In his analysis of the book, Kings and Desperate men by Loius Kronenberger, Justin Lyons provides a critique of the entire book basing his argument on the political happenings in England at that time, focusing on the information and the approach that Loius Kronenberg provided in his book. Much of the analysis revolves around the artistic approach taken by Kronenberg. He mentions that Kronenberger’s work was more descriptive rather than analytical. Justin illustrates this by saying that, ‘’the picture that Kronenberger provides falls between “orthodox history” with its emphasis on political/military events and large, impersonal trends, and social history, which often takes every detail to be of equal interest and of equal importance’’(Lyons xvi)
He goes ahead to say that Kreonenberger was less concerned with legions of details that could be marshaled. Instead, he was more concerned with those points of color that revealed the character of the persons and the age that he describes, given that Kronenberger’s work was more artistic than scholarly (Lyons xvi).
Kronenberger as a writer painted the pictures to show the rift between the life that was led by the England rulers, politicians, and the prominent people to that of the local/ ordinary people. He writes that, ” whatever might be happening in the upper levels of the society, chaos still ruled below. The poor in those days simply did not believe in tomorrow (Lyons xv). He makes a further assertion of this by saying, ”Perhaps we best enter the world outside London not by riding country roads, or traversing the parks of historic country houses, but by following our nose down the high street of an eighteenth-century village” (Lyons xv).
Justin uses secondary work by other scholars to blend his analysis of the whole work/book and to prove his view of Kronenberger’s work as more artistic; he cites Dr. Johnson’s review of the same book; ” The theatrical aspect of Kronenberger’s work is also the product of his mind’s eye…..”. Ironically he goes ahead to offer a critique of the same works that he cites. He says that Dr. Johnson made comments that were invariably pointed but seldom to the point (Lyons xviii).
Justin’s analysis stems from a biased point of view since his work reflects an idea that the book ignored certain historical happenings that ought to have been recorded or be part of the writing. He sees the book as more of a dramatic set-piece rather than scholarly writing. He introduces Kronenberger as a drama critic, professor of theatre arts, essayist and lastly he recognizes the fact that he was a novelist and goes further to allege that these shaped his visualization and presentation of his works; he begins in these words, ” we might begin by considering what it means to provide a picture of the historical period. It cannot, of course, mean an exacting capture of every detail of a subject of such breadth” (Lyons xiv).
This is a biased approach to analysis. The idea of recording historical happenings always takes different positions and the fact that Kronenberg chose to use pictures does not make it less scholarly according to me. People use different ways to pass message/ information of which he chose to use art being that he loved art.
Works Cited
Lyons, Justin. Kings and Desperate Men, Life in eighteenth century England by Louis Kronenberger. Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick: New Jersey, 2010.