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Palgrave Macmillan

Memory and Enlightenment

Cultural Afterlives of the Long Eighteenth Century

  • Book
  • © 2018

Overview

Authors:
  1. James Ward

    1. School of Arts and Humanities, Ulster University, Coleraine, Northern Ireland, UK

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  • Unique perspective: links the work of the eighteenth century to memory studies
  • Exciting approach: considers not just the eighteenth century and its texts, but the way the period is reworked and re-imagined today
  • Wide-ranging: covers art, literature, history, modern art, fiction and films

Part of the book series: Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies (PMMS)

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Table of contents (8 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-viii
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction: Theatres of Memory

    • James Ward
    Pages 1-32

  3. Restorations

    • James Ward
    Pages 33-76

  4. ‘Ever-haunting Hogarth’: Remembering the Hogarthian Progress

    • James Ward
    Pages 77-116

  5. Emma Donoghue’s Enlightenment Fictions

    • James Ward
    Pages 117-147

  6. Memory and Enlightenment in the Poetry of Eavan Boland and Medbh McGuckian

    • James Ward
    Pages 149-180

  7. The Recruiting Officer in the Penal Colony

    • James Ward
    Pages 181-198

  8. Memory and Atrocity: Representing the Zong

    • James Ward
    Pages 199-222

  9. Conclusion

    • James Ward
    Pages 223-226

  10. Back Matter

    Pages 227-251
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Keywords

About this book

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.

Reviews

“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)

Authors and Affiliations

  • School of Arts and Humanities, Ulster University, Coleraine, Northern Ireland, UK

    James Ward

About the author

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

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