Afterword

This expansive afterword reflects upon the whole volume’s arguments and contents. The focus is upon the concept of the miscellaneous: an eighteenth-century mode of organization and appreciation of culture, increasingly contested in the early nineteenth century. The author discusses issues of patriotism and audience reception, arguing for a more nuanced appreciation of the dynamics of political loyalism and dissent in Britain in the period following the French Revolution. Questions of identity and identification are seen as crucial, and as being formed at least in part within theatrical spaces. The author considers the difficult political interpretation of affective tropes such as humour and sentimentality, deftly relating them to the key issues of the day, while also paying attention to chronological change, and the need to recover ways of seeing and feeling that have been lost over the past two centuries.