Matthew Campbell, Jacqueline M. Labbe, and Sally Shuttleworth, eds., 'Memory and Memorials, 1789–1914: Literary and Cultural Perspectives': Routledge Studies in Memory and Narrative. London: Routledge, 2000. Pp. xiv + 237, 3 illustrations. ISBN 0-415-22976-6 (HB).

Abstract

This volume is a collection of twelve essays which began as papers at the interdisciplinary conference on "Memory, 1789–1914" held at the University of Sheffield in 1996. While such collections are often marred by the eclecticism of their origin, coherence is achieved here through the employment of a sustained interdisciplinary methodology which examines memory as a symbolic process both grounded in history and providing the grounds of history itself. Addressing the "long"nineteenth century, the book considers memory as a key sign of the period, exploring its manifold guises in literature, science, history, religion, and (briefly) architecture. The book's claim to offer fresh theoretical understanding of the period is justified in afocus which goes beyond the study of memory as theme or metaphor to consider the cultural functions of memory in the nineteenth century, especially in relation to conceptions of gendered subjectivity, the record and shaping of the past, and the development of the sciences of evolutionary biology and psychology.