Empire of culture : neo-Victorian narratives in the global creative economy /
Empire of Culture brings together contemporary representations of Victorian Britain to reveal how the nation's imperial past inheres in the ways post-imperial subjects commodify and consume "culture" in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The globalization of English...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Albany :
State University of New York Press,
[2024].
|
| Series: | SUNY series, studies in the long nineteenth century.
|
| Subjects: |
| Summary: | Empire of Culture brings together contemporary representations of Victorian Britain to reveal how the nation's imperial past inheres in the ways post-imperial subjects commodify and consume "culture" in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The globalization of English literature, along with British forms of dress, etiquette and dining, in the nineteenth century presumed and produced the idea that British culture is a universal standard to which everyone should aspire. Examining neo-Victorian texts and practices from Britain, the United States, Japan and Singapore, from A. S. Byatt's novel Possession and its Hollywood film adaptation to Japanese Lolita fashion and the Lady Victorian manga series, Waiyee Loh argues that the British heritage industry thrives on the persistence of this idea. Yet this industry also competes and collaborates with the United States and Japanese cultural industries, as they, too, engage with the legacy of British universalism to carve out their own empires in a global creative economy. Unique in its scope, Empire of Culture centers Britain's engagements with the United States and east Asia to illuminate fresh axes of influence and appropriation, and further bring Victorian studies into contact with various sites of literary and cultural fandom. |
|---|---|
| Physical Description: | xv, 204 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9781438498270 1438498276 |