That Untravell'd World: The Problem of Thinking Globally in Victorian Studies

Over the past decade, a growing number of scholars has sought out new ways of conceptualizing literature in terms of global systems. Victorianists, despite their field's monarchial nomenclature, have experimented with several such approaches. Some have mapped out 19th‐century transatlantic literary relations; others have explored the global media infrastructure constructed by Victorian imperialism; still others have traced the cross‐period resonances of Victorian literary forms and aesthetic constructs. Such approaches promise not only to enlarge the field's geographical scope but also to allow for creative forms of presentism that can expand the field's purchase beyond the terms of the New Historicism.