National Character and the Character of Nations
National Character and the Character of Nations
There is a vast body of writing in the nineteenth century on the character of nations which is scarcely distinguishable from the equally vast literature on national character. The character of nations is thematized repeatedly in nineteenth-century writing as the explanatory element in the story of a progression from the narrow ambit of the national place into the new territory or space of the state. National character, on the other hand, is often featured as a controlling voice in a recalcitrant community narrative that refuses, with decreasing success, to surrender its particularities, to yield itself either to the state or to any comparable transnational goal. Central to the nationalist position were the claims that Ireland was a culturally distinct nation, that it had been mutilated beyond recognition by British colonialism, but, also, that it could nevertheless rediscover its lost features and thereby recognize once more its true identity.
Keywords: famine, Ireland, national character, The Collegians, Thomas Davis, Dracula
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .
