Overview

This book highlights the ways in which Britain and Belgium became culturally entangled as a result of their interaction in the period between the Napoleonic Wars and the First World War. In the course of the nineteenth century, the battlefields of Waterloo and Ypres in Belgium became veritable burial grounds for generations of dead British military, indirectly leading to the most intensive ties between the two countries. By exploring this twofold path, the author uncovers a series of cross-influences and creative similarities within the Belgo-British artistic community, and explores the background against which the British national identity was constructed. Revealing unknown links between some of the most famous artists on both sides of the channel, such as D.G. Rossetti and Jan Van Eyck; Christina Rossetti and Fernand Khnopff; John Millais and Pieter Breughel, and Lewis Carroll and Quentin Massys, the book emphasises an artistic cross-fertilisation that can be found within battlefield literature throughout the nineteenth century, including examples from the likes of William M. Thackeray, Frances Trollope and Charlotte Brontë. Providing a rich intercultural history of Belgo-British relations after the battle of Waterloo, this interdisciplinary book will appeal to scholars and students researching history, literature, art and cultural studies.

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9783030879259

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Reviews

“This is a uniquely rich and stimulating study, which is sure to expand the horizons of researchers working in any of the numerous fields with which it engages.” (Adrian Armstrong, BAVS Newsletter, Vol. 24 (1), 2024)

Author Information

Marysa Demoor is Full Professor Emerita of English Literature and Culture at Ghent University in Belgium, where, since 1995, she has been the Director of the Centre for Gender Studies. She has published widely on Victorian and modernist culture, including the books Marketing the Author: Authorial Personae, Narrative Selves and Self-fashioning (Palgrave, 2004) and The Lure of Illustration in the Nineteenth Century: Picture and Press (Palgrave, 2009). 

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