[A Gathered Church: The Literature of the English Dissenting Interest, 1700–1930] is a work of committed criticism. (p. 164)
But the points [of Davie's Clark Lectures collected here] are argued by indirection, allusion, and selection, and we are conducted in no recognizable discipline. Some part of each lecture is given over to rhetorical strategies designed to show that Professor Davie's judgements are endowed with a peculiar privilege denied to other critics. Historians, literary and especially social, are disqualified at the outset, as having no criteria relevant to aesthetic judgement. But much of this book is, quite simply, a rewriting of history, without an appropriate discipline to do so. Aesthetic judgements may be faulted if they conflict with doctrinal considerations, and vice versa. By another strategy ('I was there') Professor Davie assumes the privilege of personal association with the tradition…. A certain privilege we may allow. I do allow it: Professor Davie has a deep, but narrow, arc of sympathy which may derive from his familial inheritance. But we cannot allow it too far, or we make nonsense of the work of critics and historians, who must, in a sense, always be 'there'. Are we to suppose that only female royalists are privileged to write the history of Queens?
This is a free excerpt of 207 words. There are 1,394 words (approx.
5 pages at 300 words per page) in the full critical essay.
Read the rest of this Criticism with our Davie, Donald (Alfred) 1922–: Critical Essay by E. P. Thompson Access Pass.
