The Burden of the Past and the English Poet

Bate, Walter Jackson

doi:10.4159/harvard.9780674281011

Cited by 327 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…So, too, the sense that England took -and gladly took -its literary cultural bearings first from Italian and then from French culture underlined the extent to which English culture had a provincial, rather than a metropolitan, status. The "burden of the past" for early eighteenth-century English-language writers was not necessarily that of a great tradition (as Walter Jackson Bate implies): 16 this is to project our own conception of the English literary past onto the eighteenth-century scene. Rather, eighteenth-century culture was more emphatically invested in a progress narrative about the refinement of the cultural tradition (from past rudeness to present urbanity) and about the future promise and prospects of English culture.…”

Section: England's Own Cultural Provinciality and "Colonial" Pastmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nationalism and Eighteenth-Century British Literature

Yadav

2004

Literature Compass

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Discusses two competing, 'domestically'-oriented understandings of the dynamics of nationalism in the period 1660-1760 -the notion of an emergent, overarching and inclusive "British" identity and the notion of English "internal colonialism" in relation to the Celtic "peripheries". The author argues, instead, for an approach that highlights England's own "provincial" standing in the wider European world of culture and the ambition to claim an "imperial" role as a way to erase this provinciality.Two tasks confront those interested in the problematic of literature and nationalism in eighteenth-century Britain: first, to understand the nature of nationalism in that context and, second, to understand the contribution of literary discourses to the dynamic of nationalism. Traditionally, accounts of European nationalisms have tended to focus either on the Renaissance-Reformation period or on the period of the French Revolution and Romanticism. The religious, even messianic, nationalisms of the earlier period and the romantic nationalisms of the later period have provided distinctive cultural formations and political conjunctures within which to frame the issue of nationalism. The period of the Restoration and the eighteenth century has lacked an equally resonant framework for conceptualizing nationalism. Indeed, the dominant emphasis has been on the anti-or non-national assumptions of an era of composite monarchies (rather than nation-states or religiously defined "peoples"), of a cosmopolitan ethos (whether aristocratic or "enlightened" in inflection), and of a neoclassical cultural formation operating in the wake of the transnational community of the culture of Latinity. This older view of the Restoration and eighteenth-century period has been layered over by recent work that has taken up issues of nation and empire but there is still much that remains unclear about how to understand issues of nationalism in this context.The two most influential works on the topic of nationalism in eighteenth-century England have both been written by historians: Gerald Newman's The Rise of English Nationalism and Linda Colley's Britons . 1 They are both rich and compelling works -though they offer conflicting

show abstract

Section: England's Own Cultural Provinciality and "Colonial" Pastmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nationalism and Eighteenth-Century British Literature

Yadav

2004

Literature Compass

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The principal reason for Bloom's singular status is that he has taken a commonplace of literary criticism-the notion that authors are influenced by the publications of their predecessors-and completely rethought, reimagined, reinvented, and, not least, renamed its basic premises (Allen 1994;de Bolla 1988;Fite 1985). Prior to Bloom's revolutionary reinterpretation, the standard assumption was that literary influence consisted of borrowings from or allusions to the work of earlier writers (Bate 1970;Renza 1995). By means of close textual study, moreover, it was possible to identify and evaluate the influence of, say, Homer on Virgil, Spencer on Milton, Milton on Wordsworth, and so on.…”

Section: The Anxiety Of Influencementioning

confidence: 99%

Marketing and Literature: The Anxiety of Academic Influence

Brown

1999

Journal of Marketing

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Literary criticism, according to leading theorist Frank Lentricchia, involves striking texts together tv see if they spark. Although many scholars have successfully struck marketing texts together, the sparks they have produced pertain primarily to marketplace phenomena rather than the academic marketing literature itself. Drawing on Bloom's "anxiety of influence" thesis, this article strikes together the published works of two prominent marketing thinkers, Theodore Levitt and Morris Holbrook. It argues that far from being positioned at opposite ends of the academic spectrum-pure versus applied-they are, in literary terms at least, precursor and ephebe, father and son, one and the same.

show abstract

“…The aim beyond this process of Shakespearean influence lies in their desire to show the relevance of Shakespeare's classics to modern time, and to modernize the old ideas of these old works in order to familiarize to contemporary culture. The reason why those playwrights choose Shakespeare's works, in particular, is referred to in Alexander Pope's words that Shakespeare is the only author who deserved the name of an original (cited in Bate, 1970). Shakespeare's singularity is also emphasized by Goethe's argument that Shakespeare left nothing for those to come after him as he exhausted the whole of human nature (cited in Bate, 1970).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The reason why those playwrights choose Shakespeare's works, in particular, is referred to in Alexander Pope's words that Shakespeare is the only author who deserved the name of an original (cited in Bate, 1970). Shakespeare's singularity is also emphasized by Goethe's argument that Shakespeare left nothing for those to come after him as he exhausted the whole of human nature (cited in Bate, 1970). Further, Bentley wrote that "all roads lead to Shakespeare, or perhaps it might be correct to say that Shakespeare leads to all roads" (cited in Cohn, 1976, p. 389).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intertextual Relationships in Literary Genres

Khafaga¹

2020

IJEL

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Most contemporary playwrights acknowledge that Shakespeare’s dramas are for use as raw material to be assimilated into contemporary mould, not to be revered strictly as untouchable museum pieces. Being the model of all dramatists, Shakespeare had a great influence on English theatre, his plays are still performed throughout the world, and all kinds of new, experimental work find inspiration in them. This paper investigates the intertextual relationships between William Shakespeare’s King Lear (1606) and Edward Bond’s Lear (1978). The main objective of the paper is to explore the extent to which Bond manages to use Shakespeare’s King Lear as an intertext to convey his contemporary version of Shakespearean classic. Two research questions are tackled here: first, how does Shakespeare’s King Lear function as a point of departure for Bond’s contemporary version? Second, to what extent does Bond deviate from Shakespeare to prove his originality in Lear? The paper reveals that Bond’s manipulation of intertextuality does not mean that he puts his originality aside. He proves his originality by relating the events of the old story to contemporary issues which in turn makes the story keep pace with modern time.

show abstract

The Burden of the Past and the English Poet

Cited by 327 publications

References 0 publications

Nationalism and Eighteenth-Century British Literature

Nationalism and Eighteenth-Century British Literature

Marketing and Literature: The Anxiety of Academic Influence

Intertextual Relationships in Literary Genres

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About