《The English National Character》是Yale University Press出版的圖書，作者是Peter Mandler
基本介紹
- ISBN：9780300120523
- 作者：Peter Mandler
- 出版社：Yale University Press
- 出版時間：2007年3月13日
- 頁數：360
- 定價：USD 65.00
- 裝幀：Hardcover
內容簡介
What kind of people are 'the English' - what are the characteristic traits and behaviour that distinguish them from other people? This highly original and wide-ranging book traces the surprisingly varied history of ideas amongst the English about their own 'national character' over the past two centuries. In Edmund Burke's time, 200 years ago, the very idea of a 'national chara...(展開全部) What kind of people are 'the English' - what are the characteristic traits and behaviour that distinguish them from other people? This highly original and wide-ranging book traces the surprisingly varied history of ideas amongst the English about their own 'national character' over the past two centuries. In Edmund Burke's time, 200 years ago, the very idea of a 'national character' was novel and not very respectable - what could a duke and a dustman have in common? In our own time, when we like to think of ourselves as unique individuals, it's hard again to think of a 'national character' that binds us into a national unit. But in between, as Britain became a democracy, 'national character' became part of the national common sense, in depictions of John Bull and his twentieth-century successor, the 'Little Man', and in a set of stereotypes about English traits, follies and foibles. Throughout, this idea of an English national character has always had to struggle against snobbery, wider identities based on Britain, the United Kingdom or the Empire, and above all the jostle of rival ideas about what made the English truly English - are they blunt and candid, or reticent and polite? Are they family-loving and sentimental, or pragmatic and cold-hearted, sending their children off to boarding schools at a tender age? Are they globe-trotting and enterprising, or insular and over-civilized? Do they pattern themselves after the 'gentleman' or are they locked in class struggle? As these contrasts suggest, far from being shy of talking about themselves, the English have pro
