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

The first study to examine the Mediterranean in nineteenth-century British writing, showing how its heritage shaped British imperialism.

Lindsey N. Chappell (Author)

9781009469807, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 14 November 2024

322 pages
23.6 x 16.1 x 2.2 cm, 0.59 kg

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.

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.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 [DSBF]