Visions of Britain, 1730-1830 : Anglo-Scottish writing and representation / Sebastian Mitchell, University of Birmingham, UK.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mitchell, Sebastian, 1959-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English literature--Scottish authors--History and criticism.

English literature--Scottish authors.

Scottish literature--History and criticism.

Scottish literature.

National characteristics, Scottish, in literature.

Physical Description:

xii, 291 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire : Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

Summary:

Visions of Britain is an inquiry into the literary and visual representation of Great Britain in the eighteenth century and early nineteenth century. The book considers the inter-relationship of text and image for the purposes of national projection. It analyses an extensive range of poems, novels, journals, drawings, satirical prints, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings. The study follows recent discussions of Anglo-Scottish writing in this period in the attempt to determine the salient characteristics of the imaginative depiction of the Kingdom of Britain, but challenges their more confident claims for the development of a progressive integrated nationhood. This book argues that the most engaging literary and visual accounts of Britain in this era subject their imagery to extensive artistic pressure, threatening to dismantle the national vision at the moment of its construction. Book jacket.

Contents:

Thomson's vision of Britannia

Smollett and dialectical nationalism

Ramsay, Hume and British portraiture

Ossian, Wolfe and the death of heroism

Boswell: self, text, nation

Scott, Turner and the vision of North Britain.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781137290106

1137290102

OCLC:

820434241