Temporal Forms and the Nineteenth-Century Mediterranean: Writing British Heritage in Ancient Lands

Authors

Lindsey Chappell, Georgia Southern UniversityFollow

Files

Abstract

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.

Publication Date

11-2024

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

ISBN for this edition (10-digit)

1009469800

ISBN for this edition (13-digit)

9781009469791

ISBN for additional format (10-digit)

1009469789

ISBN for additional format (13-digit)

9781009469784

Comments

Georgia Southern University faculty member, Lindsey N. Chappell authored Temporal forms and the nineteenth-century Mediterranean : Writing British heritage in ancient lands.

Copyright

Cambridge Rights & Permissions