'Stylish' and 'theoretically informed' declares this book's flyleaf. These descriptors are true. . . .Erwin means to trace the tension between disegno and colore (i.e., drawing and color, a binary devised in art theory) in literature from Dryden and Pope through Addison, Johnson, Burke, and the birth of the novel (a final chapter treats Jane Austen). In classic-to-romantic fashion, color wins. . . .Summing Up: . . . Graduate students and researchers.
CHOICE
In a series of readings focused on the image text relation from Pope to Austen, Textual Vision provides the best account we have of the aesthetics of design during a period we had been given to believe was in the process of repudiating it as an anachronism.... In providing us with a subtle account of the persistence of design through the eighteenth century (and beyond), Erwin makes an important corrective to the familiar narrative about the rise of the new aesthetics, which takes us with ease from Addison to Kant, concerning how it related to the tradition preceding it. Textual Vision could also be productively read within the resurgence of interest in the beautiful, a category it refreshingly approaches as a textured historical discourse rather than an avenue for repoliticizing aesthetics.... [T]he rediscovery of design in Textual Vision will remain indispensable.
Modern Philology
Throughout this book, Erwin's expertise in different aspects of eighteenth-century visual and literary culture is impressive, and he should be commended for so deftly tying together the rise of professional writing with academic debates in the fine arts and the emergence of a popular British culture. Textual Vision will be of particular interest to those investigating the relationship between word and image or the paragone of painting and poetry, and it stands as a testament to how the scholarship of art history and literature can inform one another.... [Erwin's] central thesis that the overturning of classical design was instrumental to the formation of modern British culture in the eighteenth century is both well supported and intriguing.
Eighteenth-Century Fiction
[S]pecialists in eighteenth-century literary studies, aesthetics, word and image theory, art history, and visual culture will be the ones profiting the most from the author's theoretically informed and critically nuanced arguments.... The acquisition of this monograph is highly recommended for the enrichment of personal collections and university libraries supporting graduate students.
New Perspectives on the Eighteenth Century