Foucauldian Rochester; or The Dissemination of Text

Foucault's argument that the author is created and constructed by the text's relations to society and that his/her function is one of classification and circulation provides us with a tentative starting point for discussing the publication of Rochester's poetry. The critic David Farley-Hills has provided us with the material to begin analyzing how Johnson's "blaze of reputation" has influenced the distribution and reception of Rochester's poems.

In his book, Rochester: The Critical Heritage, Farley-Hills collects critiques of Rochester's poetry from 1672 to 1903. He divides these years into different eras based on how society viewed Rochester as a man and a poet. The years 1700-50, he names as the era of "Rochester Acclaimed." The era 1750-1800 he calls "Growing disapproval," 1800-1850 is "Rochester in eclipse: Criticism," and 1850-1903 is the "Beginnings of Reassessment."

In this book, Farley-Hills attempts to connect the publication of Rochester's poetry to the social construction of the authorial identity of Rochester. He counts the editions of Rochester's works and finds a clear correlation between the number of editions and society's view of Rochester. Between 1700 and 1750, at least 27 different editions of Rochester's poetry were published; in 1750 - 1800 there were seventeen editions; 1800 - 1850 five editions; and in 1850 - 1900 two editions were published. If we were to continue Farley-Hills' division, we could call the twentieth century the era of idealisation of Rochester the anti-hero. The twentieth century saw a sharp rise in the publication of Rochester's works, and at least fourteen editions were published, four of them critical editions.

The analysis of Farley-Hills correlates with Michel Foucault's idea of the author-function. Foucault defined his author-function as being not inherent to the text, but created and constructed by the text's relations to society. Foucault's author-function directly impacts the dissemination of a text within a society. Farley-Hills hints at the complicated (shall we say, Foucauldian) relationship between the authorship of Rochester's poems and the understanding and reception of it. We can posit that society's understanding of Rochester the man controls to a certain extent how his poems are received and understood.