Literature of an Independent England
Saturday 6th November 2010, University of Warwick
Organised by Dr Michael Gardiner (Warwick) & Dr Claire Westall (York)
Sponsored by Warwick’s Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies
and Humanities Research Centre, Edinburgh University Press and Manchester
University Press
Conference Report
This agenda-setting one-day interdisciplinary conference attracted a diverse mixture
of participants, in terms of geography, disciplinarity, and seniority. Speakers came
from the US, continental Europe and Ireland as well as within the United Kingdom,
and their expertise ranged across political science, literature, history and religion.
Many situated their work specifically at the emerging crossover of political and
literary thinking about England. We were also joined by political campaigners,
academic researchers, postgraduate students and, encouragingly, a good number
of English undergraduates who were keen to build on their understanding of
England’s position in relation to their study of Devolutionary literature.
The day began with a full and detailed Keynote Address by Professor Arthur Aughey
(University of Ulster) who, building on his work in The Politics of Englishness (MUP,
2007), moved to critically unpack the ‘anxiety’ of Englishness and the dominant
modes, including modes of conversation, being used to represent and interrogate
English identities. His work in this area is being developed in a collection that he is
currently co-editing with Dr Christine Berberich, who also spoke at the conference,
to be published with MUP.
The first panel, entitled ‘The Politics of England and English Literature’, was indicative
of the range of perspectives drawn together by the event, and set the terms for the
reconsideration of English politics from a literary-cultural perspective. Anthony
Barnett – one of the country’s most insightful and experienced democracy
campaigners and founder of openDemocracy – contextualised the slippage
between Britain and England and the lingering uncertainties this causes for the
political reformers of England. His contribution became key as the day continued
and the nuanced breadth and contemporary awareness of his thinking was a
particular strength in the closing discussion. Dr Andrew Mycock (Huddersfield
University) provided a precise and clearly explained survey of the rise of English
national sentiment, specifically post-1998, and of the terminological grounding
required for considerations of English independence, issuing a warning against the
rise of ‘victimhood nationalism’ seen within certain post-colonial versions of
Englishness. Finally, under the title ‘English Literature as Ideology’, Dr Michael
Gardiner (Warwick University) brought these issues to bear upon the discipline of
English Literature by offering a substantial critique of English Literature’s historical
reliance upon a Burkean principle of cultural value. He argued that gradually, and
specifically after empire, England has risen against the nationless state of the UK,
which was once an effective deliverer of ideology, largely through English Literature.
Demonstrating that as England-the-place becomes more vital, paradoxically the
British methodology of English Literature gets harder to maintain, he advocated a
new, post-British literary discipline, which is both more national and more diverse,
and focuses its attention on the national experience of England.
Following a busy and lively informal lunch the second panel, ‘Englishness, National
Identity and Authors of the Canon’, was an intense four-paper offering. Professor
Margaret Tudeau-Clayton (University of Neuchâtel) presented a summative
explanation of the thinking behind a collection entitled This England, That
Shakespeare (Ashgate 2010) which she co-edited with Professor Willy Maley. Dr Jo
Carrthurs (University of Bristol) drew on her theological expertise to read the sociocultural assumptions embedded within Edmund Spencer’s The Faerie Queene and
John Milton’s Paradise Lost, and demonstrated how the Protestant aesthetic of
simplicity, replicated in these two canonical works directly effected discourses of
Englishness which have, more recently, been deployed against Islam. Dr Simon
Featherstone (De Montfort University), author of Englishness: Twentieth-Century
Popular Culture and the Forming of English Identity (EUP, 2009), assessed the impact
of A. J. Cook, miner and trade union leader during the General Strike, positing that
by placing A. J. Cook alongside D. H. Lawrence, and comparing their activities on
the Nottinghamshire-Derbyshire border in the Summer of 1926, a comparative case
study could be used to enable an informative questioning of the resources for
national re-imagination, and to illuminate the cultural continuities and discontinuities
between English literature, politics and social history. Wrapping up this panel, Dr
Anthony Bateman (De Montfort University) spoke about the canon of English cricket
literature via the writing of Neville Cardus, examining cricket’s role in the creation
and imperial exportation of ‘mythic’ ideas of English pastoralism and ruralism. The
panel questioned not only the position and value of canonical construction of
Englishness but also worked to extend the exposure of the imagined pastoral idyll of
English national identity.
The late afternoon was comprised of two smaller panels and a concluding
discussion. Panel three, ‘Speaking for England and of Dystopias’, included a
dynamic and entertaining reading of the novel Speak for England (2005) by its
author Dr James Hawes (Oxford Brookes University). Hawes also raised wider issues
about the global deployment of English as a language, contrasting it with a broad
range of other tongues, including French, German and Spanish, and sparked a
debate which built on the terms of the morning’s panels. Dr Christine Berberich
(University of Portsmouth) gave a detailed and polished reading of Speak for
England and Rupert Thompson’s Divided Kingdom (2005), analysing their
deployment of ‘invented traditions’ and depictions of dystopian police states that
suggest specific historical problematics and reverberate with contemporary
anxieties about a national identity in flux. In panel four, ‘Questioning the
Contemporary and Everyday’, Dr Graham MacPhee (University of West Chester) coeditor of Empire and After (EUP, 2007), spoke of the complexities embedded within
(Enoch) Powellism and of the continuing imperial ties which influence understanding
of England and Englishness, as well as making a sophisticated and controversial
case about the binding of England and Britain. Finally, the postgraduate researcher
Anna Rettberg (University of Giessen) addressed the working of Englishness and the
relationship to Britain within novels branded as ‘Black British’ – Zadie Smith's White
Teeth (2000), Monica Ali's Brick Lane (2003) and Robin Yassin-Kassab's The Road from
Damascus (2008).
The conference closed with an open debate, drawing together speakers and
delegates, with Graham MacPhee’s paper prompting numerous responses and
efforts being made to bridge the political and literary-cultural in theoretically
nuanced and interesting ways. What was noted by many delegates was the way
internationally-noted scholars in the field were thinking alongside and in conjunction
with younger scholars and students. The conference underlined the pressing need
for England’s post-devolutionary and post-imperial position to be further theorised,
and for models arising to be applied to the discipline of English Literature.
The conference organisers would like to thank all the speakers for their papers and
individual contributions to the day’s programme. We hope we meet again soon.
They would also like to thank Sue Dibben, of the HRC, the English Department,
particularly its Chair Professor Catherine Bates for her support, EUP and MUP.