The eighteenth-century review journal as allegory: Smollett’s Critical Review and the work of criticism

Jones, Richard J. (2019). The eighteenth-century review journal as allegory: Smollett’s Critical Review and the work of criticism. The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, 60(1) pp. 45–63.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/ecy.2019.0004

Abstract

One way to read an eighteenth-century review journal would be for the critical judgments that it contains. This essay argues, instead, that it should be read as allegory. The essay focuses on the Critical Review, established by Tobias Smollett in 1756, with the (impossible) aim to review everything, and explores how it appears both as what it is and in what it is not. Placed alongside Smollett’s other works of instalment and translation, what is disclosed by the Critical Review is a new work: the work of criticism itself.

Viewing alternatives

Metrics

Item Actions

Export

You can export this page using these formats Digital Object Identifier - DOI

About

• Item ORO ID
• 49362
• Item Type
• Journal Item
• ISSN
• 1935-0201
• Extra Information
• This is an unedited draft not for citation, and has been accepted for publication in The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation in 2019.
• Keywords
• Tobias Smollett; Enlightenment; periodical literature; review journals; print culture; mediation; translation; allegory; phenomenology; Walter Benjamin
• Academic Unit or School
• Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) > Arts and Humanities > English & Creative Writing
  Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) > Arts and Humanities
  Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS)
• Research Group
• History of Books and Reading (HOBAR)
• Copyright Holders
• © 2019 University of Pennsylvania Press
• Depositing User
• Richard Jones