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

该项目将Benjamin Disraeli的工作图书馆置于国家信托基金在休登庄园的位置，与Bodleian图书馆内的迪斯雷利论文休登存放处一起。因此，它提供了一个独特的机会，来思考如何理解这位最强大的维多利亚帝国主义者的阅读，以及他的职业生涯，以及有关英国民族认同、维多利亚扩张和帝国意识形态的更广泛的问题。它与英国国民信托基金会的合作，将为学者与现存图书馆和帝国理论的接触，如何促进公众与英帝国主义、全球主义及其遗产的新形式的接触树立榜样。1835年，托马斯·巴宾顿·麦考利（Thomas Babington Macaulay）曾说过一句名言：“一家优秀的欧洲图书馆的一个书架，就抵得上印度和阿拉伯的全部本土文学。”学者们利用这些声明来论证英国文学与英帝国主义之间的根本联系。然而，到目前为止，很少有批评工作追求特定图书馆和它们的旁注之间的联系，以及文学和帝国之间更大的联系。我的项目考察了最“强大的帝国主义者”本杰明·迪斯雷利（Benjamin Disraeli）的图书馆，他是帝国“最伟大”时刻的扩张主义英国首相（卡尔玛348）。这座图书馆的意义是双重的。首先，这绝对是形成性的，因为迪斯雷利没有受过大学教育。其次，初步研究表明迪斯雷利是一位多产的注释者，但学者们却忽视了这一点。虽然Ruth Clayton Windscheffel的《Reading Gladstone》（2008）研究了William Ewart Gladstone的阅读，但是对于Disraeli却没有这样的研究。这个项目假设，尽管他们作为特权白人男性领导人占据了非常相似的位置，尽管在政治上是对立的，但迪斯雷利的犹太血统和文学名人（Mayer, 2018）使他成为一个关于帝国主义和民族认同的复杂个体，值得同等的批判性关注。我的项目将通过对现存文本的定量分析、大量的旁注和与之相关的注释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，它将能够提出具体卷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，以及他对英国帝国主义和英国的国家认同的概念。虽然休根登矿床和休根登图书馆之前已经被研究过，但它们并没有被置于对话中，也没有被批判性地理解与迪斯雷利读者的关系。在提出这一双重焦点时，我将试图回答以下关键研究问题：迪斯雷利的阅读痕迹，映射到他现存的信件和论文中，可以揭示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的关系是什么？这能揭示文学在传播一个有影响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公众个体国家认同感的建构与重建？一起，休根登存款的政治文件，手稿，日记和笔记本，与图书馆的异质收藏，包括虚构的，诗歌的，宗教的，旅行的，和政治文本，有大量的旁注，构成了一个未被充分研究的证据体。利用马修·布拉德利（2009）和h·j·杰克逊（2001）的有效、批判和谨慎地利用旁注的模型对这一点进行适当的分析，可以帮助我们理解迪斯雷利的政治以及他的虚构和非虚构作品。这个研究项目将产生一个实质性的和原创的论文，扩大和挑战维多利亚时代英国帝国关系的公认范式。

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.