The Road to Brexit: A cultural perspective on British attitudes to Europe

Description

This collection explores British attitudes to Continental Europe that explain the Brexit decision. Addressing British-European entanglements and the impact of British Euroscepticism, the book argues that Britain is in denial about the strength of its ties to Europe. The volume brings together literary and cultural studies, history, and political science in an integrated analysis of views and practices that shape cultural memory. Part one traces the historical and political relationship between Britain and Europe, whilst Part two is devoted to exemplary case studies of films as well as popular Eurosceptic and historical fiction. Part three engages with border mindedness and Britain’s island story. The book is addressed both to specialists in cultural studies, and a wider audience interested in Brexit. Dedication Contents Figures and table Contributors Acknowledgements Introduction: Understanding the past, facing the future Part I Britain and Europe: political entanglements Not with a bang but a whimper: Brexit in historical perspective ‘This is something which we know, in our bones, we cannot do’: hopes and fears for a united Europe in Britain after the ... EU enlargement and the freedom of movement: imagined communities in the Conservative Party’s discourse on Europe ... The discursive role of Europe in a disunited kingdom Part II British discourses of Europe in literature and film ‘Extr’ord’nary people, the Germans’: Germans as aliens in post-war British popular culture ‘I don’t want to be a European’: the European Other in British cultural discourse The dystopian nightmare of a European superstate: British fiction and the EU A case for a Green Brexit? Paul Kingsnorth, John Berger and the pros and cons of a sense of place Brexit and the Tudor turn: Philippa Gregory’s narratives of national grievance Part III Negotiating borders in British travel writing and memoir Guards of Brexit? Revisiting the cultural significance of the white cliffs of Dover From Iron Curtains to Iron Cliffs: British travel writing between East and West Fifty years of Unbelonging: a Gibraltarian writer’s personal testimonial on the road to Brexit Index