Special Session

British and Anglophone / Palimpsests: Memory and Oblivion

Shataparni Bhattacharya (Indiana University - Bloomington)
shab@****.com (Log-in to reveal)

This session includes papers that critically examine the literary, political and philosophical aftermath of the English Interregnum (1650-1660) as a watershed period in English history. Topics addressed are as follows: the epistemological shifts prompted by the Interregnum; the development of new genres and methodologies during or following the Interregnum to adequately channel or contain these shifts; literary outputs during the Restoration through which the continuing echoes of the Interregnum reverberated—in the form of reactionism, paranoia, propaganda, conspiracy, resistance or capitulation; and the archival, literary, and digital infrastructures enabling research and pedagogy of the period. How did the Interregnum impact the political discourse on tyranny, usurpation and despotism in the late 17th and early 18th Century? What effects did these discourses have on the cultural understanding of gender and monstrosity? What are the institutional and pedagogical implications of reading the Interregnum as an epistemological departure or rupture?

The English Interregnum hangs as a space or gap between the epochs of the two Charles’. This ten-year period was characterized, on the one hand, by the hope for radical new possibilities, political responsiveness, and social transformation, and on the other, by uncertainty, paranoia, fear, despotism, and authoritarian populism. When it came to an end in 1660, with the restoration of Charles II to the throne of England, the crown and its supporters made concerted efforts to erase all material and cultural traces of the preceding decade. Those who had supported the monarchy rose in the ranks, lauding the King’s rightful return. Those who had supported Oliver Cromwell’s rise to the Lord Protector of England either went into exile or spent the rest of their careers repenting for their actions against the crown during the Civil War and the Interregnum. Ceremony, pageantry and pomp returned to the public offices of the nobility, alongside novel cultural phenomena such as the emergence of the actress on the English stage. However, the memories of the Interregnum could not be erased—even in denial. While the first decade of the Restoration saw poets and writers glorifying the King, his office and his return, by the 1670s, the cracks in the wall had already begun to show themselves. The office of kingship was once again suspect, domestic turmoil had begun to be identified as the source of corruption, ceremony had begun to be associated with empty spectacle, and Charles’ habitual silencing of Parliament had started to become a cause of resentment—and these misgivings permeated the public consciousness through pamphlets and dramatic performances in playhouses as equally as they did the elite coteries of political thinkers and writers. With this context in mind, this panel aims to uncover the traces and palimpsests of the sociocultural impacts of the Interregnum that lasted long after Cromwell himself and begot new forms of political thought, resistance and intervention.