National History and the Novel in 1930s Britain

Although indebted to scholars whose work has illuminated the distinctiveness of 1930s Britain, "National History and the Novel in 1930s Britain" argues that rather than seeking distinction, writers of the period were more concerned with the task of contextualizing their decade and their own position within a national historiography from which they felt the Great War and military masculinities had excluded them. Focusing on the novelists Christopher Isherwood, Evelyn Waugh, and Virginia Woolf, and the philosopher of history, R. G. Collingwood, I describe how the 1930s inheritors of British cultural privilege found themselves symbolically disenfranchised from a national identity inextricably linked to war, imagining alternative national stories outside the prevailing imperial and military mythologies.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English and American Literature

Year dc:date.available

2011

Author dc:creator

• Delsandro, Erica

Contributors dc:contributor

• Marina MacKay

• British & Irish Literature
• 1930s
• nation
• novel

Language dc:language

English (en)

DOI

https://doi.org/10.7936/K7VD6WJB

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:openscholarship.wustl.edu:etd-1084