This essay argues that scholarship being done under the sign of transatlantic studies, and Victorian transatlantic studies in particular, is problematically focused on the anglophone northern Atlantic region. Challenging both the essentialness and the disciplinary primacy of the “special relationship” between Britain and the United States, I argue instead that the entire nineteenth-century Atlantic world was a geographically and linguistically permeable space. Paying attention to crossings from north to south and vice versa is both methodologically and ethically necessary. From a methodological perspective, it can help us produce much more thorough answers to the questions transatlantic studies purports to ask about identity and community. But reading beyond anglophone British and U.S. American texts can also help us decolonize our reading and thinking. Of course, work like this requires scholars to read in second and third languages; as such, this essay discusses and denaturalizes the institutional barriers to multilingual English studies. It also offers a case study—a brief reading of a novel by Argentine writer Vicente Fidel López—demonstrating the insights that can be gained by expanding both our geographic perspective and our methodological toolbox.

中文翻译：

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迈向多语种维多利亚跨大西洋主义

本文认为，以跨大西洋研究为标志的学术研究，尤其是维多利亚时代的跨大西洋研究，有问题地集中在以英语为母语的北大西洋地区。我挑战英美之间“特殊关系”的本质和学科首要地位，相反，我认为整个 19 世纪的大西洋世界是一个地理和语言可渗透的空间。注意从北到南的过境点，反之亦然，在方法上和道德上都是必要的。从方法论的角度来看，它可以帮助我们对跨大西洋研究旨在提出的有关身份和社区的问题提供更彻底的答案。但阅读超越英语的英国和美国 美国文本也可以帮助我们去殖民化我们的阅读和思考。当然，这样的工作需要学者阅读第二和第三语言；因此，本文讨论并消除了多语言英语学习的制度障碍。它还提供了一个案例研究——阿根廷作家 Vicente Fidel López 的小说的简短阅读——展示了通过扩展我们的地理视角和方法工具箱可以获得的见解。