Chapter 1 - Introduction

Summary

This chapter is an introduction to the Enlightenment mock arts, set out in three historical hypotheses. First, early-modern writers became increasingly interested in the cognitive (rather than simply material) value in the work of skilled technicians. The mock-arts were models for the intuitions involved in skilled manufacture, related to certain ineffable components of literary production. Second, the literary framing for those investigations was invariably satirical (or oblique and critical in other ways). As specialists in literary wit, authors of mock arts put themselves forward as experts in curiosity, invention and communication. Third, writers became more subtle in their assumptions about the print trade and the suitability of books as tools that might contribute to the communication of personal knowledge. Since convention defined that sort of knowledge by the impossibility of pinning it down in books, this opened another field for irony and indirection.