Temporal Forms and the Nineteenth-Century Mediterranean

Erscheinungsjahr 2024
ISBN: 978-1-009-46980-7
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 322 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 619 g

Reihe: Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture

The Mediterranean is ubiquitous in nineteenth-century British literature, but this study is the first to fully recover and explore the region's centrality to Romantic and Victorian constructions of the past, the present, and the shape of time itself. Placing regions central to the making of Western cultural heritage, such as Italy and Greece, into context with one another and with European imperialism, Lindsey N. Chappell traces the contours of what she terms 'heritage discourse' – narrative that constructs or challenges imperial identities by reshaping antiquity – across nineteenth-century British texts. Heritage discourse functions via time, and often in counterintuitive and paradoxical ways. If assertions of political, cultural, and eventually racial supremacy were the end of this discourse, then time was the means through which it could be deployed and resisted. Chappell shows how historical narratives intervened in geopolitics, how antiquarianism sparked scientific innovation, and how classical and biblical heritage shaped British imperialism.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Chappell, Lindsey N.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction; Part I. 'Civis Romanus Sum': A Global Imperial Model: 1. Fractal; 2. Syncretism; Part I coda: La Libertà, unchained; Part II. 'We are all Greeks': Forging an Anglo-Hellenic Cultural Heritage: 3. Inheritance; 4. Irony; Part II coda: whitewashing hellas; Part III. 'Kindred with the Mummy': Rewriting the Holy Land; 5. Ruin; 6. Profanation; Part III coda: unholy land; Conclusion: the temporal forms of British heritage discourse.

Über Autor(innen)

Chappell, Lindsey N.
Lindsey N. Chappell is Associate Professor of English at Georgia Southern University. She has published articles in Victorian Literature and Culture, ELH, SEL, Literature Compass, Victorian Review, and elsewhere. Her research has been funded by numerous organizations, including the Council for European Studies and the Armstrong Browning Library.