Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Note
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Theological contexts
- Part II The three kingdoms
- Part III Points of contact
- 8 Constructing the pre-romantic Celt
- 9 Mapping a Gothic Europe
- 10 The varieties of Gothicism in the British Atlantic world, 1689–1800
- 11 Conclusion
- Index
9 - Mapping a Gothic Europe
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Note
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Theological contexts
- Part II The three kingdoms
- Part III Points of contact
- 8 Constructing the pre-romantic Celt
- 9 Mapping a Gothic Europe
- 10 The varieties of Gothicism in the British Atlantic world, 1689–1800
- 11 Conclusion
- Index
Summary
The Gothicism of seventeenth-century Englishmen and eighteenth-century Britons presents a subtle challenge to one of the most influential approaches to the study of ethnicity within history and the social sciences, the boundary thesis. Proponents of this line of analysis, most notably Fredrik Barth, argue that frontier relationships, binary oppositions and stereotypes of the alien are fundamental elements in the construction of ethnic identity. The processes of group definition, it is claimed, have always depended less on self-image than on perceived contrasts with the characteristics of outsiders. Although a central component of English national identity, England's Saxon identity did not magnify the differences between England and the Continent. Paradoxically, the very matter of English ethnicity also served to diminish the sense of distance between England and the ‘other’.
There was a crucial ambiguity in the commonplace contrast between England's libertarian achievement and the benighted monarchies of Catholic Europe. Against a backdrop of persistent international conflicts driven by confessional divisions, mercantilist goals and the interplay of national and dynastic interests, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English commentators demonised many of their continental European adversaries, the French in particular; but they did not forget – and, indeed, continued to celebrate – the common descent of the various Gothic nations of Europe, Anglo-Saxons and Franks included. For the craven, despotic and Roman Catholic ‘other’ of the Continent was not wholly alien, but a deformed and corrupted version of the hardy libertarian Goth.
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- Information
- British Identities before NationalismEthnicity and Nationhood in the Atlantic World, 1600–1800, pp. 211 - 249Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999
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