New Book | Visions of Britain, 1730–1830
From Palgrave Macmillan:
Sebastian Mitchell, Visions of Britain, 1730–1830: Anglo-Scottish Writing and Representation (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 304 pages, ISBN: 978-1137290106, $90.
Visions of Britain is an inquiry into the literary and visual representation of Great Britain in the eighteenth century and early nineteenth century. The book considers the inter-relationship of text and image for the purposes of national projection. It analyses an extensive range of poems, novels, journals, drawings, satirical prints, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings. The study follows recent discussions of Anglo-Scottish writing in this period in the attempt to determine the salient characteristics of the imaginative depiction of the Kingdom of Britain, but challenges their more confident claims for the development of a progressive integrated nationhood. It argues instead that the most engaging literary and visual accounts of Britain in this era subject their imagery to extensive artistic pressure, threatening to dismantle the national vision at the moment of its construction.
Sebastian Mitchell is Lecturer in English Literature at the University or Birmingham.
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C O N T E N T S
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction
2. Thomson’s Vision of Britannia
3. Smollett and Dialectical Nationalism
4. Ramsay, Hume, and British Portraiture
5. Ossian, Wolfe, and the Death of Heroism
6. Boswell: Self, Text, Nation
7. Scott, Turner, and the Vision of North Britain
Bibliography
Index
Display | Fancy Pants
The Great Master of the Fashionable Hair Style, mid-18th century, hand-colored etching by an unidentified artist. The Minnich Collection, The Ethel Morrison Van Derlip Fund, 1966 P.17,468
From the MIA:
Fancy Pants: Beyond the Gray Flannel Suit
Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 19 July — 14 December 2014
Let’s face it: men’s fashion is pretty boring. But, it wasn’t always so. There was an age when men used their clothing to stand out rather than to fit in. Often that meant ruffles, embroidery, wigs, slashed sleeves, stuffed shirts, jerkins, leggings, jewels, and cod pieces. This exhibition may inspire you to clear your closet of muted garb to make room for a little self-expression.
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