Bonds of Union
Practices and Representations of Political Union in the United Kingdom (18th-20th centuries)
The appearance and development of a "Four Nations" slant on British history over the last two decades has in many ways pointed up "the Union" as an essential component of the national history or histories of the British Isles. "Four Nations" historians, however, have tended to focus exclusively on the United Kingdom as the core of either a nascent or a now defunct Empire. History is variously invoked to account for the emergence of the British dynastic state, explain its (to some) puzzling end...
Éditeur : Presses universitaires François-Rabelais
Lieu d’édition : Tours
Publication sur OpenEdition Books : 1 juin 2017
ISBN numérique : 978-2-86906-481-2
DOI : 10.4000/books.pufr.4029
Collection : GRAAT | 33
Année d’édition : 2005
ISBN (Édition imprimée) : 978-2-86906-219-1
Nombre de pages : 206
Isabelle Bour et Antoine Mioche
PréfaceJ. C. D. Clark
The changing fortunes of union: the Federalist, state formation, and the origins of a united EuropeCairns Craig
“No Nationality without Literature”Martine Pelletier
Contemporary northern Irish Theatre: challenging the Union?Antoine Mioche
Union and Partition: the uses of Union in the British EmpireThe appearance and development of a "Four Nations" slant on British history over the last two decades has in many ways pointed up "the Union" as an essential component of the national history or histories of the British Isles. "Four Nations" historians, however, have tended to focus exclusively on the United Kingdom as the core of either a nascent or a now defunct Empire. History is variously invoked to account for the emergence of the British dynastic state, explain its (to some) puzzling endurance, and not infrequently to assert or at least suggest its necessary demise in a world of nation states.
By stressing the need for a multi-contextual approach, and casting union strictly as a process—something that is either in the making, or unravelling—"Four Nations" historians have thus paradoxically obscured the fact that union has served for several centuries to conceptualise and accommodate diversity in unity, not just in Britain, but in the wider British world. The essays in this volume, originally presented in June 2003 at a conference hosted by the University of Tours, therefore seek to move beyond the simplistic historiographical and political alternatives of union and dis-union to treat both the Union and union more generally as cultural as well as constitutional and historical constructs, well calculated to articulate separateness and help people make sense both of themselves and of their differences.
Union is here approached from three key directions—the Churches, the Nation and the Constitution, all central since the seventeenth century to the question of unity and regional/national identities in the British metropole and Empire—and from three complementary angles—historical, legal and literary. From this perspective, it is hoped that union will be seen to provide a key to a fuller and more balanced, if not uncritical, understanding of a metropolitan and imperial British world of overlapping and sometimes conflicting national self-perceptions.
Isabelle Bour is Professor of English Literature and the History of ideas at the University of Tours. She has published widely on fiction from 1760 to 1825, focusing in recent years on the epistemology of the paradigm of sensibility. She recently contributed three chapters on the reception of Jane Austen in France to a collection of essays on the reception of Jane Austen in Europe edited by Brian Southam, to be published in 2006 by Continuum.
Antoine Mioche is Associate Professor in British Studies and former head of the English Department at the University of Versailles. His research bears on the British Empire and its interplay with political thought in the United Kingdom. He has written from a comparative perspective on Ireland, India, Canada, the Empire and the UK. His latest book isLes Grandes Dates de l'histoire britannique (2003). He is currently finishing a book on union and partition in British constitutional practice.
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Répétition, répétitions : le même et ses avatars dans la culture anglo-américaine
Jean-Paul Regis (dir.)
1991
Les fictions du réel dans le monde anglo-américain de 1960 à 1980
Jean-Paul Regis, Maryvonne Menget et Marc Chenetier (dir.)
1988
Approches critiques de la fiction afro-américaine
Michel Fabre, Claude Julien et Trevor Harris (dir.)
1998
Le crime organisé à la ville et à l'écran aux États-Unis, 1929-1951
Trevor Harris et Dominique Daniel (dir.)
2002
Répétition, répétitions : le même et ses avatars dans la culture anglo-américaine
Jean-Paul Regis (dir.)
1991
Les fictions du réel dans le monde anglo-américain de 1960 à 1980
Jean-Paul Regis, Maryvonne Menget et Marc Chenetier (dir.)
1988
Approches critiques de la fiction afro-américaine
Michel Fabre, Claude Julien et Trevor Harris (dir.)
1998
Le crime organisé à la ville et à l'écran aux États-Unis, 1929-1951
Trevor Harris et Dominique Daniel (dir.)
2002
