Nicole Garret

Areas of Specialization Literature and culture of the long eighteenth century; digital humanities and online pedagogy; history and theories of motherhood; history of the book; women's religious and devotional writing, 1600-1900; history and theory of life writing.

"Christmas-Eve" has been a difficult poem to accommodate to the Browning canon.**** It has seemed an exaggeration of the poet's excesses--too ironic and at the same time too self-satisfied, too crude in its rhythms, too simple in its resolution. Too noisy all round. At its publication a review in the Atheneum suggested that Browning had "recklessly impaired the dignity of his purpose by the vehicle chosen for its development." (1) The poem also provoked a strange review or, more accurately, a refusal to review in the Browning-friendly precincts of the Pre-Raphaelite journal, The Germ. William Michael Rossetti, the reviewer, set up a barrage of verbiage as defense against the poem's reputed assault on proprieties. Never mentioning the poem's religious subject, Rossetti explains his peculiar critical stance: "Of all poets, there is none more than Robert Browning, in approaching whom diffidence is necessary." (2) After struggling with the ratios of style, conception, appropriateness in Browning, he confesses to failure: "We have been desirous to explain and justify the state of feeling in which we enter on the consideration of a new poem by Robert Browning. Those who already feel with us will scarcely be disposed to forgive the prolixity which, for the present, has put it out of our power to come at the work itself" (p. 192). Yet without knowing that he is doing so, Rossetti does suggest a way to come at the work itself. In wandering among possible critical approaches, he considers at some length the charge of extravagance brought against Browning. Clearly intrigued by the concept, he eventually regards extravagance as a way to conceptualize the gap between style and content in Browning's poetry: "If so many exceptions to Browning's 'system of extravagance' be admitted ... wherein are we to seek this extravagance? The ground work exempted, the imputation attaches, if anywhere, to the framework; to the body, if not to the soul. And we are thus left to consider the style, or mode of expression" (l. 188). Extravagance, like the Atheneum charge of impropriety, suggests that the poem lacks dignity. Rossetti does not pursue this point about decorum but points to its possibility. In our present commemorative moment and given a general assent in much literary criticism to early reviews, this essay takes up the challenge of The Germ review to reframe and revalue the concept of extravagance, considering the extravagant style as an essential poetic feature. As a corollary to considering the poem itself as extravagant, the etymology of the word signifying wandering out of bounds, authorizes critical vagrancy. Browning's extravagant poem solicits extravagant criticism and calls for judicious wandering to stop at signifying moments that clarify its religious claims. (3) In contesting interpretations of "Christmas-Eve" as primarily ironic or satiric, this essay views its irony as endemic to the poem's religious theme rather than as a position that distances the poet from it. Browning's is an irony congruent with contemporary interpretations of the bible as "disguised utterance." (4) In arguing that "Christmas-Eve" can be understood by considering its apocalyptic features, this essay turns the critical prism to view its social context as an apocalyptic Victorian moment. Yes, the poem is extravagant as prophetic rhetoric tends to be. Yes, the juxtaposition of Christmas and Revelation seems extravagant. Unlike Browning's dramatic poems set in the past, "Christmas-Eve" takes the poet's own times as its setting and at least two major social problems of Victorian England as its context: consequences of industrialization and religious crises of belief. To stress the urgency of these problems the poem adopts features of the apocalyptic genre. Both meanings of apocalypse bear on the structures of "Christmas-Eve." Its Greek and Latin etymology signifies revelation or unveiling while its allusion to the biblical book signifies prophesies about the end of the world. …

ABSTRACT:In Melissa Sodeman's Sentimental Memorials: Women and the Novel in Literary History, she uncovers traces in sentimental novels of a dynamic and prolific period in women's literary history. Sodeman demonstrates that women writers such as Sophia Lee, Anne Radcliff, Charlotte Smith, and Mary Robinson were aware of changes in the literary marketplace that threatened to exclude their novels, changes to which they responded in innovative ways. Sodeman argues that the formal structures of their novels memorialize the literary achievements and professional experiences of women writers. Her book, like the novels it treats, produces an alternative literary history that centers on women's fiction during a period of professionalization and the formation of a literary canon.

Frances Chamberlaine Sheridan, the only daughter of Anastasia Whyte and the Reverend Dr. Philip Chamberlaine, was born in 1724 in Dublin, Ireland, and raised there. Until recently, she has been known primarily as the mother of the playwright Richard Brinsley ...

Frances Chamberlaine Sheridan, the only daughter of Anastasia Whyte and the Reverend Dr. Philip Chamberlaine, was born in 1724 in Dublin, Ireland, and raised there. Until recently, she has been known primarily as the mother of the playwright Richard Brinsley ...

The disappearance of the Virgin Mary from Protestant religious feminism at the turn of the eighteenth century requires re-evaluation. Insofar as enlightenment-era religious feminism, with its emphasis on women’s intellectual freedom and political participation, legitimized its aims by insisting on the importance of maternal agency, the absence of Mary in their discourse is profoundly stark. Noticing this absence as part of a generalized trend of anti-Catholicism, scholars have been content to say that Marian imagery and Mariology shimmers too much with Catholic superstition, is too redolent of the medieval past to be an explicit figure of English literary culture. This exclusion narrative, I argue, does not do justice to the ways in which Anglicans recuperated Mary in the seventeenth century, or the complexities of Mariology in the reformed sects. I argue that her marginalization in feminist discourse was not so much a politic reticence but a deliberate strategy to eschew a figure whose orthodox Protestant significance was part of a matrix of constraint. In addition, this lecture will examine the interplay of orthodox Mariology and feminist heterodoxy in the context of religion’s enduring dichotomies between freedom of conscience and social control.

John Locke’s “Right of Revolution” (1689) opposes the concepts of revolution and rebellion: “rebellion” he calls an act of defiance against law, and “revolution” a right or duty held by communities against the excesses of a governing body. Locke’s manifesto, published in the year of England’s Glorious Revolution, is central to discourses surrounding political uprisings up through the period known as The Age of Revolutions (1774-1848). Indeed, implicit in the naming of these events (“Jacobite Rebellion,” “American Revolution”) is a judgment of their inherent legality, a discursive practice that bears examination in the rich contexts of obscure and canonical literature. This writing-intensive course will feature works on the topic of rebellion, writ large to include political, social, artistic, and intellectual examples. Our readings will include Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko (1689), selections from Johnson’s A General History of the Pyrates (1724), and Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities (1859). As an intensive writing course with a public speaking component, it will require essays and student presentations of increasing length and complexity. This course satisfies the Stony Brook Curriculum SPK and WRTD requirements.

As part of a special topics course called “Enlightenment Through the Archives,” the first aim for the Book History Project was to enlarge our knowledge of the possibilities of interdisciplinary humanities study. This process included giving students, many of whom had a lot of familiarity with “reading” texts, some hands-on experience with analyzing them as historical materials. Students were split into groups, and each was assigned a text from the syllabus or the professor’s collection of rare books. First, instructor-led presentations introduced them to the practices of critical bibliography (analysis of book materials and technologies). Then the student groups formulated their own goals aimed at creating original presentations of their analyses. These presentations took the form of essays, team lectures, and, finally, the web-based projects that you see here. Their work demonstrates, in diverse ways, proficiency in working with and arguing from evidence derived from publication records, paratextual material, inscriptions, illustrations, typographical particularities, material condition, paper and binding.

The second goal of the project was to find appropriate and engaging modes of presenting this new knowledge. Knowing that they would have to engage both live and online audiences, the groups collected a vast amount of information. They mined online databases, such as Eighteenth-Century Collections Online and Early English Books Online, to produce publication histories and locate early reviews and commentary about their chosen texts. Some of the groups analyzed trends in illustrations, or used Google Ngrams to draw hypotheses about the popularity of the books over time. Each group also designed a digital project to showcase their research in ways that transcend or contribute to the utility of traditional methods.  For instance, we used maps to draw conclusions about the importance of place in a text, or to visualize a print history. The idea was that the website would be a jumping off point for students and scholars to conduct new research, but I believe that many of the web pages turned out to be much more.

The course began with the following learning objectives.

    Locate, evaluate, synthesize and incorporate relevant primary and secondary source materials into class projects.
    Gain an understanding of how facility with old and new technologies can expand the contexts in which we understand the literature of the past.
    Gain experience generating new scholarship for a wider community of professors, students, and readers of the period.
    Develop an awareness of some of the key historical themes and aesthetic concerns of the eighteenth century and the contexts (historical, social, geographical, moral) in which these themes and concerns emerged.
    Develop an awareness of the multi- or interdisciplinary nature of humanities research in the period.
    Communicate complex ideas in formal presentations using a variety of digital media.


The Book History Project seemed to have made its most immediate impact in increasing the facility of students with digital research methods. Because they spent a lot of time working with electronic research aids, the course doubled as an advanced methods class. The class became aware of the more curatorial aspect of advanced humanities study: having the “cure” of certain books throughout the semester, they were responsible for preserving, arranging, and interpreting their materials for educational purposes. Most of their original arguments and new knowledge was derived from this curatorial work, as opposed to emerging from personal interest or theoretical approach. Their sustained engagement with a work of art, and its life over a large span of time, fostered a kind of intimacy with texts and historical figures, an experience which gave the students, ultimately, a fulfilling sense of expertise.


Please see the Student Feedback section for more on outcomes in the students’ own words.

Description of Our Project
The pages in this book history are the product of a project-based learning assignment in our Age of Austen course. This course focused on the literary genealogy of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey (1818)-- its precursors in the Gothic and Amatory traditions. Please hover your mouse over "More" to view the pages that our class designed!

With a mind for genealogies and afterlives, we began by examining some specimens of eighteenth-century book history from the instructor's collection, which gave us an idea of how illustrations, reprints, anthologies, and materiality contribute to our understanding of a work of literature, and raise questions that modern, reprinted textbooks cannot. Next, we turned to the digital archives, including Early English Books Online (EEBO), Eighteenth-Century Collections Online (ECCO), and Google Books, to compile a publication history for each text. From ECCO and EEBO we discovered other valuable records: early book reviews, obituaries, spurious biographies, illustrations, and lampoons. Finally, we turned to our other library resources in order to compile a critical history of each novel and an author biography.

The students used the resources of the Weebly platform to showcase this research, learning how to be discriminating and thoughtful about what information to include. This process uncovered much of the work that goes on behind the scenes of producing an archive or learning resource that is useful to others. The project was graded on the clarity of the written content, the means by which the contributors made their research explicit and retrievable, and the appropriateness of the selected material to the genre-- to wit, the extent to which the information is informative, interactive, and easily digestible. Press the button below to see learning outcomes and responses from the student contributors.

The William Hogarth project began as part of a summer session course called “Satire in the Age of Swift” as a way of studying eighteenth-century satire in a variety of genres and media. After an introduction to the digital archives (primarily but not exclusively) Eighteenth-Century Collections Online, our group of scholars were assigned a selection of Hogarth engravings to analyze as satire, or as artifacts of the “satirical turn” that occurred in the age of Jonathan Swift. See the project here: http://hogarthsatires.weebly.com/

The worked described on my poster took place in a 2015 course called “Enlightenment Through the Archives.” It was designed for upper-division humanities students, but included students in our “University Scholars Program.” So our class had majors in the humanities and social sciences, STEM and Pre-Professional studies. The Book History Project detailed on this poster gave students, many of whom had a lot of familiarity with close reading texts, some hands-on experience with analyzing them as historical materials. Students were split into groups, and each group was assigned a text from my collection of eighteenth-century books.

The first goal was to gain an appreciation of the possibilities of research in the humanities. The second goal of the project was to find appropriate and engaging modes of presenting their research. (“Multi-Modal” composition). Knowing that they would have to engage both live and online audiences, the groups collected a vast amount of data. They mined online databases such as ECCO and EEBO to produce publication histories and locate early reviews and commentary about their chosen texts. Some of the groups analyzed trends in illustrations, or used Google Ngrams to draw hypotheses about the popularity of the books over time.

The Book History Project seemed to have made its most immediate impact in the facility of students with digital research methods. The class also became aware of the more curatorial aspect of advanced humanities study: having the “cure” of certain books throughout the semester, they were responsible for preserving, arranging, and interpreting their materials for educational purposes. Most of their original research was derived from this curatorial work, as opposed to emerging from personal interest or theoretical approach. 

In revisiting this course for our poster session, I have a rather politically-inflected agenda. In the realm of classroom dynamics, that agenda is to interrogate the extent to which an instructor might eschew a hierarchical approach to teaching the eighteenth century--a period which, let’s face it, even the most advanced students tend to know very little about. (Some classroom denizens tend to feel a lot of background is necessary, and that it needs to be delivered by instructors). At the same time, top-down approaches--which have been called “Pedagogies of Domination”--can be especially problematic in our period. Because of the role of eighteenth-century history in contemporary politics, foundational moments and materials have the shimmering aura of origin myth and we risk becoming oracles.

I think it is important to consider the merit of holding forth about a historical moment around which has coalesced so much controversy and which means different things to different people. The question of how the eighteenth century can be accessible to students and the public is currently secondary to the question of why it should be engaged at all—why humanities, why study literary periods, why the ‘coverage model’? Therefore, my second motivation here is to leave the historical meaning of the period an open question while also demonstrating the educational value of the research tour—a grand tour, if you will, through a distant past and the methods used to bring us closer to it.

The role of the instructor here is to mind the gaps: to help identify them, sometimes to bridge them, but especially to point out that what we cannot know, theorize, or codify can be enlightening as well. The handout has a list of what I have come to see as good practices having taught with this model, both as a whole course and in smaller units.