[fantasyfan]

I decided to use the Oxford edition which has an introduction and notes by Robert L Mack whom we met in our discussions about The Arabian Nights.

I am so glad I did!

His explanatory notes are excellent and are a considerable help,in establishing the social context of the novel as well as highlighting very interesting items of a lexicographical nature.

But it is the scholarly, lucid and wide-ranging introduction that I found fascinating. I gave the novel four stars on Goodreads but it was before I read Mack’s analysis; now I’m not sure but that Thr Vicar of Wakefield doesn’t deserve the full five stars.

Exactly what is Goldsmith writing? It seems to be an amalgam of a “generic hybrid” of a great many things—among them the “picaresque novel” the essay, “domestic conduct books” the fable, the sermon, political pamphlets, and street ballads. Further, Mack feels that the book:

“reaches towards—and at its most successful moments comes very near to articulating—The defining qualities normally to be found only in the most venerated od secular scriptures. Goldsmith’s otherwise modest novel was a little book that had managed somehow to capture some very big ideas indeed.”

Mack proceeds to discuss the significance of the narrative approach. Just how are we to evaluate the function of Primrose as the narrative focus? One possibility is that Primrose is a “Job” who must confront a series of catastrophes which seem to invalidate the idea of a caring loving God.

This is followed by a discussion of “Charm, Autobiography and Sentiment.” The “charm” which Henry James (and others) saw in the book are largely in the pastoral opening section. I personally feel that an approach which reduces the book to a pre-romantic nostalgia unfairly devalues the novel.
There are certainly some autobiographical elements in the book. It would seem that the adventures of George do reflect the wanderings of Goldsmith himself. I am not certain that Chapter Twenty, which deals with the Vicar’s son is entirely successful. I found that it became rather tedious. Sentiment, Mack points out, was a dominant feature of the novel of the time. But is the work of Goldsmith at all similar to the “sentiment” and “melancholia” found in the works of novelists like Richardson?

The final section of the Intrduction is “Sentiment versus Satire”. The critical position that assserts that The Vicar of Wakefield is essentially satiric is a dominant modern approach. Mack discusses the views of Robert Hopkins who maintains that Goldsmith consciously manipulates and undercuts the narrative voice of Primrose so as to dramatise “a deeply flawed humanity”. Mack has reservations about this point of view but presents it fairly.

As I said at the outset, I read the introduction last. It has given me a great deal to think about.