VICTORIAN STUDIES AND CULTURAL STUDIES: A FALSE DICHOTOMY

I WOULD RATHER not think of Victorian studies and cultural studies in antithesis because both terms are misleading and obstruct research. We should not be choosing between either, but trying to think of a way of working that dissolves this antithesis. The first point I would like to make is that Victorian studies came into being as an interdisciplinary project just after the second world war — the journal of that name started up in the fifties. So, paradoxically, Victorian studies emerged conceptually after modernism was over and the study of modernism was well under way. I think that one of the reasons why Victorian studies appeared post-war was slightly suspect — the seeming comfort of a period not torn by the anguish of war (wrong — there were colonial wars going on all the time, they just were forgotten). A little while ago I looked to see if Victorian Studies contained any kind of statement about its project when it began. The first issue of Victorian Studies in September 1957 contained a cautious statement about its project, describing the Victorian “era” in terms of “events and personalities” and speaking of the “coordination” of disciplines rather than their transformation (3). This was innovative for its time, but imposed conceptual limits on research. If one looks back at the early issues, they are impressively scholarly and seem to be doing bits of history so-called official historians do not do.