Jeff Strabone. Poetry and British Nationalisms in the Bardic Eighteenth Century: Imagined Antiquities

Abstract

Since the 1990s, the harp-clutching Celtic bard has become an increasingly prominent part of English literary studies. That decade saw a number of factors, including the revival of Macpherson’s Ossian and the advent of Scottish and Welsh devolution, combine in a new scholarly focus on what Katie Trumpener termed ‘Bardic Nationalism’. Jeff Strabone’s monograph places itself firmly in this tradition, right down to the cover design, which features de Loutherbourg’s particularly rugged bardic specimen. His book demonstrates how this sub-field has enriched our understanding of Romantic literature, reviving interest in marginalized writers, providing new perspectives on canonical authors and posing difficult questions about literary imperialism. However, this book also exemplifies some of the problems endemic to the field as it stands, ones that will continue to get worse unless it commits itself to more thoroughly interdisciplinary practices. Strabone argues that ‘archaic native poetry, newly discovered and printed in the eighteenth century, provided historiographical support for the construction of the modern nation’ (p. 2). Whilst this is not news, what is innovative is Strabone’s focus on form and metre, elements that can fall by the wayside in a field preoccupied with sociocultural generalizations. Strabone, furthermore, has a talent for throwing out big ideas that are useful to think with. Take, for instance, his argument (p. 152) that increasing mediation of historical texts led to a reappraisal of historical time itself, and a growing Romantic sense that elements of the past were irretrievable. Counterexamples come to mind (and are alluded to by Strabone), but this and other ideas would nevertheless benefit from further attention.