Thackeray the Novelist by Geoffrey Tillotson.Review by: Edgar F. Shannon, Jr.Modern Language Notes, Vol. 71, No. 2 (Feb., 1956), pp. 134-136Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3043578 .

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Charles Norton Coe, Wordsworth and the Literature of Travel (New York: Bookman Associates, 1953. 122 pp. $3.00). PROFESSOR Coe has presented an interesting and scholarly analysis of Words- worth's indebtedness to travel books of the eighteenth and early nine- teenth centuries. Such books include accounts of tours in Great Britain as well as of travels in Europe and America. For documentary evidence of Wordsworth's drawing upon these books Mr. Coe refers to the poems and letters of the poet.

The most important chapters in Mr. Coe's study are those devoted to " Travel Books and Wordsworth's Theory of Poetry," and " Travel Books and Wordsworth's Interest in Primitivism." These are signifi- cant topics. By way of contrast, it is unfortunate that Mr. Coe felt the need to stress so much the fact that Wordsworth was a reader. The poet's letters reveal this time and time again.

Mr. Coe's main arguments are conveniently presented in his ex- cellent " Summary": 'that the poet's indebtedness to travel books can be traced from his earliest to his latest poems '; 'that travel books furnished him with incidents and characters as well as assisting him in his imagery'; 'that his use of them reveals he did not always compose extemporaneously while out walking'; 'and that many of his favorite themes parallel those of the travel books.' These arguments, like Mr. Coe's book as a whole, are likely to be of more interest to the specialist than to the general student of Wordsworth.

Mr. Coe's study is scrupulously presented with a full Appendix showing the relation of specific poems to specific travel books. There is also a useful bibliography and a convenient index.

Princeton University GILBERT DUNKLIN

Geoffrey Tillotson, Thackeray the Novelist (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1954. xv + 312 pp. $4.00). THIS study is a signifi- cant contribution to a just appreciation of Thackeray. Eschewing biography or biographical criticism, it concentrates on the novelist's writings. While it may disappoint anyone expecting ingenious in- sights or rigorous analysis of individual novels, it supplies a valuable general appraisal of Thackeray's distinctive qualities. Essentially a lucid and urbane essay by a critic acknowledging partiality but avoid- ing both dogmatism and lyricism, the book takes for its theme the "oneness " of Thackeray-that, as Saintsbury says, "he is all of a piece." Although some readers may be annoyed by the frequency and

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length of extracts irom Thackeray's works set in small type, this is not a book to be dipped into or skimmed. Except for two appendices (one seeking to minimize Thackeray's mother in his conception of Helen Pendennis, the other to indicate his place in the " great tradi- tion," as a forerunner of George Eliot and Henry James), the volume must be read consecutively and entire. Those who sur-vive trial by fine print will find it provocative and rewarding.

Among characteristics contributing to Thackeray's oneness, Pro- fessor Tillotson refers to the recurrence of characters from novel to novel, the panoramic unity of time and place, the flowing continuity rather than design of the six long novels (the primary sources for this study), the distinguished prose style, the masks as narrator persistently assumed by the novelist, and other less obvious qualities, such as narration by stream of experience, bordering on stream of conscious- ness, the delayed completion " of what is to be said of a thing," con- sistent pungency of phrasing, and customary imagery. To his remarks on imagery, Professor Tillotson might have added an allusion to the skill with which Thackeray suggests character through recurrent images-for example, through those of the spider and of Delilah applied to Becky Sharp.

An important aspect of Professor Tillotson's essay lies in his defense of Thackeray's passages of commentary against Mr. Percy Lubbock's charge of obtrusion. For a novelist who writes as a self-styled his- torian, Professor Tillotson believes the commentary not only legiti- mate but conducive to the illusion of reality which the author seeks to create. Demonstrating that Thackeray is never strictly " scenic " in Mr. Lubbock's sense of the word, and that the novels are actually a tissue of narrative with criticism and criticism with narrative, he maintains that the reader experiences no jarring sense of the author's intrusion even with extended passages of commentary. In addition, he sees the commentary as providing smooth transitions between inci- dents or dialogue and " a certain variety of style." To the com- mentary he attributes much of the effectiveness of Thackeray's books. While his argument will not persuade everybody, it is a salutary re- joinder to what has become a critical cliche.

On Thackeray's " truthfulness," including his view of character and fate, Professor Tillotson is illuminating. On the author's " philoso- phy," though usually cogent, he is perhaps less satisfying. Despite his own and Thackeray's warnings against taking as the author's, opin- ions expressed by a character in a story, he accepts as Thackeray's,

VOL. LXXI, February 1956 135

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Pen's position on society in his debate with Warringtoll (Pendennis, chapter XXIII). Yet later, when he quotes the remainder of this debate, he concludes, " Who can say for certain where the author him- self stands ? " As Thackeray says in the quoted extract, such cynical reasoning as Pen's can lead only to selfishness and isolation, from which, it is evident, love alone can save. In the fight for truth alluded to in the passage, there seems to be no question of Thackeray's standing aloof. If Thackeray, like Dickens, is no revolutionary, he too is a reformer. If he would not, as Professor Tillotson declares, change the structure of society, like Dickens he would change men's attitudes toward each other.

By concluding on a note oI autumnal glow, Professor TillotsoD does not seem quite to have done justice to Thackeray's fundamental vita- lity; nor, perhaps, does he make sufficient claim for Thackeray as a craftsman. One could wish, for instance, that his discussion had in- cluded such elements of Thackeray's art as his various techniques of irony and his subtle manipulation of suspense.

Whatever exception one may take to certain features, the book enlarges our perspective and offers a fresh estimate of a novelist eminently deserving the attention and respect of modern critics. This work provides a major step toward the goal Professor Tillotson modestly envisions, " As Thackeray's writings come to be studied more closely, views will be tested and will shed their crudeness, coming to rest on a subtler justice, which lackinig a sufficiency of worthy criticism, we cannot yet discern."

Harvard University EDGAR F. SHANTNON, JR.

Clyde H. Cantreli and Walton R. Patrick, comp., Southern Literary Culture: A Bibliography of Masters' and Doctors' Theses (Tusca. loosa: Univ. of Alabama Press, 1955. xiv + 124 pp.). TiE in- creasing number of those interested in Southern literature and cultural history will welcome this basic tool for further research. The com- pilers have been indefatigable in their efforts to be thorough and accurate in their listing of all theses completed in this fleld down through 1948. Though they modestly disclaim definitiveiness for their bibliography, it is doubtful that many additions or corrections will be made to their total of 2529 items. In the categories of individual authors, language, folklore, and bibliographies there were few prob- lems. In that of cultural history, confessedly broad, the compilers

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