Major, E.J. (2005) Femininity and national identity: Elizabeth Montagu's trip to France. English Literary History, 72 (4). pp. 901-918. ISSN 0013-8304
Abstract
In November 1776, Elizabeth Montagu, author and literary hostess, wrote from France to her friend the Scottish poet and scholar James Beattie:
If I have reaped any better advantage from my excursion it is a stronger sense of the felicity of living under a free Government & Religion rational & pure. The principles which most elevate and enoble the human character are piety and patriotism, these can never exist in their genuine state in a Land of slavery & Superstition.1
Here, Montagu speaks of the "felicity of living under a free Government" that she shares with Beattie as a Protestant Briton: a powerful shared identity, yet one which was under constant debate during the eighteenth century. As historians such as Linda Colley and Kathleen Wilson have argued, the definition of a Briton was often a contingent and volatile question, shaped by religion, class, and region.2 Montagu's imagined community of letter-writers—which included many Scottish Enlightenment philosophers, and extended well beyond its core of London authors, clergymen, politicians, and society figures—forms a version of polite Britain, self-consciously literary, religious, and patriotic.3
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of York |
Academic Units: | The University of York > Faculty of Arts and Humanities (York) > English and Related Literature (York) |
Depositing User: | York RAE Import |
Date Deposited: | 24 Jul 2009 14:08 |
Last Modified: | 24 Jul 2009 14:08 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | The Johns Hopkins University Press |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:6085 |