Democratic Subjects
Democratic Subjects
AUD$70.86
exc GSTThis pioneering and original study explores critically the nature of class identity by looking at the formation and influence of two men (Edwin Waugh and John Bright) who might be taken as representative of what 'working class' and 'middle class' meant in England in the nineteenth century. The two studies of individuals are complemented by a further study on narrative in pointing to the great importance of the collective subjects upon which democracy rested. The book indicates the way forward to a new history of democracy as an imagined entity. It represents a deepening of Patrick Joyce's engagement with 'post-modernist' theory, seeking the relevance of this theory for the writing of history, and in the process offering a critique of the conservatism of much academic history, particularly in Britain.
- A wholly original and potentially highly controversial study about the general issues of identity and class
- Will interest people from a wide range of disciplines outside history - literary studies, sociology, cultural studies etc.
- Author is one of the best-known and pioneering historians working in Britain today
Product details
December 1994Paperback
9780521448024
260 pages
229 × 152 × 15 mm
0.376kg
4 b/w illus.
Available
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Part I. The Sorrows of Edwin Waugh: A Study in Working Class Identity:
- 1. Young Edwin
- 2. The struggle for the moral life
- 3. The ends of the moral life
- 4. The cult of the heart
- 5. 'God bless these poor folks'
- 6. The legacy of Edwin Waugh
- Part II. John Bright and the English People: A Study in Middle Class Identity:
- 7. Plain man's prophesy
- 8. Speaking Bright
- 9. Making the self
- 10. Bright make the social
- 11. Creating the democratic imaginary
- Part III. Democratic Romances: Narrative as Collective Identity in Nineteenth-Century England:
- 12. Narrative and history
- 13. The romance of improvement
- 14. The aesthetic framing of the social
- 15. The constitution as an English Eden
- 16. The story of the cruel Turk
- 17. Some democratic leading men, or Mr Gladstone's dream
- Appendices.
