Nineteenth-century literary languages: politics, aesthetics, and print culture

This introduction argues that a focus on the multilingualism of nineteenth-century British and Irish literature can lead to new insights about the literary, cultural, and social histories of the four nations across the long nineteenth century. It offers a historical overview of the changing relations between the languages of nineteenth-century Britain and Ireland (English, Gaelic, Irish, Welsh, and Scots, as well as regional dialects). It discusses the particular difficulties involved in studying multilingualism and linguistic diversity in literature, and highlights the potential of collaborative, interdisciplinary research to address those difficulties. The introduction also considers the specific political and methodological questions which are raised by a multilingual and four-nations approach to the study of nineteenth-century literature, and which the articles in this issue of 19 examine in detail.