Lucinda Menaul (KCL) - 2024-25 Students
lucinda.h.menaul@kcl.ac.uk

The mode of ‘faerie classicism’ and the articulation of vernacular identities in Victorian literature, c.1840-1900..

This thesis explores ‘faerie classicism’ – the articulation of vernacular identities in dialogue with notions of classical antiquity in Victorian literature. Broadly, I take ‘vernacular identities’ to encompass non-classical literary identities often conceived as ‘popular’ or ‘of the people’. I argue that the idea of vernacular identities in Victorian literature gained its most powerful expression through its conflation with the conception of ‘the north’, as opposed to southern Mediterranean identities correlated with Greek and Latin heritage. Often, this involves the association of the northern vernacular with notions of ‘faerie’, enveloping the slippage between fairytales, folklore, and medieval romance seen in many Victorian anthologies which saw the term combine both the notion of mythical enchantment with ‘real’ historical classical and medieval context.

At the same time, the authority and prestige of the classical tradition was something to be negotiated alongside this articulation of difference, and the thesis also aims to assess to what extent ‘faerie’ was articulated in formulations of southern (Mediterranean) vernacular identities in British literature. There has been little extended study exploring the dialogue between ideas about Graeco-Roman antiquity and the vernacular, and how this was often expressed in a literary mode drawing on the fairy-folk tradition.

This dialogue and its resulting ‘magical’ imagery ultimately express political ideas across a spectrum of political beliefs ranging from socialist to jingoistic. Taking a chronological methodological approach tracking the development of vernacular identities in the ‘faerie’ mode in Victorian works dealing with antiquity, this thesis thus makes an intervention at the intersection of fields of classical and medieval reception, studies of nineteenth century national identity, political beliefs and emerging racial theory, Victorian literature, and the study of fairytale and folklore.

Principal supervisor: Prof. Daniel Orrells