Description
Book SynopsisLonglisted for the Wales Book of the Year 2007
Writing in 1903, W. E. B. Du Bois suggested that the goal for the African-American was ''to be a co-worker in the kingdom of culture''.
He was evoking ''culture'' as a solution to the divisions within society, thereby adopting, in a very different context, an idea that had been influentially expressed by Matthew Arnold in the 1860s. Du Bois questioned the assumed universality of this concept by asking who, ultimately, is allowed into the ''kingdom of culture''? How does one come to speak from a position of cultural authority?
This book adopts a transatlantic approach to explore these questions. It centres on four Victorian ''men of letters'' - Matthew Arnold, William Dean Howells, W. B. Yeats and W. E. B. Du Bois--who drew on notions of ethnicity as a basis from which to assert their cultural authority. In comparative close readings of these figures Daniel Williams addresses several key areas of contemporary literary and cultural debate. The book questions the notion of ''the West'' as it appears and re-appears in the formulations of postcolonial theory, challenges the widespread tendency to divide nationalism into ''civic'' and ''ethnic'' forms, and forces its readers to reconsider what they mean when they talk about ''culture'', ''identity'' and ''national literature''.
Trade ReviewRanging across English, Irish, and American writing, Ethnicity and Cultural Authority is not only a deft analysis of his chosen authors, but also an admirably independent-minded charting of some of the tensions between culture as the sphere in which univeral human values are expressed, and culture as the vehicle for the expression and development of particular ethnic identities. In this imaginatively conceived book, Daniel Williams manages to address several of the most central and most contentious areas of contemporary literary and cultural study. -- Professor Stefan Collini, Cambridge The possibilities of extension offered by this vital book are a key indication of its importance. -- Neil evans Translation and Literature Williams has produced a well-written and useful book that brings the analysis of Victorian culture into productive dialog with Irish and American studies. Victorian Studies Ranging across English, Irish, and American writing, Ethnicity and Cultural Authority is not only a deft analysis of his chosen authors, but also an admirably independent-minded charting of some of the tensions between culture as the sphere in which univeral human values are expressed, and culture as the vehicle for the expression and development of particular ethnic identities. In this imaginatively conceived book, Daniel Williams manages to address several of the most central and most contentious areas of contemporary literary and cultural study. The possibilities of extension offered by this vital book are a key indication of its importance. Williams has produced a well-written and useful book that brings the analysis of Victorian culture into productive dialog with Irish and American studies.
Table of ContentsIntroduction; 1. Matthew Arnold: Culture and Ethnicity; 2. William Dean Howells: Realism, Ethnicity and the Nation; 3. W. B. Yeats: Celticism, Aestheticism and Nationalism; 4. W. E. B. Du Bois: Black Folk in the 'Kingdom of Culture'; Conclusion; Notes; Bibliography; Index.
