Download or read book Myth and National Identity in Nineteenth Century Britain written by Stephanie Barczewski and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2000-03-02 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholars have become increasingly interested in how modern national consciousness comes into being through fictional narratives. Literature is of particular importance to this process, for it is responsible for tracing the nations evolution through glorious tales of its history. In nineteenth-century Britain, the legends of King Arthur and Robin Hood played an important role in construction of contemporary national identity. These two legends provide excellent windows through which to view British culture, because they provide very different perspectives. King Arthur and Robin Hood have traditionally been diametrically opposed in terms of their ideological orientation. The former is a king, a man at the pinnacle of the social and political hierarchy, whereas the latter is an outlaw, and is therefore completely outside conventional hierarchical structures. The fact that two such different figures could simultaneously function as British national heroes suggests that nineteenth-century British nationalism did not represent a single set of values and ideas, but rather that it was forced to assimilate a variety of competing points of view.
Download or read book National Identity in Great Britain and British North America 1815 1851 written by Linda E. Connors and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2011 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examining the complex world of print culture in the nineteenth century, Connors and MacDonald show how periodicals in the United Kingdom and British North America shaped and promoted ideals about national identity. The authors' striking history of an understudied period in the history of print culture sheds light on the underlying myth of British transcendence and progress that emerged with such force and appeal after 1815.
Download or read book Writing the Early Modern English Nation written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-11-22 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While there is overwhelming evidence that nationalism reached its peak in the later nineteenth century, views about when precisely national thinking and sentiment became strong enough to override all other forms of collective unity differ considerably. When one looks for the historical moment when the concept of the nation became a serious – and subsequently victorious – competitor to the monarchic dynasty as the most effective principle of collective unity, one must, at least for England, go back as far as the sixteenth century. The decisive change occurred when a split between the dynastic ruler and “England” could be widely conceived of and intensely felt, a split that established the nation as an autonomous – and more precious – body. Whereas such a differentiation between king and country was still imperceptible under Henry VIII, it was already an historical reality during the reign of Queen Mary. That the most important factors in this radical change were the Reformation and the printing press is by now well known. The particular aim of this volume is to demonstrate the pivotal role of pamphleteering – and the growing importance of public opinion in a steadily widening sense – within the process of the historical emergence of the concept of the nation as a culturally and politically guiding force. When it came to the voicing of dissident opinions, above all under Queen Mary and later during the reign of King James and Charles I, the printed pamphlet proved to be a far superior form of communication. This does not mean that books played no role in the early development and dissemination of the concept of an English nation. Especially the compendious new English histories written at the time did much to support the growth of cultural identity.
Download or read book The Return of King Arthur and the Nibelungen written by Maike Oergel and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2010-10-13 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Folklore and Nationalism in Europe During the Long Nineteenth Century written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2012-07-25 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using an interdisciplinary approach, this book brings together work in the fields of History, Literary Studies, Music and Architecture to examine the place of folklore and representations of ‘the people’ in the development of nations across Europe during the nineteenth century.
Download or read book Films and British National Identity written by Jeffrey Richards and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 1997-09-15 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book seeks to examine the ways in which the cinema has defined, mythified and disseminated British national identity during the course of the twentieth century. It takes the form of a series of linked essays which examine chronologically, thematically and by specific case studies of films, stars and genres the complexities and ambiguities in the process of evolution and definition of the national identity. It argues for the creation of a distinctive British national identity both in cinema and the wider culture. But it also assesses the creation of alternative identities both ethnic and regional and examines the interaction of cinema and other cultural forms (music, literature and television).
Download or read book Imagining Spain written by Henry Kamen and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Imagining Spain' is an analysis of the myths that Spaniards have held, and continue to hold, about themselves and about their collective past. The text discusses how perceptions of key aspects of early modern Spain were influenced by ideologies that continue to play a role in the formation of contemporary Spanish attitudes.
Download or read book The Nation Made Real written by Anthony D. Smith and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-24 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on national identity in the Netherlands, France, and Britian, The Nation Made Real offers an original interpretation of the role of visual art in the making of nations in Western Europe.
Download or read book The Societal Foundations of National Competitiveness written by Michael J. Mazarr and published by Rand Corporation. This book was released on 2022-06-21 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nations rise and fall, succeed or fail in rivalries, and enjoy stability or descend into chaos because of a complex web of factors that affect competitive advantage. One critical component is the package of essential social characteristics of a nation. The ultimate story of the Cold War is that the United States was simply a more competitive society than the Soviet Union: more energetic, more vibrant, more innovative, more productive, more legitimate. Through analysis of comparative studies of historical eras and trends, historical case studies, and the findings of issue-specific empirical research, the report explores how seven characteristics of a society determine its competitive standing and distinguish dynamic and competitively successful nations. If the history surveyed in this report provides an accurate guide to the future, the fate of the United States in today's rivalries will not be determined solely, or even in significant degree, by the numbers of its weapons or amounts of defense spending or how many proxy wars it wins but by the basic characteristics of its society. The author applies the seven leading characteristics that affect national standing to the United States to create a snapshot of where the country stands. That application provides some reason for optimism. The United States continues to reflect many of these characteristics, and the overall synergistic engine, more than any other large country in the world. However, multiple trends are working to weaken traditional U.S. advantages. Several, such as the corruption of the national information space, pose acute risks to the long-term dynamism and competitiveness of the nation, raising the worrying prospect that the United States has begun to display classic patterns of a major power on the far side of its dynamic and vital curve.
Download or read book The Myth of American Diplomacy written by Walter L. Hixson and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this major reconceptualization of the history of U.S. foreign policy, Walter Hixson engages with the entire sweep of that history, from its Puritan beginnings to the twenty-first century’s war on terror. He contends that a mythical national identity, which includes the notion of American moral superiority and the duty to protect all of humanity, has had remarkable continuity through the centuries, repeatedly propelling America into war against an endless series of external enemies. As this myth has supported violence, violence in turn has supported the myth. The Myth of American Diplomacy shows the deep connections between American foreign policy and the domestic culture from which it springs. Hixson investigates the national narratives that help to explain ethnic cleansing of Indians, nineteenth-century imperial thrusts in Mexico and the Philippines, the two World Wars, the Cold War, the Iraq War, and today’s war on terror. He examines the discourses within America that have continuously inspired what he calls our “pathologically violent foreign policy.” The presumption that, as an exceptionally virtuous nation, the United States possesses a special right to exert power only encourages violence, Hixson concludes, and he suggests some fruitful ways to redirect foreign policy toward a more just and peaceful world.
Download or read book The Rise and Fall of British Crusader Medievalism c 1825 1945 written by Mike Horswell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-01-29 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates the uses of crusader medievalism – the memory of the crusades and crusading rhetoric and imagery – in Britain, from Walter Scott’s The Talisman (1825) to the end of the Second World War. It seeks to understand why and when the crusades and crusading were popular, how they fitted with other cultural trends of the Victorian and Edwardian eras, how their use was affected by the turmoil of the First World War and whether they were differently employed in the interwar years and in the 1939-45 conflict. Building on existing studies and contributing the fruits of fresh research, it brings together examples of the uses of the crusades from disparate contexts and integrates them into the story of the rise and fall crusader medievalism in Britain.
Download or read book Mysticism Myth and Celtic Identity written by Marion Gibson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mysticism, Myth and Celtic Identity explores how the mythical and mystical past informs national imaginations. Building on notions of invented tradition and myths of the nation, it looks at the power of narrative and fiction to shape identity, with particular reference to the British and Celtic contexts. The authors consider how aspects of the past are reinterpreted or reimagined in a variety of ways to give coherence to desired national groupings, or groups aspiring to nationhood and its 'defence'. The coverage is unusually broad in its historical sweep, dealing with work from prehistory to the contemporary, with a particular emphasis on the period from the eighteenth century to the present. The subject matter includes notions of ancient deities, Druids, Celticity, the archaeological remains of pagan religions, traditional folk tales, racial and religious myths and ethnic politics, and the different types of returns and hauntings that can recycle these ideas in culture. Innovative and interdisciplinary, the scholarship in Mysticism, Myth and Celtic Identity is mainly literary but also geographical and historical and draws on religious studies, politics and the social sciences. Thus the collection offers a stimulatingly broad number of new viewpoints on a matter of great topical relevance: national identity and the politicization of its myths.
Download or read book Gender Race and National Identity written by Jackie Hogan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2008-08-18 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines links between gender, race and national identity by analyzing a range of mass-mediated and pop-cultural ‘texts’ in four nations: Australia, Japan, the United Kingdom and the USA.
Download or read book The Making of English National Identity written by Krishan Kumar and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-03-13 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why is English national identity so enigmatic and so elusive? Why, unlike the Scots, Welsh, Irish and most of continental Europe, do the English find it so difficult to say who they are? The Making of English National Identity, first published in 2003, is a fascinating exploration of Englishness and what it means to be English. Drawing on historical, sociological and literary theory, Krishan Kumar examines the rise of English nationalism and issues of race and ethnicity from earliest times to the present day. He argues that the long history of the English as an imperial people has, as with other imperial people like the Russians and the Austrians, developed a sense of missionary nationalism which in the interests of unity and empire has necessitated the repression of ordinary expressions of nationalism. Professor Kumar's lively and provocative approach challenges readers to reconsider their pre-conceptions about national identity and who the English really are.
Download or read book The English Nation written by Edwin Jones and published by Alan Sutton Publishing. This book was released on 1998 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the loss of empire and concern over Europe, England is in search of a new role. This study provides the broad historical perspective within which England could recover its true historical identity, with its associated beliefs and values, as the new millennium arrives.
Download or read book Romantic Women Writers and Arthurian Legend written by Katie Garner and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-12-11 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book reveals the breadth and depth of women’s engagements with Arthurian romance in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Tracing the variety of women’s responses to the medieval revival through Gothic literature, travel writing, scholarship, and decorative gift books, it argues that differences in the kinds of Arthurian materials read by and prepared for women produced a distinct female tradition in Arthurian writing. Examining the Arthurian interests of the best-selling female poets of the day, Felicia Hemans and Letitia Elizabeth Landon, and uncovering those of many of their contemporaries, the Arthurian myth in the Romantic period is a vibrant location for debates about the function of romance, the role of the imagination, and women’s place in literary history.
Download or read book Epic and Empire in Nineteenth Century Britain written by Simon Dentith and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-06-15 with total page 10 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the nineteenth century, epic poetry in the Homeric style was widely seen as an ancient and anachronistic genre, yet Victorian authors worked to recreate it for the modern world. Simon Dentith explores the relationship between epic and the evolution of Britain's national identity in the nineteenth century up to the apparent demise of all notions of heroic warfare in the catastrophe of the First World War. Paradoxically, writers found equivalents of the societies which produced Homeric or Northern epics not in Europe, but on the margins of empire and among its subject peoples. Dentith considers the implications of the status of epic for a range of nineteenth-century writers, including Walter Scott, Matthew Arnold, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, William Morris and Rudyard Kipling. He also considers the relationship between epic poetry and the novel and discusses late nineteenth-century adventure novels, concluding with a brief survey of epic in the twentieth century.
