Annius of Viterbo (1432/7-1502) and the Beginnings of Urban History

Between the second half of the nineteenth and the middle of the twentieth century, Serbian national historiography underwent a continuous transition, from a romantic-idealistic to a more rigorous, critical approach and interpretation. It was determined by changes both of historical method and the goals of historical inquiry, particularly regarding controversial issues of medieval Serbian history. In contrast to the glorification of the past championed by the ‘romantics’, proponents of the ‘critical school’ advocated the conscientious study of historical sources and the search for historical truth. Nevertheless, certain subjects of Serbian national historiography question this established view. One of these is the complex relationship between medieval Serbia and Byzantium, frequently interpreted by historians not only as an intrinsic part of the nation’s past and the essence of its cultural identity, but also as a convenient frame for examining and justifying contemporary national policies. In mainstream national historiography of the period between the Kingdom of Serbia (1882–1918) and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (1918–1941, after 1929 the Kingdom of Yugoslavia), Serbia’s medieval past was set in an ambivalent perspective of simultaneous Byzantinization and de-Byzantinization. It was employed in various disciplines, including political and cultural history, archaeology, art and architectural history, but also went beyond scholarly discourse.

As with any major monument that figures prominently in architectural history, the Great Mosque of Cordoba has a classic architectural “story” that explains it. This story attracts little attention in the USA, where the medieval past is of little interest because our national narrative does not depend on it. But in Europe, where a recent exhibition catalogue on Islamic art concluded with the question, “Que representa hoy al-Andalus para nosotros?” (“What does al-Andalus represent for us today?”) (Cheddadi 2000:270), medieval history plays a powerful role in modern heritage politics. Especially in Spain, the interpretation of the medieval Iberian past, with its intertwining threads of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish culture, is a deeply political act.

Reviewed by: Dark Age Bodies: Gender and Monastic Practice in the Early Medieval West J. Michael Colvin Lynda L. Coon, Dark Age Bodies: Gender and Monastic Practice in the Early Medieval West (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 2011) xii + 390 pp. Lynda L. Coon’s application of gender theory in her most recent monograph examines the new theoretical vogue: the body. Coon has written her book “to reconstruct the gender ideology of clerical masculinity through an investigation of early medieval readings of the body” (2). She adopts an intersectional view of identity formation, noting that “the book approaches gender as a lifelong negotiation, shaped by (modern) contingencies of age, class, sexual identity, nationality, imperialism, ethnicity, and even the physical location of the body in its environment ... gender is never a free-floating category that can be deployed in isolation from other vectors, especially class, age, and ethnicity” (9). There is much useful in this book, and its conclusions are the result of learned and erudite consideration of often-intransigent source materials, but her monograph might represent a step too far from an analysis of the gender paradigms of the medieval period, and might instead be a move toward the imposition of modern gender sensibilities onto the medieval past. Coon investigates the intersection of monastic physical bodies and monastic theories about embodiment in the creation of a monastic masculinity during the Carolingian era. She argues that references and allusions to the body tell us how notions of gender were created in the process of ascetic practice. Coon’s thesis maintains that bodily ideals, the products of these theoretical negotiations, were encoded into the construction of buildings and the layouts of monastic communities. The core of Coon’s argument about monastic bodies rests on a collective reading of the Rule of St. Benedict and the Plan of the Monastery of St. Gall as gendered documents, the latter of which metonymically stands for the former. Coon believes her period was a “dark age” insofar as monastic practitioners viewed their enterprise as the preservation of a classical and classicizing culture teetering on the edge of barbarity. Her intervention, then, responds to a number of historiographical fields, such as “the revival of classicism in the empire, clerical reform movements, and church-state relations” (4). To these may be added monasticism, masculinities, [End Page 176] and architectural history. “The seven chapters of the book are organized around three recurring subjects: body, building, and practice” (4), each of which, according to Coon, were expressions of the gender paradigms of monastic masculinity. The bodies with which Coon deals are masculine, and this masculinity is the process of a gendered negotiation. “The gender paradigms explored in this book,” writes Coon, “are idiosyncratic to the all-male cloister. They are not models of gender readily transferable into other social contexts, such as the royal hunt, the monarchical court, domestic spaces of the secular aristocracy, female ascetic communities, or even the palaces of bishops” (4). These masculinities are hierarchical, and it is by means of this hierarchy that we can view the differential relationships of power within the cloister. Monks allowed to speak in public—honestiores (which Coon terms masculine “mouth men”) (94)—were the superiors of the hearing monks—humiliores (which Coon terms feminine “body men”) (95, 169). This point is fair enough. The honestiores are the “penetrating” party, whose words enter the ears of their hearers in an overtly sexualized manner. Yet, some of Coon’s readings are more uncertain, and still others are outright impositions. If I am reading Coon correctly, then differential power relationships—gendered as they are—are also sexualized, and necessarily so. Using a sexualized anthropological semiology, Coon delivers much of her analysis of these relationships by means of double entendre. Some of Coon’s more imaginative moments come in her dealing with the various symbolisms of embodiment and bodily legibility: younger monks were more feminine (10); rods used for beatings are grotesque dildos (87); genitals and noses break the boundaries of internal and external by means of effluvia, while eyes and ears break this boundary in the opposite direction—and anuses can go both ways (89); mouths are labile vaginas “capable of gulping down...

Learning from Frank Furness: Louis Sullivan in 1873 Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia 6 October 2012–30 December 2012 Furness in Space: The Architect and Design Dialogues on the Late Nineteenth-Century Country House Canaday Library, Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania 14 October 2012–21 December 2012 Frank Furness: Making a Modern Library—From Gentleman’s Library to Machine for Learning Kroiz Gallery, Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia 5 October 2012–18 January 2013 Frank Furness: Working on the Railroads Library Company of Philadelphia, Philadelphia 17 September 2012–19 April 2013 Building a Masterpiece: Frank Furness’ Factory for Art Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia 29 September 2012–30 December 2012 Face and Form: The Art and Caricature of Frank Furness Athenaeum of Philadelphia, Philadelphia 30 November 2012–19 January 2013 To mark the centennial of Frank Furness’s death, a number of educational and cultural institutions in and around Philadelphia collaborated on Furness 2012 , a series of exhibitions, a symposium, and a website that sought to place the architect, and by extension the city, securely within the modernist narrative. A quirky individual, Furness (1839–1912) wrestled with nearly every major building type of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Banks, railroad stations, libraries, educational and medical institutions, clubhouses, places of worship, urban townhouses, and country estates all bear his unmistakable stamp. Among his American contemporaries, only H. H. Richardson equaled Furness in both range and creativity. Why is Furness not better appreciated outside his native Philadelphia? That is the question Furness 2012 attempted to answer, and, in large part, it succeeded. Furness was born into a prominent and accomplished Philadelphia family in 1839, just as the city was transforming itself from a cultural capital into an industrial metropolis. He exhibited a temperamental personality, even at a young age, and he was slow in settling on a career path. A three-year placement in the Philadelphia office of the Scottish emigre architect John Fraser eventually led to a longer and more pivotal stay in the experimental New York atelier of Richard Morris Hunt, who had just returned to the United States from his studies at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Meritorious service in the Union cavalry during the Civil War interrupted Furness’s studies permanently and marked his life indelibly. Not long after his discharge, Furness began working again with Hunt in New York, this time as an assistant, but the lure of his native city soon proved irresistible. By 1866 he had returned to Philadelphia and formed Fraser, Furness & Hewitt, in partnership with his former employer and a former assistant …

Reviewed by: The Chinese City in Space and Time: The Development of Urban Form in Suzhou Kerrie L. MacPherson (bio) Yinrong Xu . The Chinese City in Space and Time: The Development of Urban Form in Suzhou. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2000. xi, 360 pp. Hardcover $47.00, ISBN 0-8248-2076-2. A city of such venerable history as Suzhou has now received the attention it justly deserves. Yinrong Xu has given us a learned exegesis on the origins, the transformations—both spatial and functional—and the social and cultural contexts of an imperial administrative capital spanning two and a half millennia. Importantly, the discussion here of a long and continuous history that raises more general questions about the nature of Chinese urbanism takes this book beyond being a biography of just one city. It provides us with insights into the distinctiveness of the Chinese urban experience, a substantial synthesis of the major scholarly works on Chinese cities, and an excellent foundation for comparative approaches to urban history generally. This having been said, however, Xu is by no means constructing an "ideal type"—an image of the Chinese city devoid of its particular historical circumstances or the complex, often baffling social, economic, or political changes that shaped its physical form and functioning. As part of the hierarchical reticulation of Chinese administrative cities generally, a city was embedded in a local as well as a state system that, as modern scholarship appreciates, was neither as static nor as eternal as previously understood. The particular strengths of Xu's analysis are centered on three chapters (4, 5, and 6) outlining, respectively, the physical structure of the city, its walls and gates, and the uses of urban space. These chapters reflect his training as an architectural historian, yet he does not encumber the reader with the lingua franca of his discipline. Xu avers that one of his primary intentions was to encourage further research into Chinese city building from "an [End Page 291] architectural point of view" since the dearth of studies belies "its importance in the history of world civilization" (p. 237). The book begins with a general introduction to the historical background of the rise of Suzhou, the particular events that led to the formation of the Chinese state, and, by extension, the formalization of administration as embodied in the building and rebuilding of its urban locations. As scholars have long understood, walled cities or capitals functioned primarily as administrative centers of their particular regions, provinces, prefectures, and districts, giving coherence to the nascent imperial state from the second century. From the mid-Tang period in the eighth century, the growth of commerce, population, and cultural interactions beyond the Great Wall encouraged city growth—and the growth of records that allow a more thorough investigation into the urban milieu. Suzhou's construction in the late sixth century B.C. and its "cosmology"—the symbolism and values that shaped its physical form—are discussed in chapter 2. Xu draws on the works of Arthur Wright, Paul Wheatley, Frederick Mote, and Rhoads Murphey, to name a few of the eminent scholars who have profoundly guided our views on the meanings expressed in structures, layouts, and orientations of traditional city building based on their deep understanding of Chinese historical texts. The chapter also addresses the problems of reconciling literal descriptions in the historical sources—reflecting a two-thousand-year evolution of ideas and meanings expressed in the construction of cities by the Eastern Han—with the more recent archaeological record, a problem addressed by Nancy Steinhardt in her work on Chang'an and Beijing. One of the most distinctive aspects of Chinese urbanism compared to the West, according to Frederick Mote, is the existence of an "urban-rural continuum"—an argument further explored here by Xu. This is reflected in the fact that administrative centers (walled cities) on any level (although it may be argued that the imperial capital might be exceptional) never developed a separate "urban" government or corporate identity or, for that matter, a society or culture separate from the surrounding countryside. Xu details how this was true of Suzhou, which primarily functioned as a prefecture-level capital from the...

Architecture is an essential part of historical and cultural attractions. Iran has a special position for tourism due to its geographical, cultural, artistic, and historical location. Iran, a country with different ethnic groups and thousands of years of culture and colourful history, has a special position among the world's countries. Iran is proud of its rich history, diverse civilisations, and unique collection of historical monuments that are a testimony to its ancient past. These historical buildings not only show the brilliance of the architecture of the past but also provide a glimpse of the culture and heritage of this land. This study aims to investigate the fundamental relationship between architecture and tourism, the two main industrial and historical architectures in the geographical context of Iran. Considering the importance of architecture in the tourism industry, this article attempts to examine and introduce historical architectural works in important cities of Iran and the impact of these places on the tourism industry. Considering the necessity and importance of the research, the research method used in this qualitative study was the descriptive method. Architecture is one of those documents that bring rich resources from the past, and in this regard, paying attention to historical buildings and traditional contexts and getting to know local architecture, traditions, and Iranian culture as well as possible can bring valuable results. The results showed that architecture and tourism affect each other's development and success. Architecture is a powerful tool that can be used to develop tourism, and if it is not used, development and progress cannot be made for tourism in any region.

The abbey of Cluny looms large over the religious landscape of the central middle ages. During the tenure of Abbot Hugh the Great (1049–1109), the community tripled in size to more than 300 monks, and work had begun on the building complex known to historians of church architecture as Cluny III, the largest basilica in western Europe at the time. Moreover, before the advent of the new monastic orders of the twelfth century, most notably the Cistercians, the brethren of Cluny enjoyed unparalleled prestige as the masters of intercessory prayer for the souls of the sinful dead; and their long-lived abbots wielded influence in the highest venues of secular and ecclesiastical power, from the Ottonian court in Pavia to the papal curia in Rome. Unfortunately, many studies have depicted Cluny's rich history as a story of decline and fall, positing a ‘golden age’ from the abbey's foundation in 910 to its height under Hugh the Great; an early onset dotage during the tenure of Abbot Peter the Venerable (1122–56), who faced the withering critiques of Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux; and an embarrassing senility from the thirteenth century until the destruction of the abbey five centuries later in the aftermath of the French Revolution. In the past two decades, this picture has begun to change for the better, however, as more and more scholars, almost exclusively Europeans, have taken on the task of rehabilitating the abbey's late medieval history. Beginning with Gert Melville's provocative article, ‘Cluny après “Cluny”: Le treizième siècle, un champ de recherche’, in Francia (1990) and fully realised in Denyse Riche's magisterial L’ordre de Cluny à la fin du Moyen Âge: Le vieux pays clunisien, XIIe-XVe siècles (2000), historians can now delineate with new clarity the arc and aggregate of Cluny's medieval past. In this book, Janet Marquardt carries this trend of inquiry even further by considering the modern after-life of Cluny, specifically the municipal, memorial and scholarly responses to the ruins of the abbey in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The 1967 War, during which Israel seized East Jerusalem from Jordan, caught the Israeli planning administration unprepared. Immediately after the war, Israeli planners were asked to cover the recently occupied land with built ‘facts on the ground’ in order to foster the desired unity of the city under Israeli rule. Jerusalem’s unity became a primary national goal because it symbolized for Israelis the return of the Jews to their mythical biblical origins. But neither Israel’s modernist planners nor the politicians who guided them knew how to express such powerful symbolism architecturally. The Minister of Housing simply advised his planners to give the unifi ed city2 an ‘Oriental character’.3 The prefabricated concrete arches that were soon after superimposed on the completed design for the fi rst neighbourhood in East Jerusalem illustrated the confusion.4 Thissituation changed dramatically, however, when a younger generation of architects entered the planning scene. During the 1970s these architects created a coherent architectural image that depended heavily on the readily accessible Palestinian vernacular (Figures 11.3 and 11.4). The result bewildered Elinoar Barzaki, the former head of the Jerusalem Region in the Ministry of Housing:If the symbols of the conqueror were the cubical and ordered housing blocks of pre-1967 West Jerusalem as well as the modernist institutional buildings that crowned its government precinct, while the symbols of the conquered were the Oriental stone architecture that composed the picturesque skyline of the Old City and its environment, then Barzaki’s is a forceful observation. Post-1967 Israeli architecture clearly drifted away from its predominantly modernist practices, emulating instead the architecture of its Arab Other. Why should architects Israelize a contested city with architectural forms of another nation? Moreover, once such espousal of the Palestinian vernacular took place, what were the mechanisms that enabled Israelis to separate it from the culture that produced it in order to make it constitutive of ‘an Israeli architecture’? Paradoxically, the initial efforts to devise such Israeli architecture were already taking shape when the fi rst history of Israel’s architecture was written in 1963. In this study, the architectural modernism that had been practiced as a Zionist style since the early 1930s was established as an identifi able Israeli architectural tradition.6 Such resolution was based on the thoroughly and uniformly modernist landscape that Israelis created during the fi rsttwo decades of statehood. The questions listed above indicate severe cracks in this novel yet entrenched modernist architectural tradition, which was soon to be replaced with a quest for a newer tradition authenticated by deeper roots, the tradition ‘of the place’. This new tradition underpinned the conceptual architectural framework most prevalent in post-1967 Jerusalem. The focus of this chapter is the evolution and force of this localist tradition as well as its potential demise during the current phase of the confl ict between Palestinians and Israelis. I seek the roots of this architectural tradition in the cultural and professional formation of the generation of architects, which was entrusted with the national mandate of Israelizing Jerusalem. During the 1960s and 1970s, these architects found themselves inextricably bound up in modernism’s developing crises. At the same time that architects worldwide were questioning the premises of the Modern Movement in architecture, Israelis were becoming more vocal in challenging the modernization project of Labor Zionism, which had campaigned for decades for ‘progress and development’. This twofold crisis strongly affected Israeli-born architects, the so-called sabra, the fi rst ‘natives’ of the Israeli State. Their emerging critique of both architectural and Zionist modernisms led them to the Palestinian vernacular, particularly to ‘the Arab village’ which had fascinated them for almost a decade by the time post-1967 construction was under way. In order to analyze the journey of these Israeli-born architects into the place to which they wanted to belong as well as to the position of power from which they could shape its physical form, I study this architectural generation ethnographically. Such a perspective unravels ties between seemingly dispersed issues: the practice of post-World War II architectural trends, the pressing issue of national belonging in a settler society, theappropriation of Palestinian vernacular architecture, and, ultimately, the ethics of Israeli place-making in art and architecture. In these sets of encounters between architectural and national cultures, we fi nd that architects were neither autonomous, creative professionals working only within the discipline of architecture nor simply instruments of offi cial power. I argue instead for the transparency of architectural production, in which architects worked out themes from within the framework of their discipline, and yet their actions were thoroughly politicized at the very point where they were most ‘neutral’ and ‘professional’.

This article examines the interpretations of some architectural and archaeological heritage sites in the Crimea that appeared from the seventeenth to nineteenth century. It was the period when the travellers who described the Crimean Peninsula concluded that the most outstanding Friday mosques initially were the churches that experienced Muslim reconstruction. The travellers with their speculative ideas about architecture thought that the Muslims were unable to create these magnificent buildings. The speculations of the kind got an additional impetus when the Crimea was unified with Russia. The lack of knowledge on the early Christian history of the region and the history of architecture in general had an effect. Following the unification of the Crimea with Russia, some authors independently produced the idea that mediaeval “cave” towns and monasteries formed a link in the cultural and religious connections between Byzantium and Russia. This conclusion was based on the visual “similarity” between the artificial caves in the Crimea and the Sviatogorskii and Kiev-Pecherskii monasteries. The cases under analysis uncover the attempts of finding the “most ancient past” of Crimean Christianity, which, however, had no relation to historical realities. Nevertheless, the conclusions under analysis are typical of the thinking of the intellectual elite of the Modern Period.

By conceiving two emergent nation-states as a single region linked by conjoining roads, shared technologies and circulating researchers, this essay traces the emergence of a common “intellectual infrastructure” that during the interwar decades enabled European, American, Iranian, Afghan and Indian scholars to promote archeological and architectural interpretations of the Iranian and Afghan past. Taking Robert Byron’s Road to Oxiana as a fixed point of reference, the following pages survey the motor-linked sites where these new disciplinary approaches were developed and disseminated. By positioning Byron amid a larger cadre of investigators publishing in Farsi, Dari and Urdu no less than English, French and German, the essay shows how shifts in Iranian perceptions of the ancient and medieval past were part of a larger regional development, unfolding not only in familiar dialogue with Europe, but also in conversation and to some degree competition with nationalist scholarship in Afghanistan and India. Together with the journals, museums, learned societies and congresses which were launched in the 1920s and 1930s, cars and cameras—those key tools of the “age of speed”—were central to these learned ventures. Far from generating uniformity, this shared intellectual infrastructure enabled multiple interpretations of the archaeological and architectural past that were nonetheless mutually intelligible and methodologically consistent.

This book brings together essays on the burgeoning array of local antiquarian practices developed across Europe in the early modern era (c. 1400-1700). Adopting an interdisciplinary and comparative method it investigates how individuals, communities and regions invented their own ancient pasts according to concerns they faced in the present. A wide range of 'antiquities' -- real or fictive, Roman, or pre-Roman, unintentionally confused or deliberately forged -- emerged through archaeological investigations, new works of art and architecture, collections, history-writing and literature. This book is the first to explore the concept of local concepts of antiquity across Europe in a period that has been defined as a uniform 'Renaissance'. Contributions take a new novel approach to the revival of the antique in different parts of Italy and also extend to other, less widely studied antiquarian traditions in France, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Britain and Poland. They examine how ruins, inscriptions, and literary works were used to provide evidence of a particular idea of local origins, rewrite history or vaunt civic pride. They consider municipal antiquities collections in Southern Italy and Southern France, the antiquarian response to the pagan, Christian and Islamic past on the Iberian Peninsula, or Netherlandish interest in megalithic ruins thought to be traces of a prehistoric race of Giants. This interdisciplinary book is of interest for students and scholars of Early modern art history, architectural history, literary studies and history, as well as classics and the reception of antiquity.

Demolish or restore? A Historical Outline of the Debate about the Traditional Architecture of Beijing This article recapitulates a heated debate between the supporters of two different approaches towards Beijing’s classical architecture: the preservationists and the “demolitionists”. The conflict itself is well rooted in the ancient past, the city was looted many times, important buildings were demolished and rebuilt. However, throughout history, Beijing’s classical urban grid survived almost unharmed, but when the political centre was moved from the imperial palace to Communist Party Central Committee, Beijing city’s structure underwent major changes. First of all, Liang Sicheng’s remarkable plan to build a new administrative centre outside the city walls was refuted, Chang’an Avenue and Tiananmen Square became a seat of administrative centre instead. Secondly, Beijing’s city walls and gates, viewed by Peoples’ Government as an obstacle for development and a remainder of feudalist epoch, were torn to the ground. After 1979, when the reform and opening up period has begun, traditional architecture of Beijing faces new perils. The powerful alliance of real-estate companies and city’s government is aiming at maximizing its profits, from its point of view, traditional alleys (hutongs) should be demolished in order to make way for the new modern architecture. To sum up with, the efforts of preservationists were proven to be futile, Beijing’s historical architecture and ancient urban grid are disappearing rapidly.

Today we are facing constraints on the use of water. Some cities have astronomically high densities or unusually low access to fresh water while still others may have only enough water that is not contaminated with heavy metals or pesticides to cover the 6 percent allocated for drinking but not enough of that highest quality for the rest of domestic use. In all of these cases, modern hydraulic engineers are experimenting—though often without realizing it—with a set of solutions that are at least 2500 years old. These solutions were appropriate quality of water for each use, plus reuse to the extent feasible. Both solutions were determined then and are implemented now on a cost-benefit basis. Those who understand the lessons of history of water management can repeat them more quickly and efficiently than those who, for instance, have to re-invent a three-tiered water system from scratch. This is where the urban historian can play the role of interpreter, to help us understand in a way that the recital of disconnected facts never can. The historian recovers the plan of the past—both the physical form and the social intention. From the point of view of the development of architectural and urban history and theory, this approach to the data involves humble acknowledgment of ignorance, careful amassing of facts, meditation on the facts to see what principles they suggest, and utilization of both data and methodology from many different disciplines. Then the principles derived from one site can be tried to facilitate the understanding of another site, and a body of theory develops strongly bolstered by facts as well as principles and insights. From the site-specific facts about water management in the ancient Greek world, I have provisionally arrived at the following elements for a theoretical position about the role of water in the formation of traditional settlements: 1. Founders of these settlements used traditional knowledge to find and develop water resources. 2. Their methods were positive for long-term water resource management. 3. Water of several qualities was allocated to its best use. 4. House design and city form reveal the society's means of collecting and using water, as well as constraining that use.

It is commonplace to observe that English Romantic‐era culture was marked by a pervasive fascination with Britain's Celtic, Roman, Saxon, and medieval past, and it is thus fitting that antiquarian research and writing would be prominently represented in the published works of the period. Romantic antiquarianism took its place within, and (as will be evident shortly) largely concluded, a longstanding discursive tradition in English letters that had begun with such writers as William Camden and John Stow in the sixteenth century, was continued by Roger Dodsworth, John Aubrey, and others in the seventeenth century, and that reached its most influential form in the works of Henry Bourne, William Stukeley, Richard Gough, Francis Grose, John Brand, Joseph Strutt, and others in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As a mode of writing, antiquarianism is widely varied, defined more by the approach to its subject matter – a fascination with ancient artefacts, documents, and cultural practices – than by any distinctive formal characteristics. That said, antiquarian writing does present several identifiable generic features: it tends to be anecdotal and often collectively written as the author/compiler passes along whatever received information or illustrative tales have happened into his ken; its organization tends to be associative rather than, for example, the chronological or causal narratives of history proper; it tends to be more descriptive than polemical, probably because it typically foregrounds the actual literary, documentary, and archeological discoveries of the antiquary rather than treating such artefacts as evidence in a more comprehensive historical or philosophical argument. Indeed, the ancient documents, monuments, and artefacts described in antiquarian writing are usually presented as though they are intrinsically significant and therefore do not require the framework of a more elaborate intellectual context or historical thesis.

This chapter focuses on Tertius Kendrick’s The Travellers (1825) and Mary Shelley’s The Last Man (1826). Although neither novel is set during the Greek War of Independence, this chapter suggests that both narratives implicitly ask readers to consider what it would entail for contemporary Britain to assist Greece, for Greece to become a Westernized nation, and for Britain and Greece to develop closer transnational relations. This chapter intervenes in discussions of Romantic Hellenism by examining the ways that British Romantic writers engage with Greece’s Byzantine (Roman and Medieval) past, a period that has been largely ignored in scholarly discussions of Romantic Hellenism (which tend to focus on the Ancient Greek past).