Bardic Nationalism: The Romantic Novel and the British Empire

Katie Trumpener

Published by Princeton University Press 1997

Bardic Nationalism

The Romantic Novel and the British Empire

Katie Trumpener

Volume 2 in the series Literature in History

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691223247

Overview
Contents

About this book

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.

Author / Editor information

Katie Trumpener is Associate Professor of English, Germanic Studies, and Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago.

Reviews

"Winner of the 1998 First Book Prize, Modern Language Association"

"Bardic Nationalism is an ambitious, important survey that encompasses different genres (statistical survey, travel literature, Gothic fiction, national tale, historical novel, diaristic chronicle), different historical periods (late-eighteenth-century, Romantic, Victorian, even contemporary), and different national literatures (Scottish, Irish, Welsh, Australian, Canadian)."

"This is an impressively ambitious and assured piece of work that will become one of the indispensable books on the British novel. Thematically rich, conceptually powerful, full of surprising illuminations, Bardic Nationalism succeeds in redefining one of the crucial, contested fields in current literary historiography. Trumpener writes a lucid, sinewy prose, capable of feats of intelligent compression and analytical precision."—Ian Duncan, University of Oregon

"Winner of the 1998 Rose Mary Crawshay Prize, British Academy"

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
ILLUSTRATIONS Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
PREFACE Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	xvii
INTRODUCTION Harps Hung upon the Willow Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
PART ONE: Enlightenment and Nationalist Surveys
Chapter 1 THE BOG ITSELF: ENLIGHTENMENT PROSPECTS AND NATIONAL ELEGIES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	35
Chapter 2 THE END OF AN AULD SANG: ORAL TRADITION AND LITERARY HISTORY Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	67
Chapter 3 NATIONAL CHARACTER, NATIONALIST PLOTS: NATIONAL TALE AND HISTORICAL NOVEL IN THE AGE OF WAVERLEY, 1806-1830 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	128
PART TWO: National Memory, Imperial Amnesia
Chapter 4 COMING HOME: IMPERIAL AND DOMESTIC FICTION, 1790-1815 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	159
Chapter 5 THE OLD WIVES' TALE: THE FOSTERING SYSTEM AS NATIONAL AND IMPERIAL EDUCATION Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	193
Chapter 6 THE ABBOTSFORD GUIDE TO INDIA: ROMANTIC FICTIONS OF EMPIRE AND THE NARRATIVES OF CANADIAN LITERATURE Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	242
NOTES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	293
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	367
INDEX Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	411