The Path of Least Resistance: Mapping the 1832 Reform Act and Felix Holt
The Path of Least Resistance: Mapping the 1832 Reform Act and Felix Holt
The 1832 Reform Act has been hailed as the best mapped piece of legislation of the century, and this from a country characterised by map historians as ‘leading the map-making world with the most prolific output and the most innovatory technology ever known in cartographic history’. This paper examines a cartographic corpus – of retrospective, interpretative maps – in relation to the riots and resistance associated with the passing of the Great Reform Act. By arguing that Eliot’s Felix Holt: The Radical (1866) contributes to such a corpus, thanks to its concern with ideas of discretisation and summation, its aerial insistence and its belatedness, the paper attempts to cartographically contextualise traditional critique of Felix Holt’s much-debated conservatism and engages with the problems of using an archive to animate resistance.
maps, George Eliot, 1832 Great Reform Act, Felix Holt, representation, realism
54-72
Gatehouse, Delphine
d7438265-eb53-48e6-8e4b-c2687856bbb9
January 2020
Gatehouse, Delphine
d7438265-eb53-48e6-8e4b-c2687856bbb9
Gatehouse, Delphine
(2020)
The Path of Least Resistance: Mapping the 1832 Reform Act and Felix Holt.
Romance, Revolution and Reform, (2), .
Abstract
The 1832 Reform Act has been hailed as the best mapped piece of legislation of the century, and this from a country characterised by map historians as ‘leading the map-making world with the most prolific output and the most innovatory technology ever known in cartographic history’. This paper examines a cartographic corpus – of retrospective, interpretative maps – in relation to the riots and resistance associated with the passing of the Great Reform Act. By arguing that Eliot’s Felix Holt: The Radical (1866) contributes to such a corpus, thanks to its concern with ideas of discretisation and summation, its aerial insistence and its belatedness, the paper attempts to cartographically contextualise traditional critique of Felix Holt’s much-debated conservatism and engages with the problems of using an archive to animate resistance.
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Published date: January 2020
Keywords:
maps, George Eliot, 1832 Great Reform Act, Felix Holt, representation, realism
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Local EPrints ID: 438274
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/438274
ISSN: 2517-7850
PURE UUID: f266d09e-2c2e-435d-bf26-7b0dc37c405b
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Date deposited: 04 Mar 2020 17:32
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 06:59
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Author:
Delphine Gatehouse
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