Culture, Empire, and the Question of Being Modern

Autorentext

By C. J. W.-L. Wee

Klappentext

Culture, Empire, and the Question of Being Modern explores the problematic formation of national culture within modern English society. In this ambitious work of post-colonial and cultural theory, C. J. Wan-ling Wee investigates the complex interaction between a modern, industrialized, metropolitan, and progressively rational English national culture and a nationalistic imperial discourse interested in territorial expansion and the valorization of an idealized agrarian past.

Zusammenfassung
An exploration of the problematic formation of national culture within modern English society. It documents the relationship of concepts such as "frontier", "English" and "colonial" through an analysis of literary-cultural figures such as Kipling and T.S. Eliot in their historical contexts.

Inhalt
Introduction; Culture, Empire, Modernity; Primitive Vigor, Empire, and a "Pure" National Culture; The "Recovery" of the English Frontier in England; From National Imperialism to Imperial Nationalism; The "Native" Arrives; Epilogue: An "East Asian Modernity" and the Ironies of Postcolonial Culture.