Muse of empire?
Subtitle: classical education, the classical tradition and British attitudes to empire, 1757--1902.
Published: 2005
Language: eng
Number of pages: 435
Description: The study begins by reassessing the intellectual and cultural significance of classical education. Contrary to the balance of scholarly opinion,  Muse of Empire argues that classical education made classical antiquity a vital point of identification, a source of caveats and exemplars, and an interpretive framework for Britain's elites.Inspired by the omnipresence of classical references in British discourse on empire and the neglect of this phenomenon in the historiography of the British Empire, Muse of Empire assesses the contribution made to British imperial thought by classical education and the classical tradition between 1757 and 1902. It is thus firmly in the tradition of scholarship stressing the importance of cultural and intellectual elements in the study of imperialism. However, Muse of Empire makes no claim that the classical tradition was the source of British imperialism or even the most important contributor to British understandings of empire. It simply argues that these inseparable and mutually supporting cultural phenomena made a significant contribution to the way Britain's educated elites conceived of empire, of themselves as an imperial people, and of 'subject peoples' they encountered.The connections between these elements of the classical tradition and British conceptions of empire come to the fore when the study turns to 'imperial discourse'---that is writing and thinking about empire. An analysis of the direct and indirect references to antiquity in a wide-range of primary documents focused on empire highlights how the classical tradition was both the source of and a support for four prominent elements in British conceptions of empire: Imperial identity, the civilizing mission, the narrative of decline and fall, and the occident-orient dichotomy.From this point, the study identifies those elements of the classical tradition bearing on British conceptions of empire. A survey of literary representations of classical antiquity from the mid-18th through the early 20th century reveals a nexus of powerful imperial concepts. Particularly prominent are the magnificence of empire, the civilizing mission, empire as the destiny of history's great peoples, the dangers of corruption, decline, and fall, and the difference between European and 'Asiatic' civilization.
Notes: Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Toronto, 2005.

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Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 66-06, Section: A, page: 2352.