Sentimental Masculinity and the Rise of History, 1790–1890

Challenges the received account of the way in which modern historical thought developed in the nineteenth century.

Mike Goode (Author)

9780521898591, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 14 May 2009

272 pages, 14 b/w illus.
23.4 x 0.6 x 2 cm, 0.59 kg

'With its large and entertaining variety of sources, its fine historicized readings, and its convincing argument, Sentimental Masculinity and the Rise of History achieves its aims.' James Najarian, Studies in Romanticism

Mike Goode challenges received accounts of the development of modern historical thought, arguing that, in Romantic and Victorian Britain, struggles over historical authority were as much disputes over the nature of proper masculinity as they were contests over ideas and interpretations. Drawing on primary materials from such diverse fields as political economy, moral philosophy, medicine, antiquarian study, and visual satire, Goode uncovers a Romantic historical tradition - one most influentially realized by historical novels - which held that historians must be manly and sentimental in order to understand history properly. Goode further shows how and why, by later in the nineteenth century, the bodies and feelings - but not the gender - of historians came to be regarded as irrelevant to their scholarly projects. The result is an unconventional account of the rise of history, one that focuses more on novelists, political philosophers, and caricaturists than on historians.

1. The feeling of history
2. Edmund Burke and the erotics of Romantic historicism
3. Reflections in the print shop windows: caricaturing and contesting historical sense in the Revolution controversy
4. Morbid antiquaries and vital men of feeling: the gender of history in the Waverley novels
5. Boredom and the excitements of history: settling interests, nerves, and narratives in Rob Roy and Northanger Abbey
6. Uneven manliness and the separate spheres of Victorian history
Coda. Living history, reenacting, and the period rush.

Subject Areas: Gender studies, gender groups [JFSJ], History [HB], Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD], Literature & literary studies [D]