“Beyond the Pale of Ordinary Criticism”

Abstract

Thomas Hawkins wrote two books about his extraordinary collection of fossil reptiles: Memoirs of Ichthyosauri and Plesiosauri (1834) and The Book of the Great Sea-Dragons (1840). When contemporary readers explicitly labeled these books "eccentric," they were making use of a new discourse that aimed to make sense of phenomena that appeared to transgress the boundaries of an increasingly ordered and structured world. Some modern-day commentators have dismissed Hawkins's books because of their perceived eccentricities. This essay, by contrast, uses techniques of close reading and reception analysis to investigate them precisely as specimens of "eccentric" literature. It argues that, like other eccentric phenomena, the books were perceived to be liminal--they were felt to undermine the generic boundaries that governed the production and interpretation of the different kinds of literary work. Eccentricity as a social and cultural phenomenon has received surprisingly little attention from scholars until very recently. Through analyzing and contextualizing Hawkins's books, and the varied responses they provoked, this essay aims to contribute to our understanding both of eccentricity and of the generic conventions shaping varieties of scientific writing in the nineteenth century and beyond.

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