RAWSON, C(laude) J(ulien) 1935-

PERSONAL: Born February 8, 1935, in Shanghai, China; married Judith Ann Hammond (a university lecturer), July 14, 1959; children: Hugh Jonathan, Timothy Justin, Mark Julian, Harriet Anne, Annabel Kate. Education: Magdalen College, Oxford, B.A., 1955, M.A. and B.Litt., 1958.

ADDRESSES: Office—Department of English, Yale University, 63 High Street, Room 109, P. O. Box 208302, New Haven, CT, 06520-8302. Agent—Caroline Dawnay, Peters, Fraser & Dunlop, Drury House, 34-43 Russell St., London WC2B 5HA. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Newcastle upon Tyne, England, research fellow, 1957-59, lecturer in English, 1959-65; University of Warwick, Coventry, England, lecturer, 1965-69, senior lecturer, 1969-71, professor of English, 1971-85, chair of department, 1974-77; visiting professor, University of Pennsylvania, 1973; University of California, Berkeley, 1980; George Sherburn Professor of English, University of Illinois, 1985-86; Maynard Mack Professor of English, Yale University, New Haven, CT, 1986—. Lecturer on tours in Europe, Australasia, Far East, and North and South America.

MEMBER: American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (Clifford Lecturer, 1992); British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (president, 1974-75; Annual Society Lecturer, 1988, 1998); Modern Humanities Research Association (committee, 1974-1988).

AWARDS, HONORS: Certificate of Merit for Distinguished Service as an Editor, Conference of Editors of Learned Journals, 1988; American Academy of Arts and Sciences fellow, 2000.

WRITINGS:

Henry Fielding, Routledge & Kegan Paul (London, England) 1968.

Henry Fielding and the Augustan Ideal under Stress, Routledge & Kegan Paul (Boston, MA), 1972.

Gulliver and the Gentle Reader, Routledge & Kegan Paul (Boston, MA), 1973.

Order from Confusion Sprung: Studies in Eighteenth-Century Literature from Swift to Cowper, Allen & Unwin (Boston, MA), 1985.

Gulliver and the Gentle Reader: Studies in Swift and Our Time, Humanities Press (Atlantic Highlands, NJ), 1991.

Satire and Sentiment, 1660-1830, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1994.

God, Gulliver, and Genocide: Barbarism and the European Imagination, 1492-1945, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2001, revised edition, 2002.

EDITOR

Focus: Swift, Sphere Books (London, England), 1971.

Fielding: A Critical Anthology, Penguin (New York, NY), 1973.

Yeats and Anglo-Irish Literature: Critical Essays by Peter Ure, Liverpool University Press Barnes & Noble (New York, NY), 1974.

The Character of Swift's Satire: A Revised Focus, University of Delaware Press (Newark, DE), 1983.

(With Jenny Mezciems) English Satire and the Satiric Tradition, B. Blackwell (New York, NY), 1984.

(With F. P. Lock) Collected Poems of Thomas Parnell, University of Delaware Press (Newark, DE), 1989.

Jonathan Swift: A Collection of Critical Essays, Prentice Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1995.

(With H.B. Nisbet) The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, Volume 4: The Eighteenth Century, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1997.

Author of numerous articles and reviews in literary and popular periodicals, including Times Literary Supplement, New York Times Book Review, and London Review of Books.

General editor of Unwin Critical Library, 1975—, Blackwell Critical Biographies; Cambridge History of Literary Criticism; Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jonathan Swift; joint editor of Modern Language Review and Yearbook of English Studies, 1974-1988; and general editor and chair of the Yale Boswell Editions, 1989-2001.

SIDELIGHTS: Claude Julien Rawson has had a long and distinguished academic career specializing primarily in eighteenth- and twentieth-century literature and satire. He is also considered one of the most accomplished specialists of the satiric writer Jonathan Swift. During his career, Rawson has lectured widely in Europe, the Americas, Australasia, and the Far East. His numerous books range from Henry Fielding and the Augustan Ideal under Stress to the recent God, Gulliver, and Genocide: Barbarism and the European Imagination, 1492-1945.

In his book Satire and Sentiment, 1660-1830, Rawson delves into the evolution of satirical writing during the eighteenth century. He discusses both satirical giants such as Swift, Pope, Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, and Jane Austen and lesser-known writers like Rochester and Oldham. He also discusses the social and cultural conditions that influenced them. Writing in the Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Joel Weinsheimer noted that Satire and Sentiment offers the reader "a love of literature for its own sake—not for the broad cultural or theoretical conclusions that might be based upon it." He also commented that Rawson "does not reduce literature to grist in the mill of philosophy or sociology. He does not subvert the power of what he reads; he exemplifies it by the power of his own writing."

Rawson's God, Gulliver, and Genocide examines the ambiguous meanings and motives behind literature that satirizes yet, at the same time, may promote a tradition of stereotypes, racism, and genocide. For example, Rawson analyzes Swift's A Modest Proposal in a chapter called "Killing the Poor: An Anglo-Irish Theme?" The pamphlet by Swift has long been looked upon as an anti-colonial satire on the Irish famine in which Swift suggests that the Irish should cook and eat their children. London Review of Books contributor Terry Eagleton noted that in God, Gulliver, and Genocide Rawson presents a case that the pamphlet is actually "'an exasperated version of the cannibal slur' on the Irish, a canard, which its imagery mischievously revives." The ambiguity of stereotyping and racism in literature abounds, and Rawson provides plenty of examples, such as Oscar Wilde's poke at do-gooders for their attempts to "try to solve the problem of poverty . . . by keeping the poor alive." Rawson also delves into biblical precedents for ideas like genocide and how these thoughts are reiterated in literature, as in Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness, when Kurtz declares, "Exterminate all the brutes."

Eagleton called God, Gulliver and Genocide an "erudite, passionate book" that is "learned, wide-ranging and acute." New Republic contributor Robert Alter noted that Rawson's book is much different from "fashionable criticisms of Western values and actions . . . in its freedom from ideological agendas, its refusal to cook the evidence, its ability to see moral nuance, and its steady sense of the complexity of historical causation." He also commented, "the monitory idea that Rawson traces so well is that even metaphor has its responsibilities."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Antioch Review, spring, 1985, review of English Satire and the Satiric Tradition, p. 256.

Criticism, summer, 1985, review of The Character of Swift's Satire: A Revised Focus, p. 316; spring, 1988, review of Order from Confusion Sprung: Studies in Eighteenth-Century Literature from Swift to Cowper, p. 256.

Dalhousie Review, summer, 1994, David McNeil, review of Satire and Sentiment, 1660-1830, p. 266.

Eighteenth-Century Studies, fall, 1996, Charles A. Knight, review of Satire and Sentiment, p. 100.

Essays in Criticism, April, 1995, Dustin Griffin, review of Satire and Sentiment, p. 158.

Journal of English and Germanic Philology, October, 1991, Anne Cline Kelly, review of Collected Poems of Thomas Parnell, p. 570; October, 1995, Joel Weinsheimer, review of Satire and Sentiment, p. 570.

London Review of Books (London, England), February 6, 1986, review of Order from Confusion Sprung, p. 11; August 23, 2001, Terry Eagleton, review of God, Gulliver, and Genocide: Barbarism and the European Imagination, 1492-1945, pp. 19-20.

Modern Language Quarterly, January, 1986, review of English Satire and the Satiric Tradition, p. 162; July, 1987, review of Order from Confusion Sprung, p. 706; December, 1995, Alexander Pettit, review of Satire and Sentiment, p. 511.

Modern Philology, February, 1992, John Irwin Fischer, review of Collected Poems of Thomas Parnell, p. 406; August, 1999, Jonathan Brody Kramnick, review of The Cambridge History of Literary Criticsm, Volume 4: The Eighteenth Century, p. 117.

New Republic, February 11, 2002, Robert Alter, "Immodest Proposals," review of God, Gulliver, and Genocide, p. 34.

Review of English Studies, May, 1988, Graham Midgley, review of English Satire and the Satiric Tradition, p. 331; August, 1990, Howard Erskine-Hill, review of Order from Confusion Sprung, p. 440; November, 1999, David Womersley, review of The Cambridge History of Literary Criticsm, Volume 4: The Eighteenth Century, p. 530.

Sewanee Review, spring, 1987, Calhoun Winton, review of Order from Confusion Sprung, p. 31.

Times Educational Supplement, July 20, 1984, review of The Character of Swift's Satire, p. 19; August 23, 1985, review of English Satire and the Satiric Tradition, p. 20; November 1, 1985, review of Order from Confusion Sprung, p. 23.

Times Literary Supplement, December 8, 1989, Donald Davie, review of Collected Poems of Thomas Parnell, p. 1365; May 13, 1994, David Nokes, review of Satire and Sentiment, p. 22; October 19, 2001, Thomas Keymer, review of God, Gulliver, and Genocide, p. 12.