I was given the opportunity to sit down with Dr. Drury to discuss his paper in further detail. He cites Sianne Ngai’s book Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, and Interesting, as sparking his interest in whimsy. Ngai’s book, Dr. Drury explains, is a “cultural analysis of our everyday aesthetic vocabulary,” especially that vocabulary which extends beyond the popular yet constraining conception of aesthetics as beauty. While Ngai’s novel explores the “zany, cute, and interesting,” Dr. Drury is more interested in whimsy. Dr. Drury explains that whimsy “has its origins in the period that I study, the Enlightenment, the long 18th century…I begin with this idea: why did this word emerge? What is it?...What are people using it to do and say?”
To answer these questions, Dr. Drury turns to James Boswell, Scottish biographer and prolific diarist. Although best known for his biography of Samuel Johnson, Boswell’s journals, which were published posthumously, also sparked significant intrigue. Dr. Drury draws particular attention to The London Journal, the first of more than a dozen volumes of Boswell’s diaries. Dr. Drury explains of The London Journal, “it sold more than a million copies, in large part because Boswell describes his sexual escapades in some detail. But it’s also incredibly frank and open about himself.” Even before his journals were published, however, Boswell was often described by his peers as an “odd” individual because of his tendency to overshare. Dr. Drury notes that perhaps our contemporary age of social media is more comfortable with oversharing, “but in the 18th century, it was not common to do that, and particularly for men…Men were expected to be stoic, constrained and disciplined.” Boswell’s journals express his shame about his own character, but they also express moments of pride: Dr. Drury says, “I give all these examples of all the different moments where he acts on a whim or does something whimsical and appears to be quite proud of doing it.”
Dr. Drury’s project thus posits Boswell’s “oddness” as a sort of self-aware whimsicality. Many of Boswell’s contemporaries, Dr. Drury explains, saw him as entirely unconscious of his character, as somewhat of a babbling fool. In contrast, Dr. Drury says that Boswell “knows what he’s doing and he thinks there’s value to it. He’s modern in the way that he thinks being open and vulnerable with each other is actually a way to form intimacy and is also a way to reveal the essential identity of an individual.” In this way, Boswell was not only conscious of his own whimsical nature, but also pushing the boundaries of masculinity in the 18th century. Dr. Drury notes, “this is about how Boswell’s candor and openness breached all these kinds of norms about what it meant to be a gentleman that were very shocking at the time.”
Dr. Drury concludes by telling me that not only did The London Journal make him want to be a scholar of the 18th century, but that he will also be teaching the book in his upcoming fall 2026 course entitled “Serious Whimsy.” In his course, he’ll connect Boswell’s writing to an aesthetic of whimsy that Dr. Drury cites as “absolutely central to the 18th century.” If Boswell doesn’t intrigue you, Dr. Drury tells me that he’ll also be teaching Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Lolly Willowes, the ending of which Dr. Drury describes as “rapturous.” Regardless of what brings you to Dr. Drury’s course, it promises to be a fascinating exploration of whimsy as a serious aesthetic and social force of the 18th century.
