Book contents
- Temporal Forms and the Nineteenth-Century Mediterranean
- Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture
- Temporal Forms and the Nineteenth-Century Mediterranean
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I “Civis Romanus Sum”
- Part II “We Are All Greeks”
- Part III “Kindred with the Mummy”
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture
Part III - “Kindred with the Mummy”
Rewriting the Holy Land
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 November 2024
- Temporal Forms and the Nineteenth-Century Mediterranean
- Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture
- Temporal Forms and the Nineteenth-Century Mediterranean
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I “Civis Romanus Sum”
- Part II “We Are All Greeks”
- Part III “Kindred with the Mummy”
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture
Summary
Part III centers on eastern Mediterranean places loosely designated as the “Holy Land” in British heritage discourse. Sites in Egypt, Palestine, and Syria were especially important within Christianity, generating new biblical historicisms in the face of geological deep time and a booming tourism industry. However, the same cultural heritage that underwrote British imperialism and articulated a mission to modernize the “East” maintained that some historically significant places should be preserved. This tension is central to the temporal forms of ruin and profanation, which I define in Part III. The desire to claim Eastern sites as the origin of Western culture conflicted with the simultaneous desire to distance current populations there as “Other.” Laying claim to the history of a place like Palmyra, an ancient Roman city in Syria still popular with Western observers, both complicated and facilitated the relationship with present life there.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Temporal Forms and the Nineteenth-Century MediterraneanWriting British Heritage in Ancient Lands, pp. 161 - 225Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024