Literary and cultural spaces of restoration London.

Literary and cultural spaces of restoration London. Wall, Cynthia. "All that had been familiar, settled, phenomenologically givenwas suddenly and entirely swept away...." Cynthia Wall'sdescription of London after the Great Fire of 1666 could equally applyto those who think they know the world of Restoration literature. Uponreading this book, literary and cultural historians will be moved toreconsider the influence of physical change on literature, whilematerial and urban historians may wish to explore the literary avenueswhich are constructed in the wake of catastrophic events. Within three days, the Great Fire of 1666 destroyed four-fifths ofLondon. Londoners, challenged to adequately express the enormity oftheir loss, turned to the familiar: the biblical and classicalvocabulary used in sermons, for example. Walls argues they also inventednew forms when faced with allusions which "are suddenly troubledbecause in fact they are no longer metaphors." (21) Evengrammatical constructions of past and present emphasized change: thecity that was versus the city that is versus the city that should be.Post-Fire grids and maps, contrasted with Tudor birds-eye-viewrenderings, demonstrate the tremendous shift in spatial sensibilitiesbrought on by the Fire. Walls argues effectively that resistance to"new" designs was rooted, not merely in mercenary concern, butalso in a "deliberate, insistent, and widespread culturalpreference for recovering the London known and lost, rather thancreating a London new and unknown." (40) In the midst Adv. 1. in the midst - the middle or central part or point; "in the midst of the forest"; "could he walk out in the midst of his piece?"midmost of this interesting argument, Walls misses theopportunity to link her study to the political and social contexts inwhich it existed. In light of her argument that culture may supercede Verb 1. supercede - take the place or move into the position of; "Smith replaced Miller as CEO after Miller left"; "the computer has supplanted the slide rule"; "Mary replaced Susan as the team's captain and the highest-ranked player in the school" mere function, it is curious that Walls ignores the contemporarypolitical re-imagining involved in the so-called "Restoration"of Charles II Charles II, king of NaplesCharles II(Charles the Lame), 1248–1309, king of Naples (1285–1309), count of Anjou and Provence, son and successor of Charles I. , in 1660. What better example could she have of an Englishpreference for retaining the form of the old (the monarchy), even whendealing with the fact of the new (increased Parliamentary authority)? AsSusan Staves demonstrated in 1979's Player's Sceptres, thiscurious tension between old and new modes of authority were evident inthe fictional writing of 1660-1690. Particularly tantalizing tan��ta��lize?tr.v. tan��ta��lized, tan��ta��liz��ing, tan��ta��liz��esTo excite (another) by exposing something desirable while keeping it out of reach. anddisappointing in this regard is Walls' presentation of CharlesII's first royal declaration regarding the rebuilding. It is adocument full of change, but with concern for the forms of the past. YetWalls draws no connections among material, political, and rhetoricalconcerns. In choosing the Great Fire as the only delineating factor inher work, Walls seems distressingly monocausal. Surely the Civil Wars,Restoration and Glorious Revolution Glorious Revolution,in English history, the events of 1688–89 that resulted in the deposition of James II and the accession of William III and Mary II to the English throne. It is also called the Bloodless Revolution. deserve more attention than this. This disappointing lack of wider context particularly weakens thesecond half of the book, "Inhabiting London." It seemsuncomfortably related to the first section of the book. Chapter 6,"Narratives of private spaces: churches, houses and novels,"is based in large part on the works of Defoe. In and of itself, thischapter provides a refreshing look at the novel and its visualization ofspace, particularly when discussing the conceptualization con��cep��tu��al��ize?v. con��cep��tu��al��ized, con��cep��tu��al��iz��ing, con��cep��tu��al��iz��esv.tr.To form a concept or concepts of, and especially to interpret in a conceptual way: of streets.But in relation to Walls' wider argument, the reader is leftunsatisfied. Walls cheerfully glosses together "private" and"hidden", equating the underground nature of Dissenter meetinghouses with "private" space. Yet weren't Dissentercongregations hidden precisely because they were a matter of publiclegislation and national concern? Religion was emphatically not a matterof private conscience in the era of the Test Acts. (And the materialspaces of London's churches had been a matter of public concernlong before the Great Fire -- it is probably not an exaggeration to saythat both Laud and Charles I lost their lives in part because of theirregulation of these public spaces.) As Susan Amussen and Carole Pateman,among others, have argued, the household is not necessarily"private" in the seventeenth century. By treating householdsand churches as "private" spaces, Walls is as heavy-handed ina material which demands more subtlety. But even when the reader is left unsatisfied by the limits of thebook, one cannot help but be delighted by the observations it presents:the sense of communal city ownership, for example, engendered by thefire. Walls does an inestimable in��es��ti��ma��ble?adj.1. Impossible to estimate or compute: inestimable damage.See Synonyms at incalculable.2. service in linking the worlds of thematerial historian and the literary critic. Physically, the book isbeautifully designed, a treasury of the necessary maps and figures whichillustrate her arguments regarding the conceptualization of space. Thisis not an insignificant consideration in a book with constant spatialreferences. Indeed, her chapter on the shifts from Tudor"bird's-eye" views to cartographically Car`to`graph´ic`al`lyadv. 1. By cartography. precise post-Firemaps and grids, is one of the most gripping and convincing of the book.Overall, Walls is daring and insightful, if not always complete, in herown re-mapping of Augustan literary topography.