The architectural novel : the construction of national identities in nineteenth-century England and France : William Ainsworth, Victor Hugo, and Alexandre Dumas

Scholars in disciplines from architecture and the fine arts, to the various branches of history and social studies, will find this study timely given contemporary European controversies over what constitutes national identity and what parts are played by race, philosophy and religion, economics, immigration, and invasion. Many major European national identities barely predate the nineteenth century and were shaped not just by wars, philosophies, industrial change, and governmental policies, but also by artistic manipulation of how people perceived public spaces: landscapes, cityscapes, religious and cultural structures, museums, and monuments commemorating conflict. Among the most masterful manipulators of the day were popular nineteenth-century French and British novelists, who gave famous buildings a special prominence in their writing. Some, like Victor Hugo, are still read and respected by scholars. Others, like Alexandre Dumas, though still widely read, are undervalued by contemporary critics. Still others, like William Harrison Ainsworth, a prolific English writer, are all but forgotten. These three writers authored architectural novels which gave major ancient Gothic buildings a new and portable cultural presence well beyond their physical location. During these revolutionary times, when national symbolism was being questioned and challenged, the threatened rupture with the past was admirably addressed through their art.

The formation of European national identities during the nineteenth century through the public's perception of public spaces and monuments – museums, battlefields, war monuments and memorials, landscapes, cityscapes, and the built environment – is a subject of keen interest to scholars in architecture, cultural studies, geography, sociology, history, art history, and environmental studies. This interest is particularly timely given the contemporary struggles in Europe and Great Britain over national identity in the face of immigration, and the economic, religious, and racial tensions it has inspired. The turn toward the meaning of landscape and architecture in the nineteenth century, an era of rapid change and social transition (not to mention revolution), provides lessons from history about how symbols of national identity gain their meaning, and how those meanings change. To date, not enough attention has been paid to the important role played by popular nineteenth-century French and British novelists in defining national identity through their treatment of the Gothic monuments to power: cathedrals, castles, and prisons. Indeed, both Ainsworth and Dumas are underestimated by contemporary literary critics. In assigning meaning to architectural symbols in an age of revolutionary change Nicola Minott-Ahl tackles the vexing problem of historical continuity at a time of profound rupture with the past by considering that "narratives" written in stone did not have fixed meanings, but were floating signifiers for both past and present.

Scholars in disciplines from architecture and the fine arts, to the various branches of history and social studies, will find this study timely given contemporary European controversies over what constitutes national identity and what parts are played by race, philosophy and religion, economics, immigration, and invasion. Many major European national identities barely predate the nineteenth century and were shaped not just by wars, philosophies, industrial change, and governmental policies, but also by artistic manipulation of how people perceived public spaces: landscapes, cityscapes, religious and cultural structures, museums, and monuments commemorating conflict. Among the most masterful manipulators of the day were popular nineteenth-century French and British novelists, who gave famous buildings a special prominence in their writing. Some, like Victor Hugo are still read and respected by scholars. Others, like Alexandre Dumas, though still widely read, are undervalued by contemporary critics. Still others, like William Harrison Ainsworth, a prolific English writer, are all but forgoten. These three writers authored architectural novels which gave major ancient Gothic buildings a new and portable cultural presence well beyond their physical location. During these revolutionary times, when national symbolism was being questioned and challenged, the threatened rupture with the past was admirably addressed through their art--back cover