Christianity, patriotism, and nationhood : the England of G.K. Chesterton / Julia Stapleton.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Stapleton, Julia.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith), 1874-1936--Political and social views.

Chesterton, G. K.

Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith), 1874-1936--Religion.

Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith), 1874-1936.

Christianity and literature.

History.

Religion.

Political and social views.

Great Britain--Politics and government--1901-1910.

Great Britain.

Politics and government.

Great Britain--Politics and government--1910-1936.

Politics and literature--Great Britain--History--20th century.

Politics and literature.

Christianity and literature--Great Britain--History--20th century.

Physical Description:

xii, 238 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Lanham, MD : Lexington Books, [2009]

Summary:

This book links the concepts of patriotism, Christianity, and nationhood in the journalistic writings of Gilbert Keith Chesterton and emphasizes their roots within the English attachments that were central to his political and spiritual persona. It further connects Chesterton to the vibrant debate about English national identity in the early years of the twentieth century, which was instrumental in shaping not only his political convictions, but also his religious convictions. Christianity, Patriotism, and Nationhood explores his changing conception of the English people from an early, menacing account of their revolutionary potential in the face of plutocracy to the more complex portraits he drew of their character on recognizing their political passivity after the First World War.

As Chesterton was above all a journalist, the study considers some of the varied outlets through which he expressed his ideas as a distinctly Edwardian man of letters of a strongly patriotic persuasion. His connection with The Illustrated London News over more than three decades proved pivotal in strengthening his patriotism and discourse of nationhood vilified elsewhere, not least in advanced Liberal organs such as The Nation. Julia Stapleton shows that he was increasingly distanced from fellow Liberals before 1918, on account of the priority he gave nationhood over the state, and patriotism over citizenship. But she argues that his English loyalties were the last echo of an aspect of Victorian Liberalism that had been progressively eroded by loss of confidence among elites in the democratic aptitude of the English people.

Christianity, Patriotism, and Nationhood emphasizes that Chesterton upheld a cultural rather than racial conception of national homogeneity, in keeping with the Victorian sources of his thought and the popular patriotism of Edwardian England. It argues that his anti-Semitism was ancillary, rather than integral, to his understanding of England, and that it was matched by a similar conception of the antithesis between Islam and the patriotic ideal. Stapleton relates Chesterton's abiding concern for national "authenticity" to global imperialism, enhanced international coordination of states and civil society after 1918, and the increasing role of the British state in defining the nation. This book will be valuable to intellectual and political historians of early twentieth-century England, as well as to scholars and students of English national identity in the twenty-first century.

Contents:

1 Creeds and Identities 13

2 Liberal Journalism and the Patriotic Cosmos 31

3 The Insularity of English Art, Letters, Politics, and Thought: Chesterton's Critique of the Fin de Siecle 55

4 Liberalism, Democracy, and the English Nation 79

5 The Dissident Liberal 103

6 Authenticity, the English, and the Jews 127

7 Prussianism, Teutonism, and the Literary War 151

8 History versus Historians in the First World War 169

9 Nationalism, Internationalism, and the English Past after 1918 183.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 223-230) and index.

ISBN:

9780739126134

073912613X

9780739126141

0739126148

9780739132623

0739132628

OCLC:

244246626