ABSTRACT
The rise of a nation-state is accompanied by the development of an identifiable national culture. Increasingly from the beginning of the nineteenth century such national culture has been defined in terms of a canon of the national literature, the particularity of a national identity thus laying claim to a place within the proclaimed universality of art. Political struggle was needed to establish the canon of English literature, and its nature and ideological consequences have been well documented (Baldick 1983; Doyle 1989). From many sources which might serve to instance this power play I choose the words of Helen Gardner when she writes that, since literature confers ‘the sense of national identity’ (1982, p. 45), English literature shows ‘the virtues inherent in “The British way of life” ’ (p. 46).
