Serial Forms: The Unfinished Project of Modernity, 1815-1848

Serial Forms: The Unfinished Project of Modernity,1815–1848 is the first book in a series of three that proposes a new way of reading the transition into the modern. It suggests that seriality became the dominant form of the nineteenth century through serial newsprint, illustrations, performances, and shows, and that it is through seriality that the social is represented as increasingly politically urgent. Clare Pettitt tracks the development of communications technologies and their impact on the ways in which time, history, and virtuality are imagined.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 368 pages
Publication date: 31 August 2023
Publisher: Oxford University Press

The Unfinished Project of Modernity,1815–1848, presents a groundbreaking approach to understanding the transition into the modern era. This inaugural book in a trilogy spans the period leading up to the conclusion of the First World War, shifting its focus from London to a global perspective. Serial Forms establishes the theoretical and historical framework for the subsequent two volumes, proposing that seriality emerged as the dominant form of the nineteenth century in tandem with the development of a serial news culture and stadial historicism between 1815 and 1848. Through various serial media, including newsprint, illustrations, performances, and shows, the past and the present converge in public visibility, creating a sense of political urgency. Serial Forms contends that seriality is instrumental in representing the social as increasingly pressing, reorganizing time, recalibrating and rescaling society, and paving the way for the 1848 revolutions, which will be explored in the next book. By contextualizing their work within the messy print and performance culture from which it originated, Serial Forms offers fresh and exciting interpretations of well-known authors such as Scott, Byron, Dickens, and Gaskell. Instead of providing a narrow intellectual history or dividing the period into distinct Romantic and Victorian eras, Clare Pettitt delves into the evolution of communications technologies and their profound impact on the imagination of time, history, and virtuality.

Weight: 568g
Dimension: 156 x 231 x 23 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780198886105