Britishness" in this sense is understood primarily as both "a set of parameters comprehending the... more Britishness" in this sense is understood primarily as both "a set of parameters comprehending the standard responses of mid-and late eighteenthcentury Scots to Union," as well as "a manifestation of the concentric loyalties which allowed Scots to capitalize on their self-interested attachment to the expanding core of English commercial opportunity, without compromising their emotional identification with Scotland."
Scotland was at the forefront in spreading the ideas of the Enlightenment. By the beginning of th... more Scotland was at the forefront in spreading the ideas of the Enlightenment. By the beginning of the nineteenth century its periodical press enjoyed an unparalleled reputation with magazines like Blackwood's and the Edinburgh Review enjoying wide circulation. This edited collection of essays is the result of a major conference focusing specifically on the role of Scotland’s print culture in shaping the literature and politics of the long eighteenth century. In contrast to previous studies, this work treats Blackwood’s as the culmination of a long tradition rather than a starting point. It will appeal to scholars of the European Enlightenment as well as those researching Scottish literature and politics, and Romanticism
Scotland was at the forefront in spreading the ideas of the Enlightenment. By the beginning of th... more Scotland was at the forefront in spreading the ideas of the Enlightenment. By the beginning of the nineteenth century its periodical press enjoyed an unparalleled reputation with magazines like Blackwood's Magazine and the Edinburgh Review enjoying wide circulation. This collection of essays is the result of a major conference focusing specifically on the role of Scotland’s print culture in shaping the literature and politics of the long eighteenth century. In contrast to previous studies, this work treats Blackwood’s as the culmination of a long tradition rather than a starting point. It will appeal to scholars of the European Enlightenment as well as those researching Scottish literature and politics, and Romanticism
Britishness" in this sense is understood primarily as both "a set of parameters comprehending the... more Britishness" in this sense is understood primarily as both "a set of parameters comprehending the standard responses of mid-and late eighteenthcentury Scots to Union," as well as "a manifestation of the concentric loyalties which allowed Scots to capitalize on their self-interested attachment to the expanding core of English commercial opportunity, without compromising their emotional identification with Scotland."
This essay firstly examines the strategy of radical education in the early nineteenth-century ple... more This essay firstly examines the strategy of radical education in the early nineteenth-century plebeian public sphere around the issue of paper money, illustrated by William Cobbett in his article series "Paper Against Gold," published in the Political Register during 1810-11. Cobbett’s role as a counter-hegemonic intellectual in the series and the conception of popular knowledge it championed is highlighted, in part through his attempts to expose the complex workings of the wider financial system he described as a "place . . . of a sort of mysterious existence; a sort of Financial Ark; a place not, perhaps, to be touched, or even seen." The second part of the essay demonstrates how this form of critical publicity was transformed in the postwar years into an active project of resistance against the worst abuses of the paper money system, culminating in Cobbett’s "puff out" campaign in the Register to materially undermine Bank of England paper currency and T.J. Wooler’s print protests in The Black Dwarf directly confronting the enforcement of the "bloody code" in the capital forgery trials of late 1818. This postwar print campaign against the paper money system illustrates key aspects of the wider radical intellectual project in the plebeian public sphere, highlighting how the radical press "converted" popular public debate into a new form of cultural currency in the Romantic period, a currency that emblematized a continuing concern for the material welfare of its readers and listeners in the face of a corrupt and bloody political and economic system.
Romantic period studies, as it is now practiced from Canberra to Cambridge and Los Angeles to Lon... more Romantic period studies, as it is now practiced from Canberra to Cambridge and Los Angeles to London, is a field that has been experiencing something of a revolution in its aims and methods over the past two decades, despite the lack of a coherent theoretical narrative to accompany this global academic development. The most conspicuous sign of this transformed intellectual agenda – from a preoccupation with poetictextualist issues to an eclectic approach that borrows as much from developments in cultural studies, social history and critical theory as from literary criticism – was the publication in 1999 of a major scholarly companion on the period that set as one of its organizing aims the ‘rediscovery of neglected historical figures and events’ that would in turn lead to a ‘shifting’ of ‘our angles of vision’. The manner in which An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age established itself so rapidly as a standard reference source illustrates merely the endpoint of a process of intellectual consolidation in the field; a process initiated and sustained over twenty years through the publication of clusters of ground-breaking studies by scholars using methodologies that continuously challenged the critical orthodoxy of Romanticist literary scholarship. Moreover, the companion’s attempt to highlight ‘the fiery debates, crushing commercial pressures, and chance events of a historical period that was felt to be seething with conflict’ not only marks out the cultural materialist aspects of the project – as likewise its deliberately broad conception of cultural production in the period – but also underlines the ideological debt that this revisionist formation in Romantic period studies owes to an older, more explicitly politicized form of scholarship. British Marxist cultural studies was an academic movement that first flowered in the 1960s, became institutionalized in the 1970s, and began to fade under the dominant ideological onslaught of Thatcherism in the 1980s just when the current movement in Romantic period studies was emerging. In the absence of any contemporary narratives exploring how Textual Practice 19(1), 2005, 51–70
Britishness" in this sense is understood primarily as both "a set of parameters comprehending the... more Britishness" in this sense is understood primarily as both "a set of parameters comprehending the standard responses of mid-and late eighteenthcentury Scots to Union," as well as "a manifestation of the concentric loyalties which allowed Scots to capitalize on their self-interested attachment to the expanding core of English commercial opportunity, without compromising their emotional identification with Scotland."
Scotland was at the forefront in spreading the ideas of the Enlightenment. By the beginning of th... more Scotland was at the forefront in spreading the ideas of the Enlightenment. By the beginning of the nineteenth century its periodical press enjoyed an unparalleled reputation with magazines like Blackwood's and the Edinburgh Review enjoying wide circulation. This edited collection of essays is the result of a major conference focusing specifically on the role of Scotland’s print culture in shaping the literature and politics of the long eighteenth century. In contrast to previous studies, this work treats Blackwood’s as the culmination of a long tradition rather than a starting point. It will appeal to scholars of the European Enlightenment as well as those researching Scottish literature and politics, and Romanticism
Scotland was at the forefront in spreading the ideas of the Enlightenment. By the beginning of th... more Scotland was at the forefront in spreading the ideas of the Enlightenment. By the beginning of the nineteenth century its periodical press enjoyed an unparalleled reputation with magazines like Blackwood's Magazine and the Edinburgh Review enjoying wide circulation. This collection of essays is the result of a major conference focusing specifically on the role of Scotland’s print culture in shaping the literature and politics of the long eighteenth century. In contrast to previous studies, this work treats Blackwood’s as the culmination of a long tradition rather than a starting point. It will appeal to scholars of the European Enlightenment as well as those researching Scottish literature and politics, and Romanticism
Britishness" in this sense is understood primarily as both "a set of parameters comprehending the... more Britishness" in this sense is understood primarily as both "a set of parameters comprehending the standard responses of mid-and late eighteenthcentury Scots to Union," as well as "a manifestation of the concentric loyalties which allowed Scots to capitalize on their self-interested attachment to the expanding core of English commercial opportunity, without compromising their emotional identification with Scotland."
This essay firstly examines the strategy of radical education in the early nineteenth-century ple... more This essay firstly examines the strategy of radical education in the early nineteenth-century plebeian public sphere around the issue of paper money, illustrated by William Cobbett in his article series "Paper Against Gold," published in the Political Register during 1810-11. Cobbett’s role as a counter-hegemonic intellectual in the series and the conception of popular knowledge it championed is highlighted, in part through his attempts to expose the complex workings of the wider financial system he described as a "place . . . of a sort of mysterious existence; a sort of Financial Ark; a place not, perhaps, to be touched, or even seen." The second part of the essay demonstrates how this form of critical publicity was transformed in the postwar years into an active project of resistance against the worst abuses of the paper money system, culminating in Cobbett’s "puff out" campaign in the Register to materially undermine Bank of England paper currency and T.J. Wooler’s print protests in The Black Dwarf directly confronting the enforcement of the "bloody code" in the capital forgery trials of late 1818. This postwar print campaign against the paper money system illustrates key aspects of the wider radical intellectual project in the plebeian public sphere, highlighting how the radical press "converted" popular public debate into a new form of cultural currency in the Romantic period, a currency that emblematized a continuing concern for the material welfare of its readers and listeners in the face of a corrupt and bloody political and economic system.
Romantic period studies, as it is now practiced from Canberra to Cambridge and Los Angeles to Lon... more Romantic period studies, as it is now practiced from Canberra to Cambridge and Los Angeles to London, is a field that has been experiencing something of a revolution in its aims and methods over the past two decades, despite the lack of a coherent theoretical narrative to accompany this global academic development. The most conspicuous sign of this transformed intellectual agenda – from a preoccupation with poetictextualist issues to an eclectic approach that borrows as much from developments in cultural studies, social history and critical theory as from literary criticism – was the publication in 1999 of a major scholarly companion on the period that set as one of its organizing aims the ‘rediscovery of neglected historical figures and events’ that would in turn lead to a ‘shifting’ of ‘our angles of vision’. The manner in which An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age established itself so rapidly as a standard reference source illustrates merely the endpoint of a process of intellectual consolidation in the field; a process initiated and sustained over twenty years through the publication of clusters of ground-breaking studies by scholars using methodologies that continuously challenged the critical orthodoxy of Romanticist literary scholarship. Moreover, the companion’s attempt to highlight ‘the fiery debates, crushing commercial pressures, and chance events of a historical period that was felt to be seething with conflict’ not only marks out the cultural materialist aspects of the project – as likewise its deliberately broad conception of cultural production in the period – but also underlines the ideological debt that this revisionist formation in Romantic period studies owes to an older, more explicitly politicized form of scholarship. British Marxist cultural studies was an academic movement that first flowered in the 1960s, became institutionalized in the 1970s, and began to fade under the dominant ideological onslaught of Thatcherism in the 1980s just when the current movement in Romantic period studies was emerging. In the absence of any contemporary narratives exploring how Textual Practice 19(1), 2005, 51–70
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