Things that Didn't Happen - Writing, Politics and the Counterhistorical, 1678-1743 (Hardcover)

An innovative exploration of fake news and alternative reality in late Stuart and early Hanoverian political and literary culture, from the Popish Plot and the South Sea Bubble to the Dunciad. James Francis Edward Stuart, the Prince of Wales born in 1688, was not a commoner's child smuggled into the queen's birthing chamber in a warming pan, but many people said he was. In 1708, the same prince did not quite land in Scotland with a force of 5,000 men in order to claim the Scottish crown, but writers busied themselves with exploring what would have happened if he had succeeded. These fictions had as potent an effect on the political culture of late Stuart and early Hanoverian Britain as many events that really did happen. From the alleged "Popish Plot" of Titus Oates to the South Sea Bubble, John McTague draws on a rich variety of sources - popular, archival and literary - to investigate the propagandic and literary exploitation of three kinds of things that did not occur at this time: failures which inspired "what if" narratives, speculative futures which failed to come to pass and "pure" fictions created and disseminated for political gain. Finally, a ground-breaking reading of the various versions of Pope's Dunciad reveals a work that in its exploration of historic causation and agency and its repurposing o fthe material of contemporary political and literary culture deploys many of the strategies explored in earlier chapters to present Hanoverian reality as if it were counterhistory. JOHN MCTAGUE is Lecturer in English Literature at Bristol University.

General

Imprint:	The Boydell Press
Country of origin:	United Kingdom
Series:	Studies in the Eighteenth Century
Release date:	September 2019
First published:	2019
Authors:	John McTague (Author)
Dimensions:	234 x 156 x 19mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Hardcover - Cloth over boards
Pages:	295
ISBN-13:	978-1-78327-409-3
Categories:	Books > Language & Literature > Literature: history & criticism > Literary studies > 16th to 18th centuries Books > Humanities > History > British & Irish history > General Books > Humanities > History > History of specific subjects > Social & cultural history Books > History > British & Irish history > General Books > History > History of specific subjects > Social & cultural history Promotions
LSN:	1-78327-409-3
Barcode:	9781783274093

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