Visions of Britain, 1730 - 1830: Anglo-Scottish Writing and Representation

This is a revisionist study of the literary and visual representation of the nation in the century following the formation of the British state. It argues that the most engaging accounts of Great Britain subject their imagery to sustained artistic pressure, threatening to dismantle the national vision at the moment of its construction. 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 Front Matter....Pages i-xii Introduction....Pages 1-9 Thomson’s Vision of Britannia....Pages 10-45 Smollett and Dialectical Nationalism....Pages 46-83 Ramsay, Hume and British Portraiture....Pages 84-121 Ossian, Wolfe and the Death of Heroism....Pages 122-155 Boswell: Self, Text, Nation....Pages 156-192 Scott, Turner and the Vision of North Britain....Pages 193-232 Back Matter....Pages 233-291