British Studies into the 21 st Century: Perspectives and Practices (review)

Abstract

Reviews 269 ofthe materiality of culture. The editor's desire to 'critique and revise received c r i t i c a l paradigms' (p. x) is therefor achieved here through the inclusion of essays that clearly show a similar cultural awareness identifiable in much earlier modes ofcultural production. Craig Allan Horton English Program LaTrobe University Prest, Wilfred, ed., British Studies into the 21s ' Century: Perspectives and Practices, Melbourne, Australian Scholarly Publishing, 1999; paper; pp. vi, 118; R R P AUSS29.95; I S B N 1875606696. This slim volume, published in 1999, is a selection of papers on British Studies given by Australian and N e w Zealand scholars at conferences held in 1997 and 1998. During the gap of three or four years between the conferences and the present review, some changes prognosticated by the papers have come to pass, and others have not. Wilfred Prest's introductory definition of 'British Studies' observes that 'British' no longer includes Britain alone but n o w includes the 'Atlantic archipelago' and former colonial possessions. Consequently, within the national identities offormer colonies the term 'British' m a y also mean 'non-British'. Prest also observes that 'British Studies', once predominantly historical n o w include broadly cultural topics. Mary Griffiths believes that an interdisciplinary approach to British Studies in Australia will avoid both nostalgia and the 'amnesia' of rejection of the past, building new and culturally positive relations between Australia and Britain. Following Foucault, she argues that studying our past develops our capacity to change the way w e have been shaped, but Griffiths' enthusiastic description in 1998 of a new republican dawn shows that the flux ofhistory may divert the most confident prognostications. In Romania,freeofthe need to shape such identities, Ioana Petrescu describes h o w traditional textual studies of Old English have been joined by modern developments in, for example, psychoanalysis and the English language. Lloyd Davis suggests that Australian scholars adopt new post-colonial approaches to the British literary canon. Following Greenblatt, he anticipates a resolution ofthe tension between ideological identity produced by power relations, 270 Reviews and our freedom of self-creation. Davis clearly expects self-creative new knowledge and enlightenment to achieve radical social reforms, as implied by the 'theoretical and pedagogical innovation' ofhistitle.Ifhis intention is to 'to inspire critical debate' (rather than dragoon into radicalrighteousness),it is welcome. Robert Phiddian wants British Studies to rum to philology (or rhetoric) for the love of the English language. H e argues that a movement of English literature away from literary criticism to creative writing would engender intelligent, clear communication. Although Phiddian does not say so, his argument combines N e w m a n on the idea of the university and Juan Luis Vives on rhetoric as the elegant shaping of personal perceptions and understanding. There is a similar sense ofelegant analysis shown by Patrick Allington and Lenore Coltheart in a study of the stately home 'Carrick Hill', built during the late 1930s as an Arcadian English idyll in South Australia. Their account of evolving perceptions of heritage might have included a brief reference to Henry Lawson's poem 'Riley's Run', a nationalistic rejection of English Arcadian dreams. John Pocock's essay is more directly historical, and admirably employs the much-neglected historical tools of paradox and interaction. He places Irish history within, yet not within, British history, and observes that, for the British, government of themselves and of others was seen as the same thing. Because British history embraces both Britain and others with w h o m they interact, i t is therefore an expanding and evolving discipline, and continues to shape the present. Judith Richards has written an apologia pro vita sua with sharp wit, at times finely acerbic. Her question whether it is valid to teach Tudor and Stuart history is answered by high enrolments and the way her students gain new understandings ofAustralia's social and political foundations: the functions and necessity of parliaments, the episodes of absolutist power, natural rights, the powerful input ofAnglo-Celtic ideas, energy and traditions. Students are assisted by what E. P. Thompson called the 'English peculiarity' - principles expressed in empirical language rather than...