British Intellectual Research Articles

God and Progress: Religion and History in British Intellectual Culture, 1845–1914 by Joshua Bennett (review)

God and Progress: Religion and History in British Intellectual Culture, 1845–1914 by Joshua Bennett (review)

The Phenomenon of Unreliable Narration in the British Intellectual Prose of the Second Half of the Twentieth Century (Golding, Murdoch)

The article is devoted to the consideration the problem of the phenomenon of an unreliable narration in the British intellectual prose of the second half of the twentieth century (Golding, Murdoch). The meaning of the words “narrator”, “unreliable narration” is investigated. The unreliable narration is reviewed based on the example of the novel “Rites of Passage” by Golding (1980). It is noted that the aforementioned work has a vibrant didactic component. It has been found that Golding uses a wide range of narrative techniques. The emphasis is made on the critical analysis by other literary scholars of the novel “Rites of Passage” by Golding. The use of narrative strategies in accordance with the scientific classification by Genette (1980) is investigated. The markers of unreliability of the narrators are emphasized. Attention is focused on the fact that a high degree of unreliability is based on the limited knowledge of the heroes, direct participation in the events, a problematic system of values. It is noted that the unreliability of narration in the novel “Rites of Passage” by Golding forces the reader to doubt not only the narrator but oneself. The use of the narrative method in the intellectual prose of the British writer Iris Murdoch is investi-gated. It has been found that the novel “The Black Prince” by Iris Murdock (2006) is one of the best examples of an unreliable narration. The genre specifics of the novel are emphasized, which combines the forms of the diary, of the memoir and of the confession. In addition, Murdoch creates a narrative strategy, which combines signs of various forms of “I am the narrator” within the framework of one narrative. In addition, “The Black Prince” is a unique model of modern artistic and philosophical metatext genre formation.

Comment on God and Progress: Religion and History in British Intellectual Culture, 1845–1914, by Joshua Bennett, Oxford, University of Oxford Press, 2019

Comment on God and Progress: Religion and History in British Intellectual Culture, 1845–1914, by Joshua Bennett, Oxford, University of Oxford Press, 2019

God and Progress: Religion and History in British Intellectual Culture, 1845–1914, by Joshua Bennett

God and Progress: Religion and History in British Intellectual Culture, 1845–1914, by Joshua Bennett

God and Progress. Religion and History in British Intellectual Culture, 1845–1914, by Joshua Bennett

God and Progress. Religion and History in British Intellectual Culture, 1845–1914, by Joshua Bennett

Peculiarities of Russian Context in O. Wilde’s Play “Vera”

At the end of the XIX century the interest of British intellectual circles to the Russian Empire was intensified due to the latest events – the appearance of Nihilists on the Russian political arena. British intellectuals, especially those contradicting Victorian social and moral norms, were inspired by the new type of hero-nihilist – a romantic highly-spiritual revolutionary, struggling for freedom, which was created in their imagination mostly due to Turgenev’s works and the lawsuit of Vera Zasulich, widely discussed in European press.This study concentrates on the analysis of the first play by Oscar Wilde Vera, dedicated to the Russian topic, which seems at first sight a naïve melodrama with confusion of historical events and features of the Russian social life. The peculiarities of Wilde’s perception of Russian reality, as well as literary devices used for creating Russian background, are analyzed. Special attention is paid to the tradition of depicting a mysterious and exotic Russia in English literature since the XVI century, followed by Wilde. The writer uses a number of standard clichés presenting his “Russia” as a far-away country with eternal frost, tyrannical government, poor and savage people, fully obedient to the cruel ruler.However, as the researcher concludes, Wilde didn’t aim at making a narration about real struggle between czarist regime and the Nihilists in Russia. The future leader of the aestheticism turns to Russian environment as an “another” place – a location, being unusual for an Englishmen, where the writer expects to find high feelings and lofty ideals, spiritual aims and moral values which couldn’t exist in pragmatic Victorian society. Wilde’s “Russia” is presented as an exotic, half-fictional reality, created mostly by the author’s imagination as proper surroundings for evolution of the romantic conflict between the tyrannical Czar and the Nihilists. However, this conflict becomes a spiritual battle of cynical and pragmatic worldview with high spiritual and moral ideals, the aesthetic embodiment of the eternal struggle between the good and the evil, soul chastity and sin.

‘A tradition in ceaseless motion’: critical race theory and black British intellectual spaces

In the USA, where Critical Race Theory (CRT) first emerged, black public intellectuals are a longstanding, if embattled, feature of national life. However, while often marginalized in public debate, the UK has its own robust tradition of black intellectual creation. The field of education, both as a site of intellectual production and as the site of political struggle for black communities, is one of the significant fields in which black British intellectual positions have been defined and differentiated. This article argues that the transfer of CRT to the UK context should be understood within this broader context of black British intellectual production. Through a critical examination of race conscious scholarship and the diverse literature produced in the UK since the 1960s, this article identifies some of the dimensions of education that have been scrutinized by black British intellectuals. In doing so, it directs attention to questions being generated by the transfer of CRT to the UK and to the local materials on which those using CRT might draw, in order to build a historically grounded base for the development of CRT in the UK.

“This England and This Now”: British Cultural and Intellectual Influence in the Spanish American Independence Era

Abstract This essay argues that Great Britain provided the strongest and most relevant contemporary model for the Spanish American independence leaders. Over the course of two eventful decades, 1808 to 1826, over 70 patriot leaders made the long and difficult journey to London to seek political recognition, arms, recruits, and financial backing for their emancipation movements. Countless others remained at home in Spanish America but allied themselves with Britain through their commercial ventures, their ideological affiliation, or their enthusiastic emulation of British institutions, inventions, and practices such as the Lancasterian system of monitorial education, trial by jury, freedom of the press laws, steam engines, and mining technology. This generation of independence leaders carried on a purposeful correspondence with famous British figures such as abolitionist William Wilberforce, prison reformer Elizabeth Fry, utilitarian philosophers Jeremy Bentham and James Mill, scientist Humphrey Davy, and vaccination proponent Edward Jenner. Their conscious choice to draw closer to Great Britain, rather than Napoleonic France or the early republican United States, reveals much about the kind of cultural model the Spanish American independence leaders admired and their vision of the countries they wanted to create.

Improbable Grounds: The Emergence of the Black British Intellectual

The past two decades have witnessed the emergence of a remarkable number of internationally renowned black British intellectuals, including artists, novelists, poets, journalists, and academics. This article maps the socioeconomic and political terrain from which the “black British intellectual” has emerged. I argue that from the improbable grounds of anticolonial struggle, twentieth-century migrancy, and post/colonial claims to recognition, a new subjectivity of “black Britishness” has been forged. Subsequently, this black diasporic subjectivity has produced a form of intellectual praxis that has decisively reshaped broader discussions around race and identity within the African diaspora and the very parameters of what it means to be a black intellectual. This intellectual work, I argue, is defined by its relation to a set of dispositions including a broadly post-structuralist theory of blackness, a critical engagement with Marxism and related class problematics, a reworking of liberal feminism's failure to center race within its conceptual frame, and a reading of European colonialism and its continuing effects as a central dynamic in the production of a politics of antiracist struggle and solidarity.

“Within the Pale.” British Intellectual Society and the Image of the Russian Jew, 1890–1907

Abstract “Within the Pale”: This paper examines British responses to the East European Jew in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Unlike other analyses, which have concentrated on the impact of Jewish immigration to the UK and the so‐called aliens' debate, the author interprets the narrative constructed by British commentators who visited the Tsarist Empire (sometimes to specifically examine its “Jewish Question”) and who spent long periods there (either as independent observers, or as newspaper/journal correspondents). It discusses how Russian attitudes, images and allusions about Jews were transmitted to British discourse and the extent to which Anglo‐Russian boundaries of Judeophobia were intertwined. In its assessment it considers British perceptions of anti‐Tsarist persecution, life in the Pale, the Jewish‐peasant relationship and Anglo‐Jewish responses.

Roadmap for the future-where to next?

Describes the work of the British Library Business and Intellectual Property Centre, which was launched with the Library’s first above the line marketing campaign. Explains the challenges of providing a national service to businesses although physically based in London, and designing a range of new services to meet user needs. Covers the workshops programme, the ‘Ask an Expert’ sessions, and the forthcoming information advice and consultation service. Describes the Library’s business and intellectual property collections, including its electronic resources, online enquiry service and website. Also covers the evening events for entrepreneurs and the fee-based research service.

When the World Was Red

WHEN THE WORLD WAS RED Anthony Kirk-Greene. Britain's Imperial Administrators, 1858-1966 Basingstoke: Macmillan/New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000. xv + 347 pp. Map. Tables. Notes. Thematic bibliography. Index. $79.95. Cloth. $22.95. Paper. Anthony Kirk-Greene. Glimpses of Empire: A Corona Anthology. London/New York: LB. Tauris, 2001. xxvi + 302 pp. Illustrations. Index of authors. Price not reported. Cloth. Douglas Rimmer and Anthony Kirk-Greene, eds. The British Intellectual Engagement with Africa in the Twentieth Century. Basingstoke: Macmillan/New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000. xii + 267 pp. Maps. Index. $69.95. Cloth. Anthony Kirk-Greene is the doyen of the historical study of British colonial administrators, having labored in what was for decades a distinctly unfashionable vineyard as far as Africanists were concerned. This was understandable at a time when imperial history was out of favor and when colonized people demanded to be the primary actors in their own dramas. But, as John Lonsdale pointed out, colonial administrators are very much a part of this history; their role cannot simply be subsumed under the broad rubric of colonialism or seen as an extension of homeland politics. Britain's Imperial Administrators, Kirk-Greene offers us the fruits of many years' labor and the reflections of a career that began with his own service as district officer in northern Nigeria. It is easy to forget that on the eve of the second World War the British Empire, then at its height, comprised... over a quarter of the world's inhabited landmass, eighty times the size of Great (23), not including the territories administered by Britain or its dominions on behalf of the League of Nations or the category of possessions known quaintly as Miscellaneous Islands. The Empire had been acquired in such a haphazard way (if not exactly in a fit of absent-mindedness) that it is hardly surprising that it resisted unified administration at the top. Kirk-Greene provides an historical overview of how the various parts of the Empire came under British rule, summarizing the crucial role of chartered companies in many parts of the world and the subsequent creation of the India Office and Colonial Office as their holdings gradually came under the direct purview of Whitehall. Just to complicate matters, Sudan was administered by the Foreign Office. As he points out in his introduction, the Indian Civil Service (ICS) has been subjected to intense academic scrutiny (1) since it was disbanded with Indian independence, but the same cannot be said for the Sudan Political Service (SPS) or for the Colonial Administrative Service (CAS) which, in characteristically British fashion, handled everything that didn't come under the ICS or the SPS, including Africa. The great virtue of KirkGreene's study is that it looks for the first time at the three services that, whatever their internal sense of difference, symbolized British overseas rule, often reflecting shared background, education, training and motivation (1). He does this, too, from the ground up-from the recruitment of junior officers to the proconsuls at the top-and he follows the story from the origins of each service to the period of decolonization. One of the most interesting features of part 1, Environment, is the author's analysis of what it actually means to speak of an administrative elite, what Philip Mason referred to as men, picked from picked men (quoted 7). opposition to the theoreticians of the sociology, Kirk-Greene argues that class was at best a secondary, not a primary construct in the formation of the colonial services, for unlike the army and diplomacy, they did not require private means: In those new civil services the element of class became not that of family, the primary context of English class, but of class formation, of elitist moulding: not of birth but of nurturing (9). The great engine of this imperial socialization was the Victorian public school, which proliferated at almost the same rate as imperial acquisitions during the nineteenth century. …

The 'Sussex School' and the history of economic thought: British Intellectual History, 1750-1950

The 'Sussex School' and the history of economic thought: British Intellectual History, 1750-1950

Book Reviews

Books reviewed:David Noel Freedman (ed.), Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible.Sara Japhet, The Ideology of the Book of Chronicles and its Place in Biblical Thought (Beiträge zur Erforschung des Alten Testaments und des Antiken Judentums 9).William Johnstone, 1 and 2 Chronicles, Volume 1: 1 Chronicles 1–2 Chronicles 9: Israel’s Place among the Nations (Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 253).William Johnstone, 1 and 2 Chronicles, Volume 2: 2 Chronicles 10–36: Guilt and Atonement (Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 254).Walter Brueggemann, Isaiah 1–39 (Westminster Bible Companion).Walter Brueggemann, Isaiah 40­66 (Westminster Bible Companion).Michael H. Floyd, Minor Prophets, Part 2.Louis H. Feldman, Josephus’s Interpretation of the Bible (Hellenistic Culture and Society 27).William Horbury (ed.), Hebrew Study from Ezra to Ben‐Yehuda.Jonathan L. Reed, Archaeology and the Galilean Jesus: A Re‐examination of the Evidence.James D. G. Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon: A Commentary on the Greek Text (The New International Greek Testament Commentary).John Ashton, The Religion of Paul the Apostle.Robert Alte, Canon and Creativity: Modern Writing and the Authority of Scripture.Edward Yarnold, Cyril of Jerusalem.Norman Russell, Cyril of Alexandria (The Early Church Fathers).Marilyn Dunn, The Emergence of Monasticism: From the Desert Fathers to the Early Middle Ages.Mayeul de Dreuille, The Rule of Saint Benedict and the Ascetic Traditions from Asia to the West.Joel B. Green and Max Turner (eds.), Between Two Horizons: Spanning New Testament Studies and Systematic Theology.Zachary Hayes, The Gift of Being: A Theology of Creation.Rowan Williams, On Christian Theology.Horst Althaus, Hegel: An Intellectual Biography.Cyril O’Regan, The Heterodox Hegel.John Skorupski, The Cambridge Companion to Mill.Steven Schroeder, The Metaphysics of Co‐operation: A Study of F. D. Maurice (Value Inquiry Book Series 84).Oliver F. Williams (ed.), Global Codes of Conduct: An Ideal whose Time has Come (The John W. Houck Notre Dame Series in Business Ethics).Kevin Wm Wildes, Moral Acquaintances: Methodology in Bioethics.David L. Balch (ed.), Homosexuality, Science, and the ‘Plain Sense’ of Scripture.Kenneth Hylson‐Smith, Christianity in England from Roman Times to the Reformation, I: From Roman Times to 1066.Kenneth Hylson‐Smith, Christianity in England from Roman Times to the Reformation, II: From 1066 to 1384.Y. Hen and M. Innes (eds.), The Uses of the Past in the Early Middle Ages.John Lowden, The Making of the ‘Bibles Moralisées’.Richard Newhauser, The Early History of Greed: The Sin of Avarice in Early Medieval Thought and Literature (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 41).Odd Langholm, The Legacy of Scholasticism in Economic Thought: Antecedents of Choice and Power (Historical Perspectives on Modern Economics).Jean Richard, The Crusades c.1071–c.1291 (Cambridge Medieval Textbooks).Cindy L. Carson and Angela Jane Weisl (eds.), Constructions of Widowhood and Virginity in the Middle Ages (The New Middle Ages).James B. Atkinson and David Sices (eds.), Machiavelli and his Friends: Their Personal Correspondence.James V. Holleran, A Jesuit Challenge: Edmund Campion’s Debate at the Tower of London in 1581.Anthony Levi, Cardinal Richelieu and the Making of France.William H. Brackney, Paul S. Fiddes, and John H. Y. Briggs (eds.), Pilgrim Pathways: Essays in Honour of B. R. White.Philip C. Almond, Adam and Eve in Seventeenth‐Century Thought.Craig Harline and Eddy Put, A Bishop’s Tale: Matthias Hovius among his Flock in Seventeenth‐Century Flanders.Stefan Collini, Richard Whatmore and Brian Young (eds.), History, Religion and Culture: British Intellectual History 1750–1950.Lawrence Barmann and C. J. T. Talar (eds.), Sanctity and Secularity during the Modernist Period.Roland Hill, Lord Acton.Oliver O’Donovan and Joan Lockwood O’Donovan (eds.), From Irenaeus to Grotius: A Sourcebook in Christian Political Thought.

English Pasts: Essays in History and Culture, by Stefan Collini. The Cambridge Apostles, 1820-1914: Liberalism, Imagination and Friendship in British Intellectual and Professional Life, by W.C. Lubenow.

<i>English Pasts: Essays in History and Culture</i>, by Stefan Collini. <i>The Cambridge Apostles, 1820-1914: Liberalism, Imagination and Friendship in British Intellectual and Professional Life</i>, by W.C. Lubenow.

Shorter notice. The Cambridge Apostles, 1820-1914. Liberalism, Imagination, and Friendship in British Intellectual and Professional Life. WC Lubenow

Shorter notice. The Cambridge Apostles, 1820-1914. Liberalism, Imagination, and Friendship in British Intellectual and Professional Life. WC Lubenow

The Cambridge Apostles, 1820-1914: Liberalism, Imagination, and Friendship in British Intellectual and Professional Life (review)

The Cambridge Apostles, 1820-1914: Liberalism, Imagination, and Friendship in British Intellectual and Professional Life (review)

W. C. Lubenow. The Cambridge Apostles, 1820-1914: Liberalism, Imagination, and Friendship in British Intellectual and Personal Life. New York: Cambridge University Press. 1998. Pp. xvi, 458. $59.95. ISBN 0-521-57213-4.

W. C. Lubenow. The Cambridge Apostles, 1820-1914: Liberalism, Imagination, and Friendship in British Intellectual and Personal Life. New York: Cambridge University Press. 1998. Pp. xvi, 458. $59.95. ISBN 0-521-57213-4.

Book Review

Joseph Addison: The Freeholder. Edited by James Leheny. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1979. xii + 283 pp. £16.00. Joseph Addison: The Freeholder. Edited by James Leheny. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1979. xii + 283 pp. £16.00. Notes and Index to Sir Herbert Grierson's Edition of the Letters of Sir Walter Scott. By James C. Corson. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1979. x + 699 pp. £30.00. The Victorians and Ancient Greece. By Richard Jenkyns. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. 1980. xii + 336 pp. £15.00. Toward the Making of Thoreau's Modern Reputation. Edited by Fritz Oehlschlaeger and George Hendrick. Urbana. Chicago and London: University of Illinois Press. 1980. xx + 413pp. £13.50. Herbert Spencer. By James G Kennedy (Twayne's English Authors Series, 219) Boston: Twayne Publishers. 1978. 163pp. $8.95. T H Huxley: Man's Place in Nature. By James G. Paradis. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press. 1979. xiv + 226pp. £9.45. Philip Webb and his Work. By W.R. Lethaby. Introduced by Godfrey Rubens. London: Raven Oak Press. 1980. x + 323pp. £12.00. Leslie Stephen: Selected Writings in British Intellectual History. Edited by Noel Annan. (Classics of British Historical Literature) Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. 1979. xxx + 297pp. £11.90. The Literary Criticism of F.R. Leavis. By R.P. Bilan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1979. viii + 338 pp. £12.50. F.R. Leavis: Judgment and the Discipline of Thought. By Robert Boyers. (Literary Frontiers Editions) Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press. 1978. vi + 122 pp. £3.85. Three Honest Men: Edmund Wilson, F.R. Leavis, Lionel Trilling. A critical mosaic. Edited by Philip French. Manchester: Carcanet New Press. 1980. 120pp. £6.95. F. R. Leavis: “Reading out Poetry” and “Eugenio Montale ‐ A Tribute,” together with the Proceedings of a Commemorative Symposium on Leavis. Belfast: The Queen's University of Belfast. 1979. 63pp. £2.00