Looking at neglected plays but raising issues that bear on our reading of Marlowe and Shakespeare too, this timely and topical book explores the representation of aliens and strangers in sixteenth-century drama and offers an elegant and subtle account of the developing notions of Englishness they chart.
Englishness: Twentieth Century Popular Culture and the Forming of English Identity
Performing Englishness examines the conflicts, dilemmas and contradictions that marked Englishness as the nation changed from an imperial power to a postcolonial state. The chapters deal with travel writing, popular song, music hall and variety theatre, dances, elocution lessons, cricket and football, and national festivals, as well as literature and film. 'High' and 'popular' cultures are brought together in dialogue, and the diversity as well as the problematic nature of English identity is emphasised.
Studies of the English gentleman have tended to focus mainly on the nineteenth century, encouraging the implicit assumption that this influential literary trope has less resonance for twentieth-century literature and culture. Christine Berberich challenges this notion by showing that the English gentleman has proven to be a remarkably adaptable and relevant ideal that continues to influence not only literature but other forms of representation, including the media and advertising industries.
In recent years the marginal position which has defined translators and their texts has come under increasing and sustained challenge. However, although translation and subjectivity has been thoroughly considered in terms of post-colonialism and post-structuralism, there are few discussions which focus specifically on the construction of "Englishness" through vernacular translation. Using a range of theoretical approaches the five essays in this volume aim to realise such an understanding of translation by critically analyzing the cultural and political implications of translation and the construction of English subjectivities at particular historical moments.
