Democratic Subjects: The Self and the Social in Nineteenth-Century England (Cambridge Studies in Comparative)
Cambridge University Press, 1/12/2008
EAN 9780521448024, ISBN10: 0521448026
Paperback, 260 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm
Language: English
This pioneering and original study explores critically the nature of class identity by looking at the formation and influence of two men (Edwin Waugh and John Bright) who might be taken as representative of what 'working class' and 'middle class' meant in England in the nineteenth century. The two studies of individuals are complemented by a further study on narrative in pointing to the great importance of the collective subjects upon which democracy rested. The book indicates the way forward to a new history of democracy as an imagined entity. It represents a deepening of Patrick Joyce's engagement with 'post-modernist' theory, seeking the relevance of this theory for the writing of history, and in the process offering a critique of the conservatism of much academic history, particularly in Britain.
Introduction
Part I. The Sorrows of Edwin Waugh
A Study in Working Class Identity
1. Young Edwin
2. The struggle for the moral life
3. The ends of the moral life
4. The cult of the heart
5. 'God bless these poor folks'
6. The legacy of Edwin Waugh
Part II. John Bright and the English People
A Study in Middle Class Identity
7. Plain man's prophesy
8. Speaking Bright
9. Making the self
10. Bright make the social
11. Creating the democratic imaginary
Part III. Democratic Romances
Narrative as Collective Identity in Nineteenth-Century England
12. Narrative and history
13. The romance of improvement
14. The aesthetic framing of the social
15. The constitution as an English Eden
16. The story of the cruel Turk
17. Some democratic leading men, or Mr Gladstone's dream
Appendices.