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Literature and the Imperial Imagination: Benjamin Disraeli's Reading, National Identity and Britain's Global Expansion

文学与帝国想象力：本杰明·迪斯雷利的阅读、国家认同和英国的全球扩张

基本信息

批准号：
2245327
负责人：
金额：
--
依托单位：
University of Southampton
依托单位国家：
英国
项目类别：
Studentship
财政年份：
2019
资助国家：
英国
起止时间：
2019 至无数据
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2245327
关键词：
Literature Imperial Imagination Benjamin Disraeli

项目摘要

This project places the working library of Benjamin Disraeli held by the National Trust at Hughenden Manor, alongside the Hughenden Deposit of Disraeli's papers within the Bodleian library. It is thereby afforded a unique opportunity to consider how the reading of this most powerful Victorian imperialist can be understood in relation to his career and to wider questions concerning British national identity, Victorian expansion and imperial ideology. Its work with the National Trust will model how scholarly engagement with extant libraries and theories of empire can facilitate new forms of public engagement with British imperialism, globalism and its legacies.In 1835, Thomas Babington Macaulay famously declared, 'a single shelf of a good European library [i]s worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia.' Scholars have drawn upon such pronouncements to argue for foundational links between British literature and British imperialism. Yet, heretofore, scant critical work has pursued connections between specific libraries and their marginalia, and this larger link posited between literature and empire. My project examines the critically understudied library of the most 'potent imperialist,' Benjamin Disraeli, 'the expansionist prime minister of Britain at the Empire's "greatest" hour' (Kalmar 348). This library's significance is two-fold. Firstly, it is absolutely formative, as Disraeli was not university educated. Secondly, preliminary research shows that Disraeli was a prolific annotator, yet scholars have neglected this. Whilst Ruth Clayton Windscheffel's Reading Gladstone (2008), studies William Ewart Gladstone's reading, there has been no such study regarding Disraeli. This project posits that although they occupied very similar, albeit politically opposed, positions as privileged white male leaders, Disraeli's Jewish ancestry and literary celebrity (Mayer, 2018), make him a complex individual regarding imperialism and national identity, worthy of equal critical attention. My project will address this surprising critical lacuna through a quantitative analysis of the extant texts, their extensive marginalia, and the notes pertaining to them. Using this book-historical approach, it will be able to suggest the potential effects of specific volumes on Disraeli's political career, the methods and motives of his own literary output, and his conception of British imperialism and Britain's national identity. Whilst the Hughenden Deposit and Hughenden library have been previously studied, they have not been placed in dialogue, nor critically understood in relation to Disraeli the reader. In proposing this dual focus, I will attempt to answer the following key research questions: What can the traces of Disraeli's reading, mapped onto his extant letters and papers, reveal about the role literature played in his political life? What is the relationship between his reading and his fiction-writing? What can this reveal about the role literature played in disseminating an influential imperialist's ideas? Can evidence of reading habits help us understand the construction and reconstruction of a public individual's sense of national identity? Together, the Hughenden Deposit's political papers, manuscripts, diaries and notebooks, alongside the library's heterogeneous collection comprising, fictional, poetic, religious, travel, and political texts, with extensive marginalia, constitutes a body of understudied evidence. A suitable analysis of this, using Matthew Bradley (2009) and H. J. Jackson's (2001) models for effectively, critically and cautiously utilising marginalia, can illuminate our understanding of Disraeli's politics and his fictional and non-fictional works. This programme of research will produce a substantive and original thesis, augmenting and challenging accepted paradigms of Victorian Britain's imperial relationships.

该项目将本杰明·迪斯雷利的工作图书馆置于胡亨登庄园，与胡亨登的迪斯雷利论文存款一起置于博德利图书馆。因此，它提供了一个独特的机会，考虑如何阅读这一最强大的维多利亚帝国主义者可以理解他的职业生涯和更广泛的问题，有关英国的国家身份，维多利亚州的扩张和帝国意识形态。它与国民托管组织的合作将为学术界参与现存图书馆和帝国理论如何促进公众参与英帝国主义、全球主义及其遗产的新形式提供示范。1835年，托马斯·巴宾顿·麦考利（Babington Macaulay）发表了一个著名的声明：“一个好的欧洲图书馆的一个书架抵得上印度和阿拉伯的整个本土文学。学者们利用这样的声明来论证英国文学和英国帝国主义之间的基础联系。然而，迄今为止，很少有评论工作探讨特定图书馆与其边缘资料之间的联系，以及文学与帝国之间的这种更大的联系。我的项目考察了最“强大的帝国主义者”本杰明·迪斯雷利的图书馆，“帝国“最伟大”时刻的英国扩张主义首相”（卡尔马348）。这个图书馆的意义是双重的。首先，它绝对是形成性的，因为迪斯雷利没有受过大学教育。第二，初步研究表明迪斯累利是一位多产的注释家，但学者们忽略了这一点。尽管露丝·克莱顿·温舍费尔的《阅读格莱斯顿》（2008）研究了威廉·尤尔特·格莱斯顿的阅读，但还没有关于迪斯雷利的研究。这个项目假定，尽管他们占据了非常相似的位置，尽管政治上反对，作为特权的白色男性领导人，迪斯雷利的犹太血统和文学名人（Mayer，2018），使他成为一个复杂的个人，关于帝国主义和民族认同，值得同等的批评关注。我的项目将通过对现存文本、其广泛的旁注以及与之相关的注释进行定量分析，来解决这一令人惊讶的关键空白。使用这种书籍历史的方法，它将能够表明特定卷对迪斯雷利的政治生涯的潜在影响，他自己的文学作品的方法和动机，以及他对英帝国主义和英国民族身份的概念。虽然胡亨登存款和胡亨登图书馆以前已经研究过，但它们并没有被置于对话中，也没有被批判地理解与读者迪斯雷利的关系。在提出这一双重重点时，我将试图回答以下关键研究问题：迪斯雷利的阅读的痕迹，映射到他现存的信件和论文，揭示了文学在他的政治生活中所扮演的角色？他的阅读和小说创作之间有什么关系？这能揭示出文学在传播一个有影响力的帝国主义思想方面所起的作用吗？阅读习惯的证据能否帮助我们理解一个公众个体的国家认同感的建构和重建？总之，胡亨登存款的政治文件，手稿，日记和笔记本，以及图书馆的异质集合，包括小说，诗歌，宗教，旅行和政治文本，广泛的旁注，构成了一个未充分研究的证据机构。一个合适的分析，使用马修布拉德利（2009年）和H。杰克逊（2001）的旁注运用模式可以帮助我们理解迪斯雷利的政治思想及其小说和非小说作品。这项研究计划将产生一个实质性和原创性的论文，增强和挑战维多利亚时代英国帝国关系的公认范式。