Introduction: The Production of Victorian Culture and Victorian Cultural Studies (1999)

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for? Andrea del Sarto Introduction-writing can be a strange and strained endeavor. At their most mechanical and useless, introductions simply announce the topic of the collection or issue, give a bit of historical or theoretical context, and then devote a few lines or a paragraph summing up each of the essays that follow it. I have written that type of introduction before, primarily because I thought that was expected, indeed required, of an editor. Of course, as a reader I have always thought otherwise, and whenever I see that an introduction is following that formula, I usually skim or skip it: I am a busy guy and do not have the time linger in anticipation of the delights in which I am going be lingering anyway. Yet there is a different kind of introduction that one finds occasionally and that is well worth the time spent reading and writing. This is the introduction that does something. It is a rare breed, and I can think of only a few that have had an enduring impact on me, among them Michael Warner's opening remarks Fear of a Queer Planet and Henry Louis Gates' introductory words Race, Writing, and Difference. I am certainly not going predict that the present introduction will achieve the degree of originality, incisiveness, and timeliness that Warner and Gates achieved, but it will not fail for lack of effort. In fact, this introduction focuses on the need for such efforts, and why we, as editors, writers, readers, and teachers, must resist vigorously and forthrightly the banality of mechanical (re)production. As all well-read Victorianists know, this is a topic highly suitable for a journal devoted studies in nineteenth-century prose. We still have much learn from writers who are often regarded from the safe distance of a century or more, who are packaged in anthologies and processed through our critical reading and writing machines. Many examples come (I often quote Carlyle tardy contributors and sluggish colleagues), but my particular concern in the following pages is the applicability the production of literary and cultural critique today of some of the most incisive Victorian commentary on production: that of John Ruskin. In his chapter on the Nature of Gothic from The Stones of Venice, Ruskin decries certain qualities of the English mind that I would suggest too often characterize the modern American critical as well. Contrasting the Greek love of perfection with the medieval love of invention, he defies the common wisdom of 1853 (and, indeed, that of our own day) by pointing out the relative servility of the Greek school of architectural design when judged against the more inventive mindset of the Christian ... system of ornament; he notes, to every spirit which Christianity summons her service, her exhortation is: Do what you can, and confess frankly what you are unable do; neither let your effort be shortened for fear of failure, nor your confession silenced for fear of shame (367). In Christianity's love of individualism and personal striving (often betrayed, of course, by its own institutions and in its varying interpretations) Ruskin isolates both a principle celebrate and a challenge update, refine, and reissue. With further updating and some recasting, it is one that I am reissuing here. In particular, I wish linger over the implications for educators, editors, readers, and writers today of the following Ruskinian exhortation: Always look for invention first, and after that, for such execution as will help the invention, and as the inventor is capable of without painful effort, and no more. Above all, demand no refinement of execution where there is no thought, for that is slaves' work, unredeemed. Rather choose rough work than smooth work, so only that the practical purpose be answered, and never imagine there is reason be proud of anything that may be accomplished by patience and sand-paper. …