Catachthonic Romanticism: Buried History, Deep Ruins

Abstract

This article considers Romanticism in terms of racial migration and history, seventeenth-century political theory, Whig cultural identity, legitimacy, and commerce. By examining uses of race, heritage, and region I will explain how antiquarian historical theories are incorporated into developing notions of cultural identity. In particular, this approach adds a temporal dimension to the spatialities of archipelagic thinking: historicizing archipelagic understanding to develop a catachthonic approach that analyses the historicity of historiographical theories of nationality and identity, effectively through a doubled, or subterranean, history.