Consciousness, History, and Nation in the British Novel, 1926-1932
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
CONSCIOUSNESS, HISTORY, AND NATION IN THE BRITISH NOVEL, 1926-1932 By JONATHAN GOODWIN A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2005 Copyright 2005 by JONATHAN GOODWIN ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Many people have aided me in the completion of this project. Friends too numerous to name encouraged me throughout. My parents worked very hard to support my education at all levels. Librarians at the University of Florida, Georgia Tech, and Emory have helped me locate materials. My hound Speckleford stressed the necessity of walks. The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Florida awarded me a fellowship. I especially wish to thank my committee. George Esenwein saved me from making several historical overgeneralizations and provided detailed and helpful comments throughout. Brandy Kershner helped me see what was clear and what was not and advised me well throughout my long graduate school career. Jim Paxson maintained such enthusiasm for the project and my ideas that I can only hope this dissertation is worthy of it. I could not have completed it without the benefit of our many long conversations. And I am especially grateful to Norm Holland, who agreed to direct what was an unusual dissertation proposal, dispensed much patient and wise counsel, and remained a constant source of material and moral support throughout. Finally, Clancy Ann Ratliff's support and love came at the perfect time. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................. iii ABSTRACT....................................................................................................................... vi CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................1 2 BRITISH NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS, 1926-1932 ..........................................14 The General Strike......................................................................................................14 Background to the Strike.....................................................................................14 The Revolutionary Aspects of the Strike.............................................................18 Ronald Knox's Alternate History................................................................................39 Rationalization and Nationalization in the Wake of the Strike ..................................43 The Financial Crisis and British Nationalism.............................................................46 British Nationalism after the Crisis: The Case of John Buchan's The Gap in the Curtain.....................................................................................................................54 Imperial Unrest and Internal Unease ..........................................................................60 3 CONCEPTUAL ANACHRONISM, SMALL WORLDS, AND THE FLIGHT FROM HISTORY IN VIRGINIA WOOLF'S ORLANDO .......................................68 Conceptual Anachronism............................................................................................69 Small Worlds of Narrative and History......................................................................79 The Flight from History..............................................................................................89 4 NATIONALISM AND NARRATIVE FORM IN WYNDHAM LEWIS'S THE CHILDERMASS ........................................................................................................93 5 OLAF STAPLEDON'S LAST AND FIRST MEN AND COSMIC HISTORICISM.........................................................................................................126 6 RE-ENCHANTMENT OF MIND AND PLACE IN JOHN COWPER POWYS'S A GLASTONBURY ROMANCE............................................................................152 7 CONCLUSION.........................................................................................................171 LIST OF REFERENCES.................................................................................................174 iv BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...........................................................................................189 v Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy CONSCIOUSNESS, HISTORY, AND NATION IN THE BRITISH NOVEL, 1926-1932 By Jonathan Goodwin December 2005 Chair: Norman Holland Major Department: English In this dissertation, I argue that a major transition in the development of the British nation-state occurred between 1926-1932, a process uniquely reflected in the attitudes taken towards history in four novels written during the period: Virginia Woolf's Orlando, Wyndham Lewis's The Childermass, Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men, and John Cowper Powys's A Glastonbury Romance. Bracketed by the General Strike of 1926 and the electoral crisis of 1931, these years showed the resiliency of British nationalism in the face of periodic disruptions. The combination of social experience and individual psychology necessarily leaves traces of these upheavals in the novelistic imagination. Each novel examines how an individual mind becomes part of national consciousness through history. After a detailed overview of the historical moment, I explore the question of historical perspective in Woolf's Orlando. Conceptual anachronism is the tendency to interpret historical events through the lens of the present. Since Orlando ages so slowly and maintains a unified consciousness for such a long vi historical period, Woolf playfully recreates the central problem of historicism. Lewis's The Childermass also represents this moment of national transition through temporal displacement. His imagined afterlife is the distilled nightmare of the dulled revolutionary potential of the General Strike. Through his sporadic satires of important cultural figures and trends, Lewis aims to identify and correct what he sees as the dangerous manifestations of the Time-Cult. And Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men expands into cosmic horizons. Stapledon's projection of the far-future relies intensively upon his view of the near-present, and his perceived Americanization of the world reveals substantial anxieties about the development of the British nation-state. Finally, I describe how Powys's epic A Glastonbury Romance, written in upstate New York, diagnosed a spiritual decay within the heart of one of the peculiarly British centers of national consciousness. Glastonbury, with its Arthurian aura, presents a psychic portrait of a group mind in tumult. vii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION In the period from the end of the General Strike in 1926 to the abandonment of the Gold Standard in 1931 the British nation-state evolved much closer to its present form than in any other five-year span in the twentieth century. This study analyzes the novelistic representations of this national transformation in four works written during the period: Virginia Woolf's Orlando, Wyndham Lewis's The Childermass, Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men, and John Cowper Powys's A Glastonbury Romance. Aldous Huxley, describing late 1920s Britain, wrote that "a reaction had begun to set in--away from the easy-going philosophy of general meaninglessness towards the hard, ferocious theologies of nationalistic and revolutionary idolatry. Meaning was reintroduced into the world, but only in patches" (Huxley 274 qtd. by Hynes 63). The Empire began to implode; America, with its film and gold, was emerging as a rival financial and cultural center. Even the Book of Common Prayer was revised. Huxley's competing ideologies struggled against the backdrop of Britain's transformation into a state-interventionist economy. The global financial collapse of 1929 precipitated this transformation, and John Maynard Keynes-- Woolf's fellow Bloomsbury intellectual--was its chief architect. Each novel represents this national transformation through an individual consciousness struggling to transcend the passage of time. They seek, through the exploration of nationalism, to unify consciousness and history against the fragmentation of modernity. Several recent critical studies have focused on the literary representations of British nationalism during the transformative moments of the 1920s and 1930s. One prominent 1 2 example is Jed Esty's A Shrinking Island. Because of the imperial contraction begun in 1930, the "potential energy" released results in the reformation of a particularly English national culture (8). Importantly, Esty recognizes that the imperial contraction influenced John Maynard Keynes's development of an interventionist model of state capitalism (174). Esty's work considers the thirty year period between 1930-1960 to be Britain's "late imperialist" stage. The development of a particularly "late" modernism is the focus of Tyrus Miller's Late Modernism. Miller reads the work of Wyndham Lewis, Djuna Barnes, Samuel Beckett, and Mina Loy as composing a late modernist avant garde. Lewis's declaration in Blasting and Bombardiering that he had "disinterred himself" in 1926 provides the starting point for this fundamental change in artistic expression (27), and Lewis attributes this change to the General Strike, the proto- or pseudo-revolutionary moment in British national consciousness. Miller's study covers