Reclaiming William Morris
Subtitle: Englishness, sublimity, and the rhetoric of dissent
By: Michelle Weinroth.
Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
Published: 1996
Place of publication: Montreal; Buffalo
Language: eng
Number of pages: 302
Subjects: Morris, William, 1834-1896 -- Influence.; Arnot, Robert Page, 1890-; Communism -- Great Britain -- History -- 20th century.; Socialism -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century.; National characteristics, English.; Dissenters -- Great Britain.; Sublime, The.
Description: Casting new light on the relations between nationalism, rhetoric, and revolution, Michelle Weinroth shows how the English legacy of William Morris was appropriated in the interests of political forces seeking hegemonic power. She argues that Conservative claimants readily disseminated Morris's aesthetic oeuvre, declaring it to be the embodiment of English sensibility. Communists, however, struggled to retain Morris's Englishness while promoting his political doctrine.

Weinroth demonstrates that these peripheral ideologues were caught in a paradox: they could not grip the masses without the aesthetic appeal of Englishness, but Englishness was imbued with the very imperialism that they abhorred. Theirs was a propaganda strained by the conflict between political dissent and ruling-class cultural forms.

. Moving through theoretical, historical, and exegetical analyses of propagandist texts, Reclaiming William Morris brings out the aesthetic underpinnings of nationalist ideology. Combining the philosophical substance of Karl Marx, Georg Lukacs, Antonio Gramsci, and Ernst Bloch with Kantian aesthetics, Weinroth constructs a conceptual apparatus that explains the impassioned yet decidedly marginal rhetoric of early twentieth-century English communism.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [277]-296) and index.