Research Catalog

Title

Alternate histories and nineteenth-century literature : untimely meditations in Britain, France, and America / Ben Carver.

Author

Carver, Ben, 1972-

Publication

• London : Palgrave Macmillan, [2017]
• ©2017

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xviii, 292 pages : illustrations; 22 cm

Summary

This book provides the first thematic survey and analysis of nineteenth-century writing that imagined outcomes that history might have produced. Narratives of possible worlds and scenarios-referred to here as "alternate histories"-proliferated during the nineteenth century and clustered around pressing themes and emergent disciplines of knowledge. This study examines accounts of undefeated Napoleons after Waterloo, alternative genealogies of western civilization from antiquity to the (nineteenth-century) present day, the imagination of variant histories on other worlds, lost-world fictions that "discovered" improved relations between men and women, and the use of alternate history in America to reconceive the relationship between the New World and the Old. The "untimely" imagination of other histories interrogated the impact of new techniques of knowledge on the nature of history itself. This book sheds light on the history of speculative thought, and the relationship between literature and the history of ideas in the nineteenth century.

Series Statement

Palgrave studies in nineteenth-century writing and culture

Uniform Title

Palgrave studies in nineteenth-century writing and culture.

Alternative Title

• Untimely meditations in Britain, France, and America
• Arranging the past, reconsidering the present

Subject

• 1800-1899
• Alternative histories (Fiction) > History and criticism
• Literature, Modern > 19th century > History and criticism
• History in literature
• English literature > 19th century > History and criticism
• French literature > 19th century > History and criticism
• American literature > 19th century > History and criticism
• Alternative histories (Fiction)
• American literature
• English literature
• French literature
• Literature, Modern

Genre/Form

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Note

• Based on the authors' thesis (doctoral--University of Exeter, 2012) presented under the title: Arranging the past, reconsidering the present : the emergence of alternate history in the nineteenth century.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 267-284) and index.

Contents

Introduction: The Castle of IF -- Napoleonic imaginaries --Inheriting antiquity: political genealogy in Disraeli and Renouvier -- Nebulous history and the plurality of worlds -- Lost worlds and the (un)natural history of gender -- Earliness and lateness: alternate history in American literature.

Call Number

JFD 18-1530

ISBN

• 9781137573339
• 1137573333

LCCN

2017937711

OCLC

973919869

Author

Carver, Ben, 1972- author.

Title

Alternate histories and nineteenth-century literature : untimely meditations in Britain, France, and America / Ben Carver.

Publisher

London : Palgrave Macmillan, [2017]

Copyright Date

©2017

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Series

Palgrave studies in nineteenth-century writing and culture

Palgrave studies in nineteenth-century writing and culture.

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 267-284) and index.

Chronological Term

1800-1899

Research Call Number

JFD 18-1530