The wit restor'd; or, the critic's rejoinder: a revaluation of William Walsh

Abstract

This study revaluates the early eighteenth-century poet and wit William Walsh (1662-1708) through a careful selection and analysis of contexts hitherto neglected in studies of the poet. Walsh's experiments with mediated discourse and the problems such discourse has posed for historical and textual criticism are the common threads that baste the otherwise independent chapters of this thesis together. Chapter I provides an overview of the project. Chapter II surveys and assesses Walsh's twentieth-century critical reception. Chapter III identifies don-finant patterns in editorial treatment of Walsh, patterns that help partially account for the poet's historical anonymity despite both his contemporary reputation and the relative accessibility of his work in eighteenthnineteenth-, and twentieth-century anthologies. Chapter IV addresses the theoretical problems posed by the man and his works. I argue the anomalous position, supported by the evidence, that Walsh's art and life are primarily narratively conjoined. To cope with this intimacy between Walsh's text and context, I recommend a scholarly edition of Walsh's work deviating sharply from established practice. Chapter V integrates one of Walsh's occasional poems, A Funeral Elegy upon the Death of the Queen, into the larger framework of the many published elegies on the death of the Queen Mary, who died late in 1694. 1 propose considering the elegies as a group to better understand the unique characteristics of late seventeenth-century patronage. Chapter VI closes the study.