Memory and Enlightenment : Cultural Afterlives of the Long Eighteenth Century

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. Front Matter ....Pages i-viii Introduction: Theatres of Memory (James Ward)....Pages 1-32 Restorations (James Ward)....Pages 33-76 ‘Ever-haunting Hogarth’: Remembering the Hogarthian Progress (James Ward)....Pages 77-116 Emma Donoghue’s Enlightenment Fictions (James Ward)....Pages 117-147 Memory and Enlightenment in the Poetry of Eavan Boland and Medbh McGuckian (James Ward)....Pages 149-180 The Recruiting Officer in the Penal Colony (James Ward)....Pages 181-198 Memory and Atrocity: Representing the Zong (James Ward)....Pages 199-222 Conclusion (James Ward)....Pages 223-226 Back Matter ....Pages 227-251