Paul Stock

Imposing on Napoleon : The romantic appropriation of Bonaparte

This article explores how major British Romantic writers perceived Napoleon in the early nineteenth century: the ideas they associated with him and the images they used to depict him. I argue that these perceptions have relatively little to do with the politics of the various writers, or with the chronology of Napoleon’s career. Instead, interest in Bonaparte is driven by aesthetic and philosophical concerns: especially the question of whether Napoleon is an ordinary man ‘within’ history, or a semi-allegorical personage -a representative of some ideology or concept (like Liberty or Heroism). I also discuss how Napoleon is appended to the Romantic problem of the ‘overreacher’, who fails due to his glorious success, and who thus blurs the boundaries between triumph and failure. Lastly, I show how Napoleon influences Romantic concern about ‘imposing’ ideas onto analysis of the world. In this way, Napoleon exposes insecurities at the heart of Romantic self-perception.

The uses of space in early modern history

The study of space and place is unquestionably becoming an important research focus in the humanities and social sciences. And while there is an expanding body of theoretical work on the importance of these concepts in various disciplines, less attention has been paid to how spatial ideas and approaches can actually be deployed to understand the societies, cultures, and mentalities of the past. In this volume, leading experts explore the uses of space in two respects: how spatial concepts can be employed by or applied to the study of history, and how spaces and spatial ideas were used for practical and ideological purposes in specific periods. Together, the contributors represent a comprehensive range of disciplines concerned with space and history, including archaeology, social history, intellectual history, imperial history, geography, and cartography, allowing for an unusually broad variety of case studies and perspectives.

The Shelleys and the idea of “Europe”

This article explores how the Shelleys and their circle configure ideas of “Europe” between January 1817 and March 1818. I begin with Frankenstein, discussing how Mary Shelley associates Frankensteins experiment with the particularly “European” problem of over‐reaching – a drive for success leading to conflict or failure. I then turn to Laon and Cythna, a poem which labels itself as “revolution writing” and contemplates how the French revolution changed “Europe.” Here, Percy Shelley constructs an idea of “Europe” upon his interests in radical politics and the possibility of utopian social progress. Laons setting, Constantinople, is a border‐zone between Europe and Asia; it is simultaneously a European city in the throes of revolution and an Oriental tyranny. The Shelleys evoke “America” in a similar manner, treating it as a non‐European “other” and as a more ideal version of “Europe” uncorrupted by post‐revolutionary disappointments. Lastly, based on a remark in a letter to Percy Shelley about “European marriage,” I examine the connection between “Europeanness” and sexual mores. If, for Shelley, debates about “Europe” occur within specific parameters relating to revolution and radical change, “European” also has very different connotations connected to orthodox moral and sexual conventions.

Towards a language of 'Europe': history, rhetoric, community

Abstract From Herder to Benedict Anderson, language and nation have been at the centre of ideas about (imagined) community. This hypothesis, however, poses a problem for analysing ideas about Europe. How can we understand “Europe” as a concept or form of identity when language and nationality are considered the foundation of imagined communities and loyalties? This article addresses this difficulty. It uses J. G. A. Pocock’s definition of “sub-languages” to suggest that one can investigate the rhetorical strategies, images and vocabularies with which texts articulate ideas about Europe. These sub-languages evoke imagined communities, most obviously when texts name and identify particular groups of people as “Europeans.” But by using images and rhetorics about Europe, these texts also appeal to a readership that comprehends—even if it does not fully accept—certain assumptions about the continent. In this way, texts evoke an imagined community of readers who purportedly share a similar way of understanding Europe, or who can perhaps be persuaded to think about it in similar terms. These processes are historically particular, and so the article concludes with concrete examples. It focuses on how early-nineteenth-century philhellenes evoked a European imagined community to solicit support for the Greek Revolution (1821–32).

History and the Uses of Space

The Uses of Space in Early Modern History argues for the fundamental importance of space in historical study. Space—by which I mean the emplacement, distribution, and connection of entities, actions, and ideas—has become an increasingly important topic in the humanities and social sciences. This volume shows how spatial approaches can be used to understand the societies, cultures, and mentalities of the past. The essays gathered here explore the uses of space in two respects: how spatial concepts can be employed by or applied to the study of history; and how particular spaces or spatial ideas were used for practical and ideological purposes during specific periods. All are grounded in specific case studies, but their procedures and focuses also suggest broader methodological and intellectual implications which resonate beyond those particular contexts. Some, for example, explore how domestic or religious ideologies structured, or were structured by, early modern social spaces and interactions. Others interrogate the political objectives and symbolic meanings integral to city design, or analyze the spatial strategies that define imperial space and practice.

Liberty and Independence: The Shelley–Byron Circle and the State(s) of Europe

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