ABSTRACT
The notion of a Victorian/Modernist Divide relies on binary constructs defining the two periods through oppositional characteristics and theories identifying the turn of the twentieth century as a moment of radical change. I test these assumptions in three ways: (1) quantitative analysis, using word graphs produced by the Ngrams Viewer, assessing cultural change through the frequency with which significant words are used; (2) comparisons of posited antitheses between Victorian and modernist literary forms with subsequent oppositional formulations of modernism and postmodernism; and (3) examples from numerous modernist writers on the subjects of Victorians and periodization itself. The results expose the false and fragile nature of the constructed binaries, revealing multifaceted and malleable patterns in both the cultural history of language and the way early twentieth-century writers thought historically about themselves. In response, I propose an alternative model of palimpsestic periodization that recognizes change without reifying contrasts and that acknowledges historically distinctive conditions and movements without perpetuating the canonical formulations that segregated writers and periods into definitive groups. Palimpsestic periodization enables us still to work in our literary specializations, while prompting more nuanced and hybrid understandings of the past and, in turn, more flexible and open-ended approaches to the future.
