Books in the Transits: Literature, Thought & Culture 1650-1850 series

Explores death and its relics as they appear within the confines of the eighteenth-century British novel. The book argues that the cultural disappearance of the dead/dying body and the introduction of consciousness as humanity's newfound soul found expression in fictional representations of the relic (object) or relict (person).

Argues that Scottish poetry in the age of Burns reclaims not a single past, dominated and overwritten by the unitary national language of an elite ruling class, but a past that conceptualizes the Scottish nation in terms of local self-identification, linguistic multiplicity, cultural and religious difference, and transnational affiliations.

Explores the transformative power of reading in the eighteenth century, and how this was expressed in the fascination with Don Quixote and in a proliferation of narratives about quixotic readers, readers who attempt to reproduce and embody their readings.

Examines Anglophone writers who repurposed William Wordsworth's poetry. By reading Wordsworth in dialogue with J. M. Coetzee, Lydia Maria Child, and Jamaica Kincaid, Katherine Bergren revitalizes our understanding of Wordsworth's career and its place in the canon.