The Return of England in English Literature [Paperback]

This lively study provides an account of the 'fall and rise' of the English nation within the British discipline of English Literature between the late eighteenth century and the present day, offering a reconceptualisation of the relationship between English Literature and the formation of English cultural identity.Acknowledgements The Burkean Legacy and the Imperial Eclipse The Journey Back The Battle for the Organic Estate The Critique of the Establishment Thatcherism, Neo-Gothic, and State-nationalism The Devolutionary Push The Disciplinary Challenge Bibliography Index

'A brilliant book which makes other books on Englishness pale in comparison' - Professor Adam Piette, University of Sheffield, UK

'Born in 1946 and recalling the postwar 'New Elizabethan' push; the child of a headmistress who worked in the 'new towns' of South Oxhey and Stevenage; son of a printer wasted by the 'new managerialism,' I found the class history of my family repeatedly imbricated and recast by Gardiner's insight and argument. His interest in 'English' (the literary language and the cultural discipline) remapped my own postwar training. Gardiner's work enables me to read my own training in 'English Literature' as an inculcation in a cultural politics that was confused by the need to reinvent a British unity lost during the war, and to do so by way of a 'tradition' still 'great' enough to propose and concretize a new and transferable standard of Englishness. I read the book with an excitement matching the degree to which it provided an alternate genealogy to my past and to my discipline.' - Professor Richard Godden, University of California, Irvine, USA

Michael Gardiner's new book is a radical challenge to accepted conventions of the history of English literary studies and indeed the history of English literature. Intensely sensitive to the present moment of political change in the United Kingdom, The Return of England in English Literature charl³!