B.W. Young
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199256228
- eISBN:
- 9780191719660
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199256228.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
The Victorians were preoccupied by the 18th century. It was central to many 19th-century debates, particularly those concerning the place of history and religion in national life. This book explores ...
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The Victorians were preoccupied by the 18th century. It was central to many 19th-century debates, particularly those concerning the place of history and religion in national life. This book explores the diverse responses of key Victorian writers and thinkers — Thomas Carlyle, John Henry Newman, Leslie Stephen, Vernon Lee, and M. R. James — to a period which commanded their interest throughout the Victorian era, from the accession of Queen Victoria to the opening decades of the 20th century. They were, on the one hand, appalled by the apparent frivolity of the 18th century, which was denounced by Carlyle as a dispiriting successor to the culture of Puritan England, and, on the other they were concerned to continue its secularizing influence on English culture, as is seen in the pioneering work of Leslie Stephen, who was passionately keen to transform the legacy of 18th-century scepticism into Victorian agnosticism. The Victorian interest in the 18th century was never a purely insular matter, and the history of 18th-century France, Germany, and Italy played a dominant role in the 19th-century historical understanding. A debate between generations was enacted, in which Romanticism melded into Victorianism. The Victorians were haunted by the 18th century, both metaphorically and literally, and the book closes with consideration of the culturally resonant 18th-century ghosts encountered in the fiction of Vernon Lee and M. R. James.Less
The Victorians were preoccupied by the 18th century. It was central to many 19th-century debates, particularly those concerning the place of history and religion in national life. This book explores the diverse responses of key Victorian writers and thinkers — Thomas Carlyle, John Henry Newman, Leslie Stephen, Vernon Lee, and M. R. James — to a period which commanded their interest throughout the Victorian era, from the accession of Queen Victoria to the opening decades of the 20th century. They were, on the one hand, appalled by the apparent frivolity of the 18th century, which was denounced by Carlyle as a dispiriting successor to the culture of Puritan England, and, on the other they were concerned to continue its secularizing influence on English culture, as is seen in the pioneering work of Leslie Stephen, who was passionately keen to transform the legacy of 18th-century scepticism into Victorian agnosticism. The Victorian interest in the 18th century was never a purely insular matter, and the history of 18th-century France, Germany, and Italy played a dominant role in the 19th-century historical understanding. A debate between generations was enacted, in which Romanticism melded into Victorianism. The Victorians were haunted by the 18th century, both metaphorically and literally, and the book closes with consideration of the culturally resonant 18th-century ghosts encountered in the fiction of Vernon Lee and M. R. James.
B. W. Young
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199256228
- eISBN:
- 9780191719660
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199256228.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
This chapter strengthens the important claim made by the literary critic Terry Castle, who has argued for the need for modern scholars properly to appreciate a vitally important ‘spectral’ dimension ...
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This chapter strengthens the important claim made by the literary critic Terry Castle, who has argued for the need for modern scholars properly to appreciate a vitally important ‘spectral’ dimension in what she describes as Leslie Stephen's otherwise all too rational 18th century. Even though she respects the impetus behind W. E. H. Lecky's progressively rationalizing thesis in his History of the Rise and Progress of Rationalism in Europe (1865), she has offered her own richly suggestive series of discrete genealogies that account for the survival of the uncanny into the 19th century and rightly make much of its continuing power. This chapter, therefore, takes the form of an archaeology of the haunting sense of the 18th-century past in the 19th-century present. Haunting is both a reality and a metaphor in Vernon Lee, and the 18th century was an important factor in this experience of haunting, as it was also to prove to be for M. R. James.Less
This chapter strengthens the important claim made by the literary critic Terry Castle, who has argued for the need for modern scholars properly to appreciate a vitally important ‘spectral’ dimension in what she describes as Leslie Stephen's otherwise all too rational 18th century. Even though she respects the impetus behind W. E. H. Lecky's progressively rationalizing thesis in his History of the Rise and Progress of Rationalism in Europe (1865), she has offered her own richly suggestive series of discrete genealogies that account for the survival of the uncanny into the 19th century and rightly make much of its continuing power. This chapter, therefore, takes the form of an archaeology of the haunting sense of the 18th-century past in the 19th-century present. Haunting is both a reality and a metaphor in Vernon Lee, and the 18th century was an important factor in this experience of haunting, as it was also to prove to be for M. R. James.
C. M. Kauffmann
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197263952
- eISBN:
- 9780191734083
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197263952.003.0028
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Medieval History
This chapter examines the history of the study of medieval art in Great Britain during the first half of the twentieth century. Before 1932, no British university offered an honours degree course in ...
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This chapter examines the history of the study of medieval art in Great Britain during the first half of the twentieth century. Before 1932, no British university offered an honours degree course in the history of art. In the case of the British Academy, art did not figure in any of its sections until 1923 when the title of Section Two was changed to Medieval and Modern History and Archaeology and Art. Three fellows of this section include M.R. James, G.F. Warner and O.M. Dalton. This chapter also highlights the contributions of continental art historians to the development of British medieval studies. They include Hugo Buchtal, Otto Demus and Ernst Kitzinger.Less
This chapter examines the history of the study of medieval art in Great Britain during the first half of the twentieth century. Before 1932, no British university offered an honours degree course in the history of art. In the case of the British Academy, art did not figure in any of its sections until 1923 when the title of Section Two was changed to Medieval and Modern History and Archaeology and Art. Three fellows of this section include M.R. James, G.F. Warner and O.M. Dalton. This chapter also highlights the contributions of continental art historians to the development of British medieval studies. They include Hugo Buchtal, Otto Demus and Ernst Kitzinger.
