Abstract
In this article I want to analyse how Charlotte Smith’s novel Desmond (1792) mediates historical distance, i.e. how the novel engages with the past and how this engagement effects a particular historical experience of the represented event. Smith’s novel gives rise to an ideological tension due to its confirmation of domestic tyranny, on the one hand, and its strong political support of the ideals of the French Revolution, on the other hand. I relate this tension to the ways in which the novel constructs historical dista nce. Methodologically, I rely on the theoretical reflections on historical distance by the Canadian historian Mark Salber Phillips. According to Phillips, historical distance is a rhetorical effect that can be studied from the text’s formal organization, its affective tone, and its ideological programme. This leads to a conceptual understanding of how a text represents a particular historical event.