Memory and Enlightenment: Cultural Afterlives of the Long Eighteenth Century

by James Ward

Overview

This book illuminates how the ‘long eighteenth century’ (1660-1800) persists in our present through screen and performance media, writing and visual art. Tracing the afterlives of the period from the 1980s to the present, it argues that these emerging and changing forms stage the period as a point of origin for the grounding of individual identity in personal memory, and as a site of foundational traumas that shape cultural memory.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783030403669
Publisher:	Springer International Publishing
Publication date:	02/19/2020
Series:	Palgrave MacMillan Memory Studies
Edition description:	1st ed. 2018
Pages:	251
Product dimensions:	5.83(w) x 8.27(h) x (d)

About the Author

James Ward is a Lecturer in Early Modern English Literature at Ulster University, Northern Ireland, UK.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements.- 1.Introduction – Theatres of Memory.- 2.Restorations.- 3.‘Ever-haunting Hogarth’: Remembering the Hogarthian Progress.- 4.Emma Donoghue’s Enlightenment Fictions.- 5.Memory and Enlightenment in the Poetry of Eavan Boland and Medbh McGuckian.- 6.The Recruiting Officer in the Penal Colony.- 7.Memory and Atrocity: Representing the Zong.-8.Conclusion.- Bibliography.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Why do eighteenth century history and aesthetics continue to haunt the contemporary imagination? To what purposes is this period put in the present? And how did the eighteenth century shape the very formation of modern memory itself? These are just some of the questions investigated in this accomplished and engaging study, which explores the way contemporary aesthetic forms stage the period of Enlightenment as the origin of the link between personal memory and individual identity, and as the site of foundational traumas that continue to shape cultural memory. The result is a rigorous examination of the power of this potent past to haunt present forms, and of the power of fiction to retroactively shape the past for the present.” (Kate Mitchell, Australian National University, Australia)

“James Ward’s Memory and Enlightenment is a sophisticated, fascinating study of the ways the eighteenth century continues to cast a long shadow on our arts and politics today.” (Emma Donoghue, authorof Slammerkin and Life Mask, Canada)