Bardic Nationalism The Romantic Novel and the British Empire

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Trumpener, Katie., Author.

Series:

Literature in history (Princeton, N.J.)

Literature in history

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Bards and bardism in literature.

Colonies in literature.

English fiction--18th century--History and criticism.

English fiction.

English fiction--19th century--History and criticism.

Imperialism in literature.

Nationalism and literature--Great Britain--History.

Nationalism and literature.

Nationalism and literature--Great Britain--Colonies--History.

Romanticism.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (450 pages) : illustrations.

Place of Publication:

Princeton : Princeton University Press, 1997.

Summary:

This magisterial work links the literary and intellectual history of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Britain's overseas colonies during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to redraw our picture of the origins of cultural nationalism, the lineages of the novel, and the literary history of the English-speaking world. Katie Trumpener recovers and recontextualizes a vast body of fiction to describe the history of the novel during a period of formal experimentation and political engagement, between its eighteenth-century "rise" and its Victorian "heyday." During the late eighteenth century, antiquaries in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales answered modernization and anglicization initiatives with nationalist arguments for cultural preservation. Responding in particular to Enlightenment dismissals of Gaelic oral traditions, they reconceived national and literary history under the sign of the bard. Their pathbreaking models of national and literary history, their new way of reading national landscapes, and their debates about tradition and cultural transmission shaped a succession of new novelistic genres, from Gothic and sentimental fiction to the national tale and the historical novel. In Ireland and Scotland, these genres were used to mount nationalist arguments for cultural specificity and against "internal colonization." Yet once exported throughout the nascent British empire, they also formed the basis of the first colonial fiction of Canada, Australia, and British India, used not only to attack imperialism but to justify the imperial project. Literary forms intended to shore up national memory paradoxically become the means of buttressing imperial ideology and enforcing imperial amnesia.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

PREFACE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION Harps Hung upon the Willow

PART ONE: Enlightenment and Nationalist Surveys

Chapter 1 THE BOG ITSELF: ENLIGHTENMENT PROSPECTS AND NATIONAL ELEGIES

Chapter 2 THE END OF AN AULD SANG: ORAL TRADITION AND LITERARY HISTORY

Chapter 3 NATIONAL CHARACTER, NATIONALIST PLOTS: NATIONAL TALE AND HISTORICAL NOVEL IN THE AGE OF WAVERLEY, 1806-1830

PART TWO: National Memory, Imperial Amnesia

Chapter 4 COMING HOME: IMPERIAL AND DOMESTIC FICTION, 1790-1815

Chapter 5 THE OLD WIVES' TALE: THE FOSTERING SYSTEM AS NATIONAL AND IMPERIAL EDUCATION

Chapter 6 THE ABBOTSFORD GUIDE TO INDIA: ROMANTIC FICTIONS OF EMPIRE AND THE NARRATIVES OF CANADIAN LITERATURE

NOTES

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [367]-410) and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780691044804

0691044805

OCLC:

1273306135