The Renaissance English Cultural Nationalism And Modernism 1860 1920

Contextualising the emergence of literary and aesthetic modernism and cultural nationalism within the popularity of the Renaissance, this volume offers new insights into high and low culture, as well as historical periodization.

Contextualising the emergence of literary and aesthetic modernism and cultural nationalism within the popularity of the Renaissance, this volume offers new insights into high and low culture, as well as historical periodization.

Rituals and performances are a key theme in the study of nations and nationalism. With the aim of stimulating further research in this area, this book explores, debates and evaluates the role of rituals and performances in the emergence, persistence and transformation of nations, nationalisms and national identity. The chapters comprising this book investigate a diverse array of contemporary and historical phenomena relating to the symbolic life of nations, from the Yasukuni Shrine in Japan to the Louvre in France, written by an interdisciplinary cast of world-renowned and up-and-coming scholars. Each of the contributors has been encouraged to think about how his or her particular approach and methods relates to the others. This has given rise to several recurring debates and themes running through the book over how researchers ought to approach rituals and performances and how they might best be studied. The Cultural Politics of Nationalism and Nation-Building will appeal to students and scholars of ethnicity and nationalism, sociology, political science, anthropology, cultural studies, performance studies, art history and architecture.

In the mid-1880s The Builder, an influential British architectural journal, published an article characterizing Renaissance architecture as a corrupt bastardization of the classical architecture of Greece and Rome. By the turn of the century, however, the same journal praised the Renaissance architect Filippo Brunelleschi as the ?Christopher Columbus of modern architecture.? Victorian Perceptions of Renaissance Architecture, 1850-1914 examines these conflicting characterizations and reveals how the writing of architectural history was intimately tied to the rise of the professional architect and the formalization of architectural education in late nineteenth-century Britain. Drawing on a broad range of evidence, including literary texts, professional journals, university curricula, and census records, Victorian Perceptions reframes works by seminal authors such as John Ruskin, Walter Pater, John Addington Symonds, and Geoffrey Scott alongside those by architect-authors such as William J. Anderson and Reginald Blomfield within contemporary architectural debates. Relevant for architectural historians, as well as literary scholars and those in Victorian studies, Victorian Perceptions reassesses the history of Renaissance architecture within the formation of a modern, British architectural profession.

Uncovers how global Shakespeare Tercentenary commemorations addressed crises of imperial and national identities during the First World War.

Draws together leading experts from a wide range of disciplines to analyse the life and work of John Ruskin (1819-1900).

This book is the first comprehensive account of global Shakespeare commemoration in the period between 1916 and 2016. Combining historical analysis with insights into current practice, Memorialising Shakespeare covers Shakespeare commemoration in China, Ukraine, Egypt, and France, as well as Great Britain and the United States. Chapter authors discuss a broad range of commemorative activities—from pageants, dance, dramatic performances, and sculpture, to conferences, exhibitions, and more private acts of engagement, such as reading and diary writing. Themes covered include Shakespeare’s role in the formation of cultural memory and national and global identities, as well as Shakespeare’s relationship to decolonisation and race. A significant feature of the book is the inclusion of chapters from organisers of recent Shakespeare commemoration events, reflecting on their own practice. Together, the chapters in Memorialising Shakespeare show what has been at stake when communities, identity groups, and institutions have come together to commemorate Shakespeare.

A deeply personal yet broadly relevant exploration of the ephemeral life of the classic in art, from the eighteenth century to our own day Is there such a thing as a timeless classic? More than a decade ago, Rochelle Gurstein set out to explore and establish a solid foundation for the classic in the history of taste. To her surprise, that history instead revealed repeated episodes of soaring and falling reputations, rediscoveries of long-forgotten artists, and radical shifts in the canon, all of which went so completely against common knowledge that it was hard to believe it was true. Where does the idea of the timeless classic come from? And how has it become so fiercely contested? By recovering disputes about works of art from the eighteenth century to the close of the twentieth, Gurstein takes us into unfamiliar aesthetic and moral terrain, providing a richly imagined historical alternative to accounts offered by both cultural theorists advancing attacks on the politics of taste and those who continue to cling to the ideal of universal values embodied in the classic. As Gurstein brings to life the competing responses of generations of artists, art lovers, and critics to specific works of art, she makes us see the same object vividly and directly through their eyes and feel, in all its enlarging intensity, what they felt.