Brit-Myth

Brit-Myth PDF Author: Chris Rojek
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1861895569
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
The world sees Britain through the antics of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, the stiff-lipped, painfully class-conscious societies depicted in Gosford Parkand Remains of the Day, and the scathing diatribes of American Idol’s Simon Cowell. The images being projected from the island nation of England are so disparate these days that it’s hard to know what to think of the British. Chris Rojek explores this dilemma, looking at the myths, misconceptions, and stereotypes of the British. Drawing upon a wide range of sources in pop culture, politics, art, and history, Rojek examines how Britons are viewed both at home and abroad. From Austin Powers to King Arthur and Albion, and from Big Brother to international opinion polls, Rojek investigates what it means to be British in a globalized, multicultural world. Brit-Myth deftly avoids extreme nationalism or abstract scholarship, offering a new conception of Britishness that transcends race and emphasizes the integral role of individualism and nonconformity in British identity. Full of thought-provoking insights and engaging anecdotes, Brit-Myth will entertain both Anglophiles and those who want to learn more about the land under the Union Jack.

Brit-Myth

Brit-Myth PDF Author: Chris Rojek
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1861895569
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Get Book

Book Description
The world sees Britain through the antics of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, the stiff-lipped, painfully class-conscious societies depicted in Gosford Parkand Remains of the Day, and the scathing diatribes of American Idol’s Simon Cowell. The images being projected from the island nation of England are so disparate these days that it’s hard to know what to think of the British. Chris Rojek explores this dilemma, looking at the myths, misconceptions, and stereotypes of the British. Drawing upon a wide range of sources in pop culture, politics, art, and history, Rojek examines how Britons are viewed both at home and abroad. From Austin Powers to King Arthur and Albion, and from Big Brother to international opinion polls, Rojek investigates what it means to be British in a globalized, multicultural world. Brit-Myth deftly avoids extreme nationalism or abstract scholarship, offering a new conception of Britishness that transcends race and emphasizes the integral role of individualism and nonconformity in British identity. Full of thought-provoking insights and engaging anecdotes, Brit-Myth will entertain both Anglophiles and those who want to learn more about the land under the Union Jack.

Myth and National Identity in Nineteenth-Century Britain

Myth and National Identity in Nineteenth-Century Britain PDF Author: Stephanie Barczewski
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191542733
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
Scholars have become increasingly interested in how modern national consciousness comes into being through fictional narratives. Literature is of particular importance to this process, for it is responsible for tracing the nations evolution through glorious tales of its history. In nineteenth-century Britain, the legends of King Arthur and Robin Hood played an important role in construction of contemporary national identity. These two legends provide excellent windows through which to view British culture, because they provide very different perspectives. King Arthur and Robin Hood have traditionally been diametrically opposed in terms of their ideological orientation. The former is a king, a man at the pinnacle of the social and political hierarchy, whereas the latter is an outlaw, and is therefore completely outside conventional hierarchical structures. The fact that two such different figures could simultaneously function as British national heroes suggests that nineteenth-century British nationalism did not represent a single set of values and ideas, but rather that it was forced to assimilate a variety of competing points of view.

UnRoman Britain

UnRoman Britain PDF Author: Miles Russell
Publisher: The History Press
ISBN: 0752469290
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
When we think of Roman Britain we tend to think of a land of togas and richly decorated palaces with Britons happily going about their much improved daily business under the benign gaze of Rome. This image is to a great extent a fiction. In fact, Britons were some of the least enthusiastic members of the Roman Empire. A few adopted roman ways to curry favour with the invaders. A lot never adopted a Roman lifestyle at all and remained unimpressed and riven by deep-seated tribal division. It wasn't until the late third/early fourth century that a small minority of landowners grew fat on the benefits of trade and enjoyed the kind of lifestyle we have been taught to associate with period. Britannia was a far-away province which, whilst useful for some major economic reserves, fast became a costly and troublesome concern for Rome, much like Iraq for the British government today. Huge efforts by the state to control the hearts and minds of the Britons were met with at worst hostile resistance and rebellion, and at best by steadfast indifference. The end of the Roman Empire largely came as 'business as usual' for the vast majority of Britons as they simply hadn't adopted the Roman way of life in the first place.

British Dragons

British Dragons PDF Author: Jacqueline Simpson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781840225075
Category : Dragons
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
The notion that witchcraft faded away with the onset of the scientific revolution is entirely mistaken. This text stands in the grand tradition of writing and witchcraft and suggests that magic was alive and well in 19th-century Scotland, as contemporary newspaper reports confirm.

Celebrity Culture and the Myth of Oceania in Britain

Celebrity Culture and the Myth of Oceania in Britain PDF Author: Ruth Scobie
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1783274085
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
An intriguing case study on how popular images of Oceania, mediated through a developing culture of celebrity, contributed to the formation of British identity both domestically and as a nascent imperial power in the eighteenth century.

The Interest

The Interest PDF Author: Michael Taylor
Publisher: Jonathan Cape
ISBN: 9781847925725
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
For two hundred years, the abolition of slavery in Britain has been a cause for self-congratulation - but no longer. In 1807, Parliament outlawed the slave trade in the British Empire, but for the next quarter of a century, despite heroic and bloody rebellions, more than 700,000 people in the British colonies remained in slavery. And when a renewed abolitionist campaign was mounted, making slave ownership the defining political and moral issue of the day, emancipation was fiercely resisted by the powerful 'West India Interest'. Supported by nearly every leading figure of the British establishment - including Canning, Peel and Gladstone, The Times and Spectator - the Interest ensured that slavery survived until 1833 and that when abolition came at last, compensation was given not to the enslaved but to the slaveholders. Worth e340 billion in today's money, this was the largest pay-out in British history before the banking rescue package of 2008, incurring a national debt that was only repaid in 2015 and entrenching the power of slaveholders and their families to shape modern Britain. Drawing on major new research, this long-overdue and ground-breaking history shows that the triumph of abolition was also one of the darkest episodes in British history, revealing the lengths to which British leaders went to defend the indefensible in the name of profit.

The Mythology of the British Islands

The Mythology of the British Islands PDF Author: Charles Squire
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : British Isles
Languages : en
Pages : 472

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Book Description


Adaptation, Intermediality and the British Celebrity Biopic

Adaptation, Intermediality and the British Celebrity Biopic PDF Author: Márta Minier
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317185560
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
Beginning with the premise that the biopic is a form of adaptation and an example of intermediality, this collection examines the multiplicity of 'source texts' and the convergence of different media in this genre, alongside the concurrent issues of fidelity and authenticity that accompany this form. The contributors focus on big and small screen biopics of British celebrities from the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries, attending to their myth-making and myth-breaking potential. Related topics are the contemporary British biopic's participation in the production and consumption of celebrated lives, and the biopic's generic fluidity and hybridity as evidenced in its relationship to such forms as the bio-docudrama. Offering case studies of film biographies of literary and cultural icons, including Elizabeth I, Elizabeth II, Diana Princess of Wales, John Lennon, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Beau Brummel, Carrington and Beatrix Potter, the essays address how British identity and heritage are interrogated in the (re)telling and showing of these lives, and how the reimagining of famous lives for the screen is influenced by recent processes of manufacturing celebrity.

Britain and 1940

Britain and 1940 PDF Author: Malcolm Smith
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780415240765
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
1940 was the most significant year in European history this century, this book examines what it meant for the people of Britain then and now. Malcolm Smith details the resultant influences that have constructed our national consciousness.

Mythology of the British Isles

Mythology of the British Isles PDF Author: Geoffrey Ashe
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
"Geoffrey Ashe's lavishly illustrated Mythology of the British Isles retells the legendary history of Britain and uncovers a national mythology which is comparable to that of the Greeks in its richness and cohesiveness. Recounting stories and legends from the dark centuries of British prehistory to the ninth century AD - tales of giants and fairies, druids and saints, King Lear, King Arthur and Old King Cole - he shows how they all interrelate and take on fresh significance from historical and archaeological research"--Back cover.