Nationalism, Imperialism and Identity in Late Victorian Culture: Civil and Military Worlds (Hardback)

Nationalism, Imperialism and Identity in Late Victorian Culture provides an account of ideas about national character in late Victorian culture, with a wide reference to Literature and popular Culture around the time of the Boer War (1899-1902), and a particular scrutiny of images of the soldier. In specific images, narratives and motifs, the book highlights dynamic tensions between the external boundaries of empire and of civil society, and between class antagonisms and national projections. New sources and materials are introduced, showing how the trauma of the Boer War for British culture may be explored in changing representations of the soldier. These changes cannot be theorised adequately in terms of an intensification of patriotism, the development of or the crisis of imperialism. Attridge finds that the Boer War was both the last Victorian conflict, yet had much in it that anticipated Modernity.