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Abstract
The paper explores forms and functions of the rhetoric of national character in 18th-century British literature. British writers mobilised the rhetoric of national character not only to define themselves collectively against others, but also to influence political controversies at home; in particular the class- and gender-based struggle for political rights in the emerging British nation. To analyse the forms and functions of images of national character, this paper develops a framework for a cultural and historical imagology. This framework integrates a social constructivist view of national character and national identity with discursive, rhetorical, and cultural approaches to literature. Emphasis is placed on the role that narrative devices and intermedial strategies play for constructions of national character. It is concluded that ‘national character’ not only consists of the attributes typically predicated to a specific nation; rather it is also a formal and even aesthetic construct, which relies on processes of intermedial translation.
Notes
Of course, Hume's essay is less about national character as such than the peculiarities of English character. Arguing that the English Government, in contrast to, e.g., the monarchies of France and Spain, ‘is a Mixture of Monarchy, Aristocracy and Democracy’ and that the people therefore enjoy ‘the great Liberty and Independency’, he concludes: ‘Hence the English, of any People in the Universe, have the least of a national Character; unless this very Singularity be made their national Character’ (1748: 278f.). The powerful cultural myth of English singularity becomes a recurrent element of the rhetoric of national character, which is recurrently mobilized by male writers of the middle class to bolster their claims to political virtue.