This thesis attempts to analyze Japanese British writer Kazuo Ishiguro¡¦s The Remains of the Day by tracing Ishiguro¡¦s engagement with such problematic issues as the recuperation of history, the negotiation with Englishness, and the fetishization of professionalism. To critically study the thematic concerns of Ishiguro¡¦s novel¡Xits examination of the conflicts between memory and history, its critique of the discursive formation of Englishness, and its scrutiny of psychic costs of the subject formation of a professional butler, I adopt a critical stance that is hybridized in nature and read The Remains of the Day as an incisive deconstruction of the colonial cultural legacies that the English both embrace and disavow. The first chapter explores the ways in which the macronarratives of the nation¡¦s history impact and influence the micronarratives of personal memory. Stevens¡¦s yearning for the glorious past of colonial Britain and his disavowal of his shameful memory well reflect the collective symptom of post-imperial melancholia that the British people experienced in the ¡¦80s. The second chapter applies Homi Bhabha¡¦s ideas of ¡§stereotype¡¨ to study the discursive formation of Englishness through acts of cultural coercion and problematize the concepts of Englishness as discursively constructed fetishes. By paying concentrated attention on English imaginaries of the landscape of English country side, the English country house, and the English gentleman, Ishiguro mocks and questions, if not ridicule, the concepts of Englishness by making parodies of these three prototypes of Englishness. By using Michel Foucault¡¦s concepts of discipline, sexuality, and subjectivity, the third chapter studies Stevens¡¦s professionalism, his conflicts between personal affections and desire and his professional principles. Even though Ishiguro proffers a critique of Stevens¡¦s blind loyalty and exposes the political consequences of the butler¡¦s non-political stance, the novel ends with an open ending that leaves undecided how Stevens is to face the ¡§remains¡¨ of his days, or, as an analogy, how the English are to tackle with the ¡§remains¡¨ of their days.

In mid twentieth century Britain, after the experience of total war, evil was not an abstract concept but a palpable reality. How was evil understood, and how did this understanding influence notions of English national identity? This thesis examines the lives and works of C. S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and J.R.R. Tolkien, members of the British literary club Inklings. It probes representations of evil, Englishness, gender and the erotic in their fiction and shows specifically how their science fiction, horror, and fantasy was a response to the moral and human devastation of two world wars. The thesis suggests that the Inkling’s middle brow literature opens a window on a wider sense of uncertainty and longing about Englishness in the eve of decolonization and decline.

Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2013. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis explores how Justin Cartwright’s perspective on Englishness, as a South Africanborn writer living and writing in England, is played out in his novels. Four of Cartwright’s novels with English settings are analysed: In Every Face I Meet (1995), The Promise of Happiness (2004), To Heaven by Water (2009) and Other People’s Money (2011). Cartwright’s position as a self-conscious observer of English life is revealed as eliciting a nuanced critique of Englishness. It is argued that Cartwright adopts something of an anthropological approach towards his English subjects, and that this troubles the traditional gaze of the Western anthropologist upon the “other”. At the same time, his protagonists are represented with humane sympathy, though this is often tempered with irony. Drawing on Paul Gilroy’s ideas about race and multiculture in England and Robert J.C. Young’s The Idea of English Ethnicity, this thesis discusses Cartwright’s presentation of Englishness as both potentially inclusive and exclusive. Cartwright also sets England against America, and more significantly, against Africa. Cartwright’s portrayal of Africa is shown to reveal his somewhat ambivalent attitude towards his birthplace. Throughout the thesis, Cartwright’s novels are discussed with an awareness of the influence that the social philosopher Isaiah Berlin has had on the author, particularly with regard to his critique of idealism and his espousal of value pluralism and liberal humanism. Yet it is also suggested that Cartwright’s liberal humanism may be intertwined with his complex and ambivalent attitude towards Africa. Moreover, the ironic tone and postmodern, metafictional elements of these novels perform Cartwright’s belief in value pluralism in interesting ways. The relationship between literature, art and national fictions is furthermore discussed, in conversation with Benedict Anderson’s ideas about nationalism. This thesis provides a close-reading of the works of this under-researched author and examines the complexity of his “estranged” position towards Englishness. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie tesis verken hoe Justin Cartwright, Suid-Afrikaans gebore skrywer woonagtig in Engeland, se die siening van Engelsheid (Englishness) in sy romans weerspieël word. Vier van Cartwright se romans met ‘n Engelse agtergrond word ontleed: In Every Face I Meet (1995), The Promise of Happiness (2004), To Heaven by Water (2009) en Other People’s Money (2011). Dit word onthul hoe Cartwright se posisie as self-bewuste waarnemer van Engelse lewe hom staat te stel om ‘n genuanseerde critique van Engelsheid te lewer. Daar word aangevoer dat Cartwright ‘n ietwat antropologiese benadering tot sy Engelse onderwerpe inneem en dat dit die tradisionele siening van die Westerse antropoloog van die “ander” ondergrawe. Terselfdertyd bied hy sy protagoniste met menslike erbarming aan, hoewel dit dikwels met ironie getemper word. Deur gebruik te maak van Paul Gilroy se opvattings oor ras en multikultuur in Engeland en Robert J.C. Young se The Idea of English Ethnicity, bespreek hierdie tesis hoe Cartwright Engelsheid voorstel as sowel potensieel inklusief as eksklusief. Cartwright stel ook Engeland teenoor Amerika, en meer belangwekkend, ook teenoor Afrika. Daar word aangetoon dat Cartwright se uitbeelding van Afrika sy nogal ambivalente houding teenoor sy geboorteplek verraai. Regdeur die tesis word Cartwright se romans bespreek met in agneming van die invloed van die sosiale filosoof Isaiah Berlin op die skrywer, veral ten op sigte van sy critique van idealisme en sy omhelsing van waardepluralisme en liberale humanisme. Tog word daar ook gesuggereer dat Cartwright se liberale humanisme verweef mag wees met sy verwikklede en ambivalente houding ten opsigte van Afrika. Daarbenewens is die ironiese toon en postmoderne, metafiktiewe element van hierdie romans op interessante maniere ‘n bevestiging van Cartwright se onderskrywing van waardepluralisme. Vervolgens word die verhouding tussen literatuur, kuns en nasionale fiksies bespreek in samehang met Benedict Anderson se idees oor nasionalisme. Hierde tesis bied ‘n noukeurige ondersoek van die werke van hierdie onderverkende skrywer en ondersoek die kompleksiteit van sy “vervreemde” houding teenoor Engelsheid.

This thesis attempts a re-interpretation of late nineteenth-century agricultural depression, specifically in England, by complementing economic histories to suggest a hitherto neglected cultural component equally defined Victorian comprehension of both the phenomenon's geographic distribution and symbolic form. Adopting recent theoretical shifts in historical geography that validate the use of literary evidence in combination with economic data sources, the thesis claims depression was constructed from an accretion of mythologised layers of meaning deposited unconsciously or otherwise. These symbolic forms influenced spatial outcomes both in material and imaginary realms, and the nature of debate at varying levels from fanning debates to intellectual discourses. The thesis examines three distinct examples of the accumulation and distribution of depression symbolism and how each signification was acted upon by different discursive communities. Firstly, attention will be directed towards farming behaviour and the consumption of depression myth. Critically the thesis suggests within farming, depression emerged as a state of mind that inhibited the production of indigenous solutions, thus further propagating depression. Secondly, the thesis moves on to examine how the- technicalities of agrarian debate were seized by wider national debates, thus further codifying the depression with numerous social anxieties such as fin de siecle fears, national destabilisation and racial degeneration. Interestingly, icons of failure conferred upon depression within this higher level of discursive interaction are returned to the parochial level, further influencing farming behaviour. An additional implication suggests the geography of depression is heavily skewed towards a perceived threat to an invented homeland at a time of emergent national identities. Finally, the thesis considers an agrarian-led response to farm failure, the introduction of small holdings and the philosophy of la petite culture, as a potential solution. The theoretical basis of land reform campaigns envisaged a major overhaul of the failed rural order of patrician sponsored agriculture, yet were influenced by the accumulated mythology of depression. Thus farm failure as conceived within imaginary geographies proved as persuasive in interpreting depression as physical expressions of distress in real space.

Existing criticism that addresses the concept of Englishness in Elizabeth Gaskell’s writing is sparse and confined to a small part of her oeuvre, and, furthermore, has, in the main, placed Englishness (and England) in Gaskell’s fiction either within a Derridian paradigm of endless signifiers or in the realm of metaphor. I place Gaskell’s Englishness within its socio-historical milieu, and argue that, for Gaskell, England is primarily literal, her green and pleasant land, and that, in her writing, she envisages a slowly evolving and flatter English social system incorporating a wider selection of the English population than was the norm in the mid-nineteenth century. She wrestles with the place of the ‘other’ within English society. Indeed, as a female and as a Unitarian, Gaskell is herself ‘other,’ outside of hegemonic Englishness, and her outsider status had a marked influence on her Englishness. I argue that there are ambiguities in Gaskell’s vision for a more egalitarian Englishness. Her Englishness is couched in middle-class terms, in which, for Gaskell, the entry requirement into the ‘in group’ of Englishness (by, for example, the working classes) is middle-class acculturation, and she presents both the benefits and limitations of her liberal, middle-class perspective. Contemporary topics that inform Gaskell’s fiction include industrial change, economic liberalism, colonial expansion, political reform, and scientific debate, each of which brought issues of nationhood and identity into focus. Gaskell’s primary vehicle for producing Englishness in this historical context was through short stories and novels, although her essays and letters are also significant. I focus on four key areas which provide entry points into her constructions of Englishness: race, empire, imperial trade (especially tea, opium, and cotton), and gender/masculinity.

The dissertation takes the modern business technique/concept of brands and branding, applies them to a historic case study, the creation by James VI and I of Great Britain from 1603 to 1625, and by doing so throws new light on both. It compares two distinct approaches to branding, unidirectional and social interactionist, postulating that the latter would prove better at explaining the success of the brand Great Britain/British. The case study reveals that neither approach is supported by the evidence. Content analysis shows that there was a lack of awareness of the brand Great Britain/British and an inconsistency in its use, hence neither approach can be sustained. However, the same analysis does show that an alternative brand, England/English, existed in the same time and that this brand provides some limited support for the social interactionist view of brands and branding. The lack of success of the brand Great Britain/British during his reign does not appear to have prevented James VI and I from establishing himself as the legitimate King of England in addition to Scotland although the contribution of the brand to this was marginal at best.

This project aims to develop and explore questions of theatre as public discourse and the representation of England and Englishness in contemporary British theatre during the period 2000-2010. I present a dual focus in this practice-led research process, creating an original creative work, Albion Unbound, alongside an academic thesis. I describe the relationship between play and thesis as ‘dialogic’ with reference to the work of Mikhail Bakhtin. His ideas on language, subjectivity and authorship offer an insightful perspective upon the theory and practice of theatre-making, but Bakhtin himself makes a concerted claim for drama’s inherent monologism, generically incapable of developing genuine dialogic relations between its constituent voices. Chapter One explores the ‘case against drama’ and identifies the different senses of theatrical dialogism which emerge in critical response. Chapter Two considers Bakhtin’s work around carnival, the grotesque and the history of laughter, framed within a debate about the ‘politics of form’ in the theatrical representation of madness and mental illness. A key division emerges between political, discursive theatre and experimental theatre, as I question the boundaries of Bakhtin’s ideas. Chapter Three questions the nature of political theatre and its British traditions via Janelle Reinelt and Gerald Hewitt’s claim that David Edgar represents the ‘model’ political playwright engaged in theatre as ‘public discourse’. I focus upon three-thematically linked of Edgar’s plays, Destiny, Playing with Fire and Testing the Echo to engage questions of the ‘state-of-the-nation’ play and Edgar’s varied formal strategies employed in constructing his dramatic worlds and the political discourse he seeks with an audience. Chapter Four extends this debate to question the alleged ‘return of the political’ in new writing between 2000-2010 and specifically a body of plays which engage issues of nation and identity – those plays contemporaneous to Albion Unbound. Chapter Five provides a reflexive conclusion, elaborating upon the creative, collaborative process of making Albion Unbound, accounting for its successes and failures as a piece of contemporary theatre. I also reflect upon the relationship of theory and practice the project has developed, the dialogic relationship between thesis and play. Chapter Six is the play itself, as it was performed.

Postcolonial theory teaches us that the Empire was as much a textual as a physical undertaking: the Empire was (and is) experienced through its texts. Anthony Trollope was an enthusiastic traveller and helped to "write the Empire" in both his travel narratives and in his novels. This study examines his travel narrative South Africa, and explores how the colony is depicted in this work and in Trollope's "colonial" novels: Harry Heathcote of Gangoil, John Caldigate, An Old Man's Love and The Fixed Period. Trollope's colonies are places of moral danger where the value systems instilled by English society provide the only means for overcoming the corrupting influences of the colonial space. He writes the colonies as images of Britain, but these images are never true reflections of the homeland: there is always an element of distortion present, which serves to subvert the "Englishness" of his colonial landscapes. / English Studies / MA (ENGLISH)

Séparé du Sud pastoral, de la capitale londonienne et d’Oxbridge par une frontière moins géographique que culturelle, le Nord de l'Angleterre a une géographie variable en fonction des besoins du discours. Une constante discursive parcourt cependant la littérature sur la région : marqué par ses rudes conditions climatiques, jadis peuplé de barbares, en butte aux invasions et ravagé par la Révolution Industrielle, le Nord serait en marge de la sphère poétique. Or, à partir des années 1960, dans le cadre d'une redécouverte des marges de l'ex-empire et d’une dissolution des frontières nationales due à la mondialisation, le Nord revendique son droit à figurer à part entière au cœur de la carte poétique. Les poésies de Basil Bunting, de Ted Hughes, de Tony Harrison, et de Simon Armitage nous invitent à parcourir ces Nords géographiques, historiques, culturels, mais avant tout poétiques. Ces quatre poètes, nés dans le Nord, ont en commun d’avoir pris une distance, sinon physique, du moins intellectuelle, avec la région, ce qui leur a permis de poser un regard critique. Le mouvement nostalgique de retour à la terre natale amorce une réappropriation sur le plan de l’imaginaire de cet espace colonisé par des discours dépréciatifs. Les poètes y découvrent une source intarissable de créativité et partent en quête d’une langue qui résorbe l’écart entre nordicité et poéticité : l'impur accent barbare devient axiome poétique. Comment cette poésie du Nord met-elle en question l'anglicité et la tradition poétique anglaise en même temps qu'elle la structure ? Si « poésie du Nord » il y a, quelles en sont les réalisations dans la voix, le rythme et la forme poétiques ? / Divided from the pastoral South, London and Oxbridge by a frontier that is less geographical than cultural, Northern England has been constructed through shifting discourses. One discursive feature though has been constantly present in the literature on the region : since the place is forbidding (not the least because of its grim weather), since it used to be populated with barbaric tribes and provided a buffer against even more barbarian invasions, since it was devastated by the Industrial Revolution, the North is excluded from the poetic sphere. Yet since the 1960s, in a context of peripheries emerging from the former empire and of national frontiers disappearing due to globalisation, the North has claimed its right to hold a central place on the poetic map. Basil Bunting, Ted Hughes, Tony Harrison and Simon Armitage have participated in reconfiguring geographical, historical, cultural, but, most importantly, poetic Norths. The nostalgic return to the region where they were born and bred reads as a creative and critical reappropriation of a space that has been colonised by derogatory discourses. The poets discover an inexhaustible source of inspiration and set on a quest for a language that would bridge the gap between northerness and poetry : their impure barbarian accent becomes a poetic axiom. How does this Northern English poetry question Englishness and the English poetic tradition while constructing them ? If « Northern English poetry » does exist, how does it show in terms of poetic voice, rhythms and forms ?

This is a study of religious national identity in Britain during the 1920s. The focus of the thesis is the Prayer Book controversy which engulfed the Church of England in 1927 and 1928 and climaxed with the House of Commons rejecting the Church’s proposals for an alternative liturgy on two occasions. The purpose of the revised book was to incorporate moderate Anglo-Catholicism into the life of the Church. It is asserted that the main factor behind the revision controversy, largely overlooked in previous studies, was a conflict of different models of national religion. While the dominant ‘Centre-High’ (sometimes referred to as ‘liberal Anglican’) faction in the Church, which included the English Catholic section of Anglo-Catholics, favoured a broadly Christian national religion and a tolerant, comprehensive established Church, many Protestants, in particular conservative Evangelicals, understood religious national identity to be emphatically Protestant under the terms of a Reformation settlement. The bishops’ revision proposals challenged the Protestant uniformity of the Church and so brought into question the constitutional relationship between Church and State. Thus the issue of national religion played a pivotal role in the revision controversy. Chapter one gives the background to the liturgical project in the Church, assessing the balance of power between the Anglican parties in the 1920s and explaining the purposes of revision. It is argued that the new Prayer Book reflected the reigning Centre-High orthodoxy of the House of Bishops and was moderately Anglo-Catholic in nature. This underlying agenda led many Evangelicals and advanced Anglo-Catholics to reject the new book. Chapters two and three describe the Evangelical and Anglo-Catholic responses respectively and argue that both parties were divided over revision, with large sections of both opposed to revision. Chapter four explains the attitude of the conservative Evangelical, Centre-High and ‘Western’ Catholic groupings towards the constitutional, cultural and moral dimensions of religious national identity. It argues that these understandings of national religion were a key cause of identity conflict within the Church and so determined the responses of each Church faction towards revision. Chapter five enlarges on the idea of Protestant national religion during the period by assessing the important role of the Free Churches and non-English mainline Churches in the crisis. It argues that the involvement of Protestants in these denominations was significant and that the ideologies of anti-Catholicism and national Protestantism motivated this. Finally, chapter six further emphasises the ‘national’ dimension of the revision controversy by explaining the attitude of the House of Commons to revision. It is asserted that the Commons’ debates on revision were in fact discussions on the role of national religion in 1920s Britain and that the rejections of the bishops’ proposals demonstrated the resilience of parliamentary Protestantism in British politics. Overall, the thesis concludes that, while Protestant national identity certainly weakened from the mid nineteenth century, this decline should not be exaggerated. Indeed the 1920s may have seen an upsurge in anti-Catholicism, as Protestants, in particular Evangelicals, reacted to the rise of Anglo-Catholicism in the Church and the post-war successes of Roman Catholicism. The idea of Protestant Britain remained a strong alternative to the conceptualisation of a broadly Christian Britain during 1920s.