Peter K. Andersson’s research while affiliated with Lund University and other places

This article reflects on the role of the walking stick in the nineteenth-century city and explores the nature of the criticisms directed at it. The criticism and mocking of certain ways of holding the cane display the deep conflicts within the culture of urban strolling concerning how to take part in it, and who were allowed to do so. By identifying an irritation with canes, we see that there was a conflict between the purposeful culture of walking and the superficial culture of performativity and display, which forced Victorian men to be extremely careful of how their behaviour was perceived. By bringing the walking stick to the fore, the paper illustrates its role in a struggle between ostentation and sobriety and how its importance in cultures of both self-possession and flamboyance is indicative of aspects of the history of urban walking.

This roundtable article provides responses to the other contributions, emphasizing the need for connecting various research strands in Victorian Studies, and considering international aspects. The essay ends with a proposal to take inspiration from the method of microhistorical morphology, forcing the scholar to consider many different contexts.

This article addresses the role of the civilizing process in the historiography of the Victorian period. The author develops a critique of perspectives that deem the nineteenth century to be an era of discipline and self-restraint, arguing that these result from the hegemonic position of literary perspectives within Victorian Studies and their frequent reliance on Foucauldian-inspired techniques of discourse analysis. In response, he outlines and illustrates the potential for alternative research agendas and approaches that move away from representational sources in order that the Victorian period can be viewed in a new light. These include the study of vernacular photography, cultures of leisure, and the subcultures of groups where the importance of nonverbal practices and the cultures inherent in bodily experiences are highlighted - forms of expression that reach beyond established discourse. It is argued that the failure of scholars of the Victorian period to consider this nonverbal culture means that the theoretical frameworks of comprehension that currently characterize Victorian Studies are underdeveloped. The essay calls for Victorianists to broaden their theoretical perspectives, engage with new sources, and embrace new methodologies in order to enlarge our understanding of nineteenth-century culture.

This article sets out to study the ways in which reactions and adaptations to modernity and societal change among non-elite communities in late nineteenth-century Sweden are visible in contemporary attitudes to social deviants and nonconformists. In Swedish provincial cultures, narratives about local characters in the oral tradition played a significant part in regional identity formation in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Swedish local characters, commonly termed 'originals', and the oral traditions connected with them have much in common with tales of local characters in other countries, as well as the interest in 'eccentrics' in the urban cultures of the early nineteenth century, as studied by Miranda Gill and James Gregory. The present investigation makes use of stories held in a folklore archive in the south of Sweden which were collected in the early twentieth century, and which shed light on the mental and identity processes inherent in rural and urban social communities in the late nineteenth century. By looking at the personal characteristics the community noted and how the anecdotes took shape, it is possible to conclude that deviants were instrumental in creating localized identities, but should not be thought to be mere foils to a normal identity, but active constituents in the constant renegotiation of collective identities in response to encroaching modernity. The interest in local characters was therefore not a sign of growing individualism, but of an ambivalence about social change. He or she, in his or her old-fashioned way of life, general uncleanliness, and uncouth language, was made to represent the unmodern and could be used as a scapegoat when explaining the outmoded ways of the village, but also as a mascot, asserting a certain pride in a local identity. However, comparing the local characters in Swedish towns and cities with their rural counterparts, it is apparent that the coarse and dialectal mentality and humour of the provincial narratives thrive in the urban context too. This is an indication that even at the turn of the twentieth century, despite processes of modernization, local popular cultures in Sweden in both town and country were still pervaded by pre-modern rural sentiments, a point that has hitherto been neglected in the far too teleological portrayal of the history of the modern West.