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Thanks to all who contributed clarification of this point; it's interesting
to me to see the ways in which these ideas of 'centuries' seem to mirror an
almost Spenglerian notion of the succession of quasi-organic, self-defining
cultures, with attendant overlap and clash--the 19th century reaches back
into the 18th (which itself extends to Waterloo) and stretches forward to
1914, etc.
I think we are still witnessing the last gasping crackles of the 19th in
some realms, while the 21st may have had decades of gestation already,
though it hardly seems real yet, to me at any rate--though perhaps unreality
is its central and controlling ideal (or else its mistaken appearanceto
those schooled in the earlier realm).
--Philip Smith
http://www.philipsmithbooks.com/
Deborah J. Leslie wrote:
> It's been some years since I was active in SCSECS or EC/ASECS
> (South-Central Society for 18th-Century Studies and East
> Central/American Society for 18th-Century Studies), but the general
> definition of the Long 18th Century amused me greatly at the time. These
> societies were heavy with literary scholars, yet the most widely-stated
> period parameters seemed to be 1660 to 1832--the restoration to the
> passage of the Reform Bill, both political events.