Myth, Memory and the Middlebrow

Priestley, Du Maurier and the Symbolic Form of Englishness

• Author(s): Ina Habermann,
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Pages: 242
• ISBN_10: 0230241360
  ISBN_13: 9780230241367
  
• Language: en
• Categories: Biography & Autobiography / Literary Figures , Language Arts & Disciplines / Linguistics / Historical & Comparative , Literary Criticism / General , Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh , Literary Criticism / Semiotics & Theory , Literary Criticism / Modern / 20th Century , Literary Criticism / Subjects & Themes / Culture, Race & Ethnicity , Psychology / Social Psychology , Social Science / General , Social Science / Anthropology / Cultural & Social , Social Science / Sociology / General , Social Science / Sociology / Social Theory , Social Science / Media Studies ,

Description:... Globalization, devolution and the challenges of a postcolonial and multicultural society have fuelled the debate about national identity in Britain in recent years. Notions of individual and collective identity have revolved around a number of stereotypes of ̀Britishness' or ̀Englishness' which appear ever more incongruous. This study suggests that these debates still draw on discourses of Englishness which were shaped in the interwar period and amplified in Second World War propaganda. From the 1920s to the 1940s, Englishness as a form of collective and cultural identity can be described as a ̀symbolic form', comprising specific notions of the people and their relationship to the country, most powerfully visualized in landscapes embodying a ̀mythical present'.