The Redress of the Past: Historical Pageants in Britain, 1905-2016

20世纪的英国经常出现“选美热”。在英格兰、苏格兰和威尔士，各种规模和特点的社区上演了当地和国家历史事件的戏剧重演，成千上万的男人、女人和孩子作为表演者、组织者和观众参与其中。这是一部规模宏大的民族古装剧。在20世纪的过程中，从小教堂和乡村社区到利物浦和曼彻斯特等大城市，社区和机构举办了数百场活动。此外，各种各样的机构，如军队、英国国教和妇女合作协会，也举行了历史性的盛会。这种狂热在某些时期尤其强烈，特别是在爱德华时代，20世纪30年代和50年代（受到英国节和1953年加冕礼的鼓励），但这一传统从未完全消失，在20世纪70年代和千年庆典期间又有复兴。历史盛典的一个显著特征是，不仅有社区的参与，也有知名人士的参与，比如G.K.切斯特顿（G.K. Chesterton）和G.M.特里维廉（G.M. Trevelyan）。利用口头和书面证据，该项目是一项具有里程碑意义的干预措施。尽管这些看似短暂的事件可以为大众对过去的理解提供丰富的见解，但它仍在很大程度上逃脱了学术审查。该项目还提供了“遗产”在休闲活动中的作用，地方，国家和帝国身份之间的相互作用以及社区生活特征的关键见解。英国地区和国家之间的差异和相似之处，以及随着时间的推移的连续性和变化，是项目的核心，将深入探讨。对当地事件的全面报道- -基于地理上分散的资料- -将支持、促进和宣传当地历史学家和历史协会的活动，并为所有对社区和机构（包括学校）历史感兴趣的人提供有用的资源。它将恢复社区和机构讲述自己的故事。它将产生一个历史盛会的综合数据库，一本被设想为该主题的关键著作的专著，以及一本将英国运动置于其国际背景下的论文编辑卷。每一个历史盛会，任何重要的记录存在的范围内的研究和互动的公共访问资源的中心。该网站将包括对选美运动的一般性评论、与选美相关的短暂事件的代表性图像，以及历史选美目击者的口头证词。它将允许公众和项目之间的互动，使个人用户和当地历史协会-其中一些将积极参与该项目-贡献他们自己的记忆和纪念品。它将以交互式地图为特色，允许用户定位选美场地，并跟踪表演和主题的发生情况。该网站将成为历史学家、文学、戏剧、历史地理和文化研究学者的重要工具。通过该数据库，这些用户将能够访问和处理与历史选美的内容、组织和经验有关的大量信息，从而可以探索，例如，对特定历史事件和主题的演变描述，选美脚本的作者，以及大众记忆的构建。该数据库还将鼓励学术界和其他用户更广泛地使用与选美有关的档案。因此，该项目将加强对20世纪一个重要现象的学术和非学术理解，将非常丰富的视觉、口头和文本资源汇集在一起，其中许多资源濒临丢失。

Twentieth-century Britain was subject to regular bouts of 'pageant fever'. Communities of all sizes and character across England, Scotland and Wales staged theatrical re-enactments of events from local and national history with thousands of men, women and children involved as performers, organizers and spectators. This was national costume drama on a grand scale. Over the course of the twentieth century many hundreds of events were mounted by communities and institutions, ranging from small churches and village communities to large cities such as Liverpool and Manchester. In addition, institutions as diverse as the Army, the Church of England the Women's Co-operative Guild also staged historical pageants. The fever was especially intense at certain times, notably the Edwardian era, the 1930s and 1950s (encouraged by the Festival of Britain and the 1953 Coronation), but the tradition never fully died out and there were revivals in the 1970s and during the millennium celebrations. A distinctive feature of historical pageantry has been the involvement not only of communities but also of prominent individuals, such as G.K. Chesterton and G.M. Trevelyan.Drawing on oral and written evidence, this project is a landmark intervention. It will provide an authoritative treatment of a subject that has largely escaped academic scrutiny despite the rich insights that these apparently ephemeral events can give into popular understandings of the past. The project also offers key insights into the role of 'heritage' in leisure activities, the interaction between local, national and imperial identities, and the character of community life. Differences and similarities between the regions and nations of Britain, and continuities and changes over time, are central to the project and will be explored in depth. The comprehensive coverage of local events - based on geographically dispersed sources - will support, stimulate and publicize the activities of local historians and historical associations, and provide a useful resource for all those interested in the history of communities and institutions, including schools. It will recover the stories that communities and institutions told about themselves. It will result in a comprehensive database of historical pageants, a monograph envisaged as the key book on the subject, and an edited volume of essays situating the British movement in its international context. Every historical pageant for which any significant record exists comes under the scope of the study and the interactive publicly-accessible resource at its centre.The website will include general commentary on the pageant movement, representative images of pageant-related ephemera, and oral testimonies from witnesses to historical pageants. It will allow interaction between the public and the project, enabling individual users and local history societies - some of whom will be actively involved in the project - to contribute their own memories and memorabilia. It will feature interactive maps, allowing users to locate pageant venues and to track the incidence of performances and themes over time. The website will be an important tool for historians, as well as scholars of literature and drama, historical geography and cultural studies. Through the database, these users will be able to access and process a vast body of information relating to the content, organization and experience of historical pageants, allowing the exploration of, for example, the evolving depiction of specific historical events and themes, the authorship of pageant scripts, and constructions of popular memory. The database will also encourage wider use of pageant-related archival holdings by academic and other users. The project will thus enhance academic and non-academic understandings of an important twentieth-century phenomenon, drawing together a remarkably rich collection of visual, oral and textual resources, much of which is on the verge of being lost.