9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
it's not safe to srike a beehive--but I'll give it a try, February 14, 2009
This review is from: Wuthering Heights (Ignatius Critical Editions) (Paperback)
The strange title of this review comes from the awareness that this particular edition of "Wuthering Heights" is, to say the least, "controversial". Just see the other review and also the comments attached to it. As somebody who has studied, compared, reviewed in the last ten years some forty-odd editions of this novel from 1900 (Haworth Edition) onwards, I will try to remain as cool as possible, not concealing my possible vested interests as an early-retired Roman Catholic priest.
This Ignatius Critical Edition, introduced and edited (?) by Joseph Pearce, is rather a text-oriented edition (and not a "study" or context-oriented one, like Norton's, Broadview's or Longman Cultural, to name only the very best of them). Besides the text itself and copious footnotes, we are left only with the twenty page Introduction by Pearce and three critical essays at the end which are not at all bad nor overly controversial: they can even add to our never-ending understanding of this most deep and poetical of all texts (a slight overstatement).
The second essay is particularly good, the other two rather
run-of-the-mill material.
Thus, this edition should be compared to the Oxford's and Penguin's ones (to name the best and best-known of them),
or the Wordsworth Edition or the Oneworld's one.
We begin with the real STRENGHTS of Ignatius Edition:
1) THE TEXT itself, that is deadly accurate (with the unavoidable corrections) on the 1847 first edition. This, of course, doesn't happen as a miracle of Pearce's own: it's only a matter of copying (and that means perhaps typesetting) from the Clarendon reference edition and not getting involved in a legal suit over copyright (something that I surmise ended abruptly the way of the excellent Heather Glen's edition for Routledge
--and it remains a very good option to get one of the very few copies still extant of that ill-fated effort, for the Introduction and the Afterthought by Glen are most valuable and imppressive, and the annotation is good enough. You may try Amazon Canada or abebooks.com, but it's not easy to get a good-condition copy, and paper has not stood well the test of the time, although Oxford or Penguin or Wordsworth do far worse as regards paper ageing).
Returning to the Ignatius Critical Edition, its text is deadly accurate to the point of fastidiousness (as it happens with other Oxford look-alikes), for example in the funny and nonsensical "two volume" division, with its separate chapter numbering, or the rather heavy and most un-American punctuation.
2)THE ANNOTATON, is -arguably- the VERY BEST on the market for accuracy and completeness (with only one gross blunder, easily detectable, but just now I can't find the page). The lexical and dialectal helps are sufficient and user-friendly, although of course nothing is as user friendly as the full Standard English glosses of the dialectal tirades as footnotes, that began with the Franklin Mint editions (for example the 1979 one, with the Alan Reingold illustrations, one good and not so expensive item to own), and continue nowadays with Norton Fourth, Broadview, or Longman Cultural. These last editions offer also reliable
1847-like texts (especially Booth's for Longman), although not so deadly accurate, with a more sensible modern punctuation (especially Norton, but also Broadview), and even dropping the "two volume" division altogether in the case of Norton and Broadview, or softening it in Longman's (with a double chapter numbering in the "second volume", like the old Macdonald edition of 1955 with the very suggesting Dame Daphne du Maurier Introduction, some good illustrations, and a reliable Garrod/Page text--another interesting buy).
3)MATERIAL PRODUCTION. A good trade paperback (albeit without flaps) in the line of -again- Broadview, Norton and Booth (Oneworld Classics edition, with a less reliable eclectic text with some errors and too many of 1850 Charlotte's "improvements" does better in this respect, with flaps, slightly better paper and it looks like signature-sewn instead of all-glue "perfect binding". I'm not so sure about Broadview, Longman and Norton, for I would have to tear them apart for ascertaining that, and my scientific curiosity doesn't get so far).
Ignatius Edition, for its part, IS signature-sewn (no doubt about it), with good paper and near perfect printing quality in Goudy Old Style typeface (not my favorite, but who minds!) set to 11,5/13,5 points. That is much easier on the eyes than the Sabon 10/12,5 of Longman, with a perfect print quality, or the Plantin 10/11,5 of Broadview with a similar printing quality, not to mention the Fairfield 9/11 of Norton Fourth, with worse printing quality. In summary, Ignatius Critical Edition is the most legible and best produced of this bunch. As far as material production is concerned, Oxford World's Classics and Penguin Classics, let alone Wordsworth Classics, are genuine TRASH (i.e."mass market paperback") that look like they had a
Top Secret label of "Destroy BEFORE reading" and, in any case, will not last long enough to be read again.
To speak now of the WEAKNESSES, there is only ONE, but almost a deadly one.
THE INTRODUCTION ! These twenty pages, written to the glory of the great Joseph Pearce, who seems perfectly able to write a "scholarly" Introduction about goodness knows what, encompass all the sectarianism and bigotry and shortsightedness that one fears to find after reading the back cover statements
("a tradition-oriented approach", "many modern critical editions have succumbed to the fads of modernism[?] and
post-modernism", "this series concentrates on critical examinations informed by our[?] Judeo-Christian heritage", "meeting the authors in their element, instead of the currently popular method of deconstructing a classic to fit a modern[?] mindset", "the great works of Western Civilization[mind the capitals] ... in the company of some of the finest literature professors alive today[Joseph Pearce?]"),
all this back-cover bigotry and heavy-handedness, and then some.
To begin with the good news, the body of the Introduction, ably and clearly written, is perhaps the most unperceiving and conventional in the whole history of Wuthering Heights Introductions since 1900, although one is forced to admit that Pearce knows his trade and has done his homework well. The line follows that of Charlotte's 1850 vindication-domestication Preface, but overstating it grossly and missing all the
many-faceted suggesting subtleties of this "Victorian" Preface (and, of course, "Victorian" is not an adjective to put along Wuthering Heights nor Emily Jane Brontė's poems).
To make Nelly Dean a model of Christian virtue and faithfulness in three pages is certainly to overdo Charlotte's hint. There is no need to make her the villain of the plot, as some critic attempted too heavy-handedly, but, at her best, Nelly Dean is the wearisomest ever meddling and eavesdropper governess that be, too concerned to get her reputation right in re-telling her story as to notice her many contradictions and her all-too-pragmatic lies and double deals. She likes herself when she looks at the mirror, she is delighted to have made her own acquaintance (Spanish idioms, please excuse me), but her very conceitedness is telling of her other many weaknesses (as the saying goes,
"I used to be conceited, but now I'm perfect!"). Nelly Dean is an inexhaustible repository of conventional wisdom, moral hipocrisy (caring more for appearances than for substance), and unsensitiveness for the feelings and sufferings of anybody else. Above all, she is egoist, manipulating and
self-serving to the last. So much for Nelly Dean, acknowledging that some of her moral shortcomings stem from her serving double duty as character and narrator (one can argue that she is a meddler and an eavesdropper because she is to propel the plot and tell everything to that dunce of Lockwood).
And what about the pure, unfailing and orthodox Christian [Roman Catholic variety, perhaps?] faith and devotion of Emily J. Brontė herself? Pearce can put to double or triple duty some unforgettable verse, albeit rather ambivalent like "O God within my breast, | Almighty, ever-present Deity! [...] There is no room for Death, | Nor atom that his might could render void: | Thou, THOU art Being and Breath, | And what Thou art may never be destroyed." It will come as a surprise to nobody that he omits the intervening lines [...] in the selfsame well-known poem
"Vain are the thousand creeds, | That move men's hearts, unutterably vain, | worthless as withered weeds | or idlest froth amid the boundless main". Nor does one get shocked when Pearce seems to ignore that Emily never did duty at the Sunday school, like her sisters did. The subjects of Emily's faith, religious allegiance or hope in the afterlife are, to put it simply, very complex. Pearce strikes a sounder note when he speaks several times of Emily's virginity (but, what an obsession! Is he a
gynecologist-in-disguise?), and above all, when he speaks of her unfailing devotion for her father (and the other way round, too). So much for the good news.
The BAD news? They cover only two pages (second and third) of the worthless and unsuggesting Introduction, but they are a devastating example of sectarianism and bigotry, of malveillance and utter lack of academic courtesy (one most remember, after all, that Pearce -"one of the finest literature professors alive today"- is not a scholar, nor -it seems- does he want to become one-- goodness forbid!):"and many literary academics seem to be little more than gossips"; "In a shameful and shameless display of myth making, these "scholars" have taken"; "the virginal clergyman's daughter has been turned into a fulminating...
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5 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Go for the traditional and comprehensive Norton instead, September 11, 2008
This review is from: Wuthering Heights (Ignatius Critical Editions) (Paperback)
The Ignatius Critical Editions claims to "represent a tradition-oriented alternative to popular textbook series such as the Norton Critical Editions or Oxford World Classics, and are designed to concentrate on traditional readings of the Classics of world literature."
Yet what can in fact be a more traditional, more scholarly, and less popular textbook than
Wuthering Heights (Norton Critical Editions) or
Wuthering Heights: Authoritative Text, Backgrounds, Criticism (Norton Critical Editions) as well as the
Wuthering Heights (Oxford World's Classics). The list of such respected, traditional and academic considerations of the text must also include
Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights (Penguin Critical Studies) Twentieth Century Interpretations of Wuthering Heights: A Collection of Critical Essays (20th Century Interpretations) and even the dreaded (by this publisher)
Wuthering Heights (Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations).
This product page nebulously accuses these revered and much referenced works as somehow masters of deceit to confuse and to lose the freshman mind: "Whereas many modern critical editions have succumbed to the fads of modernism and post-modernism, this series will concentrate on tradition-oriented criticism of these great works." Yet what could be more traditional than the editions mentioned aforehand?
This "Ignatius" edition promises to "ensure that traditional moral readings of the works are given prominence, instead of the feminist, or deconstructionist readings that often proliferate in other series of 'critical editions'." And yet this product page itself poses the unanswered questions: "What was Emily Brontė's intention? Were her intentions iconoclastic? Were they feminist? Were they Christian or post-Christian?" Since this product description proscribes a feminist reading of this proto-feminist writer, that question is closed. And may we please have a working definition of the neologism "deconstructionist, and examples of where such criticism may be found? Certainly not in the "popular textbook series" of Norton and Oxford! What does this publisher mean by post-Christian? Something like Father Thomas Merton's borrowing of CS Lewis's phrase to entitle his
Peace In The Post-christian Era?
Does the writer of this product page really not realize the hallowed history of Oxford University?
The coup de grace of this overheated sales pitch reads: "As such, they represent a genuine extension of consumer-choice, enabling educators, students and lovers of good literature to buy editions of classic literary works without having to 'buy into' the ideologies of secular fundamentalism." Let us again define your terms! What in the world is meant here? And do the critical essays truly live up to this boast? We find not a clue in the product description, not even an essayist's name.
Better we turn to their consideration of this text itself: "Wuthering Heights is one of the classic novels of nineteenth century romanticism. As a major work of modern literature it retains its controversial status." So, something written in the eighteen hundreds may be considered "a major work of modern literature" yet not receive a critical reading which has "succumbed to the fad of modernism"?
Such questions remain unanswered and unsurprisingly this product description grants us no indication of the writers of the "new and controversial critical essays." Although we read they are "some of the leading lights in contemporary literary scholarship" we are not permitted to know their names. Yet, judging from the other books in this series, we can guess their leading lights do not shine that bright. For example, in this serie's "critical edition" of Mary Shelley's Modern Prometheus, the essays are written by "leading lights" from such esteemed institutions as the Open University, Christendom College, Ave Maria in Naples Florida, the Southern Catholic College; the author's names nearly unknown. The one recognized institute of higher education, Notre Dame, has her contribution poorly written by an architectural grad student, who concludes Pygmalion is a better and more moral myth because her creator prays (albeit to Venus) and his creation is not
"ugly" and he marries his creation. Leading lights indeed!
Unless and until this product page can answer its own questions regarding this text: "What was Emily Brontė's intention? Were her intentions iconoclastic? Were they feminist? Were they Christian or post-Christian? Who are the heroes and the villains in this dark masterpiece? Are there any heroes? Are there any villains?" and can openly identify its leading lights: "This critical edition of Emily Brontė's classic includes new and controversial critical essays by some of the leading lights in contemporary literary scholarship." the "tradition-minded literature professor" does well to stick to the traditional, proven, if unpopular (for being highly academic) textbooks such as the Norton and the Oxford.
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