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Title: Bardic Nationalism by Katie Trumpener ISBN: 0-691-04480-5 Publisher: Princeton University Press Pub. Date: 05 May, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (1 review)
Rating: 4
Summary: Reinterpreting Cultural Nationalism and Empire
Comment: In an effort to move beyond a simple historical recontextualization of the Romantic Era novel which explains literary turmoil in terms of various political revolutions, Katie Trumpener's "Bardic Nationalism" attempts a thorough exploration of the period's social and cultural anxieties, along with changes in political thought, to track the development of the novel and its impact in the burgeoning British Empire. Trumpener sees herself at the forefront of an innovative reading of reading of the novel and its social function during the Romantic Era. Trumpener focuses her attention in this study on the controversy in the British Isles over the 'correct' telling of history within the empire, between what Bhabha might call the "totalizing pedagogy" of the antiquarian, one interested in historical fact evidenced in written manuscripts, and the oral tradition of the Celtic bard, who derives his authority from an established tradition of cultural knowledge.
Building on strains of nationalist criticism within imperial contexts by Benedict Anderson, Michael Herzfeld, and Reinhart Koselleck--whose takes on the subject range from nationalism arising out of a forced sense of individualism within a depersonalized empire to a dialectical model in which oppressed cultures react and respond as units repeatedly against invading and invasive forces--Trumpener positions herself in a decidedly dialectical model, suggesting that the antiquarian/bard controversy is the starting point for an imperial/nationalist argument that finds a rich, if unresolved, battleground in the Romantic novel. What is at stake in these primarily Irish and Scottish works for Trumpener revolves around the following key issues: the subsuming of local identity within a rapidly-growing economic machine, the loss thereafter of traditional local culture, the collapse of the family unit upon the return of Anglo-Imperial players to England, the displacement of the maternal, and what Trumpener sees as the unfortunate scholarly tendency to assume that colonial fiction did not come into existence until the Victorian Era.
Trumpener exhorts the postcolonial critics who follow her to "reread colonial literature itself" to discover the roots of postcolonial anxieties. A strong work in itself, "Bardic Nationalism" breaks ground in the direction Trumpener points out, returning to source materials from a period of intense colonial activity, both at home in the British Isles, and abroad for the British Empire.
While not in the least detracting from her overall effectiveness, Trumpener's inclusion of fiction and poetry from the Victorian Era and even the late twentieth century occasionally disrupts the flow of her argument. In a study of the Romantic Era, one is surprised to find only passing reference to that major novel genre, the Gothic, and little attention focused on the narratives of slave owners (to wit, Matthew Lewis's "Journal of a West India Proprietor" and Crevecoeur's "Letters from an American Farmer") which seem so appropriate for a discussion like the one found in Chapter Four, where she modifies a popular interpretation of Edward Said. Also unsettling is the near critical reinstatement of Sir Walter Scott as literary paradigm in the book's final chapter after arguing the opposite over the course of Chapter Three, where she very cleverly takes on Georg Lukacs's reading of the historical novel.
These are, on the whole, minor difficulties with a well-written and well-argued critical work. Trumpener's prose is clear and direct, and her arguments are delivered, supported, and concluded in a brisk, and readable fashion. Trumpener offers both Romantic and postcolonial scholars an exciting vantage point from which to view nationalist and imperial modes of literary expression, keeping in mind historical contexts and prominent gender issues.
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Title: The Anthology and the Rise of the Novel: From Richardson to George Eliot by Leah Price ISBN: 0521539390 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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Title: Culture and Imperialism by Edward W. Said ISBN: 0679750541 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 June, 1994 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, Edith Grossman, Harold Bloom ISBN: 0060188707 Publisher: Ecco Pub. Date: 21 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: The Literary Channel: The Inter-National Invention of the Novel by Margaret Cohen, Carolyn Dever ISBN: 0691050023 Publisher: Princeton University Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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