Modern Antiques : The Material Past in England, 1660-1780

craftsmen, and shoppers appropriated the past to create nostalgic and ironic alternatives to their own moment. Barrett Kalter explores the history of these "modern antiques,\u0022 including Dryden's translation of Virgil, modernizations of The Canterbury Tales, Gray's Gothic wallpaper, and Walpole's Strawberry Hill. Though grounded in the ancient and medieval eras, these works uncannily addressed the controversies about monarchy, nationhood, commerce, and specialized knowledge that defined the present for the English eighteenth century. Bringing together literary criticism, historiography, material culture studies, and book history, Kalter argues that the proliferation of modern antiques in the period reveals modernity's paradoxical emergence out of encounters with the past. [Publisher's text]