Abstract
This chapter provides a foundation for the case studies in my subsequent chapters by elucidating Hogg’s attraction to a kaleidoscopic literary practice through his self-positioning as both a participant in, and a critical viewer of, the literary marketplace; he draws together and critiques some of the competing impulses and rival literary forms circulating in the Romantic period. I begin by situating his kaleidoscopic art at the cultural intersection of Brewster’s scientific invention and some contemporary literary responses to the kaleidoscope — most specifically, the popular perception of the miscellany as its closest literary analogue in the 1810s and 1820s. Part I then pursues Hogg’s conception of a commercially based miscellany, placing his projected ‘Poetical Repository’ and its successor, The Poetic Mirror, in relation to debates about canon-making and commerce, and demonstrating his critical engagement with the prevailing literary conflicts of his day through his use of the two key models of genre-mixing — the miscellany and the anthology. Using the ‘high’ culture of anthologising which would become central to the construction of a canonical British literary history, and ‘low’ literary forms of parody and imitation, Hogg eventually created a mock miscellany which was also a satirical take on the anthology as a mode of shaping a selective narrative.
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Notes
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© 2016 Meiko O’Halloran
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O’Halloran, M. (2016). Hogg’s Self-Positioning in The Poetic Mirror and the Literary Marketplace. In: James Hogg and British Romanticism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137559050_2
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