Instead of modernity : the Western canon and the incorporation of the Hispanic (c. 1850-75)

At the heart of the book is a departure from the obsession with "modernity" that has been so prominent in nineteenth-century cultural studies. -- . Instead of modernity revisits the key moment in the mid-nineteenth century when, it is said, 'all that is solid melts into air'. Spanning the visual arts, literature, and thought, it reconsiders artists and writers linked to the foundations of modern culture: Marx, Darwin, Nietzsche, Flaubert, Baudelaire, Whitman, Whistler and Courbet. In so doing, it offers an alternative to the obsession with notions of 'modernity' that underpin many influential theories of culture. It incorporates the Hispanic world (Spain and Spanish America) into the story of this time, disrupting and reconfiguring the narrative of 'modernity', challenging the belief the Hispanic had opened the doors to the 'modern' but was overtaken by cultures of the north-west Atlantic. While this points beyond the divide between a supposed core and periphery in culture, the book likewise undermines the patriarchal basis of canonical modernity, giving prominence to women from the painter Rosa Bonheur, and the photographers Jane Clifford and Julia Margaret Cameron, to the actress Matilde Díez. Instead of 'modernity', the book conjures visions of intimate connection between places and times, between representations and realities, between selves and others. It explores commonality and similarity. In its own prose, it envisages ways of conducting and writing comparative cultural study, beyond contextualisation and historicisation, drawing on the nineteenth-century imagination. In that spirit, the book finds its way across diverse fields and subject matter, tracing connections between them, from sexuality to optical technology, from brain slices to taxidermy. In so doing, it conjures four moods: meeting, departure, sacifice and repose Front matter Dedication Contents List of illustrations Acknowledgements Abbreviations and conventions Introduction: from modernity to the aesthetic appreciation of history Meeting: coming together and taking shape Departure: to leap beyond yet nearer bring Sacrifice: everyone must die Repose: forms of shared distraction References Index