The Nineteenth-Century Present - (Interventions: Rethinking the Nineteenth Century) by Koenraad Claes & Elizabeth Ludlow (Hardcover)
About this item
Highlights
- The Nineteenth-Century Present explores the multiple ways in which history was understood, structured, and reassessed in literary, theological, and political contexts across the nineteenth century.
- About the Author: Elizabeth Ludlow is Associate Professor of Literature and Religion at Anglia Ruskin UniversityKoenraad Claes is a Tutor and Bye-Fellow at Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge
- 298 Pages
- Literary Criticism, European
- Series Name: Interventions: Rethinking the Nineteenth Century
Description
About the Book
This collection explores how a range of nineteenth-century authors, from their own historically contingent perspectives, were concerned with many of the same issues as scholars today looking back at the nineteenth century.
Book Synopsis
The Nineteenth-Century Present explores the multiple ways in which history was understood, structured, and reassessed in literary, theological, and political contexts across the nineteenth century. While the scope of the book is wide, ranging from the representations of geological time and ancient history to the writing of the recent past, and covering the work of writers from Walter Scott to G.K. Chesterton, each chapter reveals how present concerns intrude on and shape every view of history. Ultimately, the collection emphasises that issues raised regarding historicity in recent methodological debates were already concerns in the nineteenth century.
From the Back Cover
The nineteenth-century present explores the multiple ways in which history was understood, structured, and reassessed in literary, theological, and political contexts across the nineteenth century.
This scope of the chapters covers a range of British authors from Walter Scott to G.K. Chesterton, demonstrating how the issues raised regarding historicity in recent methodological debates in all aspects of society, including social hierarchies, religion, science, gender, and burgeoning mass media were already concerns in the nineteenth century. The book questions the opposition between state-sanctioned narratives and counter-histories, the challenges of scientific breakthroughs, and the political and metaphysical tensions between the idea of open-ended continuity and the expectation of an ending. Employing a range of methodologies and welcoming a diversity of representations, these wide-ranging case studies demonstrate the diversity of writing (about) history in nineteenth-century literary texts and its continuities, as well as differences with twentieth and twenty-first century historiographical approaches.About the Author
Elizabeth Ludlow is Associate Professor of Literature and Religion at Anglia Ruskin University
Koenraad Claes is a Tutor and Bye-Fellow at Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge
