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Article: EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY STUDIES
- Article from:
- AUMLA : Journal of the Australasian Universities Modern Language Association
- Article date:
- November 1, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright AUMLA Nov 2003. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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If the Victorians believed the eighteenth century to be a place where the post-horns blew at midnight and all was well, such notions have been well and truly destabilised over the last thirty years. Current representations of the long eighteenth century, which now sweeps from the Restoration right through to the Romantics, reveal an era much more anarchic and volatile-more modern, simply-than was once thought. Indeed, many observers think that the eighteenth century contains the very origins of modernity, because of its explosion of print culture, popular culture, consumerism, empire and parliamentary politics, the birth of the novel and pornography, psychological realism in fiction and in ...