, critical forms, and modes of production in antebellum America. I would also recommend this book for use in university and research libraries that support the study of critical theory, literary criticism, book history, and American literature.

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