Chapter 4
In: Neo-Victorianism and Medievalism
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Abstract
This article enters the contemporary debate about the role of monuments in the public sphere and their relationship to history. Those who “defend” monuments either position them as living history—claiming that to take them down would be an erasure of the past, or remove them from the historical process—arguing that they cannot be judged from contemporary perspectives. By contrast, this article reconceptualizes the relationship between monuments and history and proposes a new framework through which to understand “monumental time.” This framework explores the complex interrelationship between three phases of monumental time: the time of the monumental subject, the time of construction, and the time of contemporary engagements. Hadley uses this framework to examine the position of two monuments to Queen Victoria in Montréal, Canada in relation to not only Canadian history but also contemporary debates around that history.