(I will repost our comments from the previous incarnation of this post for convenience. Nevermind the timstamps; here come the comments!)
That's an interesting place to start, Jim. I began my interest in the eighteenth with a fascination with the narratological features of the early novel, but it led me to think about early America and our "Founding Fathers" myths. There is so much in colonial American discourse that is exactly what anyone raised in American schools would expect, but a great number of surprises and contradictions. The philosophical roots of American democracy are often excerpted to reflect current political ends. For a country as obsessed as ours is with its origins, it's shocking to see that almost no one, even politically involved people, have actually read whole works by Locke, Hume, Franklin, and Jefferson. As you say, it's as if people are afraid of finding out there is no Santa, so they keep that myth pristinely unexamined. Whenever I teach from the eighteenth, I get the sense my students are extremely wary, as if we're cutting up cadavers and might find no heart inside.
"Closely linked to this is the sense of the modern era - the era we are in now - lying like a baby in its cradle, with all its features apparent, yet still fragile and newly born."
What a lovely analogy! When I am trying to convey my interest in the period to students, I talk about this being the period when literary and print culture as we now practice it came into being: the spread of literacy; the rise of mass culture; the tensions between "high" and "low" culture; the development of print and genre conventions; the development of the "author."
The thing is, the scale back then was small enough that one can actually trace things (or at least, one can feel that one can). We have not been able to talk about "culture" or "literary culture," in any unified sense, for a long time now. But in the 18thc, while there were certainly many different areas of activity, some quite distinct and separate, one still has the sense that one can stand back and see the whole landscape. Much of it is hazy to be sure. But one can still position oneself in a position of relative knowledge.
Well, I think I have given a lot away here: I am drawn to the 18thc because deep down, and loath as I am to admit it, the fractured nature of Modernism makes me, frankly, tired.
Plus there is the widespread sense of humour, before that became a marker for a lack of depth. And the sense of communal interdependence, of community.
....
Just read Carrie's comment. My students, being largely Canadian, have a significantly looser relationship to the period as the "founding of our country" was a 19thc phenomena. So those of us teaching here -- or teaching English lit. -- don't have that hook.
The humor was a huge part of it for me. I was reading, at the instigation of my very unliterary dad, Swift's Modest Proposal when I was about 12, I think. That led to the Tale of a Tub and Gulliver sometime in High School. Then virtually no literary reading at all until freshman year in college and a deep immersion in Joyce and Modernism throughout. But I was aware even then that Swift and Sterne were an important part of Joyce and Beckett's strangely shaped narratives. The person who became my dissertation advisor published as much on the mods as he did on 18c, but I was hooked on the possibilities of historical research in my second semester of MA year.
I particularly liked the way that modernist shibboleths melted away under historical scrutiny. I decided that I hated the monumentalizing tendencies of 20c writing, and the kinds of publicity required to sustain it.
I know for a fact that a number of comrades at my undergrad literary magazine, all steadfast moderns and postmoderns, transmogrified into 18c scholars over the years, as did I, I suppose. No names, please.
My suspicion is that people become 18c scholars because there is someone they grew to loathe in romanticism, or 19c realism, or 20c modernism or postmodernism, or perhaps all of those movements. There is a dimension of asceticismor disavowal to specialization, isn't there?
A very interesting discussion, Jim. I came to study the eighteenth century solely because my MA mentor was an eighteenth-century specialist and there were lots of sources at our library. However, while that was the source that brought me to the eighteenth century (or early modern), it wasn't what kept me there. The work of scholars like EP Thompson and Raymond Williams solidified my interest. You mention in your post that you find the juxtaposition of the primitive and the contemporary a major draw. Many years ago, in an article called "Patrician Society, Plebeian Culture" (1974), EPT called the eighteenth century a "transitory phase." That concept really embodies my research and coalesces with your own comments.
Many see the eighteenth century merely as an odd linchpin from the old to the new and that it therefore has no place in either "early modern history" or "modern history." That's the beauty of it, I think. As an historian, I can say that I am both. At times I don an early-modern mask, other times a modern one, but all the time recognizing that the history of the eighteenth century is curiously unique. Not simply the holder of "traditional values", not simply the stepping grounds to modern revolution.
So, I guess what I'm saying is that that element of the "transitory"--neither one nor the other--draws me to our field.
Welcome aboard, Sharlene. This kind of treatment of the long 18c as part of the history of modernity and modernization has always made sense to me.
In what kinds of areas do you find this passage from early modern to modern happening most visibly?
Are you thinking in terms of events, meaning disjunctures or ruptures that demonstrate some sort of breakdown of an ancien regime?
Or more in terms of particular cultural debates, contests, or conflicts taking place during our period, which are historically singular enough to distance 18c figures from those who precede and succeed them?
So how do you see this working?
Jim, your post was wonderful--so eloquent--and made me nod in agreement several times. I like the flexibility and the paradox of the 18th century; I like the fact that, like Sharlene says, it's both early modern and modern, and I like the fact that it is, like Jim says, both familiar and alien. When I study 16th and 17th century texts, they seem distant and so removed from our own world. The 18th century, on the other hand, has so much about it that is familiar. I like that the period is not easy, that it's a constant challenge to understand.
Thanks, Dave.
Well, my own focus is on gender and labor and the push/pull in the eighteenth century over the construct of a public sphere. I began my work many years ago toying with the way that the ideology of separate spheres began creeping further into the eighteenth century--that somehow the industrial revolution seemed fundamentally less important to defining a masculine "public sphere" and a feminine "private sphere." We see that argument being played out throughout the long eighteenth century with no clear-cut distinctions. Therefore, using an event like the industrial revolution (or commercial revolution or french revolution) as a "take-off" point to modernity seems really problematic to me. I think I'm with Miles Ogborn's attitude about the modern in that we need to see how the people from our period constructed the meanings of modernity (_Spaces of Modernity_--I'll talk about that in the 'whatch ya reading' thread).
So, I'm less concerned with particular events that demonstrate change over time and more concerned with the cultural debates and attitudes you mentioned in your post.
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