Englishness and National Culture

Cover Page......Page 1
About the Book......Page 2
Title Page......Page 3
ISBN 9780415196871......Page 4
Dedication......Page 5
CONTENTS......Page 7
FIGURES......Page 8
PREFACE......Page 9
Part I NATION......Page 12
1 NATION, IDENTITY, DISCOURSE......Page 14
Nation as class dominance......Page 17
Nation as ‘imagined community’......Page 19
Nation as real versus nation as spirit......Page 22
Identity......Page 23
Collective identity......Page 26
Identity and discourse......Page 30
Identity unified or plural?......Page 32
Language versus discourse......Page 35
‘This sceptr’d isle’ and other questions......Page 37
Nation beyond analysis?......Page 39
Nation and the present writer......Page 40
2 NATIONAL DESIRE......Page 44
Historical definition of nation......Page 48
Nation as state, nation as culture......Page 53
Theorising nation as state, nation as culture......Page 54
Heterogeneity in state and culture......Page 57
Nationalism......Page 60
Nation and modernity: Tönnies, Gellner......Page 61
Identity as romantic self......Page 63
Identity as reflected in art and nature......Page 64
Modernity and national desire......Page 65
Part II THE ENGLISH TRADITION......Page 70
3 EMPIRICISM IN ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY......Page 72
Bacon......Page 74
Hobbes, empiricism, and the English Enlightenment......Page 77
Discourse, realism and pleasure in Hobbes......Page 79
Locke’s Englishness......Page 83
Reality......Page 85
Ideas and words......Page 86
Subjectivity and morality......Page 89
Locke’s rhetoric......Page 91
Rhetoric and the body......Page 93
Rhetoric between simple and complex......Page 94
4 AN EMPIRICIST TRADITION......Page 98
The great oppositions......Page 99
Milton and morality......Page 101
1 The ‘transparent’ style......Page 104
2(a) Classic irony......Page 106
2(b) Irony in Pope, Rawnsley and Littlejohn......Page 109
3 Romantic empiricist discourse......Page 113
Alternatives: English silly discourse......Page 118
Alternatives: satire......Page 120
Terminal closure......Page 123
Part III ENGLISHNESS TODAY......Page 126
The English cultural situation today......Page 128
Theory at the margin of criticism......Page 129
Reality......Page 131
Language......Page 133
The subject......Page 136
And irony, of course…......Page 139
Empiricist content/empiricist style......Page 140
Empiricist metaphor, empiricist tone?......Page 142
The desire of the historian......Page 146
Contemporary English history and ‘postmodernism’......Page 147
The epistemological question......Page 152
Historical facts and historical narrative......Page 154
Narrative......Page 156
The object......Page 157
Means of representation......Page 159
The denial of desire......Page 160
History-writing and empiricism......Page 162
The rhetoric of pathos......Page 164
The last Englishman......Page 165
Nineteen Eighty-Four......Page 167
Realism and Modernism......Page 168
The English sense of humour?......Page 170
Beyond analysis?......Page 171
Beyond a joke?......Page 173
Small World......Page 174
Contingency, the body, the other......Page 176
Caricature and cartoon......Page 180
The English tradition......Page 181
Orwell, Donald McGill and English working-class humour......Page 183
8 CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH POETRY......Page 188
Modernism and empiricism......Page 189
‘Adlestrop’ and ‘The Waste Land’......Page 190
The Movement......Page 193
Davie and Hardy......Page 194
Philip Larkin: ‘The Whitsun Weddings’......Page 195
Ted Hughes: hawks real and symbolic......Page 199
Seamus Heaney......Page 204
In England now......Page 208
Discursive differences......Page 212
Assessing empiricism......Page 214
Modernism......Page 215
Constitutional reform......Page 216
Blindness and insight......Page 217
After nation?......Page 220
The ‘temporal’ account......Page 222
The ‘spatial’ account......Page 223
Kristeva and ‘Esprit général’......Page 226
Nation on the dark side......Page 228
Lacan, identity and aggression......Page 230
Žižek and ‘the Thing’......Page 232
Nation and aggressivity......Page 234
A lucid pessimism......Page 235
England now......Page 237
BIBLIOGRAPHY......Page 242
INDEX......Page 252