SOURCE: "Dangerous Sissy: Gendered 'Lives,' John Gay and the Literary Canon," in Philological Quarterly, Vol. 75, No. 3, Summer, 1996, pp. 339-60.

In the following essay, Dugaw asserts that late-eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century notions of class and literary propriety led to a reluctance on the part of Gay's contemporaries to consider him a significant contributor to the literary culture of his era.

John Gay's reputation tumbled as literary criticism metamorphosed in the eighteenth century from a descriptive project to a determinant of taste and values. His own era judged him a prominant figure, an author who sparked controversy and emulation. By the nineteenth century Gay's "official" stature shrank. At the same time, English literary historiography took the form it still holds today. The two phenomena are not unconnected. The changing narratives that successively represented Gay's "life" and his "character" disclose the social, moral, and ideological imperatives that have shaped the valuing...