Writing Britain's Ruins, 1700--1850: The Architectural Imagination

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This interdisciplinary research project seeks to explore the often acknowledged but, to date, critically under-researched relationship between Gothic architecture and literature in British writing of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (1700-1850). Over its 18-month duration, the project seeks to bring to completion a major academic monograph entitled _Gothic Antiquity: History, Romance and the Architectural Imagination, 1760-1840_. This study seeks to analyse a selection of poetic, fictional and dramatic texts alongside, and in relation to, contemporary architectural tracts, antiquarian tomes and illustrated topographies, travel-guides, popular journalism and selected aesthetic debates, paying particular attention to the ways in which the widespread cultural fascination with Gothic architecture in Britain in the period, both original and Revivalist, at once prompted and relied upon competing, highly politicised conceptualisations of the British 'Gothic' or medieval past. Far from being a monolithic construct, the visions of the British nation's ancient medieval or 'Gothic' heritage that were inspired by real and imagined sites of architectural ruin were marked by a lack of consistency: for some, Gothic antiquity was a barbaric epoch of feudal tyranny and Catholic superstition, while for others, it constituted the zenith of the nation's cultural and political achievements. In turn, these competing constructions of the nation's history fed directly into political debates of the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century present. Through a series of focused case studies, the research draws attention to the fictional, poetic, dramatic, antiquarian and popular-historical texts that were prompted and inspired by some of the actual Gothic architectural ruins across the landscapes of England, Scotland, Wales, and, after 1801, Ireland, among them Netley Abbey, Southampton; Kenilworth Castle, Warwickshire; Alnwick Castle, Northumberland; Furness Abbey, Cumbria; Bothwell Castle, Lanarkshire; Conwy Castle, Conwy; St Alban's Abbey, Hertfordshire; Tintern Abbey, Monmouthshire; Mellifont Abbey, County Louth; and Alnwick Castle, Northumbria. Through this, the project aims to address the role played by literature in the rise of the heritage movement in Britain from the end of the eighteenth century onwards. Paying equal attention to the texts written about, or set within, imaginary and Revivalist architectural sites, the study argues for the centrality of architecture, both literally and as metaphor, to eighteenth-century aesthetic debates and to the rise of Romantic conceptualisations of the literary imagination in the early nineteenth century. In seeking to encourage scholarly dialogue across disciplinary boundaries, the project, in a second but overlapping phase, aims to host an academic conference, 'Reading Architecture Across the Arts and Humanities', an interdisciplinary, trans-historical event designed to initiate scholarly exchange between scholars working on topics of architectural interest across a broad range of disciplines. Focusing its interests on Britain in the period 1700-1850, the project then draws together into a research network a number of invited academics from the fields of literature; history; art history; and Heritage studies with complementary interests, hosting two academic symposia and collaborating on a vigorous programme of public engagement: 6 public lectures on the theme of 'Writing Britain's Ruins, 1700-1850' at Strawberry Hill House, London, and the collaborative publication of a book of that title aimed at the non-specialist reader. Extending its reach to learners beyond the academy, the project aims to run a non-credit-bearing Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on the theme of 'The Gothic Revival: Interdisciplinary Perspectives'. Across its various events and outputs, 'Writing Britain's Ruins' aims to develop leadership potential in the fields of research, impact and knowledge transfer