Modern Antiques - The Material Past in England, 1660-1780

Modern Antiques argues that the reinvention of the past was fundamental to the development of modernity in England during the long eighteenth century. Bringing together the fields of literary criticism, historiography, material culture studies, and book history, Kalter offers new interpretations of Dryden, Gray, and Walpole, showing how these authors appropriated contemporary historical research to create nostalgic and ironic alternatives to the present-modern antiques.

List of contents

Chapter 1 Acknowledgements Chapter 2 Introduction: The Time Bound and the Modern Antique Chapter 3 The "Cob-web law" and the Fundamental Law: History, Chronology, and Poetic License Chapter 4 Chaucer Ancient and Modern: Standardization, Modernization, and the Eighteenth-Century Reception of The Canterbury Tales Chapter 5 DIY Gothic: Thomas Gray and the Medieval Revival Chapter 6 Horace Walpole's Fugitive Pieces: Collecting and Ephemerality Chapter 7 Conclusion

About the author

Barrett Kalter is associate professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Product details

• Authors: Barrett Kalter
• Publisher: University Press Copublishing Division
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.12.2019
• EAN: 9781611483789
• ISBN: 978-1-61148-378-9
• No. of pages: 260
• Dimensions: 155 mm x 229 mm x 33 mm
• Weight: 522 g
• Series: Transits: Literature, Thought & Culture 1650-1850; Transits: Lit, Thought & C; Transits: Literature, Thought & Culture; Transits: Literature, Thought & Culture, 1650-1850; Transits: Literature, Thought
• Subject: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies