2009
Theresa Braunschneider
- Associate Professor
- Washington and Lee University
![Picture of Theresa Braunschneider](https://www.acls.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/C5D23BAD-4B50-DE11-97CE-000C293A51F7.jpg)
Abstract
This study examines the relations between changing conceptualizations of nighttime, modernity, and gender in a broad range of eighteenth-century British literature, with an emphasis on genres that document contemporary daily life. Arguing that such texts regularly point to the significant increase in nocturnal activity as a defining feature of their “age,” this project trace connections between an emergent understanding of gender as comprised of myriad quotidian acts and new perceptions of the night as a domain of polite sociability, orderly commerce, and rational government.