Dancing in Time and Place: Figuring Englishness in Romantic Periodicals

Discussions of dance in Romantic periodicals were part of a discourse that sought to establish class and national identities in post-revolutionary Britain. Defensive essays looked to Enlightenment theorists on the primacy of gesture as a means of artistic expression, to argue for dance as a liberal artand element of gentlemanly education; an emphasis on naturalistic expression also finds its way into nationalistic evocations of English country dancing. A countervailing argument linked authenticity of expression and spontaneity with excess, even disease: the natural as the sign and perpetrator of chaos. In both, the question of dance’s legitimacy turned on whether it constituted organized movement—an exercise of the intellect upon the body—or was fundamentally disorganized, a command of the mind by the body that released uncontrollable energies.