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‘Not an Idle Spectator’: Geoffrey Hill as Model Reviewer

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Bridget Vincent
Bridget Vincent*
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge, UK; University of Melbourne, Australia
*
Bridget Vincent, University of Melbourne, Australia, 23 Russell St, Newington, VIC 3350, Australia. Email: [email protected]; [email protected]
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Abstract

Geoffrey Hill's prose has prompted longstanding critical controversy, much of which turns on the perceived difficulty, intransigence and anachronism of his oeuvre as a whole. This paper proposes that new ways to navigate this controversy can be found in Hill's preoccupation with the exemplary dimensions of writing – that is, in his interest in the poet's capacity to offer examples (positive and negative) to a community of readers. The discussion pays particular attention to the connections Hill's reviews establish between style and ethical choice and between literary difficulty and democracy; connections which are intertwined with his ethics of exemplarity in fundamental ways. The paper also engages with those dimensions of literary exemple-use which emerge in new or unusual ways in his prose: his presentation of “models” or ideals for the organisation of civil society; his treatment of certain literary works as exemplars or embodiments of philosophical ideas; and his procedural tic of “sampling” regularly for the purpose of chastisement the “bad example” set by some of the works he criticises.

Type
Articles
Information
Diogenes , Volume 60 , Issue 1: Universalism in a Multicultural World , February 2013 , pp. 86 - 96
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2014

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