Conclusion: Fabricating Englishness

Abstract

The nineteenth century’s preoccupation with the meaning of Englishness began with the origin of the term in 1804. By 1884, the third and final recorded nineteenth-century use of the term cited in the Oxford English Dictionary reveals a rich set of established meanings and ideologies. In the intervening decades — surveyed in this Conclusion — an ideology of Englishness had been established which was both reflected in and shaped by cultural forms and emerging myths in general and Tennyson’s poetry in particular. Historians and critics who continue to debate the nature and history of Englishness, past and present, discern in the nineteenth century defining ‘moment[s] of Englishness’¹ when national identity was shaped by crisis or change. The Reform Acts of 1832, 1867 and 1884 defined inclusion and exclusion for the nation. The turbulent period of the First Reform Act was a particular defining moment for England — and for Tennyson. Movements for reform and the abolition of slavery led to increasing interest in national character and awareness of the Empire’s Others. Tennyson’s first independent volumes — Poems, Chiefly Lyrical (1830) and Poems (1832) — were published and reviewed by periodical critics. Concerned for the unifying and ‘sympathetic’ nature of poetry, and for the poetic succession, reviewers attempted to shape Tennyson’s language and define his national role.