| My dissertation draws on a previously unexamined body of British writing about the French Revolution of 1848 in order to revise the scholarly assumption that reform-minded Victorian authors ignored or rejected the historical and literary legacy of revolutionary France. Although the '48 Revolution is regarded as a watershed in the history of continental Europe, students of Victorian literature have typically held that the political upheaval meant little to writers in Britain, where the failure of the final Chartist petition in 1848 marked the beginning of a period of domestic stability. I argue instead that the French political crisis not only captured the attention of journalists but also deeply influenced the work of such major authors as Thomas De Quincey, Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens, and Wilkie Collins. Drawing on post-'48 journalism and memoirs to re-read canonical texts, my dissertation reveals that Victorian writers envisioned the short-lived Revolution as a disturbing episode of historical repetition, one that generated considerable anxiety about the possibility of historical progress and about the historical significance of contemporary life and art. |
