Antiquarianism, balladry and the rehabilitation of romance

doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521790079.004

2 - Antiquarianism, balladry and the rehabilitation of romance

from Part I - The Ends of Enlightenment

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2009

Susan Manning

Edited by

James Chandler

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Summary

Antiquarianism

In 1699, A New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew defined an antiquary as a ‘curious Critick in old Coins, Stones and Inscriptions, in Worm-eaten Records and ancient Manuscripts; also one that affects and blindly doats, on Relicks, Ruins, old Customs, Phrases and Fashions’. Notwithstanding the widening range of antiquarian activities and their increasing cultural authority, it was a reputation hard to shake off; ridicule is in the air almost as often as the subject is mentioned – and it is ubiquitous – throughout eighteenth-century writing. Thomas Love Peacock drew on a fully-fledged anti-antiquarian discourse when he created the figures of Reverend Dr Folliott, Mr Chainmail, the roaring Welsh bard Seithenyn and Mr Derrydown. It is not immediately obvious what, at the height of the Romantic era, made such figures worth the repeated flourish of a satirist’s pen. But the significance of antiquarian activities reaches right into the quiddity of Romantic writing. Indeed, it has been suggested that ‘English literature’, understood in its broadest sense, ‘constitutes itself in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries through the systematic imitation, appropriation and political neutralization of antiquarian and nationalist literary developments in Scotland, Ireland and Wales’. This is a claim that requires a great deal of unpacking.

Keywords

antiquarian authenticity antiquarianism ballad collectors romantic writing medieval quest romance minstrel-bard historical novels

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge History of English Romantic Literature , pp. 45 - 70

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521790079.004 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2009

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