I’m very much looking to speaking at the symposium Texts in Place/ Place in Texts at Royal Holloway on 21st May 2015, which brings together geographers and literary scholars to discuss their understandings of the relationship between texts and places.
My talk is titled “’The distance is quite imaginary’: locating the nation and the world in Dickens’s David Copperfield” and is drawn from a section of my forthcoming monograph which explores the representation of national and global spaces/places in the Victorian novel. Full abstract as follows:
“It is merely crossing,” said Mr. Micawber, trifling with his eye-glass, “merely crossing. The distance is quite imaginary.”
Mr Micawber’s humorous denial of the distance between Britain and Australia provides a comic strain to the emigration story of Dickens’s David Copperfield (1849–50), but its comedy belies an important point about the representation of place, and especially the national-global politics of representation, in the Victorian novel. In this paper, I will use David Copperfield to think about the representation of place in terms of narrative structure: how much narrative space is afforded to different places, how places are made more or less present through various representational modes, and how structures of nation and world intersect. I will suggest that David Copperfieldprovides an exemplary model of the structural delineation of place in the Victorian novel: a tight yet protracted core of the nation-space is set against an absent, often “imaginary”, world at large. Yet David Copperfield also calls for a closer reading of this structure, and I identify a paralleling of national and global places in the narrative to suggest how we might read for more subtle inferences of global resonances in the spaces of the Victorian novel.
Call for Papers: Edited Collection on ‘Sea Narratives’
Set in the wider context of a turn towards space and mobility, studies of the sea have come to take increasing prominence in the humanities and social sciences. This volume seeks to establish an interdisciplinary exchange on the theme of ‘sea narratives’, looking at how the sea has figured as an important site in different cultural and geographical contexts from a variety of disciplinary perspectives.
The collection will explore how humans have interacted with the sea through trade, labour, migration, leisure and exploration; how the sea has figured in national contexts as a site of geopolitical control; and how it has featured in the cultural imagination as a space of danger and the unknown, but also as a source of inspiration. Historically the sea has been a space of possibility, representing the potential of travel, exploration and trade; it has also been a site of conflict and contest, where warfare and geopolitical disputes play out. From poets such as Derek Walcott, who links the sea powerfully with colonial history, to artists such as Paul Morstad who uses old maps as canvases for fantastic creatures, the sea has inspired a range of creative responses that generate new questions about its power and possibilities.
This collection seeks to investigate these varied, contested and provocative ways in which the sea has been chronicled. Contributions are invited from disciplines including (but not limited to) geography, history, literary studies, media studies, and art history, that focus on the theme of “sea narratives” from the 1600s to the present day. The collection will span geographical locations, taking as its premise the idea that sea narratives benefit from trans-national study. The concept of ‘narratives’ is interpreted broadly, to encompass fiction, travel writing, poetry, film, documentaries, oral stories, and other historical sources.
Final essays will be 6000-8000 words in length, and first drafts will be due in November 2014. Abstracts of 300 words should be submitted by Sunday 4th May 2014. Enquiries and expressions of interest are welcome before this deadline: please contact me at c.e.mathieson@warwick.ac.uk
Derek Walcott’s poem “The Sea is History” was one of our starting points for the symposium on Sea Narratives organised as part of the Travel and Mobility Studies Network at Warwick. When we formed the idea for this symposium, we hoped to create an interdisciplinary forum that would generate multiple and intersecting perspectives on the rich histories, geographies, and narratives of the sea. We were certainly not disappointed, and the 6 speakers that presented throughout the day provided a fascinating array of insights into the places, practices, and politics that shape the sea.
The programme for the next Midlands Interdisciplinary Victorian Studies Seminar is now available, taking place on Thursday 16th January at the University of Nottingham. The theme is Victorian Masculinities and I’m presenting a paper titled “‘A brown sunburnt gentleman’: the travelling male body in Victorian literature”. By happy coincidence, I’m presenting a (longer) variation of this paper the day before, Wednesday 15th January, at a research seminar at Nottingham Trent University. The research looks at the return of male travellers from hot climes, focusing here on Woodcourt’s return in Bleak House to examine the class, race and gender implications of his becoming ‘a brown sunburnt gentleman’. This is drawn from work in my current book which I’m starting to extend in a couple of new pieces that will develop these ideas further.
It’s a couple of months now since the first press release announcing plans to rebuild the Crystal Palace. My initial response was amazement that it may be possible in coming years to see the rebuilding of one of the most important buildings of the nineteenth century; but as further details unfurl I, like many others, am increasingly ambivalent about the project, which would see a £500 million investment by a private Chinese corporation into the building and surrounding parkland. While the regeneration of the park seems long-overdue and supported by the local community, the corporation currently have an exclusivity agreement with the local council that prevents other proposals for the site’s development to be submitted until February 2015; during this time there is a call for the community to express their feedback on the scheme but it seems this has come rather late in discussions and from what I’ve read of the news articles, local people are unconvinced that this is the right sort of investment for the park. I’m not familiar with the area to comment further on the local impact of the project, but have been wondering from a Victorianist’s perspective what would be the value in rebuilding the Crystal Palace at Sydenham.
Aeronautic view of The Palace of Industry For All Nations, from Kensington Palace by Charles Burton, England, 1851 – 1852 (courtesy of V&A Museum)
It’s easy to say that the Crystal Palace was one of the most iconic building of the Victorian age, but its history is much more complicated and complex than that: its a story of two phases, and the symbolic meaning of the building changed over the years. In its first incarnation, the Crystal Palace was built in Hyde Park in 1851 to house the Great Exhibition of the Industry of all Nations: the first international Exhibition of its kind, showcasing over 100,000 objects from all over the world. The Exhibition organising committee ran a public call for proposals for the design of the building, and after many unsuccessful suggestions it was Joseph Paxton’s design that caught the imagination of the organisers. Paxton had long been designing specialist greenhouses made from glass and iron for the large collection of exotic plants at the Chatsworth estate (including the famous giant Victoria Regia water lily). His design for the Exhibition space replicated the basic principles of these glasshouses, but at 562m long, 124m wide, and with an interior height of 39m, the building was by far the largest structure of its kind, and required sheets of glass bigger than any produced before. It was a piece in Punch that saw the building christened “the Crystal Palace”, a name that captured the semi-mythical, iconic status of the new building.
“The Dispersion of the Works of all Nations” by George Cruikshank, 1851
The Crystal Palace inspired mixed responses, ranging from hyperbolic praise at the wonder of its design, to ridicule that it was simply a very large greenhouse. So too was it site of contestation: as one Household Words article points out, not so far away from the great building lay “our over-crowded burial grounds, generating a poisonous atmosphere in the thick of the living and loathing people! There, runs the polluted Thames, of which we are compelled to drink!” (Richard Horne, 22/03/1851). Once filled with the exhibits, the wonder of its design was that although the structure was such a spectacle in and of itself, it receded into the background as a translucent space in which the objects on display could take centre-stage – as the colourful “Watercolours of the Great Exhibition” nicely demonstrate.
‘View in the West Nave’ by Henry Clarke Pidgeon, 1851Crystal Palace Sydenham – photograph by Philip Henry Delamotte
But it is arguably in the second phase of the Palace’s life that the strongest ideological meanings became invested in the building itself; the wealth of objects on display at the Exhibition overwhelmed visitors and ultimately preside most strongly in accounts of the Exhibition), but devoid of these things the Crystal Palace was both more open to interpretation, and open to retrospective investment as a symbol of a past era. After the closure of the Exhibition in October 1851, it was decided that the Palace should be rebuilt at Sydenham and, from its construction in 1854, it remained there until 1936. But while retaining the original features of Paxton’s design, this was an altogether different building: shorter in length, but with a much greater footprint (nearly 100 acres more) and rising to six stories (from the initial three), resulting in a much larger capacity than its first incarnation. Just from looking at pictures, it is clearly a much more commanding, overpowering presence as a structure, and I think this is crucial to the way in which the Palace (and, by association, the Great Exhibition) retrospectively became symbolic of a golden age of British imperial superiority to a much greater extent than in its original incarnation at the time of the Exhibition. The new Palace was put to a range of uses as a leisure space, hosting many concerts, events, exhibitions, and surrounded by 200 acres of park land used for recreation and sport. In 1936, the building was destroyed by a fire but the park has remained, and over the years there have been many suggestions for rebuilding or otherwise restoring the site of the Palace.
So what would be gained by rebuilding the Crystal Palace today? I suppose my initial fascination with the idea stems from an inability to quite grasp the scale and size of the building (both the original, and the redesigned version), and particularly the effect of being inside such a large glass structure. To be able to see and experience that wouldn’t be able to recapture the Victorian experience of the building in any real way, but it would provide an interesting exercise in accompanying the interpretation of accounts from the period. Perhaps more indicatively, it would represent a very interesting contribution to a contemporary neo-Victorian landscape which is marked by a fascination with the buildings and places of the past as sites of meaning, and I’m intrigued as to how a rebuilt Palace would play into both public perceptions and contemporary critical responses on these themes.
Because if there’s one thing that’s noticeable about the design (see the brochure download), it’s that the proposed building is evocative of a neo-Victorian aesthetic that befits the contemporary landscape, rather than standing as a monument to the past. While in images of Paxton’s design the iron bars of the structure are heavily visible, the design foregrounding the contrast between glass and iron, light and dark, weight and weightlessness, in the new design this is gone or at least downplayed in the overall visual effect: transparency, light, airiness are the themes of this structure, emphatically a reinterpretation rather than a straightforward homage to the Victorians. At the same time, heritage looms large over the project: “The park will be restored in line with the approved masterplan to create a modern 21st century park of national importance which reflects Joseph Paxton’s original ideas and responds to the needs and aspirations of local residents” (p. 5). It’s a rather empty statement however, with no explanation of what is understood by “Paxton’s original ideas”, and the talk of “originality” is further interesting given the Palace’s two design formulations – the new building uses the second design, not the true original from Hyde Park.
This reinterpretation is also interesting in that it demonstrates the global afterlives of Victorian Britian’s national heritage. The plans have come from the Chinese ZhongRong Group, and in the opening statement Mr Ni states that “the former Crystal Palace is celebrated in China as a building of great achievement. Its ingenuity and scale is magnificent and this project is a once in a lifetime opportunity to bring it back to life […] I have admired the Crystal Palace for many years and am passionate about this project. The Palace’s story is fascinating and I am hoping to add the next chapter by providing a gift to London and the world” (p. 3). It’s a telling statement about the ongoing resonances of the Victorian period and the dis- or re-location of national culture into international contexts, and to see that re-located back into Britain would bring interesting opportunities to analyse these currents further.
As the project gets underway it will be interesting to see how these themes develop; I’m not, from what I’ve heard so far, in favour of the project and hope that the local concerns around it are taken seriously. Insofar as the potential for discussion around the Victorians and their neo-Victorian afterlives goes, though, the project raises some indicative questions and I’d be intrigued to hear more about what other Victorianists make of the proposals as they unfold.
The new issue of Open Letters Monthly is out today, and in among a host of exciting arts and literary reviews you’ll find a piece by me on Tatiana Holway’s The Flower of Empire: An Amazonian Water Lily, the Quest to Make it Bloom, and the World it Created. This intriguing new study explores the history of the Victoria regia water lily that became an evocative symbol of the Victorian era, and Holway’s study takes us from the banks of the Amazon in the 1830s to the doors of the Crystal Palace in 1851, with an intriguing history unfolding in between. I very much enjoyed the book and, well, you can read the rest of the review over at OLM!
Thursday 27th June 2013 saw the Travel and Mobility Studies research network at the University of Warwick host its first annual symposium. The day focused on the theme of “contact and connections”, thinking about the different ways in which travel produces connections, creates networks, and provides opportunities for cross-cultural, -national and -spatial points of contact. The 14 speakers across the day provided a rich, varied and insightful set of papers around these themes which made for an interesting and stimulating day.
SUEZ CANAL, 1927. British Empire Marketing Board poster.
Although the papers were diverse in their topics of focus, if there was one theme that I found threaded throughout the day it was the sense that travel practices and narratives serve not so much to connect, but rather to destabilise categories of identity, places, narratives. In the first panel “Troubled Relations”, Churnjeet Mahn (University of Surrey) looked at how the Grand Trunk Road, a major connecting route from Calcutta to Kabul, has had its history eroded through cultural amnesia, while Roxanne Bibizadeh (University of Warwick) identified how displacement can provide the opportunity for rewriting and destabilising stereotypes – in the case of Leila Aboulela’s work, of the Muslim woman; and Claire Connor (University of Bristol) identified the “crossing the line” ceremony performed on board the SS Great Britain in 1852 as disruptive moment in which the boundaries of respectability became blurred in the liminal space of the sea. In the keynote address that followed, Tim Youngs (Nottingham Trent University) raised questions about the generic instabilities of travel narratives, the lines between representation and misrepresentation, and the (perhaps unexpected) conservatism of the genre that often finds itself complicit with patriarchal imperialism.
In a panel on “Global Britain” these ideas again came to the fore. Hannah Lewis-Bill‘s (University of Exeter) discussion of tea-drinking in Victorian Britain raised issues of cultural adaptation, modification and reflexivity involved in the circulation and usage of transnational commodities, particularly tea; Mary L. Shannon (King’s College London) spoke about the cultural interactions involved in the publication of the Melbourne Punch, the “child” of the London publication, which continued to position itself within London print culture while establishing a new Melbourne print culture. Robert Wells‘ (Indiana University, Bloomington) paper also looked at the cultural absorption of foreign travel ideals in a paper on spa tourism from 1560-1760, suggesting that English spas drew on European culture while emphasising the unique Englishness of these spa resorts. The next panel, on “Late 19th Century Travelogues”, took us through various points of contact between British and foreign countries: Kate Walchester‘s (Liverpool John Moores University) discussion of British travel to Siberia looked at photographs of Sami people, reading these for the negotiations of cultural relations they reveal, and Sam Knowles considered a reading of Robert Louis Stevenson’s travel writing that argued for a more complex handling of imperialism in Stevenson’s work; Jenny Pearce (University of Hull) discussed English governesses abroad, exploring the unique and complex social position they occupied as enabling the crafting of a “third space” of cultural translation and negotiation.
The day ended with Cathy Waters‘ (University of Kent) keynote in which categories of identity again became displaced: looking at the rise of the special correspondent in the late 19th century press, Waters identified how these travelling figures found themselves in a position not dissimilar to, and often mistaken for, that of the spy. Waters explored how this fit within the reshaping of journalistic practices and late-19th century print culture, and ended by raising some indicative questions about the relationship between journalism and travel narratives, and the issues of authenticity that both foreground in their style and content.
The symposium was an excellent end to the first year of the Travel Network and it was a pleasure to host such an interesting day on the Warwick campus. Plans are currently taking shape for the next year of the Network, so I hope to be able to bring news of fruitful developments soon.
I’m not long back from the BAVS/NAVSA/AVSA conference The Global and the Local held in San Servolo, Venice from 3rd-6th June. There were so many fascinating papers over the few days, but the highlight for me was the excellent range of Dickens papers presented, and in particular the Local/Global Dickens position-paper seminar that I participated in. I’ve written more about this in a post for the Journal of Victorian Culture online, which you can read here.
I’m very pleased to feature today on The Daily Dose, the excellent blog series run by Dr Brandy Schillace on her fabulous blog. Brandy Schillace is a medical humanities scholar working at the intersection between medical history and literature, and The Daily Dose provides regular features on scholars working in these areas. Although I’m not strictly a medical humanist I do have a keen interest in literary bodies, and in my guest post I talk about some of the travelling bodies that I investigate in the Victorian novel, giving a brief glimpse into my sunburnt travellers that will be the focus of a chapter of my monograph. My piece is here, you can find the rest of the series here, and you should also explore the fantastic “Fiction Reboot“!
Dr Charlotte Mathieson 