Studying British Cultures (New Accents)

265 Pages·2003·1.36 MB·English

by  Susan Bassnett

Studying British Cultures
‘An important book that focuses on the problems of
understanding as well as teaching British Cultures, Studying
British Cultures should prove very thought-provoking to anyone
engaged in the study of British cultures, whether living in Britain
or overseas.’ Literature Matters
Studying British Cultures is a lively and provocative volume of
essays which offers the ideal introduction to a contentious area.
The contributors, who have been instrumental in establishing the
discipline of British Cultural Studies, explore a wide range of
critical debates on cultural identity and explode the myth that
Britain is made up of a homogeneous people.
The first half of the book traces and examines the theory and
methodology of studying British cultures, in disciplines variously
known as British Studies, Cultural Studies or British Cultural
Studies. The second half of the book turns to key topics in those
fields, looking in turn at developments in Scottish, Welsh and
Irish Studies and the roles of Shakespeare and West Indian
literature in the study of British cultures. In vivid and often
entertaining essays, the authors demonstrate that ‘culture’ is a
plurality of discourses, not a fixed, unitary concept.
Now with an additional essay by Susan Bassnett, Studying
British Cultures is essential reading for all those concerned with—
or concerned about—the study of contemporary Britain.
Susan Bassnett is Professor in the Centre for Translation and
Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Warwick. She
has published extensively in the fields of Translation Studies,
Comparative Literature, Theatre History and Intercultural
ii
Studies. She is author of Translation Studies (Routledge, 2002)
and, with Harish Trivedi, Postcolonialism and Translation
(Routledge, 1999).
Contributors include Anthony Easthope, Alan Durant,
Christopher Brumfit, Michael Byram, David Punter, Robert
Crawford, Katie Gramich, Sabina Sharkey, David Dabydeen and
John Drakakis.
IN THE SAME SERIES
Alternative Shakespeares 1, Ed. John Drakakis
Alternative Shakespeares 2, Ed. Terence Hawkes
Post-Colonial Shakespeares, Ed. Ania Loomba and Martin Orkin
Re-reading English, Ed. Peter Widdowson
Rewriting English, Janet Batsleer, Tony Davies, R.O'Rouke and
Chris Weedon
English and Englishness, B.Doyle
Linguistics and the Novel, Roger Fowler
Language and Style, E.L.Epstein
The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama, Keir Elam
Structuralism and Semiotics, Terence Hawkes
Superstructuralism, Richard Harland
Deconstruction ed. 2, Christopher Norris
Formalism and Marxism, Tony Bennett
Critical Practice, Catherine Belsey
Dialogism, Michael Holquist
Dialogue and Difference: English for the Nineties, Ed. Peter Brooker/
Peter Humm
Literature, Politics and Theory, Ed. F.Barker, P.Hulme, M.Iversen
and D.Loxley
Popular Fictions: Essays in Literature and History, Ed. Peter
Humm, Paul Stigant and Peter Widdowson
Criticism and Society, Ed. Imre Salusinszky
Fantasy, Rosemary Jackson
Science Fiction: Its Criticism and Teaching, Patrick Parrinder
iv
Sexual Fiction, Maurice Charney
Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics, Shlomith Rimmon-
Kenan
Metafiction: The Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction,
Patricia Waugh
Telling Stories: A Theoretical Analysis of Narmtive Fiction, Steven
Cohanand Linda Shire
Poetry as Discourse, Anthony Easthope
The Politics of Postmodernism, Linda Hutcheon
Subculture, ed. 2, Dick Hebdige
Reading Television, John Fiske and John Hartley
Orality and Literacy, Walter J.Ong
Adult Comics, An Introduction, Roger Sabin
The Unusable Past, Russell J.Reising
The Empire Writes Back, Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and
Helen Tiffin
Translation Studies Ed. 2, Susan Bassnett
Studying British Cultures, Susan Bassnett
Literature and Propaganda, A.P.Foulkes
Reception Theory, Robert C.Holub
Psychoanalytic Criticism, Elizabeth Wright
The Return of the Reader, Elizabeth Freund
Sexual/Textual Politics, Toril Moi
Making a Difference, Ed. Gayle Greene and Coppélia Kahn
AVAILABLE AS A COMPLETE SET (in Hardback only): ISBN
0415-29116-X
Edited by
Susan Bassnett
Studying British
Cultures
An Introduction
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published 1997 by Routledge
This edition first published 2003
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or
Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to
www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
Editorial material and selection © 1997, 2003 Susan Bassnett
The contributions © 1997 the contributors
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN 0-203-35661-6 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-38729-5 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-32350-9 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-32351-7 (pbk)
CONTENTS
GENERAL EDITOR’S PREFACE ix
CONTRIBUTORS xi
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xiv
Introduction: Studying British Cultures xv
Susan Bassnett
PART 1
1 But what is Cultural Studies? 2
Antony Easthope
2 Facts and meanings in British Cultural 20
Studies
Alan Durant
3 British Studies: an educational perspective 42
Christopher Brumfit
4 Cultural Studies and foreign language 57
teaching
Michael Byram
5 Fictional maps of Britain 70
David Punter
PART 2
6 Dedefining Scotland 88
Robert Crawford
viii
7 Cymru or Wales? Explorations in a divided 103
sensibility
Katie Gramich
8 A view of the present state of Irish Studies 120
Sabina Sharkey
9 Teaching West Indian literature in Britain 143
David Dabydeen
10 Shakespeare in quotations 162
John Drakakis
AFTERWORD: STUDYING BRITISH 185
CULTURES, 2003
BlBLIOGRAPHY 200
INDEX 225
GENERAL EDITOR’S PREFACE
No doubt a third General Editor’s Preface to New Accents seems
hard to justify. What is there left to say? Twenty-five years ago,
the series began with a very clear purpose. Its major concern was
the newly perplexed world of academic literary studies, where
hectic monsters called ‘Theory’, ‘Linguistics’ and ‘Politics’ ranged.
In particular, it aimed itself at those undergraduates or beginning
postgraduate students who were either learning to come to terms
with the new developments or were being sternly warned against
them.
New Accents deliberately took sides. Thus the first Preface
spoke darkly, in 1977, of ‘a time of rapid and radical social
change’, of the ‘erosion of the assumptions and presuppositions’
central to the study of literature. ‘Modes and categories inherited
from the past’ it announced, ‘no longer seem to fit the reality
experienced by a new generation’. The aim of each volume would
be to ‘encourage rather than resist the process of change’ by
combining nuts-and-bolts exposition of new ideas with clear and
detailed explanation of related conceptual developments. If
mystification (or downright demonisation) was the enemy,
lucidity (with a nod to the compromises inevitably at stake there)
became a friend. If a ‘distinctive discourse of the future’
beckoned, we wanted at least to be able to understand it.
With the apocalypse duly noted, the second Preface
proceeded piously to fret over the nature of whatever rough beast
might stagger portentously from the rubble. ‘How can we
recognise or deal with the new?’, it complained, reporting
nevertheless the dismaying advance of ‘a host of barely