The French Immersion: Cross Currents of Selfhood

Abstract

Late-eighteenth-century British literature emerged from a geographical polarity. At a time when Britain was adopting its modern form as a nation-state and when British—French national animosities were cresting, the French Revolution, the most important event in the history of France as a modern nation, defined a movement of British national literature. The geographical categorization of literature according to nation, though making sense for linguistic, historical, economic, and cultural reasons, has obscured the spaces between France and England. The study of what one might term Channel literature—like the study of Romantic Transatlanticism and Romantic imperialism— reveals a more complex cultural and literary world than exclusively national studies. This chapter explores that literature, especially as it involves the French emigration to England that began with the Revolution and peaked in the early 1790s.KeywordsNegro WomanPost OfficeFrench RevolutionFrench PeopleFrench ArmyThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.