Foundation IX

Volume IX

2017

FOUNDATION Edited and Compiled by Members of St Chad’s College

Editor in Chief: Dominic Birch

No. 1

For copyright and usage information please contact the editorial board via the principal of the college: Margaret Masson St Chad’s College 18 North Bailey Durham DH1 3RH

ISSN 1752-0398 ii

Contents Two Poems Anne Stevenson

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‘True sightness of seeing’: Metaphor and Metamorphosis in the Poetry of Anne Stevenson 4 Eleanor Spencer-Regan Robin Hood and the Real Gangs of the Late Middle Ages 25 Helen Lamport The Nostalgia of Christmas Worship Lucinda Murphy

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“Boys don’t do ballet”: constructing and rejecting gender in Early Years play 59 Jess Frieze ‘A Blighted Star’: Hardy, Shakespeare and The Pursuit of Poetic Justice 75 Katy Handley D´ eja vu in Gustave Flaubert’s travel narrative to the Orient 89 Sarah Budasz iii

Voluntarism, Englishness and British Culture Abdulla Omaigan

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The Sons of the Hadramawt: Understanding al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula from a Social Movement Theory Approach 108 Owen Stenner-Matthews The Scottish National Party’s Vacillating Position on Europe 127 Frederik Seidelin

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Contributors Eleanor Spencer-Regan is the Vice-Principal and Senior Tutor of St Chad’s College and Digital Director of the Durham University Centre for Poetry and Poetics. She was a Frank Knox Memorial Fellow in the Department of English at Harvard University in 2011-12. Her publications include American Poetry since 1945 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), and essays in Kathleen Jamie: Essays and Poems on Her Work (Edinburgh University Press, 2014), A Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Poetry 1960-2010 (Wiley Blackwell, forthcoming), and Sylvia Plath in Context (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).

Helen Lamport I am a second year History student at Chads. My essay is about the Robin Hood ballads. The relationship between Robin Hood and popular culture was interesting to me, as the heroic criminal is still celebrated today, hundreds of years later. As well as writing essays for my degree, I have also had the role of secretary of the History Society, which has involved organising a wide range of interesting talks on historical topics. I also study Chinese, as I love to travel and I am fascinated by Asian culture. In Chads, I also like to get involved with team sports, and I play both Squash and Hockey. This summer I am doing an internship in the marketing branch of the Commercial Management team of M&G. Lucinda Murphy Having graduated with my undergraduate degree in Theology from Durham back in 2015, I have been absolutely delighted to have returned to Durham (and of course to St. Chads!) this year to embark on my PhD, after a brief chapter at Heythrop College in London where I completed my Masters in Psychology of Religion. I am now working back in the Department of Theology of Religion from a more anthropological perspective, with Professor Douglas Davies. My PhD focuses on British Christmas traditions, especially in relation to ‘Christmas spirit’. I am particularly interested in the interaction between memory and emotion.

Jess Frieze I am a second year Education Studies and English student at St Chads College. My research interests are focused around diversity and liberation within education, particularly in relation to children’s literature and film, and constructions of gender in children’s lives. I have written about gender and children’s toys, constructing the working class in Disney media and the educational impact of the Harry

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Potter series. I am active in student politics and highlighting welfare and liberation issues at Durham.

Katy Handley is a third year English student, who hopes to pursue a career in law and will study Law BA with Senior Status at Cambridge University, beginning this September. She is particularly interested in victorian and classical Greco-Roman literary trends, and how legal concepts influence fictional works more generally. Her dissertation this year concentrated on the themes of this article, with the aim of evidencing Thomas Hardy’s recognition that true justice should be attentive and receptive to all individuals in society.

Sarah Budasz is a first year PhD student in French literature. Her thesis focusses on the reception of Classical antiquity in 19th Century French travel narratives to the Orient. Her main research interests include the literary expressions of cultural identities, intellectual history, postcolonial studies and Gustave Flaubert.

Abdulla Omaigan is a second year undergraduate student in Education Studies and Philosophy. He is interested in the themes of identity and culture, specifically how they might give rise to certain issues between individuals from conflicting nations.

Owen Stenner-Matthews graduated with distinction from Durham Global Security Institute’s Defence, Development and Diplomacy MSc programme. Previously educated at the University of Warwick and Bogazici University in Istanbul, Owen currently works for Drum Cussac, a security and intelligence consultancy. His primary research interests lie in asymmetric conflict, particularly in the Middle and Far East.

Frederik Seidelin is a Chad’s alumnus (2014-16) and has just finished his MA thesis on the separatist rhetorics of the Scottish National Party at the University of Copenhagen. His research interests include the relationship between populism and pluralist democracy in Europe, British and Scottish nationalisms, and the political and social legacies of empire in Britain.

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Foreword I love this issue of Foundation! It exemplifies so much of what I love about this College. Here we have nine articles submitted by nine members of St Chad’s—one is a member of staff, one is a member of the senior common room, three are postgraduate students and four are undergraduates. That academic and intellectual thinking of this calibre is going on throughout the College is impressive, the range of areas of expertise displayed here a delight—from Eleanor Spencer-Regan’s subtle engagement with the poetry of Anne Stevenson, one of our greatest living poets (who also happens to be a College Fellow), through Lucinda Murphy’s fascinating research into the meaning of Christmas nostalgia, to Sarah Budasz on Flaubert’s travels in the Orient.

In a lovely serendipity, it is pleasing to see a few key Chad’s values being explored in a variety of ways here. So, we have justice in Helen Lamport’s reading of the Robin Hood ballads as contemporary critiques of justice in the later middle ages and in Katy Handley’s assured piece on the pursuit of poetic justice in Hardy and Shakespeare; themes of inclusion and diversity in Jess Frieze’s article on gender construction in early childhood and Abdulla Omaigan’s exploration of voluntarism and British identity; a new paradigm from Owen Stenner-Matthews to help us understand the motivation and meaning of Al-Qaeda in the Yemen— and beauty and curiosity threaded thematically and stylistically through them all.

This, then, offers us a taster or a reminder of the intellectually alive multi-disciplinary community that is St Chad’s College.

Enjoy!

Margaret Masson Principal St Chad’s College May 2017

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Preface I am delighted to present the fourth volume of St Chad’s College Foundation journal. We had some really excellent submissions this year, from all three common rooms and Anne Stevenson has given permission for two of her poems to be published here. It really is a great year for Foundation. Chad’s continues to be a place of learning, and it’s heartening to see such a diverse set of essays. 2016 may well go down as one of the worst years in western history—and it has certainly been a difficult year for everyone who believes in science, expertise and intellectual curiosity. As a college we’ve had a lot of conversations about the events of the past year and what has stood out is our commitment to liberal, intellectual values. This means encouraging people to think deeply about the world around them, and endeavouring—together—to become more curious and thoughtful citizens. I hope that Foundation will remain part of this effort, showcasing the intellectual talent of our community.

I’d like to thank everyone who made this possible. Curtis Runstedler, the outgoing academic affairs officer for all his guidance throughout the year. Oliver Burnham for encouraging me to switch to LaTeX. Elizabeth Hoyt for being the shining star of the MCR. All of senior management for their help and support in making this journal happen. And, finally, the contributors themselves, whose work I hope to see gracing the pages of The New Yorker some time in the future.

Dom Birch April 2017

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Binoculars in Ardudwy (North Wales, 1990) A lean season, March, for ewes who all winter camped on the hills.

They’re gathered in now to give birth to children more cheerful than themselves.

There’s a farmer, Land Rover, black dog trotting, now rolling on his back.

At the gate, sheep bunched—one alone drifting down the steep Cambrian track.

Look now, the sun’s reached out, painting turf over ice-smoothed stone.

A green much younger than that praises Twll-nant and Pen-isa’r-cwm.

All this through the lens of a noose I hold to my focusing eyes, hauling hill, yard, barn, man, house and a line of blown washing across a mile of diluvian marsh.

I see every reed, rust-copper, and a fattened S-bend of the river.

Then, just as I frame it, the farm wraps its windows in lichenous weather and buries itself in it tongue.

Not my eyes but my language is wrong.

And the cloud is between us forever.

Under cover of mist and myth the pierced fields whisper together, ‘Find invisibile Maes-y-garnedd. . . , Y Llethr. . . Foel Ddu. . . Foel Wen.’ 1

If I Could Paint Essences (Hay on Wye)

Another day in March. Late rawness and wetness. I hear my mind say, if only I could paint essences.

Such as the mudness of mud on this rainsoaked dyke where coltsfoot displays its yellow misleading daisy.

Such as the wetness of west here in England’s last thatched, rivered county. Red ploughland. Green pasture.

Black cattle. Quick water. Overpainted by lightshafts from layered gold and purple cumulus. A cloudness of clouds which are not like anything but clouds.

But just as I arrive at true sightness of seeing, unexpectedly I want to play on those bell-toned cellos of delicate not-quite-flowering larches that offer, on the opposite hill, their unfurled amber instruments—floating, insubstantial, a rising of horizon of music embodied in light.

And in such imagining I lose sight of sight.

Just as I’ll lose the tune of what hurls in my head, as I turn back, turn home to you, conversation, the inescapable ache of trying to catch, say, the catness of cat as he crouches, stalking his shadow, 2

on the other side of the window.

Anne Stevenson1

1 ‘Binoculars

in Ardudwy’ and ‘If I Could Paint Essences’ are reproduced by kind permission of Anne Stevenson and Bloodaxe Books.

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‘True sightness of seeing’: Metaphor and Metamorphosis in the Poetry of Anne Stevenson Dr. Eleanor Spencer-Regan hatever Anne Stevenson’s poems are ostensibly ‘about’— W whatever experience, landscape, fleeting thought, or sudden realization they take as their stimulus, subject, or occasion—they are always, on one level, ‘about’ language.

Throughout her career, Stevenson’s poetry has demonstrated a powerful concern with the complex relationship between reality and linguistic representations thereof. Stevenson is a poet who, even as she delights in the potential of words to express, enact, excite, and enliven, is acutely aware of the limitations of language.

Such an awareness is, she suggests, essential for the poet, and she disdains the complacency of those poets, the ‘Men of Letters’, who exclaim, ‘How lucky we are / to have a room in language.’1 As Stevenson’s poetry reveals again and again, this room is but a temporary lodging, a cramped ‘hotel’ room that offers little more than fleeting respite to the world-weary (or word-weary) traveler.

This article will focus on several poems which, explicitly or obliquely, concern themselves with the complex relationship between our experience of the material world and the language in which we apprehend and articulate that experience. Whilst Stevenson is clearly no Language poet (or L = A = N = G = U = A = G = E poet, after that magazine of that name), it will be shown that she is a poet frequently, yet unassumingly, working at the 1 Anne

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Stevenson. Poems 1955–2005. Tarset: Bloodaxe, 2005.

very limits of language, seeking out those frontiers, both physical and psychological, at which words fail us, or are found wanting.

Stevenson’s work enthusiastically reprises persistent questions and concerns about the adequacy and inadequacy of language that we recognise from the work of earlier poets from Shakespeare and the Romantics to Wallace Stevens and Robert Graves.

Stevenson is keen to dispel the belief that the poet possesses preternatural linguistic powers or proficiency. Recognizing that ‘we generally think of writers as artists lucky enough to have exceptional facility with language,’ she states, ‘I lay no claim to extraordinary gifts.’2 Stevenson stresses the arduous nature of a poet’s dealings with language. She takes issue with John Keats’ pronouncement that ‘if Poetry comes not as naturally as leaves to a tree it had better not come at all’, in its implication that the capture of experience in language is an undemanding or spontaneous process: ‘despite the temptations of metaphor’, she cautions, ‘there is really nothing organic about poetry.’3 In both her poetry and her prose, she suggests that to be a poet is to be a ‘maker’: a craftsperson or artisan, whose raw material is words.

Words are figured as tangible physical objects, and Stevenson suggests that the poet must learn how to ‘handle’ them just as a blacksmith must learn how to temper metal, or a carpenter how to carve wood. In the 1994 essay ‘A Chev’ril Glove’, she writes: Think what a magpie Shakespeare was, picking up scraps and tatters of useable language from street and tavern, court and countryside, lawbooks and chronicle.

His little Latin and less Greek were inessential items discarded from a huge working stock of English with which he furnished and embellished a mental studio 2 Anne Stevenson. Between the iceberg and the ship: selected essays. Ann Arbor. University of Michigan Press, 1998, pp. 66, 131.

3 John Keats. Selected Letters. Ed. by R. Gittings and J. Mee. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 66; E-mail interview with Author. 19 September 2002.

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of inconceivable proportions. I like to think of Shakespeare, of poets in general, inhabiting a world like a warehouse, a factory floor full of molten language and malleable forms[.]4 Similarly, Stevenson suggests that from Elizabeth Bishop she learned ‘not how to write poetry, but how to handle the material laid out on the workshop floor’.5 Indeed, in an unpublished essay, ‘What is Happening to Poetry’, she writes (borrowing a phrase from K.H. Jackson), ‘contemporary Welsh and Irish poets still pride themselves on practicing “the carpentry of poetry” passing it on to their ephebes as they received it from their ancestors. Oh, that some of that skill in carpentry were passed on, too, through our English and American creative-writing establishments!’6 This ‘making’ is itself the subject of numerous poems, but even poems that are not explicitly ‘about’ the poetic process never allow us to forget that they are art objects painstakingly crafted out of words.

Elaborating on T.S. Eliot’s reference to the poet’s ‘intolerable wrestle with words and meanings’, Stevenson offers her own rather more domestic analogy for this protracted process: Think of any language as a single sheet you are trying to fit on a big double bed. You no sooner cover one corner than the one opposite is laid bare. You manage to tuck it in at the top, but the bottom remains exposed. There is no way the language-sheet is going to cover the whole bed!7 Though language is a spare single sheet that will not cover the vast double bed of human (and non-human) experience, it is all that even the most accomplished poet has to work with: a Wordsworth 4 Stevenson,

Between the iceberg and the ship: selected essays, p. 123. p. 124.

6 Anne Stevenson. “What is Happening to Poetry?” Unpublished Essay, Author’s Personal Papers.

7 Stevenson, Between the iceberg and the ship: selected essays, p. 175.

5 Ibid.,

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or a Wallace Stevens has only the same size sheet as everyone else, she suggests, though they may be rather more inventive in their use of it. In the absence of ‘extraordinary gifts’, the poet must instead possess an uncommon acquaintance with, and awareness of, words: ‘Writing poetry’, she suggests, ‘is inseparable from a poet’s unconscious at homeness with the sounds, inflections, pitches, and textures of a language. The pulse of its rhythms, the different weight and lengths of its vowels—these have to accumulate in a poet’s consciousness without his knowing how.’8 It is perhaps the blessing and the burden of the poet that they are never free from this desire to engage with the world through language, even when that world seems powerfully to resist their efforts. As such, many of Stevenson’s poems take as their inspiration or their occasion a failure, as the poet makes poetic capital out of what she perceives as the falling-short of her own linguistic powers. In ‘Binoculars in Ardudwy’ (1993), one of the ‘Poems from Cwn Nantcol’, we find a speaker attempting to capture a rural scene in North Wales through both the lens of her binoculars and through language. In the second stanza, the speaker uses words in the most straightforward way, to plainly point, in realtime no less, to material objects: ‘There’s a farmer, Land Rover, black dog / trotting, now rolling on his back.’9 In the third stanza, though, the language takes a seemingly inevitable figurative turn, as she urges, ‘Look now, the sun’s reached out / painting turf over ice-smoothed stone.’ She figures her binoculars as ‘a noose / I hold to my focusing eyes’, the word ‘noose’ recalling the tightening ‘net’ of language in ‘The Way You Say the World’. Her binoculars give the speaker an illusion of closeness whilst actually acting as a barrier between her ‘focusing eyes’ and the natural landscape. Likewise, language affords us a feeling of proximity to, or control over, the material world around us, all the while significantly mediating our every experience of that world. Just as the 8 Ibid.,

p. 109.

Poems 1955–2005, p. 71.

9 Stevenson,

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lenses of the binoculars allow the speaker to, albeit momentarily, neatly ‘focus’ and ‘frame’ the view, words allow us to carefully demarcate, and classify our experiences and ideas. The magnifying lens of the binoculars hauls the view ‘across // a mile of diluvian marsh’, the stanza break indicating the true distance between the speaker and the objects of her gaze. The word ‘hauling’ together with the image of the noose suggests that a kind of violence is being committed on the landscape. The scene ultimately proves resistant, even actively so, to her attentions: Then, just as I frame it, the farm wraps its windows in lichenous weather and buries itself in its tongue.

The speaker assumes that ‘Not my eyes but my language is wrong, / And the cloud is between us forever.’

She suggests that a speaker of the English ‘language’ cannot truly belong in this Welsh landscape, where the very fields whisper in impenetrable Welsh ‘language’: Under cover of mist and myth the pieced fields whisper together, ‘Find invisible Maes-y-garnedd. . . , Y Llethr. . . Foel Ddu. . . Foel Wen.’ In a 1996 interview, the poet writes, ‘Living as we do among Welsh-speaking neighbors in Cwm Nantcol, my husband and I naturally feel ourselves to be foreigners.’10 As Sean Pryor notes, though, ‘the fields speak English too: theirs is an English sentence which incorporates Welsh place names. Even in this personification of the fields there is a fault then. . . The fields whisper these things in English only because they whisper to the speaker.’11 This poem, then, is about a far more fundamental foreignness than that of an English-speaker in Welsh-speaking North Wales. It is not only English that is ‘wrong’ in this landscape, but any language, 10 Stevenson,

Between the iceberg and the ship: selected essays, p. 178.

Leighton, ed. Voyages over Voices: Critical Essays on Anne Stevenson. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2010, p. 146.

11 A.

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all language. As the poet plainly states in a review of Jonathan Bate’s Song of the Earth, ‘Nature doesn’t talk; we do.’12 The natural world, as Stevenson insists in other poems, is ‘speechless’: the farm does not have a ‘tongue’ and fields do not whisper in either Welsh or English. It is this that ultimately separates the speaker from her surroundings: she is a linguistic creature in a non-linguistic environment.

To suggest, as does the speaker, that a particular language is ‘wrong’ is to imply, deliberately or otherwise, that there is a ‘right’ language. Yet, Stevenson refutes this idea in a 1995 essay, where she writes, ‘for a writer to claim that he can free himself of “wrong” language by creating a new “right” one through the intensity of his imagination—as Wallace Stevens in his charming way , seems to have done—suggests that he is indulging in too hopeful an illusion.’13 Stevens’ ‘too hopeful’ desire for a new language is not without precedent, though. In the early nineteenth century, Jeremy Bentham’s scathing attack on not only the abuse, but also the inherent inadequacy, of language precipitated a crisis of confidence for the Romantic poets. Language, according to Bentham, ‘is a pernicious instrument because it accredits real existence to “fictions”. It allows its speaker to assert propositions which cannot be validated because they refer to nothing outside themselves.’14 Richard Cronin suggests that the Romantic poets internalized Bentham’s idea of language as untruth, and that ‘it is apparent in Byron when he writes: “I hate things all fiction. . . and pure invention is but the talent of a liar’.15 Furthermore, Bentham suggests that language is part of the arsenal of the established conservative status-quo, an idea that we see in Shelley’s Oedipus Tyrannus (1820), in the ‘emperors, kings, and priests and lords / 12 Anne Stevenson. “Review: Song of the Earth, Jonathan Bate”. CUL MS Add. 9451 (Criticism) Word-processed draft, p. 2.

13 Stevenson, Between the iceberg and the ship: selected essays, p. 170.

14 Richard Cronin. “Shelley’s Language of Dissent”. In: Essays in Criticism XXVII.3 (1977), p. 205.

15 Ibid.

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Who rule by viziers, scepters, bank-notes, words. . . ’.16 The Romantic poets, then, faced an almost paralyzing dilemma: ‘How is it possible for the radical poet to evade the conservative force of language while remaining a poet?’17 Bentham’s proposed solution was conceptually simple, but practicably impossible: nothing less than the construction of a new language ‘free from the defects of ordinary English’.18 Despite the unworkability of Bentham’s solution, Shelley seized on it with some enthusiasm. In The Revolt of Islam (1818), for example, the establishment of Cyntha’s new and incorruptible moral system depends on the implementation of a new linguistic system: ‘And in the sand I would make signs to range / These woofs, as they were woven, of my thought; / Clear, elemented shapes, whose smallest change / A subtler language within language wrought.’19 Similarly, in ‘Ode to Liberty’ (1820), the poet voices his longing for a renovation and renewal of language whereby ‘words that make the thoughts obscure / From which they spring, as clouds of glimmering dew / From a white lake blot Heaven’s blue portraiture’ will be ‘stripped of their thin masks and various hue / And frowns and smiles and splendours not their own’.20 Shelley envisages a return to Adamic purity, each word cleansed of its dulling accretions. Cronin suggests, though, that ‘his use of a fanciful myth suggests that Shelley regards this notion as no more than an idle dream.’21 Eden cannot be reclaimed, and nor can pristine language.

Shelley’s and Stevens’ ‘dream’ is one from which Stevenson herself is not immune. In the 1979 essay, ‘Writing as a Woman’, Stevenson disputes Adrienne Rich’s claim that women ‘must find . . . a language of our own to express “a whole new psychic ge16 P. B. Shelley. The complete works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Ed. by R. Ingpen and W. E. Peck. v. 2. Gordian Press, 1965, p. 345.

17 Cronin, “Shelley’s Language of Dissent”, p. 207.

18 Ibid.

19 Shelley, The complete works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, p. 353.

20 Ibid., p. 313.

21 Cronin, “Shelley’s Language of Dissent”, p. 208.

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ography” of female emotion’, writing, ‘I am not convinced that women need a specifically female language to describe female experience. . . For even if we could agree that women have a less aggressive, more instinctive, more “creative” nature than men (and I’m not sure that’s true) language is difficult to divide into sexes.’22 Despite her skepticism towards Rich’s notion of a ‘specifically female language’, though, she admits to sharing her desire for a new mode: A flight of fancy prompts me to imagine a women’s language that appoints itself guardian of the traditional beauties of English as opposed to the speed-read efficiencies of American. Imagine a woman’s language that preserves the dignity of the King James Bible and the Prayer Book, which forbids the use of technological jargon in any work of literature not intended for the laboratory or classroom.23 She sadly concludes, ‘But such a dream is, of course, impossible.’

Later, in the short poem, ‘And even then,’ (1990), Stevenson appears to reconsider the possibility of a new (though not explicitly female) language. The speaker briefly entertains the possibility of an Adamic new language, richer, subtler, and more conducive to the poet’s task, ‘a language in which / memory would be called “letting in the sorrow”’, and ‘poetry / “translating the dreams”.’24 The reader is left uncertain as to whether this new language is a ‘too hopeful illusion’ or a genuine possibility. The speaker initially suggests, ‘There may be a language in which / memory will be called “letting in the sorrow”’. The conditional ‘may’ then strengthens into a definite ‘will’ that suggests not possibility, but certainty. In the next line, though, ‘will’ has become ‘would’, as that certainty fades to become purely hypothetical. As in the 22 Stevenson,

Between the iceberg and the ship: selected essays, p. 19. p. 20.

24 Stevenson, Poems 1955–2005, p. 270.

23 Ibid.,

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1979 essay, the alluring idea of a new language has been wistfully rejected.

‘If I Could Paint Essences’ (1982), like ‘Binoculars in Ardudwy’, speaks of an apparent failure, of both language itself and of the speaker’s ability to master it. This poem identifies a powerful tension between two modes of linguistic expression, the literal and the metaphorical. Aristotle identifies an aptitude for metaphor as the hallmark of the true poet: ‘But the greatest thing by far is to have a command of metaphor. This alone cannot be imparted by another; it is the mark of genius, for to make good metaphors implies an eye for resemblance.’25 Metaphorical expression, however, is by no means the preserve of poets. Stevenson writes that these ‘figures of speech are not only the stuff of poetry; they are built right into our language. They are part of the mechanism through which we work with words to make words work for us.’26 Indeed, Victor M. Hamm suggests that ‘metaphor is at the very heart of language, for every language is, as has often been remarked, an unconscious tissue of petrified metaphors.’27 Though Aristotle’s pronouncement perhaps suggests that the poet enjoys a straightforward relationship with his or her ‘command of metaphor’, several of Stevenson’s poems reveal her uneasy, acutely self-conscious relationship with her own ‘eye for resemblance.’ In ‘Constable Clouds and a Kestrel’s Feather’ (2012), the creation of metaphors is at first associated with the innocent imaginative freedoms of childhood: As a child did you never play the cloud-zoo game on summer days like these? Lie prone on the grass, stalk in your mouth, face to the sun, to let imagination run wild in a sky full of camels and whales where the air 25 Aristotle. Poetics. Ed. by D. W. Lucas. Oxford: Clarendon, 1968, p. 212.

26 Leighton, Voyages over Voices: Critical Essays on Anne Stevenson, p. 14.

27 V. M. Hamm. Language, truth, and poetry. Marquette University Press, 1960, p. 62.

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show today features fish evolving into crocodiles disintegrating slowly into little puffs of sheep grazing on air.28 The shapes seen in the sky suddenly become threatening and altogether more adult: ‘Now a tyrannosaur, chasing a bear. . . / or is it a white bull? Europa on his back, / panicking to disappear.’

The rapt cloud-gazer is clearly no longer a child, but a mature poet with a working knowledge of mythology.

In ‘Cold’ (1993), though the poet initially takes obvious relish in her capacity for creating apt images of a snow-covered roof— A tablecloth slips off noisily pouring heavy laundry into detergent, a basin of virgin textiles, pocked distinctively with crystals. . . . the air lets fall again a lacier Organza snow-veil. Winter bridal The muffled dog fouls briefly—29 The final stanza sees a return to ‘a steadier state’, as ‘Ice / sets in and verifies the snow.’ Despite the speaker’s delight in her imagination’s ability to represent the scene in different ways, the time for elaborate metaphor is over and snow becomes just snow.

In the Stevenson papers held at Cambridge University Library, there are four undated drafts of an unpublished poem titled variously ‘Little Poem Against Metaphor’ and ‘Little Poem Without Metaphor’. What appears to be the final draft reads: These dahlias displaying huge lurid rosettes, not the colours of sin. Cat’s vole with its feet set so neatly together by the compost bin, not praying.30 28 Anne Stevenson. “Constable Cloud and a Kestrel’s Feather”. Wordprocessed draft, Author’s Personal Papers. 2012.

29 Stevenson, Poems 1955–2005, p. 114.

30 Anne Stevenson. “Little Poem Against/Without Metaphor”. CUL MS Add. 9451 (Poems) Four typewritten drafts.

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In the other drafts, the word ‘rosettes’ reads either ‘gynaecia’ or ‘corollae’. Even in the writing of a poem that explicitly declares itself to be ‘against’ or ‘without’ metaphor, the poet cannot help but search for the most fitting and striking image. As in Wallace Stevens’ ‘Study of Two Pears’, here we see an apparently irresistible slide into metaphorical representation within a poem that challenges the authority and adequacy of metaphor in poetry.31 What this poem really seems to be ‘against’, though, is not the poet’s keen ‘eye for resemblance’, but our tendency to anthropologically project on the non-human world around us, to imagine, for instance, that a vole prays.

In ‘If I Could Paint Essences’ the speaker’s self-consciousness is revealed in the very first stanza in the line, ‘I hear my mind say, / if only I could paint essences.’32 She curiously divides herself into a speaking ‘mind’ and a hearing ‘I’, as she simultaneously voices her aspiration and acknowledges its hopelessness. The word ‘essences’ is etymologically derived from the Greek expression, ‘to ti ˆen einai’, translated literally as ’the what it was to be’ (or the shorter phrase, ‘to ti esti’, literally translated as ’the what it is’), and has a number of possible meanings.33 The Oxford English Dictionary variously defines it as ‘a fact. . . or property possessed by something’; a ‘specific. . . manner of existing’; or as ‘the reality underlying phenomena; absolute being.’34 A desire to ‘paint essences’, then, might be the desire to re-present the characteristic aspect or feature of an object (to accurately capture its visual appearance), or, more ambitiously, the desire to capture the noumena hidden within the phenomena: the ‘Ideal Forms’, to use Plato’s phrase, only hinted at by the props of mere ma31 Wallace Stevens. The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964, p. 196.

32 Stevenson, Poems 1955–2005, p. 24.

33 Marc S. Cohen. “Aristotle’s Metaphysics”. In: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philsophy (2000). url: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotlemetaphysics.

34 Oxford English Dictionary. url: www.oed.com/view/Entry/64494.

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terial world. Michael O’Neill suggests that Stevenson’s poem is ‘unimaginable without the practice of poets such as Keats’, whose Endymion seeks ‘A fellowship with essence, till we shine / Full alchemized and free of space.’35 What Stevenson’s speaker yearns for, though, is surely the very opposite of what Keats’ speaker seeks. Endymion wishes to transcend the merely physical in order to be united with ‘essence’, to himself become immaterial and ‘free of space’. Stevenson’s speaker, on the other hand, wishes to give the ‘essences’ she perceives material substance, to make them visible and, therefore, paintable. The impossibility of capturing any higher reality in her art is suggested in the juxtaposition of the words: to paint is to make visible, to give shape, colour, and texture, whereas an ‘essence’ is invisible, formless, immaterial. To ‘paint essences’, then, would be to make the invisible visible, to give form to the formless, yet any attempted re-production or representation would inevitably be inadequate, a poor shadow of a shadow of the ‘Ideal Form’. Indeed, O’Neill suggests that ‘the lovely appeal of painting essences lies precisely in its very Romantic impossibility.’36 As in ‘Binoculars in Ardudwy’, the speaker first attempts to remain utterly faithful to the scene before her through her use of literal language, dutifully naming and recording each constituent feature of the landscape in a rudimentary visual inventory: ‘Red ploughland. Green pasture. // Black cattle. Quick water.’ These observations create a sense not of a real landscape, though, but of a child’s nave and reductive drawing, a two-dimensional representation of that landscape. The speaker momentarily lapses into figurative description (the scene is ‘Overpainted / by lightshafts from layered gold / and purple cumulus’), but then quickly rejects further metaphorical description, noting the ‘cloudness of 35 Leighton, Voyages over Voices: Critical Essays on Anne Stevenson, p. 112; J. Keats. The poems of John Keats. Ed. by J. Stillinger. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1978, p. 125.

36 Leighton, Voyages over Voices: Critical Essays on Anne Stevenson, p. 113.

15

clouds // which are not like anything but clouds’, the isolated line visually representing the clouds’ singularity and inimitableness: reality’s resistance to resemblance.

The second half of Stevenson’s poem opens up into what we recognise as a kind of Romantic lyrical richness of image and sound. Contrasting strikingly with the short sentences and sparse images of the third and fourth stanzas, in the fifth there is an extravagantly multi-sensory metaphorical description of the rural scene: I want to play on those bell-toned cellos of delicate not-quite-flowering larches that offer, on the opposite hill, their unfurled amber instruments—floating, insubstantial, a rising horizon of music embodied in light.

The breathless, urgently enjambed lines and compound adjectives force a quickening of pace that suggests that the speaker is approaching some sort of creative climax, perhaps one in which she will finally alight upon the magic words she needs to ‘paint’ accurately the ‘essences’ of her surroundings. As ‘bell-toned / cellos’ create their own onomatopoeic vowel music, the image of ‘a rising / horizon of music embodied in light’, coupled with the swelling assonance of ‘rising / horizon’, is suggestive of a transcendence, a rising above normal sensory awareness into a heightened synesthetic alertness. This subtly nods to a similarly multisensory metaphorical image in Endymion: ‘When the airy stress / Of music’s kiss impregnates the free winds, / And with a sympathetic touch unbinds / Eolian magic from their lucid wombs’.37 Once again, though, the speaker rejects figurative description, and the stirringly enjambed crescendo of the fifth and sixth stanzas is abruptly deflated by the largely mono-syllabic, end-stopped first line of the seventh stanza—‘And in such imagining I lose sight of sight.’ The eighteenth-century rhetorician, Hugh Blair, writes 37 Keats,

16

The poems of John Keats, p. 128.

that ‘Simple expression just makes our ideas known to others; but figurative language, over and above, bestows a particular dress upon that idea: a dress, which both makes it to be remarked, and adorns it.’38 As far as Stevenson’s speaker is concerned, the ‘particular dress’ bestowed by the extended metaphor does not adorn so much as obscure. For the speaker, it is the unsophisticated image of ‘Red ploughland. Green pasture. // Black cattle’ that represents ‘true sightness of seeing’, whereas her lapse into sumptuous multi-sensory metaphors brings about a loss of ‘true’ vision.

In this instance, metaphor is not revelation but obfuscation.

The poem makes us aware that this kind of frustration is not an isolated experience for the speaker. That the poem begins, ‘Another day in March’, suggests that each day is characterised by an interminable cycle of creative aspiration and frustration.

The speaker is never free of the inescapable ache of trying to catch, say, the catness of cat as he crouches, stalking his shadow, on the other side of the window.

Lest the speaker be accused of Romantic grandiosity following the sensuous abundance of her aborted imaginative flight, the poem closes on this ‘droll and domestic’ image, a striking visual metaphor for the poet striving to find the elusive words with which ‘to paint essences’.39 The speaker’s perceived failure to adequately preserve in language the beauty of her surroundings precipitates a sense of disconnection that is commonplace in Stevenson’s work. As in several other poems, for example ‘Travelling Behind Glass’, ‘From My Study’, ‘Moonrise’, ‘The Wrekin’, and the unpublished ‘History’, and ‘Man Seen Through a Rainy Window’, the speaker looks 38 H. Blair. Lectures on rhetoric and belles lettres ... Edited by Harold F. Harding, etc. A reduced facsimile of the edition of 1783. Robert Aitken, 1784, p. 274.

39 Leighton, Voyages over Voices: Critical Essays on Anne Stevenson, p. 113.

17

through a window, able to see, but never to touch, what is ‘on the other side’.40 This image of the window also provides us with a useful way of thinking about language. Indeed, Ernst Cassirer uses a window as a metaphor for language when he writes: . . . while wanting to be the connecting link between two worlds. . . [language functions] as the barrier which separates the one from the other. However clear and however pure a medium we may then see in language, it always remains true that this crystal-clear medium is also crystal-hard—that however transparent it may be for the expression of ideas, it still is never wholly penetrable. Its transparency does not remove its impenetrability.41 The question of whether metaphor is a means of accessing and expressing, say, ‘the mudness of mud’, or just an inadvertent muddying of the waters, preoccupied Wallace Stevens, too, and his ever-evolving theory of metaphor was central to his wider theory of poetry. In ‘Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction’, Stevens introduces the concept of ‘the first idea’: It is the celestial ennui of apartments That sends us back to the first idea, the quick Of this invention[.]42 As with Stevenson’s ‘essences’, a reader might be forgiven for assuming that Stevens’ ‘first idea’ is analogous to Novalis’ ‘Chiffernschrift’, Shelley’s unseen Power’, or Plato’s ‘Ideal Forms’. Indeed, Bernard Heringman writes that Stevens ‘has always been interested, Platonically, in “The abstract. . . The premise from which all things were conclusions”, and concludes that the “first idea” is the “Platonic idea”.’43 Stevens’s ‘first idea’, though, is exactly 40 Anne

Stevenson. “History”. CUL MS Add. 9451 (Poems).

Schilpp, ed. The Philosophy of Ernst Cassirer. Menasha: WI: George Banta, 1949, pp. 244–64.

42 Stevens, The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens, p. 381.

43 Bernard Heringman. “Wallace Stevens: The Use of Poetry”. In: ELH 16.4 (1949), p. 330.

41 Arthur

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that: not ‘the Thing Itself’, but an idea ‘about the Thing’. In a 1942 letter to Henry Church, Stevens writes: Some one here wrote to me the other day and wanted to know what I meant by a thinker of the first idea. If you take the varnish and dirt of generations off a picture, you see it in its first idea. If you think about the world without its varnish and dirt, you are a thinker of the first idea.44 It is not an a priori ‘Ideal Form’ that exists within (or above) the world prior to, and separate from, our perception and understanding of it. Rather, it is our perception and understanding of the world around us—our very first perception. Milton J. Bates notes that ‘the mind has no direct, unmediated access to realities outside itself. The closest it can come is already a mental construction.’45 It is this very first ‘mental construction’ that Stevens means by ‘the first idea’. To see a picture in its ‘first idea’, having scraped away ‘the varnish and dirt of generations’, is not to glimpse any higher reality or ‘Ideal Form’, but merely to get back to one’s own first and freshest apprehension of it.

It is the role of poetry to reveal or make accessible, even if only ‘for a moment’, this ‘first idea’, by removing the obfuscating ‘varnish and dirt of generations’. ‘Notes. . . ’ tells us that the ‘first idea’ ‘becomes / The hermit in a poet’s metaphors, // Who comes and goes and comes and goes all day.’ It is ‘a poet’s metaphors’, then, that constitute the thick layer of varnish and dirt that keeps the first idea from our sight. If the ‘first idea’ is our first and freshest perception of an object, then the ‘varnish and dirt’ is constituted of all subsequent occasions wherein we do not perceive the object itself afresh, but only our own pre-extant aesthetic or linguistic representations of it. We see, in the words 44 W. Stevens. Letters of Wallace Stevens. Ed. by H. Stevens. Berkley: University of California Press, 1966, p. 426.

45 J. N. Serio, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Wallace Stevens. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, p. 51.

19

of Stevens, not ‘the Thing Itself’ but only ‘Ideas about the Thing’.

The poet faces a quandary, then. The ‘varnish and dirt’ is comprised of familiar and obfuscating metaphorical representations, yet the only way to slough them away is to devise new metaphors, and so run the risk of inadvertently adding to the layer of varnish and dirt. Metaphor, therefore, can paradoxically function as both obfuscation and exfoliation.

If metaphor can obscure objects or ‘essences’ just as often as it can reveal them, what is the poet to do? Both ‘Binoculars in Ardudwy’ and ‘If I Could Paint Essences’ demonstrate that the allure of metaphorical representation cannot ultimately be resisted.

A poem completely free of metaphorical language, then, would be little more than a self-conscious poetic exercise, a challenge the poet sets for him- or herself. In ‘Walking Early by the Wye’ (1982), Stevenson simultaneously exercises her poet’s eye for resemblance and explicitly foregrounds the fictiveness of the images.

Winifred Nowottny observed in 1962 that: criticism often takes metaphor au grand serieux, as a peephole on the nature of transcendental reality, a prime means by which the imagination can see into the life of things. . . This attitude makes it difficult to see the workings of those metaphors which deliberately emphasize the frame, offering themselves as deliberate fabrications, as a prime means of seeing not into the life of things, but the creative human consciousness, framer of its own world.46 Through what O’Neill calls ‘a series of prefatory “As ifs”’, Stevenson’s poem foregrounds ‘the workings’ of metaphor.47 The poem opens with a startling metaphor: ‘every splinter of river mist / 46 W. Nowottny. Language Poets Use. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2000, p. 89.

47 Leighton, Voyages over Voices: Critical Essays on Anne Stevenson, p. 109.

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rayed in my eyes.’48 A remarkable resemblance between mist, insubstantial and formless, and a splinter, sharp and invasive, seems unlikely, yet this is, the speaker implies, a resemblance ‘in [her] eyes’, rather than a logically sound one. A merger between inner and outer is suggested in ‘February’s wincing radiance’ and ‘the squint of the sun’. It is, of course, not the ‘radiance’ that is ‘wincing’ or the ‘sun’ that squints, but the speaker herself. Her responses are attributed to the natural world around her, and the link between them further suggested by the tightly yet unobtrusively woven tissue of alliteration (‘radiance’, ‘river’, and ‘rayed’) and assonance (‘wincing’, ‘splinter’, ‘river’, and ‘mist’). The repeated ‘As ifs’ function not only as an announcement of, and a disclaimer to, her vivid metaphors, but also as a tacit invitation to the reader to enter a realm of expanded imaginative possibility.

Through sketching figurative equivalents for her sensuous experiences, the speaker is able to imaginatively ‘enter alive the braided rings Saturn / is known by’, whilst keeping one foot firmly on ‘the dyke’s heaped mud.’ Despite the high instance of words taken from the register of the decorative arts (‘lacquered’, ‘braided’, ‘silvered’, and ‘pearled’), it is clear that metaphor is not merely a decorative flourish or curlicue, but the only means of conveying the curious dual nature of the speaker’s experience. J. Hillis Miller writes that ‘Existence is neither imagination alone nor reality alone, but always and everywhere the endlessly frustrated attempt of the two to cross the gap which separates them.’49 Literal language—words that plainly point to the objects that surround us, or some physical characteristic thereof—can convey only the objective ‘reality’ perceptible to everybody. Metaphor allows us to communicate a sense of both the inner and the outer, the subjective and the objective, the ‘real’ and the imagined, the abstract and the concrete. It enables the poet to assimilate the objective ‘reality’ that we share with others and the subjective inner life 48 Stevenson,

Poems 1955–2005, p. 64.

H. Miller. Poets of Reality: Six Twentieth-century Writers. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965, p. 233.

49 J.

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that we experience alone. Furthermore, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson suggest that although ‘metaphor is typically viewed as characteristic of language alone, a matter of words rather than thought or action’, it is, in fact, ‘pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.’50 According to Lakoff and Johnson, we might even conclude that ‘metaphors as linguistic expressions are possible precisely because there are metaphors in a person’s conceptual system.’51 If the ways we perceive, understand, and think about the world around us are ‘fundamentally metaphorical’, then metaphor in poetry speaks to, and of, nothing less than our own cognitive processes. A poet’s striking metaphors may shape the way we think about certain objects, yet the metaphor itself was shaped by the poet’s own cognitive processes. In the final stanza, the speaker vows I will not forget how the ash trees stood, silvered and still, how each soft stone on its near shadow knelt, how the sheep became stones where they built their pearled hill.

Here we have metaphor not as fait accompli but as process. The metaphor is not merely a static substitution of, or equivalence drawn between, image and object, but an altogether more complex and fluid process of transformation. So radically transformative is this process that we might be tempted to say that this is metaphor as metamorphosis, even. The imaginative transformation is enacted at the phonetic level by the interplay of hard and soft sounds. The hard st- of ‘stone’ relaxes into the soft shof ‘shadow’, as the soft sh- of ‘sheep’ hardens into the crystalline 50 G. Lakoff and M. Johnson. Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981, p. 3.

51 Ibid.

22

st- of ‘stone. The vividness of these images suggests that in foregrounding their fictive nature, the speaker has freed herself from the constraints of the ‘real’—what Wallace Stevens calls ‘the pressure of reality’—and is able to give full reign to her imagination.52 In the unpublished essay, ‘What is Happening to Poetry’ (written between 2007 and 2012), the poet notes: As Internet technology increasingly replaces communication by pen and paper, the resources of verbal expression have adapted themselves to visual habits of writing. Cell phone ‘texting’ has developed a short hand that is working itself into mainstream English, while the virtual world of the television does nothing to arrest the deterioration either of accurately chosen words or the basic rules of grammar.53 Though elsewhere she gives us the image of the poet-as-maker manipulating words as a carpenter shapes and hews a piece of wood, here she suggests that ‘it may even be that our best, most sensitive writers are those least able to manipulate words, the slowest to fall into habits of convenience speech.’54 Each of Stevenson’s poems is the hard-won product and record of an ‘intolerable wrestle with words and meanings’; however, the poet’s instinct to capture within language our experience of the world remains undiminished. The final poem in Stevenson’s latest collection, Astonishment (2012), ends with the lines: For all that’s wrong, Lenten is come with love to towne.

New times, old words.

In a light green haze, let’s try, with the practical birds, to praise love’s ways.55 52 Wallace Stevens. The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination. London: Vintage Books, 1965, p. 27.

53 Stevenson, “What is Happening to Poetry?”

54 Stevenson, Between the iceberg and the ship: selected essays, p. 162.

55 Anne Stevenson. “Spring Again”. Word-processed draft, Author’s Personal Papers. 2012.

23

If, as Stevenson suggests, Astonishment is to be her final collection, this affirmation that ‘old words’ might help us live in these ‘New times’ may prove to be her last (and lasting) words on the subject.

24

Robin Hood and the Real Criminal Gangs of the Later Middle Ages Helen Lamport he Robin Hood ballads from the fifteenth century are the earT liest sources for the popular tradition that existed in the later middle ages of stories about Robin Hood and his outlaw gang of merry men. Historians have examined how closely the various activities of Robin Hood and his men in the ballads reflect the real activities of criminal gangs in order to understand better the intentions of the authors of the ballads and contemporary attitudes towards outlaw gangs and crime. However, a large amount of discord has emerged between historian’s views. This essay will assess the similarities between Robin Hood and his men and those of real criminal gangs in the later middle ages, focusing particularly on the notorious Coterel and Folville gangs, to determine whether they were written as a critical commentary of justice in the later middle ages. Some parallels can be drawn between the criminal activities in the Robin Hood ballads and the activities of real criminal gangs including the leadership and organisation of the gangs, their crimes of highway robbery and poaching, as well as the eventual outcome of the gang members’ fates. However, important differences emerge which are crucial in determining the true purpose of the ballads. As Hanawalt has shown, Robin Hood’s activities are notably more honourable than those of real criminal gangs, which demonstrates the intentions of the ballads’ authors to romanticise the image of criminal gangs.

The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were uncertain periods 25

in English history because of the social impact of the Black death and extensive periods of fighting in France. These circumstances were influential in giving rise to outlaw activity. Nobles brought their private armies home from the war and returning soldiers were attracted to criminal activity having plundered extensively in France.1 Whilst there is some evidence of non-gentry gangs in the later middle ages such as William Beckwith in Knaresborough forest 1387–92, whose gang comprised of lesser landholders, tradesmen, artisans and servants, it was rare non-gentry formed successful and organised criminal gangs.2 This is because organised gangs relied on their ties to local nobility and magnates as maintainers and receivers to successfully evade the law. The Coterels and Folvilles were two famous outlaw gangs who successfully operated in the early fourteenth century and both had close ties to powerful nobility who helped them evade justice. It is noted in the judicial records that ‘the number of men who sat at some time in parliament either for shire or for borough and who had close connections with the Coterels is quite notable. . . . James Coterel received assistance . . . from no fewer than seven such men’ and ‘there was no fewer than four bailiffs of the high peak who were of continuous assistance to Coterel and his followers’.3 The Coterel gang was made up of the sons of Ralph Coterel, who owned land in Tadington, Priestcliffe, Chelmerton, Flagh, Toustedes, Cromford and Matlock, and their accomplices.4 They were involved over the period 1328–33 in a number of crimes including poaching, robbery, kidnapping and homicide and they pillaged extensively the lands of Henry, earl of Lancaster, in Derbyshire and Staffordshire..5 The 1 A. Ayton. “Military Service and the Development of the Robin Hood Legend in the Fourteenth Century”. In: Nottingham Medieval Studies 36 (1992), p. 126.

2 R. B Dobson and J. Taylor. Rymes of Robin Hood: An Introduction to an English outlaw. Stroud: Sutton Publishing Limited, 1997, p. 27.

3 J. G Bellamy. The Coterel Gang: An anatomy of a band of fourteenthcentury criminals, London: Longmans, Green and Co, 1964, p. 705.

4 Ibid., p. 699.

5 Ibid., p. 701.

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Folville gang was made up of the sons of John De Folville, Lord of Ashby Folville, Leciestershire and Teigh Rutland, and their accomplices.6 The Folvilles first crime was the murder of Roger Bellers in January 1326, and they then appear over the next sixteen years in various criminal records across several counties in the Midlands.7 There are similarities between the activities of Robin Hood and the activities of the Folville and Coterel gangs. Firstly, the gangs relied on strong leadership. Hanawalt argues it was crucial to the strength of the gang organization that there was an outstanding leader who ‘commanded respect because he was the strongest or best shot or was a natural leader or had the highest social status in the group’.8 In the case of the kidnapping of royal justice Richard Willoughby in 1332, it is noted ‘that Eustace Folville was chief of their organization and their maintainer in all things’.9 John Coterel is also depicted as the clear leader of the Coterel gang, as juries which accused the gang referred to it as the society of James Coterel.10 Leaders of real criminal gangs could command the utmost respect and loyalty, even to the point of kingship as shown in a letter in 1336, when one criminal gang leader is referred to as ‘Lionel, King of the rout of Raveners’.11 Robin Hood is depicted as the undisputed master of his gang, commanding his men in all their criminal activities, as shown, “‘Maistar,” than sayde Lytil Johnn, ”And we our borde shal sprede, Tell us wheder 6 E. L. G Stones. “‘The Folvilles of Ashby-Folville, Leicestershire, and Their Associates in Crime, 1326-1347’,” in: Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 7 (1957), p. 118.

7 Ibid., p. 118.

8 B.A. Hanawalt. “Ballads and bandits. Fourteenth-century outlaws and the Robin Hood poems”. In: (1992), p. 160.

9 Musson A. and Powell E. Crime, Law and society in the later Middle Ages: selected sources. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009, p. 77.

10 Bellamy, The Coterel Gang: An anatomy of a band of fourteenth-century criminals, p. 700.

11 D. Coyle. “The outlaws of Medieval England’”. In: Hohunu 3 (2005), p. 59.

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that we shal go, And what life that we shall lede?’.12 Robin Hood’s men even imitate the royal custom of livery, wearing Lincoln green to demonstrate their strong loyalty to his leadership.13 The structure of Robin Hood’s outlaw gang is also similar to that of real criminal gangs in the later middle ages. The Coterel and Folville gangs both had an inner core of outlaws of no more than six men, which were mainly family members, but they could also command a much larger force when necessary. In the judicial records, we find repeated mention of Eustace Folville, Richard Folville, Robert Folville, Walter Folville and Laurence Folville in the Folville gang’s activities and repeated reference to James Coterel, Nicholas Coterel, John Coterel and Roger Sauvage in the Coterel gang’s activities.14 However, in their more extensive criminal activities they commanded more men, as recorded ‘on 26 November 1332 the Sheriff of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire was ordered to exact from county court to county court no fewer than two hundred men including the canons of Lichfield’.15 Like the Coterels and Folvilles, Robin Hood relies on a core of loyal men in his gang, ‘And bi hym stode Litell Johnn? And also dyd gode Scarlok, And Much, the millers son’.16 However, Robin Hood can also draw on a much larger force to take on his enemies, as shown, ‘Seven score of wyght yemen Came pryckynge on a rowe’.17 The similarity between the leadership and organisation of real criminal gangs and that of Robin Hood’s merry men does not seem particularly unusual. The stories are relatable by having characters and a setting which contemporaries of the later middle ages would 12 Dobson

and Taylor, Rymes of Robin Hood: An Introduction to an English outlaw, p. 79.

13 Ibid., p. 93.

14 A. and E., Crime, Law and society in the later Middle Ages: selected sources, p. 78.

15 Bellamy, The Coterel Gang: An anatomy of a band of fourteenth-century criminals, p. 710.

16 Dobson and Taylor, Rymes of Robin Hood: An Introduction to an English outlaw, p. 79.

17 Ibid., p. 95.

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understand and identify with. The structure also sets up Robin Hood to be the main protagonist of the ballads and the sense of hierarchy in his gang reflects the traditional patriarchal structure of society in the later middle ages.

The criminal activities in the Robin Hood ballads are also similar to the criminal activities of the Coterel and Folville gang.

Highway robbery was a prevalent criminal activity in the later middle ages as shown in the statute of Winchester in 1285, when the highways were ordered to be broadened ‘so that there be neither dyke, tree, nor bush were a man may lurk to do hurt’.18 King Edward III also tried to make highway robbery a treasonable offence in the treason act of 1351, but was unsuccessful.19 The Folville’s regularly engaged in highway robbery, as shown in the court records, ‘And that the said Eustace, Richard Folville, parson of the church of Teigh [Rutland], Robert Folville, Walter Folville and Laurence Folville, brothers of the said Eustace together with others unknown in the wood of Freshrib in Uffington in the first year of the reign of King Edward III [1327] at dawn of a certain day robbed Hugh Crake of Ryhale of four horses worth 4’.20 Robin Hood also engages in highway robbery. This is shown in the ballads when Robin Hood commands his men to “‘wayte after some unkuth gest, up chaunce ye may them mete. Be he erle, or ani baron, Abbot, or ani knyght, Bringhe hym to lodge to me?’.21 Poaching was also a common and popular criminal activity, especially as until 1390 the commons who did not possess a privilege to hunt on reserved ground could freely take game from unpro18 W. M Ormrod A. Musson. The evolution of English justice: law, politics and society in the fourteenth century. Basingstoke: St Martin’s Press, 1999, p. 165.

19 Ibid., p. 165.

20 A. and E., Crime, Law and society in the later Middle Ages: selected sources, p. 76.

21 Dobson and Taylor, Rymes of Robin Hood: An Introduction to an English outlaw, p. 80.

29

tected land.22 After the law was instigated they continued to hunt, although it was now illegal to do so. Hunting was enjoyed by all classes of society and it was common for outlaws to poach game. The judicial records document that in 1327–8 the Coterels and their friends raided Lancastrian estates in the North midlands and stole animals said to have been worth 5,200 marks.23 Robin Hood clearly frequently engages in poaching in the ballads, providing rich feasts of game for his guests. When he enters the king’s service he even declares he will one day return to the forest and to his favorite pastime poaching, ‘I come agayne full soone, And shote at the donne dere, As I am wonte to done”.24 The outcome of Robin Hood and his gang is similar to the reality of the Coterel and Folville gangs. Members of both gangs successfully evaded justice for years. The outlaw criminal gangs were very hard to capture, as they operated across different county borders and therefore in different legal jurisdictions.25 In one instance, the Coterels even kidnapped one John de Staniclyf, a tenant of the Roger de Wennesley who had been given the job of hunting them down. They imprisoned him until he took an oath he would never be against them and on release took from him a bond for 20 to be paid if he ever opposed them.26 The outlaws also managed to escape from gaol, for example Roger la Zouche, who was an accessory to the crimes of the Folville gang, escaped while awaiting trial and Roger Savage, who was arrested in London for his crimes in Nottingham, also escaped and joined 22 J.

Birrell. “Peasant deer poachers in the medieval forest”. In: Progress and problems in medieval England (1996), p. 69.

23 J. G Bellamy. Crime and public order in England in the later middle ages, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973, p. 82.

24 Dobson and Taylor, Rymes of Robin Hood: An Introduction to an English outlaw, p. 109.

25 A. Musson, The evolution of English justice: law, politics and society in the fourteenth century, p. 9.

26 Bellamy, The Coterel Gang: An anatomy of a band of fourteenth-century criminals, p. 707.

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the gangs again in the Willoughby affair.27 Robin Hood like the outlaw gangs successfully manages to evade capture. In the Gest he kidnaps the Sheriff of Nottingham and makes him take a similar oath to that taken by John de Staniclyf for the Coterel gang, as shown ‘”Thou shalt swere me an othe,” sayde Robyn, ”On my bright bronde: Shalt thou never awayte me scathe, By water ne by lande”’.28 Also in Robin Hood and the Monk, Little John helps Robin escape from jail, as he ‘toke the keyes in honde; He toke the way to Robyn Hode, And sone he hym unbonde’.29 Eventually members of the Coterel and Folville gang were pardoned for their crimes and it is recorded how they went on to work for the King. In November 1336 James Coterel was commissioned to arrest a Leicestershire parson accused of illegal activity.30 Nicholas Coterel led an army of archers into Scotland and became Queen Philippa’s bailiff for the High Peak.31 Other members of the gang turned to military careers, for example Roger le Sauvage was numbered among a group of Derbyshire gentry who the king reprehended in January 1335 and commanded to join him in Scotland.32 The Foville gang were also pardoned. In November 1332 it is recorded that Robert de Folville was pardoned and in July 1333 Eustace received a pardon. ‘in return for the good services which he had rendered in the Scottish war’.33 Robin Hood is pardoned for his crimes by the king and he goes into royal service, as the king bids him to “‘come home, syr, to my courte, And there dwell with me”’.34 27 Stones, “‘The Folvilles of Ashby-Folville, Leicestershire, and Their Associates in Crime, 1326-1347’,” p. 119.

28 Dobson and Taylor, Rymes of Robin Hood: An Introduction to an English outlaw, p. 93.

29 Ibid., p. 121.

30 Bellamy, The Coterel Gang: An anatomy of a band of fourteenth-century criminals, p. 712.

31 Ibid., p. 712.

32 Ibid., p. 712.

33 Stones, “‘The Folvilles of Ashby-Folville, Leicestershire, and Their Associates in Crime, 1326-1347’,” p. 128.

34 Dobson and Taylor, Rymes of Robin Hood: An Introduction to an English

31

Keen has argued that the similar activities of real criminal gangs and Robin Hood suggest that there was a popular sense of admiration in the later middle ages for real criminal gangs who subverted the corrupt judicial system.35 Contemporaries would have indeed admired and envied the high profits that criminal gangs acquired and the rich lifestyle they enjoyed, as crime paid extremely well by the standards of the day.36 There is also evidence to suggest that the Coterels and Folvilles were well-known and did have supporters, as Bellamy notes about the Coterels ‘the impression is given that in many quarters the gang is not only respected but reluctantly admired’.37 The Folvilles appeared as heroes in Piers Plowman, written in 1337 by William Langland.38 A main theme in the ballads is Robin Hood’s confrontation of authority figures and his attack on the judicial system. Robin Hood confronts officials who in the later middle ages were disliked, including corrupt judges, officials like the sheriff and harsh creditors including the Abbot of St Mary’s. The outlaw gang is celebrated for subverting and undermining the unfair and ineffective judicial system. Justice was prevented in the later middle ages as courts had very low conviction rates, judges were easily bribed and sheriffs were often incompetent.39 However, the support and sympathy contemporaries held for real criminal gangs would have depended on the gang’s perceived threat to individuals and local societies. In an area with a great number of bands operating and terrorizing the local population outlaw, p. 109.

35 M.H. Keen. The outlaws of medieval legend. London: Routledge, 2000, p. 204.

36 Hanawalt, “Ballads and bandits. Fourteenth-century outlaws and the Robin Hood poems”, p. 159.

37 Bellamy, The Coterel Gang: An anatomy of a band of fourteenth-century criminals, p. 717.

38 Hanawalt, “Ballads and bandits. Fourteenth-century outlaws and the Robin Hood poems”, p. 160.

39 J. R Lander. Conflict and stability in fifteenth-century England. London: Hutchinson, 1977, p. 165.

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they would not have had popular support. The Coterel and Folville gangs were greatly feared by their victims, as shown on 26 December 1331 when a member of the gang called William del Hethe visited the house of Robert Fraunceys at Hardstoft (Notts.) as an envoy of Roger le Sauvage to demand 40s. by means of threats.

As a result, Robert left his house and did not dare to live there for a long while.40 A petition by the commons in the parliament of 1347 claimed that the peace was very troubled and disturbed and that the law was almost ignored because the magnates were guilty of maintenance.41 Even in the Gest when the outlaw gang ride into Nottingham with the King the townsmen display their fear of Robin Hood, ‘Full hastly they began to fle, Both yemen and knaves, And olde wyves that myght evyll goo, They hypped on theyr staves’.42 Therefore, for the most part contemporaries feared and disliked outlaw gangs.

Ormrod instead argues support of outlaw gangs was particularly an expression of noble and gentry criticism of the crown’s attempts and failures at judicial interventionism. The ballads likely originated in the households of lesser gentry and in the fourteenth century nobles and gentry resented the introduction of the king’s justice because it undermined their legal control. Ormrod demonstrates that the justices of peace may deliberately be left out of the ballads as a statement of the authors’ contempt of their authority.43 For centuries, nobles and gentry used their power over local magistracy as an instrument of social control and community regulation, which was why they resented the court of king’s bench diminishing their power.44 40 Bellamy, The Coterel Gang: An anatomy of a band of fourteenth-century criminals, p. 706.

41 Bellamy, Crime and public order in England in the later middle ages, p. 7.

42 Dobson and Taylor, Rymes of Robin Hood: An Introduction to an English outlaw, p. 110.

43 A.Musson. “Law in the landscape: criminality, outlawry and regional identity in late medieval England”. In: (2005), p. 17.

44 Bellamy, Crime and public order in England in the later middle ages,

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However, whilst there is evidence that the ballads originated in gentry households, they are based on the oral tradition of the Robin Hood stories, which appealed to lesser members of society.

Dobson and Taylor have successfully shown that the ballads, in particular Robin Hood and the Monk and Robin Hood and the Potter were intended to have popular themes for different audiences, as they were recited by minstrels whose livelihoods depended on their appeal to townsmen, peasants and gentry alike.45 Popular attitudes criticised the judicial system not because it undermined the local power of gentry and nobles, but because it was corrupted by them. Real gentry criminal gangs like the Coterel gang and Folville gang added to this corruption as they successfully operated outside the law and engaged in all manner of criminal activities but were unsuccessfully prosecuted and seldom punished.

Contemporaries were aware of bastard feudalism and the use of maintenance by local gentry and nobility, which was a crucial factor in undermining the judicial system. The judicial system is shown to be corrupt and weak in the ballads, but the lack of maintainers and receivers, as well as Robin Hood’s social status as a ‘yeoman’ rather than a member of the gentry makes Ormrod’s argument that the ballads are a criticism of the centralisation of justice problematic.

The ballads depict Robin Hood and his criminal gang as heroes, so the authors would have had to make considerable differences between the activities of Robin Hood and his gang to the reality of the often feared criminal gangs. The Folvilles appear to have robbed and killed without mercy, robbing ‘Walran de Baston of a cask of wine worth 50s’, holding Richard Willoughby to ransom for 1300 marks and robbing ‘Robert Cort at Stainby of two horses and harness belonging to him worth 20’.46 Robin Hood, p. 82.

45 Dobson and Taylor, Rymes of Robin Hood: An Introduction to an English outlaw, p. 29.

46 A. and E., Crime, Law and society in the later Middle Ages: selected sources, p. 75.

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unlike real criminal gangs, insists on not robbing the lower and middle ranks of society or honourable men, as shown by his instructions to the gang ‘loke ye do no husbonde harme, That tilleth with his ploughe. ”No more ye shall no gode yeman That walketh by grene wode shawe, Ne no knyght ne no squyer That wol be a gode felawe47 p.80.) Real criminal gangs would have had to rob the lesser members of society in order to get basic necessities of clothing and food to survive in the forest.48 Also there is no evidence that the Coterel gang and Folville gang, with their strong ties to local gentry and nobility, used their criminal activity to aid the poor. Instead, they probably split their profits with maintainers and receivers, as shown by Bellamy who argues that ‘no doubt the lord of Markeaton (and of Ashwell, a Folville haven in Rutland) Sir Robert Tucher, took his share’ of the 1300 marks of the Wylughby ransom money.49 Whilst there is no specific story about Robin Hood helping the poor in the ballads, it mentions that Robin Hood is prepared to help those in need, ‘Of my good he shall have some, Yf he be a pore man’.50 After Robin Hood sells the potter’s pots, he asks him how much they were worth. When he replies that they would be worth ‘to nobellys’ Robin gives him ‘ten ponde’ and promises that “‘whan thow comest to grene wod, Wellcom, potter, to me”’.51 Therefore, Robin Hood and his gang mainly target the wealthy in their criminal activities and align some of their interests with helping the lower members of society.

Robin Hood and his gang are also extremely courteous to their victims of highway robbery. In contrast, real criminal gangs such 47 Dobson and Taylor, Rymes of Robin Hood: An Introduction to an English outlaw.

48 Hanawalt, “Ballads and bandits. Fourteenth-century outlaws and the Robin Hood poems”, p. 158.

49 Bellamy, The Coterel Gang: An anatomy of a band of fourteenth-century criminals, p. 707.

50 Dobson and Taylor, Rymes of Robin Hood: An Introduction to an English outlaw, p. 94.

51 Ibid., p. 132.

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as the Coterels appeared much more willing to use force, as Bellamy notes “from the autumn of that year (1331) it seems to have been accepted policy to eschew violence?.52 Robin Hood’s men greet their highway victims with gentlemanly manner,“litell John was ful curteyes and sette hym on his kne’.53 Robin Hood then invites the gang’s highway victims to dinner and gives them a splendid feast of poached game. He then only takes their money if they lie to him about how much they possess, ‘If thou hast no more,” sayde Robyn, ”I woll nat one peny, And yf thou have nede of any more, More shall I lend the’.54 Robin Hood even goes as far as to lend Sir Richard at Lee, a knight he waylays on the road, four hundred pounds.55 Real criminal gangs in the later middle ages, as well as often acting violently, on occasion resorted to murdering their victims. Over the period of their various crimes, Eustace Folville was charged with five separate cases of murder in the judicial courts.56 In 1455, the judicial records also report the brutal murder of Nicholas Radford by the earl of Devon’s men. The gang murdered Nicholas Radford when they robbed his house to steal his possessions. Nicholas Phillip ‘with a small dagger smote the said Nicholas Radford, a tremendous deadly stroke across the face’ and then ‘another stroke upon his head from behind so that the brain fell out of his head.’ The brutality continued, as Thomas Philip ‘with a knife feloniously cut the throat of the said Nicholas Radford’ and John Amory ‘with a long dagger smote the said Nicholas Radford from behind on his back through to his heart’.57 52 Bellamy,

The Coterel Gang: An anatomy of a band of fourteenth-century criminals, p. 705.

53 Dobson and Taylor, Rymes of Robin Hood: An Introduction to an English outlaw, p. 80.

54 Ibid., p. 81.

55 Ibid., p. 83.

56 Stones, “‘The Folvilles of Ashby-Folville, Leicestershire, and Their Associates in Crime, 1326-1347’,” p. 119.

57 A. and E., Crime, Law and society in the later Middle Ages: selected sources, p. 89.

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In contrast, Robin Hood and his gang only murder to evade capture, rather than for the purpose to commit other crimes. In Robin Hood and the monk, Little John kills the monk who summoned the sheriff to Robin Hood’s whereabouts and his page boy in case he tells anyone, ‘John smote of the munkis hed, No longer wolde he dwell; So did Moch the litull page, for ferd lest he wolde tell’.58 Robin Hood also kills Guy of Gisborne as he is hunting down Robin Hood for the sheriff, as shown ‘He tooke Sir Guys head by the hayre, And sticked itt on his bowes end: ”Thou hast beene traytor all thy liffe, Which thing must have an ende”’.59 Therefore, whilst Robin Hood and his gang murder in the ballads, unlike real criminal gangs they only murder those who have done them wrong and to save themselves from arrest.

This has led Hanawalt to argue that the similarities and differences between Robin Hood and his gang and real criminal gangs demonstrate that the writers of the Robin Hood ballads attempted to romanticise the concept of outlaw criminal gangs. The form and the contents of the early Robin Hood ballads strongly reflect conventions found in late medieval English romances, and the ballad form can also be seen to derive from the French courtly romance.60 The ballads idolize the outlaw lifestyle, always depicting the greenwood forest as beautiful and plentiful. Summerson has argued in the later middle ages the majority of criminal activity was undertaken by small groups of the lowest in society, ‘the criminal underworld,’ therefore the authors of the ballads were not attempting to create a truly realistic parallel to everyday crime in the later middle ages.61 The differences between Robin Hood and his gang and real criminal gangs demonstrate that the au58 Dobson and Taylor, Rymes of Robin Hood: An Introduction to an English outlaw, p. 119.

59 Ibid., p. 145.

60 P.R. Coss. “Aspects of cultural diffusion in medieval England: the early romances, local society and Robin Hood”. In: Past and Present (1985), p. 36.

61 H. Summerson. The criminal underworld of medieval England. London: F.Cass, 1996, p. 219.

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thors do not intend to celebrate real criminal activity in the later middle ages but instead they create a successful amusing paradox of society that makes outlaw gangs who are traditionally bad and dishonest appear as heroes fighting the corruption of the villainous authority figures, who should be good and honest.

Other historians have criticised Hanawalt’s argument because Robin Hood and his gang do not always act heroically in the ballads, so it is questionable that the authors in the ballads really intended to romanticise outlaw gangs. In Robin Hood and the Potter, Robin Hood is scolded for trying to take money from an honest yeoman, ‘”Het ys fol leytell cortesey,” seyde the potter, ”As I hafe harde weyse men sye, Yeffe a pore yeman com drywyng over the way, To let hem of hes gorney”’.62 Also in Robin Hood and the Monk, Robin Hood does not pay Little John for winning their wager, ‘Litull John seid he had won five shillings, And Robyn Hode seid schortly nay’.63 Bellamy has therefore suggested that the intentions of the authors of the ballads might have been to tell a story about the activities of a particular outlaw gang that operated in the 1320’s.64 But, despite plenty of research a real gang that truly relates to Robin Hood and his merry men has not been found.

In conclusion, there are fundamental similarities between Robin Hood and his gang and notorious outlaw gangs in the later middle ages. These include the organization and leadership of the gangs as well as some of their criminal activities including highway robbery and poaching and their successful evasion of justice.

The similarities are used by the authors of the ballads to channel popular attitudes that criticize the corruption of justice, but they do not strongly relate to gentry criticism of central judicial intervention. However, popular attitudes were not supportive of 62 Dobson and Taylor, Rymes of Robin Hood: An Introduction to an English outlaw, p. 126.

63 Ibid., p. 116.

64 Bellamy, Crime and public order in England in the later middle ages, p. 71.

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real criminal gangs, as they could be a violent menace and threat to local communities. Therefore, there are crucial differences between the activities of Robin Hood and his gang and those of real criminal gangs including their ties to local gentry and nobility, aid to the poor, use of violence and murder. However, whilst the ballads use similarities and differences between the activities of Robin Hood and real criminal gangs to convey criticism of the justice, we will never know to what extent the authors were truly writing a criticism of the justice system or if their main purpose was to simply create entertaining and popular stories. Robin Hood is not an entirely heroic protagonist who is never at fault. Perhaps this is because the appeal of Robin Hood’s gang and its timeless popularity comes from the thin line which Robin Hood treads in his various adventures and activities between being honourable and dishonourable, a villain and a hero, a criminal and a restorer of justice, which keeps the stories amusing and unpredictable.

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The Nostalgia of Christmas Worship Lucinda Murphy hristmas’ undoubtedly conjures up a rich variety of mean‘C ing in the British mind. Robins. Mince pies. Snowmen.

Sparkly baubles. Father Christmas. The imagery, associations, and traditions abound. But for many, Christmas just wouldn’t be Christmas without having a good old sing song of O Come All Ye Faithful in the ‘magical’ candlelit atmosphere of a local church carol service. This study intends to explore why these ‘faithful’ folk find this atmosphere so ‘magical’, how exactly it makes them feel, and what it might be that draws them to church at this time each year.

In order to investigate these questions, I conducted a series of eight qualitative interviews with congregants who attended the Christmas Eve Carol Service at Holy Trinity Church, Stratford upon Avon in December 2015. Based on Eric Milner-White’s now widely practised Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols,1 this service attracts around 800 congregants each year and has become such a popular event within the town that church wardens often find themselves having to turn people away at the door. Given that a regular Sunday sees roughly 100 people turning up on a good day, this upsurge in attendance at Christmas presents a distinct sociological anomaly.

This is not an anomaly unique to Holy Trinity. Contrary to extensive evidence of decline in Church of England attendance fig1 David Walker. “Cathedral Carol Services: Who Attends and Why?” In: Anglican Cathedrals in Modern Life: The Science of Cathedral Studies. Ed.

by Leslie J. Francis. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, p. 112.

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ures over the last half century,2 attendances at Christmas services remain strong.3 Indeed, though there have been some fluctuations, we have recently begun to see reports of a rise in numbers attending church at Christmas.4 There is no doubt that, for some reason, Christmas sees usually diminishing congregations bolstered by an energised, excited crowd who do not feel able or inclined to engage during the rest of the liturgical year. This phenomenon, up until now, has received surprisingly little attention from researchers. Only very recently have a handful of clergy begun to draw the Church’s attention to the unique make-up of Christmas congregations.5 These studies have focused solely on cathedral worship however, and so it appears that my study may represent the first attempt to consider the phenomenon in a parish church setting.

It goes without saying that this research should be of vital interest to the Church. However, I believe it might also provide a revealing contribution to the wider study of religion. There has, for some time now, been an acceptance in the field that the sweeping secularization thesis of the 1960s may not be, in reality, quite so sweeping; or indeed, quite so straightforward. Christmas, in 2 Mathew Guest, Elizabeth Olson, and John Wolffe. “Christianity: loss of monopoly”. In: Religion and Change in Modern Britain. Ed. by Linda Woodhead and Rebecca Catto. London, UK: Routledge, Feb. 2012, pp. 62–5; G. Davie. Religion in Britain: A Persistent Paradox. Wiley, 2015, pp. 49– 53; A. Brown and L. Woodhead. That Was The Church That Was: How the Church of England Lost the English People. Bloomsbury Academic, 2016.

3 Archbishops’ Council. Key Facts about the Chruch of England. 2014. url: https://www.churchofengland.org/about-us/facts-stats.aspx.

4 Rachel Phillips. “Christmas is not just for Christmas: An exploration of the Christmas story and its meaning as told by members of the congregation at the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols held at York Minster on Christmas Eve 2007”. Unpublished Masters Dissertation. University of Nottingham, 2011, pp. 3–4.

5 Walker, “Cathedral Carol Services: Who Attends and Why?”; Phillips, “Christmas is not just for Christmas: An exploration of the Christmas story and its meaning as told by members of the congregation at the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols held at York Minster on Christmas Eve 2007”.

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my view, provides us with a rare and insightful snapshot of our contemporary picture; and crucially, of the elusive and yet extensive ‘middle ground’ which Davie considers as the key to the study of religion in Britain.6 Indeed, in some kind of Christmas miracle, many of the various disparate groups coveted by both the Church and the sociologist—the young people, the middle-aged men, the atheists, the agnostics, the ‘believing without belonging’, the ‘vicarious’ believers, the people who fit somewhere in between—seem to want to gather together at Christmas time to literally sing from the same hymn sheet.

Talking to both regular and non-regular church goers who had attended Holy Trinity’s 2015 Christmas Eve Carol Service, I hoped to gain a sense of what had drawn each of these individuals to this quintessential Christmas scene; and to ascertain whether the types of motivations drawing people to church at Christmas matched up in any way to the motivations which keep the regulars coming back during the rest of the year. After an initial online questionnaire circulated amongst congregants, various volunteers came forward for interview. This self-selecting group was made up of UK born individuals between the ages of 56 and 68, falling neatly into the so-called baby-boomer generation.7 A purposive sample of this cohort was then divided into two categories based on church attendance patterns; a non-regular attender group made up of Jacquie, Karen, Colin, and Geoff, and a regular attender group made up of Robert, Barbara, Linda and Michael (*please note the use of pseudonyms).

Reviewing these conversations, one overarching theme became clear. ‘Christmas’, for both regular and non-regular attenders, appeared to be a time which in some way reminded them of their origins and/or their core beliefs. While six out of eight interviewees explicitly referred to the word ‘reminder’, the theme remained strongly implicit throughout the course of the interviews. In each 6 Davie, 7 Ibid.,

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Religion in Britain: A Persistent Paradox, pp. 73, 84–7. p. 88.

case, it seemed that this ‘reminder’ represented a motivation on the part of the individual to reconnect with an integral part of their particular self-identity as they had come to understand it.

Holy Trinity’s Christmas Eve Carol Service, for these individuals, and especially for the non- regular attenders, appeared to function as an effective symbol of this annual ‘reminder’.

I want to argue, therefore, that the carol service should be considered a vital facilitative space in which core identities, both individual and collective, might be recalled and cultivated. I claim that it represents, for these individuals at least, an active process of remembering in which the emotion of nostalgia plays a dominant role. This study attempts to outline what exactly might be going on in this process of remembering, putting my interviewees’ narratives into conversation with various disciplinary perspectives.

The concept of remembering as an active process is well supported in contemporary neurological and psychological research.8 According to this research, memories are not so much retrieved from the past but constructed from the present. The insinuation that memories might be motivated by the needs and motivations of the present psyche can be traced back to Freud’s depiction of ‘screen memories’, in which the unconscious desires and fantasies of the present psyche ‘screen’ memories to form dream-like images ‘of childhood’.9 Irrespective of the currency of Freud’s theory today, it is now widely acknowledged amongst psychologists that memories are never divorced from the present feeling-state.

Instead, they are, as Schacter outlines, carefully selected and refined by the ‘subjective rememberer’ in a ‘process of elaborate encoding’.10 Furthermore, that such retrospectively constructed memories 8 D.L. Schacter. Searching for Memory: The Brain, the Mind, and the Past. BasicBooks, 1996.

9 Sigmund Freud. “Screen Memories”. In: The Uncanny. Trans. by David McLintock. London: Penguin, 2003, p. 21.

10 Schacter, Searching for Memory: The Brain, the Mind, and the Past, pp. 44–50.

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might take central place in the formation of identities is well attested in the growing literature on autobiographical memory.11 Autobiographical memory is considered a subtype of Tulving’s concept of ‘episodic memory’,12 in which the individual in enabled to autonoetically re-experience sensually distinctive moments of their past.13 Not to be confused with episodic memory itself,14 autobiographical memory represents the part of the memory which accords personal significance to such episodes.

Autobiographical memory, in short, emphasises the critical role that self-identity plays in the remembering process. As the working self, or the reflective ‘I’, as James would have it, interprets and encodes personal memories, it continually reviews and updates its objective ‘me’, as the ‘me’ itself simultaneously influences the qualitative nature of the perceiving ‘I’.15 Meanwhile, just as memory and self are considered to interact in an actively dynamic symbiotic relationship, so too are autobiographical remembering and the socio-cultural world.16 In his outlining of 11 Dorthe

Berntsen and David Rubin. “Understanding autobiographical memory: an ecological theory”. In: Understanding autobiographical memory.

Ed. by D. Berntsen and D.C. Rubin. Cambridge University Press, 2012, pp. 333–355.

12 E. Tulving. Elements of Episodic Memory. Oxford University Press, 1985, p. 127.

13 Katherine Nelson. “Narrative and Self, Myth and Memory: Emergence of the Cultural Self”. In: Autobiographical Memory and the Construction of a Narrative Self. Ed. by Robyn Fivush and Catherine A. Haden. New York: Psychology Press, 2013, p. 8.

14 Alan David Baddeley. “Reflections on autobiographical memory”. In: Understanding autobiographical memory. Ed. by D. Berntsen and D.C. Rubin. Cambridge University Press, 2012, pp. 70–72.

15 Dan McAdams. “Identity and the Life Story”. In: Autobiographical Memory and the Construction of a Narrative Self. Ed. by Robyn Fivush and Catherine A. Haden. New York: Psychology Press, 2013, pp. 188–196; William James. “The Self”. In: The Essential William James. Ed. by John Shook. New York: Prometheus, 2011, pp. 89–103.

16 Martin A. Conway and Laura Jobson. “On the nature of autobiographical memory”. In: Understanding autobiographical memory. Ed. by D. Berntsen and D.C. Rubin. Cambridge University Press, 2012, pp. 70–88.

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the development of autobiographical memory, Nelson includes the notion of the ‘cultural self’ which enables the child to set their personal self-history in cultural context, and crucially to contrast their self with an ideal-self as developed in relation to this cultural context.17 It seems reasonable to suggest therefore that the process of remembering which the Carol Service facilitates might be seen, from a psychological perspective, as a function of autobiographical memory. In other words, it should be viewed not just as a process of remembering, but of identity formation and cultivation.

Moreover, this should not be considered a merely individual process but a collective one. For as Assmann persuasively indicates, just as the individual psyche chooses the memories it wishes to retain according to its emotional needs and motivations, so too does cultural society.18 Arguably, anthropologists or sociologists considering the process of remembering from a collective perspective would classify Holy Trinity’s annual Christmas Eve Carol Service as a rite of intensification. This term was first coined by Chapple and Coon as an elaboration of Van Gennep’s famous theory of rites of passage.

Van Gennep’s theory is based on the premise that an individual’s life in any society is comprised of ‘a series of passages from one age to another and from one occupation to another’.19 Such a change marks a ‘crisis’ in the habitual interaction rates of the individual, which requires the restoration of equilibrium in order for the identity to remain integrated.20 This, according to Van Gennep, is invariably achieved by sophisticated societies in the performance of a ritual which provides an intermediate ‘liminal’ 17 Nelson, “Narrative and Self, Myth and Memory: Emergence of the Cultural Self”.

18 J. Assmann and R. Livingstone. Religion and cultural memory: ten studies. Stanford University Press, 2006.

19 A. van Gennep, M.B. Vizedom, and G.L. Caffee. The Rites of Passage.

University of Chicago Press, 2011, p. 2.

20 E.D. Chapple and C.S. Coon. Principles of anthropology. H. Holt and Company, 1942, p. 484.

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stage for the individual as they pass from one status to another.21 Whereas rites of passage focus on the ‘non-periodic changes’ of life which relate to individual identity, rites of intensification, as Chapple and Coon define them, occur in conjunction with the ‘periodic’ environmental changes which affect the group as a whole.

Rites of intensification are thus most obviously associated with the regular changes in climate or environment which occur with the passing of time.22 Christmas, along with the majority of religious rituals, is cited as a prime example of this type of rite. Tracing the origins of the festival as a response to the seasonal change precipitated by the winter solstice period, Chapple and Coon explain how Christmas has become ingrained as a ‘family rite’ in which interactions between family members reach their peak.23 Indeed, in the eyes of contemporary Western cultures, Christmas ‘tis the season to be jolly’; a holiday season in which we undoubtedly continue to see dramatic shifts in patterns of work, leisure, sociality, commercial markets, and even emotional moods and attitudes (watch this space for my PhD!).

Reviewing this framework, the needs and motivations driving the cultural psyche to choose to remember Christmas rituals like the Carol Service are clear. For cultural identity to be maintained and cultivated, the periodic performance of such public ceremonies is essential. Accordingly, the ‘regularity’ of their occurrence ensures the vicissitudes of social and environmental life are incorporated into a familiar and ‘constant rhythm’.24 Having considered how the dynamics of the cultural psyche’s autobiographical memory interact with the individual’s in more formal, structural terms, I now want to turn to a consideration of how the process might be experienced; how it might actually feel.

In short: it became pretty clear, from engaging in my interview conversations, that it felt nostalgic. Defined as a ‘type of auto21 Gennep,

Vizedom, and Caffee, The Rites of Passage, p. 1. and Coon, Principles of anthropology, pp. 462, 485–86.

23 Ibid., pp. 515–516.

24 Ibid., pp. 507–8.

22 Chapple

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biographical memory’,25 the rich concept of nostalgia, I suggest, provides an insight into the specific emotional tone at the driving seat of the remembering process.

Unpacking the dynamics of this emotion, however, might be easier said than done. Though contemporary research indicates that ‘nostalgia’ has become recognised as a widely experienced emotion,26 it is often experienced and acknowledged as an ineffable kind of feeling.27 Mills and Coleman define nostalgia as ‘the bittersweet recall of emotional past events’ (1994: 205). Thus, nostalgia is, by its very definition, not only a deeply subjective experience,28 but also somewhat contradictory.29 Its ‘bittersweet’ combination of sadness and joy, pleasure and pain, loss and familiarity, make it a complex, multi-layered experience.30 The historical development of ‘nostalgia’ as a concept is almost as complex as the dynamics of the emotion itself.31 Coined by the Swiss physician Johannes Hofer in 1688 to describe the symptoms of extreme homesickness suffered by Swiss mercenaries, nostalgia is a compound of the Greek words: nostos, meaning journey home or homecoming and algios meaning pain, or longing, or grief.32 Contrary to modern sensibilities or preconceptions, it 25 Marie A. Mills and Peter G. Coleman. “Nostalgic Memories in Dementia”. In: International Journal of Aging and Human Development 38.3 (1994), p. 205; Janelle L. Wilson. Nostalgia: Sanctuary of Meaning. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2005, pp. 147–48.

26 Clay Routledge. Nostalgia: A Psychological Resource. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2015, pp. 8–20.

27 Wilson, Nostalgia: Sanctuary of Meaning, p. 8.

28 Elihu S. Howland. “Nostalgia”. In: Journal of Existential Psychiatry 3.10 (1962), p. 198.

29 Wilson, Nostalgia: Sanctuary of Meaning, p. 23.

30 Fred Davis. “Nostalgia, Identity and the Current Nostalgia Wave”. In: The Journal of Popular Culture 11.2 (1977), p. 418; Routledge, Nostalgia: A Psychological Resource, p. 44.

31 H. Illbruck. Nostalgia: Origins and Ends of an Unenlightened Disease.

Northwestern University Press, 2012.

32 Ibid., p. 5.

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was classified as a disease well into the nineteenth century,33 and for some time afterwards as a pathological delusion.34 It is only really since marketing researchers have cottoned on to its positive connotations that nostalgia has come to be regarded as a desirable, pleasurable and predominantly positive ‘emotion’.35 Over the past ten years, psychologists have begun to investigate nostalgia in a more systematic manner.36 Drawing upon Davis’ earlier sociological work,37 this growing research suggests that nostalgia may in actual fact not be as ‘stuck in the past’ as we had first assumed. Rather, these psychologists argue nostalgia should be seen not only as a positive emotion but as a psychological resource, whereby reflecting on or idealising past experiences can generate positive feelings, a sense of meaning, and affirmed self- identity in the present.38 In identifying and exploring the dynamics of nostalgia in this study, I therefore hope to contribute to this climate of research.

With this in mind, I now want to unpick some of the emotion’s multi-layered dynamics by exploring the themes which emerged from my interviews in more detail.

As contemporary nostalgia research might suggest, the interviewees all viewed the Carol Service as a positive event. It was frequently referred to as a ‘joyous’, ‘happy’, ‘enjoyable’, ‘uplifting’, ‘jolly’ ‘celebration’ which made people feel ‘upbeat’ and gave them a real sense of ‘occasion’. A tangible sense of ‘feel good’ factor came across as people recalled a ‘buzzy’, vibrant and highly charged atmosphere. Robert, Michael and Barbara explained that the service’s timing after the rush of preparations is largely over means that this event, for many, signals ‘the start of Christmas’.

33 Wilson,

Nostalgia: Sanctuary of Meaning, p. 22.

Kaplan. “The Psychopathology of Nostalgia”. In: Psychoanalytic Review 74.4 (1987), pp. 465–6.

35 Wilson, Nostalgia: Sanctuary of Meaning, p. 22.

36 Routledge, Nostalgia: A Psychological Resource, pp. 1–2.

37 Davis, “Nostalgia, Identity and the Current Nostalgia Wave”; F. Davis.

Yearning for Yesterday: A Sociology of Nostalgia. Free Press, 1979.

38 Routledge, Nostalgia: A Psychological Resource.

34 Harvey

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For many, therefore, this service seemed be a highly anticipated event and several referred to a sense of excited ‘expectation’. ‘You do feel that everybody knows that tomorrow is something special’, Jacquie said. Colin instinctively linked this sense of anticipation to memories of his childhood: ‘I went to a very . . . trad school where there was a daily act of corporate worship . . . and I’ve always sung hymns . . . you move through the year with the hymns and then you come to Advent and the Christmas hymns start to be sung, it’s just lovely . . . I just love them and that might be edging towards nostalgia, maybe one of the reasons because it reminds me of my childhood, it reminds me of those moments of expectation and . . . there are certain ones . . . we sing, where you. . . think, this is it. It’s like opening your presents at Christmas. They only come once a year, so enjoy it.

Get ready for it. Get in the zone. Get in the groove.’

Describing the ‘ritual’ of Christmas, he adds: ‘There’s a dynamic that just builds up. . . It’s been building up for days. And everybody’s been building up to it. And everybody knows it’s important. And everybody involved in it is kind of focused on the moment. So it’s bound to be a very . . . strong . . . moment in your life. But other services, yes, you can feel it just the same. Probably not the same intensity, but it’s the same quality. . . You’re still there wondering and longing.’

The connecting of ‘longing’ with a sense of significance and momentousness here captures an important nostalgic theme.39 Moreover, the assertion that other services are invested with the ‘same 39 Ibid.,

pp. 84–7.

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quality’, though perhaps with less ‘intensity’ suggests that ‘Christmas’ might function as an intensification of the emotions surrounding ordinary worship. In capturing this sense of ‘longing’, Colin’s interview expresses a sentiment which was universal amongst my interviewees, and an indication as to why the Carol Service produces this sense of excited anticipation.

The answer, in short, seems to be that people know their expectations are going to be met. Asked what she thought drew people to this service, Linda said: ‘I think it’s partly nostalgia . . . It’s familiarity. You know what you’re going to get when you walk . . . through the church doors. You’re going to get carols that you have learnt as a child . . . and a rekindling of what you know.’

The themes of ‘familiarity’ and ‘knowing’ appeared repeatedly throughout the interviews. People spoke fondly of their favourite carols and relished being granted the opportunity to sing the ‘old faithfuls’ which they had sung since childhood. ‘Oh that’s what we go for, to sing!’ Karen blurted out instantaneously when asked how she felt about singing. She loves the way the carols are sung with ‘lots of gusto’ so ‘everybody can join in.’ ‘I love all of them’, she said, ‘and I very rarely need the words because I just know it.’ This sense of ‘knowing’ also appeared strongly in Barbara’s description of the atmosphere: ‘It’s the music that. . . creates the whole atmosphere, the soaring music that fills the church and, you know, puts people in the mood, because everybody knows . . . the carols so. . . from the time that Once in Royal David’s City starts, people feel they can join in and relax and. . . sing the carols to your heart’s content and you know, those days in the school assembly come back . . . and we’re still using the Victorian tunes aren’t we for the carols and everybody knows them. You know, 50

there’s nothing new about it . . . It’s familiarity. It’s part of the routine. It’s . . . comfortable.’

This admission of ‘comfort’ reveals another key theme. The sense of shared knowledge and familiarity experienced at the Carol Service for many induced a feeling of comfort, or ‘reassurance’ as Colin repeatedly dwells upon. Exploring this further, Linda reflected: ‘I think it’s more than nostalgia. I think it’s almost . . . everybody has a bit of soul that they need to feed and this is a safe way of doing it.’

This statement is of course symptomatic of Linda’s personal beliefs. Replacing ‘soul’ with ‘identity’ however, reveals that its sentiment supports the recent promotion of nostalgia as a psychological resource which aims to ‘feed’ self-identity and, as a result, psychological wellbeing.40 Indeed, the interviewees all reported leaving the service feeling ‘on a high’, ‘uplifted’ or a ‘sense of wellbeing’.

It appeared that the consistency of the setting enabled the service to be utilised as a retreat space apart from the chaos of the outside world. Many interviewees reported feeling ‘at peace’, a sense of ‘calm’ or even a kind of ‘magic’. It was a setting in which time appeared to stand still, allowing people to reconnect and commune with things as they really are; in other words, the things which do not change. Almost all the interviewees appeared to view the Carol Service as symbolic of the true meaning of Christmas as opposed to the commercialized Christmas of the secular world.

This motivation might perhaps be aligned with what some have identified as modernity’s search for some sort of natural authenticity or foundation which might undergird its pervasive relativism.41 40 Routledge,

Nostalgia: A Psychological Resource, p. 26.

Nostalgia: Origins and Ends of an Unenlightened Disease, p. 245; Wilson, Nostalgia: Sanctuary of Meaning, pp. 54–7; D. HervieuL´ eger. Religion as a Chain of Memory. Rutgers University Press, 2000, pp. 96, 141–57.

41 Illbruck,

51

At the very least, all the interviewees proved emotionally moved by an appreciation for the sense of continuity provided by the aesthetics, tradition, history and community spirit evoked by the church setting.

The aesthetic quality of the experience was clearly the vital emotional motivating factor. Appreciation for the standard of the choir and the influence of the music in creating the atmosphere was universal. Some also referred to the ‘beauty’ of the words in the familiar readings. Meanwhile, some connected the church’s architectural beauty to a sense of history. Karen said: ‘I love the building, because it’s history. I love the wooden pews . . . There’s a lovely feeling about it. You’re surrounded by history, it’s lovely. It sort of envelops you doesn’t it.’

Essentially, there seemed to be a very blurred line between aesthetic experiences, warm fuzzy nostalgic feelings, and moments of felt transcendence or spirituality. This was particularly well expressed by Robert: ‘I love the physical building itself, and actually I took great peace from the fact that actually this has gone on for, you can’t say eternity, but it’s gone on for a long time, that people have worshipped in this place and sat . . . in this place, and . . . looked at these windows and looked at these walls. And there is a degree of . . . um how can I say eternity but it’s not eternity . . . it can . . . shrink your current problems.’

The juxtaposition of experiencing this kind of intimate, personal ‘moment’ within the context of the wider community, culture and perhaps even the kind of ‘eternity’ Robert describes, was a key theme throughout my interviews, and corresponds well to Turner’s concept of communitas.42 Often identified with the middle limi42 V.W.

Turner, R.D. Abrahams, and A. Harris. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Aldine Transaction, 2011.

52

nal part of Van Gennep’s rite, communitas can be described as a fleeting sense of ‘social bond’ which transcends and yet simultaneously strengthens ordinary social structures,43 presenting a feeling of oneness or pure Being with others.44 Christmas appeared to be a time for ‘getting together’ and ‘touching base’ (Jacquie) not just with family, but also with the wider community. That everyone else at the Carol Service was enjoying themselves and feeling similar emotions seemed important to people. Comparing the communal experience to that of a ‘football match’, Geoff particularly valued the fact that everyone was ‘up for it’ and ‘there because they want[ed] to be’. Laughing, he added, ‘Everybody’s there singing . . . dare I say it, from the same hymn sheet.’

It seems only natural that, in the midst of all these memories and feelings of togetherness, feelings of grief also came to the surface. Perhaps more obviously, people felt a sense of loss for loved ones now absent from the occasion. But they also felt a sense of loss for elements in society which may have changed; for past parts of them-selves, past beliefs and cherished times passed.

Jacquie reported becoming ‘quite teary inside’ as she listened to the music at the Carol Service which made her feel ‘nostalgic . . . remembering Christmases past when other people have been with us who are now dead.’ Asked what made her feel nostalgic at the service, she replied: ‘specific things like . . . imagining your parents there.

But other than that just a general . . . Christmas nostalgia. You know, that the candles are there and . . . thinking this is what Christmas means for me. Candles. Trees. Carols. The thought that tomorrow is going to be a really nice quiet family day . . . So that sort of nostalgia.’

43 Ibid., 44 Ibid.,

pp. 96, 127. pp. 126–38.

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This expresses the ‘bittersweet’ nature of nostalgia particularly well. She begins by considering her feelings of grief, her imagination allowing her to glean back, just for a moment, a sense of connection with those she has lost. However, in the same imaginative mode, she swiftly moves to contemplate a more ‘general’ nostalgia which incorporates these sad feelings with the continuities of the present. Her narrative neatly demonstrates the ‘redemptive sequence’ described by Routledge and colleagues, in which negative events or feelings give way to an emotional positive conclusion.45 Hence, rather than triggering an irreconcilable grief for the past, Christmas for Jacquie at least, appears to provide a space for a healthy, contemplative form of remembrance.

This sense of contemplation was also drawn upon by Barbara when trying to explain why she felt a kind of ‘sadness’ as she listened to carols: ‘There’s usually sadness in beauty isn’t there . . . You know, you don’t look at a beautiful picture and start laughing . . . You get lost in it . . . and you think ‘yeah that’s really nice” and . . . it makes you contemplate it.’

She interestingly continues: ‘But you get that, don’t you, in a family. You know, if you go to your Gran’s birthday party, there’s joy but there’s also a touch of sadness that she’s getting older and, you know, she’s not dancing on the table and you know . . . that sort of thing . . . which is part of life . . . complete life is having joy. . . at certain moments but . . . it’s never unrestrained . . . And it will come across more and more. There will come a time when . . . you’ve got your own family around you, and you’re celebrating Christmas and think . . . if only Mum and Dad were still here. . . ”’ 45 Routledge,

54

Nostalgia: A Psychological Resource, p. 17.

Though clearly relating feelings of loss here, Barbara concluded by describing the feeling as a ‘sort of contented sadness.’ Asked to expand on this, she replied: ‘Well you accept the fact that you enjoyed what you had . . . those were the days but . . . you don’t wish them necessarily back but you accept the fact that you enjoyed them when they were there and they were what they were.’

Hence, it seems the kind of nostalgia displayed here is not in denial or stuck in the past, but quietly contemplative of the passing of time.46 It appears, therefore, such occasions as Christmas may allow the individual to integrate their view of their past into their continuing life story and self-identity.

It seems that the Carol Service provided, for these individuals, a fertile sanctuary for nostalgic self-reflection. However, this is not some narcissistic, self-indulgent sanctuary which merely seeks to eulogise the past as a kind of self-help stop-gap; but rather an imaginative, contemplative sanctuary which enables people to envisage hope for the future, to review where they’re at, and to draw from this the inspiration and motivation necessary for moving forward.47 Crucially I found evidence of this across both regular and nonregular groups. But perhaps even more significantly, my conversations uncovered similar processes at work on a regular Sunday.

Thus, it seems that, at Christmas time, people who do not engage with the church for the remainder of the year are effectively engaging in the same process of collective remembering and reflection as the regular attenders who tended to ascribe to a more orthodox belief-set. Hence, despite her atheistic leaning scepticism, Jacquie finds being in a ‘religious setting’ helpful to ‘sit and review’ her ‘own particular beliefs.’ Colin also reflected this sentiment, commenting: ‘Even if you don’t believe it’s a wonderful opportunity 46 Wilson,

Nostalgia: Sanctuary of Meaning, p. 26.

Nostalgia: A Psychological Resource, p. 83.

47 Routledge,

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just to sit down and reflect upon. . . what you’ve been doing.’ For Colin, Christmas combines this sense of ‘challenge’ with ‘hope’.

As he sees it, the process of longing for and remembering Jesus’ birth each year provides a renewal of ‘hope’, which propels him to embrace the ‘challenge’ of making changes in his moral life.

Many of my interviewees considered ‘hope’ to be at the core of the central message of Christmas. This was clearly expressed by Karen: ‘I think the Christmas story’s full of hope isn’t it. It’s . . . the birth. . . of everything. It’s all hopeful and good (pause) even in a stable . . . You feel renewed don’t you at Christmas. I don’t feel as if it’s the end of the year, I just feel as if we’re starting again.’

So what draws the ‘faithful’ to church at Christmas time? According to this small case study, the answer appears to be ‘nostalgia’. A nostalgia for happy times spent; for the year just gone; for Christmases past; for the way things were; for childhood; for loved ones lost; for beliefs once held; for carols and Christmas trees, sparkles and angel wings, choirs and candles. However, underlying all of this seemed to be a nostalgia for the authentic ‘truth’, for the foundation of things, for a ‘beginning’.

This undoubtedly fits with Christmas’ theological message of the incarnation. The Christmas story is ultimately a story of renewal, of the eternal Word which was ‘in the beginning’ being recalled and rediscovered afresh when it entered time, ‘became flesh, and dwelt among us’ (John 1). In remembering this ‘beginning’ each liturgical year, the Church reaches back to remind itself of its origins and to reconnect with an integral part of its identity. It is through the tradition of rituals like the Carol Service that this collective process of autobiographical remembering is communicated.48 However, equally, it is through participation 48 Assmann

p. 7.

56

and Livingstone, Religion and cultural memory: ten studies,

in such rituals that the individual’s process of autobiographical remembering is stimulated. For it is in nostalgic ‘memory spaces’49 like the Carol Service that the formative question ‘who are we?’ becomes a question of ‘who am I?’. In reflecting upon the ‘beginning of Christianity’ (Geoff), my interviewees found themselves reflecting upon their own ‘beginnings’. Whether this was celebrating the joy of ‘new birth’, looking back fondly on their school carol services, remembering the ‘beginning’ of their faith journeys or embracing the ‘beginning’ of a brand new year, each of my interviewees were reminded of a sense of meaning and purpose in their lives which somehow bolstered their core identity.50 The Carol Service can ultimately be seen for these individuals as a liminal act of communion; a re-gathering or re-collecting together of that from which they are dis-connected, that for which they are ‘homesick’, or perhaps even, that which they had forgotten. It represents a communion or a ‘binding’ together, in the truest sense of the word ‘religion’,51 of distinctive individuals; of seemingly contradictory emotions; of the year just gone and the year ahead; of individual and collective identities; of episodic and semantic memories; of the living and the dead; of the individual and society; of belief and unbelief, non-regular attender and regular attender; of human and divine, sacred and profane; of time and timelessness, horizontal and vertical, past and present, present and future.

The Carol Service is ultimately therefore a kind of ‘homecoming’ in the original sense of the word ‘nostalgia’; a ‘feeling of completeness’ as Barbara described, or of being ‘at peace with yourself’ as Colin suggested. Like the emotion itself, it is a ‘restoration of lost unity’, a ‘hold[ing] together’ of seemingly contradictory things in a redemptive Prodigal-Son-esque reconciliation; in which 49 Ibid.,

p. 20.

Nostalgia: A Psychological Resource, p. 83.

51 Grafton Eliason. “Spirituality and Counselling of the Older Adult”. In: Death Attitude and the Older Adult: Theories, Concepts and Applications.

Ed. by Adrian Tomer. New York: Routledge, 2000, p. 243.

50 Routledge,

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what was ‘lost’ is ‘found’, and the crux of the individual’s identity comes ‘alive again’ 52 . For it is often only by grounding ourselves with a sense of who we are that we are able to reflect on what we might do next; only by answering the formative question that we come to ask the normative question; only by returning home that we come to know how to move forward.

52 Luke

15:11-32; T. Radcliffe. Why Go to Church?: The Drama of the Eucharist. Bloomsbury Academic, 2009, pp. 20–8

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“Boys don’t do ballet”: constructing and rejecting gender in Early Years play Jess Frieze his study reports an analysis of children’s construction of genT der in play. The study was undertaken over a two day period at Ford Park College (names of all participants and institutions are pseudonyms), a co-educational independent school in the north of England. Ford Park has always offered education from Reception through to Sixth Form, but has recently opened a Pre-School named Ford Park Ducklings, which at the time of the study was in its second year of operation. The study took place in January 2017, at the start of the Spring Term. Through observing the free play which dominated the curriculum at the Pre-School, this study aims to examine whether children of nursery age are aware of social constructions of gender and how they conform to or reject these.

Studying gender in nursery age children At Ford Park, children are able to start pre-school in the term in which they will turn three years old, meaning that the majority of children in the class were three. Two children were two years of age and several were four. Depending on when parents choose to enrol their children at the pre-school, they remain there for either one or two years, starting Reception in the academic year in which they turn five. Ford Park Pre-School offers parents the choice of sending their children for full days, lasting from 8.45am to 4pm, 59

or for one of the morning or afternoon sessions (8.45-1pm or 14pm). Parents are also able to choose how many days of the week their children attend the pre-school, with the most popular choice, according to the teacher, being four days per week. Ford Park is located within an affluent area, and almost all of the children were from middle class backgrounds. All were white with the exceptions of Conrad, who was from a mixed background, Ayesha, who was Indian, and Eduardo, who was Hispanic. The class size varied from twenty-eight children at its largest to eleven at its smallest in the days that the study was undertaken. Thirty-two is the maximum capacity of the pre-school. There were two teachers, one permanent teaching assistant and one part-time nursery nurse.

As a researcher, it is always difficult to position oneself in the classroom when observing children. While I was obviously unable to ingratiate myself with the children, I was eager to emphasise that I was also not a teacher, and that children did not have to regulate their behaviour in front of me for fear of getting into trouble. While this observer as participant role, with the researcher as a helpful adult obviously separate from teaching staff, may be possible in older children1 this was more difficult with pre school ages. On the first morning of the study, the day’s monitor, a child whose name was chosen at random from a bag, was given the task of counting how many children and grown ups were present, as well telling the teacher the date and the weather. When the grown ups were counted by the monitor (Ben) walking around and tapping each adult on the head, I was included in this count after only a moment’s hesitation from Ben. While children were mostly unperturbed by my observation over the two days, if I were to repeat this ethnography, I would perhaps take this carpet time on the first morning of the study to explain to the whole class my purpose in being there, as I did individually to the several children who asked me: that I was doing a special project on the 1L

Duits. “The Importance of Popular Media in Everyday Girl Culture”.

In: Journal of Communication 25.3 (2010), pp. 243–257.

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Pre School and would be watching what they did here. I offered them the opportunity to tell me anything they thought was good or bad about being at Ford Park.

Previous literature in this area, while vast in range, was used to shape the direction of my analysis. Studies examining how children position themselves, particularly those concentrating on masculine subject positions, often choose to observe older children,2 whilst a number of studies of nursery children in the past have been formulaic and quantitative in nature,3 analysing children’s responses to researcher led questions. I wanted to use methods from both of these types of research, taking the frameworks of more structured work on nursery children and creating an ethnography where the direction of the study was informed by observations. Similarly, literature examining children’s play such as4 has also involved researcher prompted activity—while these studies are immensely useful in examining how children position themselves in relation to a topic, I wanted my ethnography to be completely child-lead. From my observations I determined certain recurring themes, which were used to shape the structure of the final study.

A genderless classroom Due perhaps to its relative newness (and recent moves towards a more fluid understanding of gender), the Lead Early Years practitioner and teacher told me that the staff had aimed to make the Pre-School a gender neutral space—a contentious idea in it2 A Phoenix, S Frosch, and R Pattman.

“Producing Contradictory Masculine Subject Positions: Narratives of Threat, Homophobia and Bullying in 11-14 Year Old Boys”.

In: Journal of Social Issues 59.1 (2003), pp. 179–195; M Ghaill. Making of Men. eBook Available at http://www.myilibrary.com?ID=113066. 2017.

3 D N Ruble et al. “The role of gender constancy in early gender development”. In: Child Development 78.4 (2007), pp. 1121–1136.

4 J Marsh. “‘But I want to fly too!’: Girls and superhero play in the classroom”. In: Gender and Education 2 (2010), pp. 209–220.

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self. The classroom was decorated in neutral tones with white paintwork and wooden furniture, and many of the toys and games provided for the children were made of natural materials, such as sanded and varnished pieces of wood as building blocks, or pebbles as an aid to numeracy. There was a home corner with baby dolls and dressing up items, but the staff had tried to provide relatively gender neutral dressing up options with “less of the princess dresses”. When I first entered the classroom, the children were playing together on the carpet with a set of wooden building blocks—they would sit on the carpeted area with toys provided at the start of each day while children were being dropped off and before the register was taken. On Day 1, children played together constructing towers with no obvious gender divide or coded play.

I had expected to find examples of what Davies termed “category maintenance work”, where children ascribe gender coding to nongendered items such as these wooden blocks.5 However, upon first observation this did not seem to be the case: Children all playing together in one group with non gendered toys. It is impossible (?) for category maintenance work to take place as there are no obvious categories. Field notes, 8.40am, Day 1.

However, this idea was challenged to some extent as my observations continued. On Day 2, the same toys were provided for the children, but a very different reaction to them was observed: The girls have gone into one group, playing birthday cake with the pieces of wood, while the boys play construction. Field notes, 9am Day 2.

There are several possible reasons for this discrepancy—different children were present on Day 2, as well as the class size having reduced from twenty-eight children on the morning of Day 1 to 5B

Davies. Frogs and Snails and Feminist Tails: preschool children and gender. 1st ed. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1989.

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eleven on Day 2. It may have been that certain children who enjoyed playing in a mixed group were not present, or that the smaller class size allowed for an easier gender divide into two compact groups. The children may simply have enjoyed playing both in mixed and in single sex groups. In most cases, children did not show examples of category maintenance work when playing with the non-gendered toys, with both boys and girls using the pebbles for counting games and, a particular favourite of both genders, a tray of sugar lumps used for building.

Several times during the study, members of staff approached me to share their view that the children I was studying were too young to be aware of gender, beyond the fact that boys and girls were biologically different. This argument may be supported by Kohlberg’s theory of gender development, which states that children go through several stages in developing an understanding of gender.6 The first, gender identity, reached at around two years of age, allows children to identify their own and others’ biological sex, while by the second, gender stability, children understand that gender remains constant over time, but their understanding is heavily influenced by external features, such as hair and clothes, and is normally reached at age four. In this stage, children may believe that gender presentation can affect biological sex, such as fearing a boy may become a girl if he were to wear a dress. If this is the case, the young age of the pre school children may mean that the children at Ford Park had yet to enter the second stage and perceive that their biological differences could influence their external presentations of masculinity or femininity and how these were expressed through play.

However, the children I observed seemed, despite many being under four years old, to have a clear understanding that external features, such as the wearing of dresses or length of hair, did not affect biological sex, a view Kohlberg ascribes to children of that 6 L Kohlberg. “A cognitive-developmental analysis of children?s sex-role concepts and attitudes”. In: The development of sex differences. Ed. by E Maccoby. London: Tavistock, 1966, pp. 82–173.

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age group. When reading a story about a little boy who wanted to be a ballet dancer, one child told me that boys could not wear dresses or do ballet, as they would look ‘wrong’, a suggestion which would pass gender stability tests such as Ruble’s and which would place Ford Park children at a far more advanced stage than their age would allow for.7 By the third stage of Kohlberg’s theory, gender constancy, children are able to recognise that gender is independent of external features, a level of subtlety some children seemed to have reached. This may be due to effort by parents as well as teachers to impress upon children from a young age that their gender is not influenced by appearance and behaviour, or vice versa. In a society which recognises the fluidity of gender and gender expression far more than it did in the 1960s when Kohlberg formulated this theory, children may be better able to progress through its stages earlier.

While boys and girls often did play in single sex groups over the two days of the study, there were far more instances of mixed sex groups than I had anticipated, and certainly far more than I can recall of my own experiences of pre school. Thorne’s idea of verbal marking of gender could be used to offer an explanation for this.8 Thorne observes teachers addressing children by gender markers—for example, “Come on, boys and girls”, “You ladies need to stop talking now,” etc. Thorne argues that gender terms, useful for teachers to address large groups, perpetuate the idea that two distinct categories exist in the classroom and may influence the separation that many remember in the playground.

However, during my research, the children were never addressed in this way. As the Pre School was named Ford Park Ducklings, the children were mostly addressed in this way—“Right, Ducklings, can we line up nicely?” etc. By appealing to children’s’ identity as a member of Ducklings rather than as either a boy or a girl, teachers (who did not mention when asked about gender 7 Ruble

et al., “The role of gender constancy in early gender development”.

Thorne. Gender Play: boys and girls in schools. 1st ed. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1993.

8B

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divides whether this was deliberate) may have allowed for more mixed gender and non gender coded play, as these ideas of gender categories were rarely spoken out loud.

Constructing orthodox gender roles However, there were a few exceptions to the gender free play of most children. On the first day of the study I witnessed Conrad, the oldest child in the class, and several other boys playing with some large plastic paper clips, running around the classroom and using the clips as guns. The boys ran around shooting each other and making ‘war’ noises until they were told to stop by the teacher as they were being too noisy. After this, most of the boys drifted off to play with other toys and Conrad was left continuing the game alone. I observed him playing alone with the paper clips and singing the Power Rangers theme tune on several occasions over the two days, one of the few instances of popular media influencing the children’s play. When I spoke to several other members of staff at lunch time, many of the teachers told me that they believe ideas of gender only become relevant at around four or five years old, and that the children I was observing had no concept of the gender essentialism surrounding children’s play. If this is the case, it may account for Conrad, as the oldest child at age four and a half, being the only boy in the class to consistently conform to hegemonic masculine subject positions in his play. However, Conrad was clearly the most challenging child in the class in terms of behaviour, a fact stated several times by the staff. Unlike most other children, he would rarely follow instructions, such as to stop playing and tidy up before home time or to sit on the carpet for registration.

In a study of older boys, Phoenix et al argue that typically masculine subject positions adopted by school age boys often place a disregard for academic study and for authority figures as an ideal 65

around which male hierarchies are constructed.9 Through his bad behaviour, often expressed through loud, typically masculine and violent games, Conrad may have aspired towards what he believed to be the culturally exalted form of masculinity, a tactic which did seem effective when other boys joined in with his game. Conrad’s embracing of male coded games may have been a classic example of attention seeking, attempting to win friends amongst the other boys. However, Conrad was by no means the most popular child in the class, and I often observed him playing by himself, humming the Power Rangers theme tune and clearly engrossed in an imaginary game. The most popular boys, Jack, Ben and Sam, were mostly unwilling to join in with the typically masculine and violent games of shooting. They were hard working and well behaved, a type of masculinity which Reay found in her study of Year One children, concluding that “the culturally exalted form of masculinity varies from school to school”.10 This may be down to the fact that Ford Park is a private school, which puts a high value, even in the Pre-School, on academic success. It seems that Conrad had misjudged this in his attempt at achieving a higher place within the class social hierarchy. It may simply have been that, unfortunately, he was the only child in the class who liked Power Rangers.

While Conrad was the only boy in the class to consistently play in an obviously gendered way, the same was not true of the girls.

Ashley was, in many ways, a female equivalent of Conrad, often instigating games of dressing up, families or weddings. I really only observed her on the second day of the study, when she began an elaborate game in the home corner with Sarah and Molly which involved Ashley playing their mother. For this role, she adopted 9 Phoenix, Frosch, and Pattman, “Producing Contradictory Masculine Subject Positions: Narratives of Threat, Homophobia and Bullying in 11-14 Year Old Boys”.

10 D Reay. “Spice Girls, Nice Girls, Girlies and Tomboys: Gender Discourses, girls, cultures and femininities in the primary classroom”. In: Gender and Education 13.2 (2001), p. 156.

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an American accent and repeatedly spoke phrases clearly lifted from American TV shows. When comparing this with Conrad’s love of Power Rangers, the only other significant example of media affecting the play, it seems likely that television, with its extreme presentations of gender, played a role in constructing gendered subject positions in the classroom. As well as television however, Ashley was clearly imitating her own mother in the game, stating that she was “going to my exercise class” and telling the other girls not to disturb her whilst she worked, using a disconnected computer keyboard. This subject position seemed impressively feminist, as Ashley seemed to be depicting a single working mother in her game, rather than the traditional games I expected the girls to play involving looking after baby dolls or cooking, which Sarah and Molly would often play when they were alone in the home corner. If this game was inspired by Ashley’s home life, it may be possible to suggest that the changing role of adult women today plays a part in children’s constructions of gender.

Little girls have traditionally been provided with toys depicting domestic life, such as baby dolls and play ovens, as the role of mother and housewife was expected of them when they grew up.

It is likely they would see their own mothers and female relatives in these roles. However, in a modern world where many women continue to work after having children, the roles that children expect for women may be changing, and thereby influencing their play. It was obvious that Ashley’s own mother led an independent life, going to work and “exercise class” as well as caring for her daughter, which seems likely to at least partly account for Ashley’s unwillingness to play traditional games of cooking and looking after children.

The same was not true of Sarah and Molly. When Sam drifted over to the home corner to play with the girls they were initially unsure, but eventually joined in with a game where Sam, as Father Christmas, brought presents. This prompted me to ask what the children had received for Christmas, with the common answer being underwear and toys. Sam had received a camera and Ashley 67

a doll. The game then changed to a superhero adventure, with Ashley electing not to play. Sarah, Molly and Sam debated the best way to stop a villain, with Sarah and Molly deciding to tell the police. Sam then took on the role of a policeman, while the girls elected to “stay at home” while he caught the villain. When the girls refused to join Sam’s adventure he became bored and drifted off after reassuring them that he had imprisoned the villain and that escape from jail was impossible. Why the girls constructed themselves in this passive way was interesting.

In Marsh’s study of children and superhero play, the same was often true, with girls deferring to boys in games where a villain had to be caught.11 It is possible that again, the responsibility for this lies in the media. Superhero narratives in children’s play are almost certainly informed by popular discourses, which remain largely sexist. Male superheroes such as Batman, Superman and Spiderman are well known cultural figures, giving Sam plenty of examples to imitate in his play, while female characters in superhero narratives tend either to be villains (Catwoman, Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy etc) or play a very minimal role. Marsh offers this as a reason for the same findings in her study: “they [female heroes] are not as brave and strong as the boys and when in direct competition with a man they are relegated to the category of ‘girl’ (Supergirl, Bat Girl)”.12 In a game focused around a hypermasculine fantasy world, it is perhaps not surprising that Sarah and Molly would find it difficult to position themselves as equal to Sam and able to join the adventure.

The game was interrupted by Ashley’s discovery of two soft toy foxes. I had brought these into the Pre-School on the second day of the study after watching the children listen to a story about two fox cubs which showed both the male and the female fox having an adventure. I had intended to ask the children about this and invite them to play with the foxes and then draw or describe to me the 11 Marsh, “‘But I want to fly too!’: Girls and superhero play in the classroom”.

12 Ibid., p. 211.

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games they played with them. I placed them in the story corner when Ashley, on one of her excursions to ‘work’, found the toys and brought them to the home corner. She was clearly delighted with them, and placed them in the shopping trolley containing her possessions in the game, replacing a baby doll with the foxes.

She initially constructed them as a family—“this is the mummy and this is the baby”—and was possessive when Sarah and Molly showed interest in the toys as well. They then became her children, and later a family pet. While the structure of the game varied, in each case a maternal role was at its centre, with Ashley either acting as mother to the toys or watching over them as a family.

This may have been influenced by the story the children had heard the day before, where the fox cubs were looked after by a mother fox whose absence to hunt for food facilitated their adventure.

Ashley’s actions could be considered a reflection of Rousseau’s argument that little girls prefer playing with dolls than with active games as “their taste [is] plainly adapted for their destination”.13 From the proclivity of the girls in the class to play families and mothers, this could be considered depressingly true. However, while to Rousseau this urge to take on a maternal role in play is an innate, biological adaptation, it is more likely that this position is socially constructed. Kane attributes some of children’s choice of strongly gender coded toys and play to parental constructions, arguing that “from the moment of birth, and even before, parents begin shaping their children’s gender”.14 It is possible that the children in my research may have been influenced by their parents’ offering them traditionally ‘male’ or ‘female’ toys, such as baby dolls for young girls. However, many parents are likely today to offer their children a range of toys, and I believe it is more likely 13 J Rousseau. Emile, or, concerning education: extracts, containing the principle elements of pedagogy found in the first three books / by Jean-Jacques Rousseau; with an introduction and notes by Jules Steeg. 1st ed. London: D.C Heath and Company, 1763/1884, p. 176.

14 E Kane. Rethinking Gender and Sexuality in Childhood. 1st ed. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013, p. 48.

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the “gender essentialism” prevalent in the toy market as whole that is responsible for these constructions of gender.

Toy shops are often sharply divided, making selection of toys on interest alone very difficult. Hamleys toy shop has recently faced backlash for having a separate floor for girls and boys. Although it has now removed these labels and changed its pink and blue signage for red, their two floors still contain obviously female and male coded toys, with brands such as Barbie and Hello Kitty on the floor below brands such as Hot Wheels and Lego. With toy shops featuring such strongly coded toys, it seems very unlikely that true self selection in toy shops is possible, something which may translate into the classroom and ideas of what is ‘proper’ play for girls and for boys. Children such as Ashley may feel pressure to consider these performances of gender, encouraged by the toy market and perhaps parents, and therefore construct her game in this way.

Deviating from the masculine However, despite the emphasis placed on them in this study, Ashley and Conrad’s strongly gender coded play was a relative exception to the habits of most of the children. While distinct friendship groups could be seen in the girls, in the boys this was far less rigid, and often boys would disperse and join games initiated by the girls. Sometimes this was well received, and sometimes not.

Sam wants to play kittens with Sarah, but she’s not sure now that the other girls have come over. Eventually she joins in, but ignores him when Ashley reappears. Field notes, 10am, Day 2.

I recorded several instances of girls being unwilling to allow boys to join their games, especially if these games were more female coded, such as this episode, which took place in the home corner during a game of families involving use of dressing up clothes and baby dolls. However, I did not observe a single instance of 70

boys similarly rejecting girls from their games, even when these games were male coded, such as playing with building blocks or toy cars. This may mimic the wider social pattern that it is more acceptable for women to engage in male-coded behaviours, such as wearing trousers and playing football, than it is for men to wear dresses or partake in cheerleading, for example. However, this may be attributable to the fact that far fewer instances of maleonly play were particularly strongly gendered. As I have already mentioned, male friendships in the class revolved around Jack, Ben and Sam, the three most popular boys. There did not seem to be a similar core of popular girls, though Ashley was clearly in charge of most female-only games. These three boys showed little interest in obviously masculine games, such as those initiated by Conrad, and as shown in field notes, attempted to join the girls in games such as families and playing with dolls. Despite this, most of the other boys in the class clearly looked up to these three, and often attempted to join their group, with varying degrees of success. These boys were much more inclusive to other boys than girls, as seen here in a game of families.

Jack, Ben and Sam are playing families with some toy penguins. Eduardo asks to play and they explain the game, unlike the girls earlier who suggested that there were already too many people playing and other girls could not join in. Field notes, 12.30pm, Day 2.

While sometimes Jack, Ben and Sam would limit their games to only the three of them, more often than not they would allow other children to play, regardless of their gender. As seen here, other children clearly aspired towards inclusion in these games. I have already mentioned that the three boys were hard working, quiet, and the cleverest children in the class. This would suggest that the culturally exalted form of masculinity at Ford Park Pre School revolved around the academic success of children such as Jack, Ben and Sam, and could explain why other boys were keen to be involved in games which were either not coded or even more 71

obviously feminine, such as the penguin game seen here.15 By joining in with their style of play, other boys may have hoped to embody some of the trio’s academic achievement and favour with the teachers.

Conclusion The study certainly did not yield the results I expected. Having been told that Ducklings was an almost entirely gender neutral space, but hardly believing this in a world full of sharply defined gender categories and coded toys, my results fell somewhere between the two. To the credit of the teachers involved, Ducklings did seem a place where children could express themselves in whichever style of play they wished—when Ben and Bradley began a game of dressing up, complete with pink hats, handbags and baby dolls, neither teachers nor other children reacted in any way. Later that afternoon, Ben began a game involving hammering a variety of wooden objects, telling us that “this is what Daddy does at work.” But, rather than a lack of awareness of gender constructions, many of the children I observed suggested a sophistication in their awareness of expected behaviors for boys and girls, and felt comfortable conforming to and rejecting these to suit their own interests.

Many instances of play involved mixed groups of children, which may have been influenced by the teachers’ emphasis on non gender coded toys, as well as addressing all of the children as “Ducklings” to virtually remove all segregated activities from the school day (there were in fact no separate timetabled activities for boys or girls). Boys especially were happy to play a variety of games and include girls and other boys in their groups. Their play was rarely strongly male coded, and the only boy who consistently conformed to traditionally masculine activities, Conrad, 15 Reay,

“Spice Girls, Nice Girls, Girlies and Tomboys: Gender Discourses, girls, cultures and femininities in the primary classroom”.

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was an exception. While girls adhered more closely to traditionally feminine activities, such as playing mothers or dressing up, they also regularly engaged in mixed gender activities, and their girls-only play often presented women in a more active position, such as Ashley’s depiction of her mother.

However, girls play especially suggested more traditional ideas about gender, such as Sarah and Molly’s inability to join in with the superhero narrative or the construction by the girls of the non-coded toy foxes as a game centered around a family. This is likely due to the extreme focus in toys intended for girls on a maternal role, with baby dolls a popular toy both at Ducklings and in toy shops around the world. Overall, when gender did influence the play, it tended to mostly be feminine coded. Boys were mostly happy to join in with games of families and dressing up, or even instigate them themselves. When I asked a mixed group of children their favourite colour, they all answered pink.

It may be that Ducklings was an environment which encouraged female coded activities over male—‘neutral’ toys such as blocks and pebbles may be easier to turn into a birthday cake or a house than into guns or cars. It may also have been due to the fact that all of the teachers at the Pre School were female. The teachers rarely intervened to stop the free play, but on the few occasions this did happen, it was to tell boys that they were being too noisy or violent. Teachers’ favorable response to female coded games, which often involved showing a drawing or creation to the teacher for approval, may have encouraged all children to choose these sorts of games, rather than joining the war games played by Conrad which would often receive negative attention from staff.

There are many complex factors at play in children’s constructions of gender, including the media, parental influence, other children, teachers and many more. It is therefore not surprising that I did not find a definitive pattern of behavior shared by all of the children—they are all autonomous beings whose individual backgrounds and experiences meant that all of their actions would vary from each other. However, certain themes could still be identified, 73

and the conclusion drawn that children’s constructions of gender are complex but, whether present or absent, always significant.

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‘A Blighted Star’: Hardy, Shakespeare and The Pursuit of Poetic Justice Katy Handley n Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbvervilles, when young AbraIblight’d ham asks Tess ‘which [star] do we live on? a splendid or a [sic] one?’, Tess replies ‘a blight’d one’. that was once, 1

or might conceivably be wholesome and beneficial, but is spoiled or infected in its current state. In Hardy’s novel, justice in the world is confined within the scope of the ‘blighted star’ Tess imagines the earth to be. Sympathetic, merciful social justice has the potential to exist; yet it does not. The adjective ‘blighted’ suggests something Literary critic, Kiernan Ryan, argues that there is a key distinction between ‘poetic justice’ and ‘poetical justice’.2 Shakespeare imagines a world in which ‘ere human statute purged the gentle weal’ in Macbeth, offering a prolepsis of mankind’s system of justice.3 Walter Pater declares that it is for ‘finer justice, a justice based upon a true respect of persons in our estimate of action’, that the people of Measure for Measure, cry out as they pass before us’.4 Hence, by the use of ‘poetical’ or imaginative 1 Thomas Hardy. Tess of the D’Urbervilles. 1st ed. London: Penguin, 2008, p. 31.

2 Kiernan Ryan. The Empathetic Imagination and the Dream of Equality: Shakespeare’s Poetical Justice. lecture given at The Chapel, St Chad’s College, Durham (2016/12/08).

3 William Shakespeare. “The Tragedy of Macbeth”. In: The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works. Ed. by John Jowett et al. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005, p. III. iv. 76.

4 Walter Pater. Appreciation with an Essay on Style. London: Macmillan, 1911, p. 190.

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force, the literature fantasises about this version of justice that is beyond the remit of the characters in the play.

Thomas Hardy and William Shakespeare, in using poetic justice as a literary device, intend to reevaluate conventional moral beliefs and stimulate mankind’s desire to strive for social justice.

Hardy’s ideological perspective was partly a reaction against the principles of Christianity, yet the literary and theological aspects of classical Greco-Roman culture were seminal to both Hardy and Shakespeare. The figure of Lady Justice is ‘the symbol of the judicial system’, and her statue appears in courthouses across the globe.5 She has her origins in the Roman goddess Iustitia and her Hellenic counterpart, Themis.6 Her depiction as a ‘blind-folded figure with sword and scales’ manifests Hardy’s desire for balance and equality in justice; the sword is often interpreted as signifying authority.7 As I will evidence, Hardy’s and Shakespeare’s literature proves that classical symbolism can be adapted to represent contemporary themes. If we apply the symbol to moral approach of these two great literary figures, it reflects their visionary desire that humanity will defend justice, and consistently strive for an entirely just society.

Thomas Hardy’s novel, Tess of the D’Urbervilles presents us with the account of a fallen woman and murderess, punished for her transgressions by death. Tess’s punishment might shock a modern reader, yet to Hardy’s contemporaries, the outcome of these events would be considered just, both in the eyes of the law and by the conventions of society. By this interpretation, ‘poetic justice’, meaning ‘the fact of experiencing a fitting or deserved retribution for one’s actions’, occurs at the ending of Tess.8 5 Marci Hamilton. God vs. the Gavel. 1st ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, p. 286.

6 Ibid., p. 286.

7 Pamela Donleavy and Ann Shearer. From Ancient Myth to Modern Healing: Themis: Goddess of Heart-Soul Justice and Reconciliation. Hove: Routledge, 2008, p. 23.

8 Oxford English Dictionary Online. Available at http : / / dictionary .

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Yet Hardy’s omnipresent narrator transforms the storyline into a powerful defence for its eponymous heroine. By the end of the novel, Tess is irrefutably ‘A Pure Woman, Faithfully Presented’ and Hardy has deliberately undermined conventional understandings of justice.9 In Shakespeare’s play, Measure for Measure, Claudius cautions Antonio to consider ‘whether you had not sometime in your life/ erred in this point now you censure him’.10 Analogously to Hardy, Shakespeare questions the right of anyone to sit in judgement of another human being. For, as all humans are inherently flawed, everyone has the capacity to commit crime. The playwright recalls the passage from John in the Bible. A group of Christians are about to punish an ‘adulteress’ because, they argue, ‘Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned’ 11 . Jesus, on seeing this, suggests ‘he that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her’.12 All those who seek to condemn the woman have also sinned themselves and therefore have no jurisdiction to pass judgment. Hardy has this biblical principle in mind when depicting the injustices inflicted on the protagonists in his novels.

Two ideological realisations, with regards to social justice, were prevalent in Hardy’s lifetime. The first was his dismissal of Christian faith, a conversion untraceable in his biography. It is evident, however, that following this transition, Hardy placed his faith in the better aspects of mankind. Yet, he began to grow incrementally more frustrated by the inability of the public to understand the sentiment and ethical advice in his unconventional choice of subject. In the ‘Postscript’ to Jude the Obscure, the writer expressed his exasperation when ‘somebody discovered that Jude oed.com (2017/01/12).

9 Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, p. i.

10 William Shakespeare. “Measure for Measure”. In: The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works. Ed. by John Jowett et al. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005, pp. II. ii. 15–16.

11 John, 8:5 12 John 7:8

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was a moral work’.13 The realisation that so many of his readers had evidently missed the point, of Jude, and of all his tragic novels, simultaneously instigated the second anagnorisis of his lifetime and the denouement of his career as a novelist. Hardy claims his realisation was that, despite his efforts, ‘the only effect of it on human conduct that I could discover being its effect on myself—the experience curing me of further interest in novel-writing’.14 The unpopularity of Jude reflected a public desire for poetic justice and a happy ending; in Hardy’s opinion, this detracted from his overall aim to stress the suffering of individuals and the limitations of justice in the real world.

Evidence of Hardy’s increasing pessimism is a poem, written 1925–1928, in which he states morosely ‘we are getting to the end of visioning’.15 We are getting to the end of visioning The impossible within this universe, Such as that better whiles may follow worse, And that our race may mend by reasoning.16 The First World War had a significant impact on Hardy’s belief in the humaneness of humanity. His poetry becomes less an incitement for social justice and instead grieves for the appalling state of a universe in which ‘nations set them to lay waste—their neighbours’ heritage by foot and horse’, while ‘tickled mad by some demonic force...’. The long sentence that commences the final stanza of the poem builds to a dramatic crescendo as Hardy, prophetically, envisages a replication of the horrors of war he has witnessed.

13 Thomas Hardy. Jude the Obscure. 1st ed. London: Pan Books, 1995, p. xxvi.

14 Ibid., p. xxvi.

15 Thomas Hardy. “We are getting to the end of visioning”. In: The Collected Poems of Thomas Hardy. Ed. by Michael Irwin. Ware: Wordsworth Editions Ltd, 1994, p. I. 1.

16 Ibid., pp. II. 1–4.

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And that when nations set them to lay waste Their neighbours’ heritage by foot and horse, And hack their pleasant plains in festering seams, They may again— not warily, or from taste, But tickled mad by some demonic force — Yes. We are getting to the end of dreams!17 The final, and notably the thirteenth, line, amplifies the theme of misfortune by cutting quickly to ‘Yes’, followed by an abrupt caesura that prefaces the despairing lament ‘we are getting to the end of dreams!’.18 The syntax bears down on the painful final word as Hardy acknowledges the death of his own dreams of setting an ethical standard for social justice.

Hardy initially, however, rejected the term ‘pessimism’ and, moreover, argued that ‘meliorism’ or even often ‘optimism’ did not suffice in establishing his view.19 In the ‘Preface’ to The Return of the Native, in the 1912 edition, Hardy argues that his ‘higher characteristic of philosophy’ is ‘truth’ (Hardy, 1978, p.

481). Hardy’s self-acknowledgement as a pragmatic realist is even evident in his attitude to writing. In the ‘Preface’ to Jude the Obscure, Hardy claims that this novel, ‘like former productions of this pen’, is ‘simply an endeavour to give shape and coherence to a series of seemings, or personal impressions’.20 His apparently humble intention, however, limpidly has a higher purpose, as evidenced by his exasperation at the limitations of the novel’s impact on achieving social justice. Hardy’s fictional works undeniably maintain that a better understanding of the world is the product of individual interpretations of truth.

Hardy’s earliest published novel, Desperate Remedies, explains that Cytherea ‘seasons justice with mercy as usual’, a reference to Portia’s speech on ‘the quality of mercy’ in Shakespeare’s The 17 Ibid.,

pp. II. 8–13. p. 13.

19 Thomas Hardy. The Return of the Native. 1st ed. London: Penguin Classics, 1978, p. 478.

20 Hardy, Jude the Obscure, p. xxv.

18 Ibid.,

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Merchant of Venice.21 Cytherea’s brother Owen argues that her merciful attitude undermines the course of justice. He satirises Portia’s assertion that ‘earthly power doth then show likest God’s / when mercy seasons justice’.22 Owen’s words alter the meaning of the verb ‘seasoning’; mercy does not improve the taste of justice, but contaminates it. Hardy draws on Shakespeare’s emphasis on the differences in standards of justice in the Old Testament and the New Testament. The sacrifice of Christ for the sins of mankind enables God to grant mercy without compromising his position as dispenser of justice. The Old Testament principal of justice, on the other hand is defined by the biblical law, known as Lex Talionis: ‘He who kills a man shall be put to death. He who kills a beast shall make it good, life for life. When a man causes a disfigurement in his neighbour, as he has done it shall be done to him, fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; as he has disfigured a man, he shall be disfigured’.23 This law propounds that for every crime, a punishment of equal weight must be exacted. It is manifest by the scales used to weigh out the ‘pound of flesh’ in The Merchant of Venice and stands in contrast to the New Testament principle of mercy advocated by Portia.

Shylock’s enforced conversion to Christianity in The Merchant of Venice, however, reveals the troubling inconsistencies still present in a merciful interpretation of justice. Ephesians advises ‘be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even 21 Thomas Hardy. Desperate Remedies. 1st ed. London: Macmillan, 1975, p. 318.

22 William Shakespeare. “The Comical History of the Merchant of Venice, or otherwise called the Jew of Venice”. In: The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works. Ed. by John Jowett et al. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005, pp. IV. viii. 185–6.

23 Leviticus, 24:17–20

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as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you’24 . Proverbs, however, professes that, by forgiving an enemy, ‘thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head’25 . Hardy’s novels explore the problematic elements of the latter interpretation, as evidenced in my third section, entitled ‘Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus’, meaning ‘outside the Church there is no salvation’.26 Hardy’s literature argues that the Church has no jurisdiction, even by its own doctrine, to condemn individuals. Indeed, the Christian principles themselves claim to be underpinned by mercy.

The variability of justice has implications for its ‘poetic’ counterpart. The first reference to ‘poetical justice’, in Thomas Rymer’s The Tragedies of the Last Age Considere’d in 1678, establishes a distinctly literary definition for the term. He critiques a fable, ‘The Tragedy of Rollo the Duke of Normandy’, in which he claims ‘nothing is designed in this of Rollo, either to move pitty or terror, either to delight or instruct’.27 Rollo, in his effort to become King, murders his brother Otto and other members of his court, before dying in a duel. Rymer proposes a plot alteration to improve the narrative; Rollo and Otto’s father’s prior claim to the throne is revealed as the result of deception and murder. In the tragic finale, the brothers murder each other. The brothers, though essentially honourable in character, are tainted by their father’s depravity.

Rymer maintains that had they not taken advantage of their father’s original crime, ‘then no poetical justice could have touched them’.28 The punishment ironically fits the offence; the brothers are provoked to murder each other by their father’s original sin.

Rymer’s example of ‘poetical’ justice combines the concept of 24 Ephesians,

4: 31–32 25:22 26 Orlando O. EspAn ˜ and James B. Nickoloff. An Introductory Dictionary of Theology and Religious Studies. Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 2007, p. 439.

27 Thomas Rymer. The Tragedies of the Last Age Consider’d and Examin’d by the Practice of The Ancients and by the Common Sense of All Ages in a Letter to Fleetwood Shepheard, Esq. London: Richard Baldwin, 1692, p. 16.

28 Ibid., p. 23.

25 Proverbs

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‘perfect’ or ‘poetic’ justice with the ideal literary structure. He elevates poetic justice from a writer’s moral duty, to a crucial element of literary form. The plot of Hardy’s Tess, if its skeleton was exhibited as a list of events without the narrator’s perspective, exemplifies Rymer’s definition of poetic justice. Rymer claims that Rollo and Otto’s punishment, for their father’s crimes, validates Divine Providence and promotes moral behaviour; however, it also endorses the retributory elements of the blood feud. Retribution, involving the transferral of punishment from the guilty to the innocent, entirely contradicts rational justice. In the Bible, we might assume that poetic justice is a mandatory requirement, to ensure that the literary structure and content supports the benevolence and omnipotence of God. ‘The Book of Job’, however, is contradictory to this assumption. Job, who is ‘a perfect and an upright man’ in the eyes of God, is the object of ‘Divine Wager’ in which Satan questions the loyalty of so fortunate a worshipper 29 . God proceeds to deprive Job of his wealth, his health and his family, until he reaches a state of such despair that he believes that ‘God hath delivered me to the ungodly, and turned me over into the hands of the wicked’ 30 .

The attempts of the friends of Job to offer reasons for Job’s suffering makes for an interesting comparison to a section from Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Hardy’s narrator seems to discuss with himself the cause of Tess’s fate after her corruption, yet whether the corruption was rape or seduction is left unexplained and deemed irrelevant. In the biblical tale, Job’s friends debate over the cause for his punishment until the Lord appears and chastens the men, stating ‘wilt thou condemn me, that thou mayest be righteous?’ 31 . He immediately declares the comments made

by Job’s friends to be fallacious. Equivocally, the various arguments against Tess, provided by Hardy are immediately dismissed as irrelevant. Hardy examines the ‘possibility of a retribution’, as 29 Job,

1:8 16: 11 31 Job, 40:8 30 Job,

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Tess’s aristocratic ancestors often raped country girls. The phrase ‘good enough for divinities’ ascribes this possibility to the biblical claim children are punished for the sins of their fathers.32 This form of retributory punishment, endorsed by Thomas Rhymer’s definition of poetic justice, Hardy declares unsatisfactory. By the end of ‘The Book of Job’ it is implied that the balance of poetic justice is restored, as Job is compensated for his suffering and given ‘twice as much as he had before’ 33 . It seems aberrant to suggest that Job’s family can merely be replaced and that this constitutes adequate remuneration for the original loss, yet the story is to be understood allegorically, rather than in a literal sense.

‘The Book of Job’ designs to confirm the presence of God by refuting counter-arguments, whilst condemning humans who appropriate the role of adjudicator, a position reserved solely for God. The theme is evident in Tess. A religious sign-maker, who Tess believes manifests divine condemnation for her sexual transgression, constructs a signs stating ‘THY, DAMNATION, SLUMBERETH, NOT’.34 This is a misquotation. In the Bible, the phrase begins ’their damnation...’ and refers to those who preach false principles of God, such as the friends of Job 35 . The signmaker’s proselytisation is undermined by his misinterpretation of the original biblical law. Ironically, he inadvertently condemns his own actions, rather than Tess’s.

Hardy evidences the confusion caused by the misunderstanding of biblical morals in one of the most convoluted sentences in the novel.

But this encompassment of her own characterisation, based on shreds of convention, peopled by phantoms and voices antipathetic to her, was a sorry and mis32 Hardy,

Tess of the D’Urbervilles, p. 199.

41: 11 34 Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, p. 226.

35 2 Peter 2:3 33 Job,

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taken creation of Tess’s fancy—a cloud of moral hobgoblins by which she was terrified without reason.36 The sentence is elaborate but the tone is matter-of-fact. Hardy’s narrator takes a pragmatic perspective at this stage that contrasts with the emotional sensitivity expressed elsewhere in the novel.

Hardy asserts that the poetic justice constructing the plot that results in Tess’s death by execution at the end of the novel is not justice in an ethical or even a Christian sense. By religious law, only God can judge Tess. Hardy’s fictional works question the need to buttress society with flawed, monolithic structures that do not address the concerns of the ordinary man or woman.

Christianity’s presentation, therefore, in Hardy’s view, can be misleading and facilitate ignorance. Hardy, however, also endorses Christian virtues, such as charity, referring to Tess as ‘Apostolic Charity’, in alluding to ‘his favourite Bible readings in 1 Corinthians’, the Apostle Paul’s letter.37 The letter expounds the value of charity, declaring that it ‘suffereth long and is kind’ 38 . Hardy was a follower of the Evangelical Doctrine in his youth before loosing his belief in Divine Providence. Even after his movement towards atheism however, his literature contains evidence of his appreciation for this religious school of thought.

Dalziel maintains that, despite Hardy’s later atheist views, the three main points of this original ‘Evangelical Sermon’ of 1858 were preserved as his ‘central preoccupations’ (Dalziel, 2001, p.

13). These are the following: ‘his insistence on ‘law as curse, on suffering, and on the saving force of love’.39 Hardy asserts the importance of forgiveness, which in the Bible appears as the principle that God is the judge of mankind and endorses mercy.

He struggled, however with the presence of suffering in the human 36 Hardy,

Tess of the D’Urbervilles, p. 115. p. 309.

38 1 Cor, 13:4-5, cited by ibid., p. 309 39 Pamela Dalziel. “The Gospel According to Thomas Hardy”. In: Thomas Hardy Reappraised: Essays in Honour of Michael Millgate. Ed. by Keith Wilson. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press, 2001, p. 13.

37 Ibid.,

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world, if everything was planned and ordained by a benevolent God. His belief in mankind’s love as a remedy to suffering may have retained similarities with Evangelicalism, yet the doctrine itself is founded by principles in which Hardy ceased to have faith.

It is more probable that Hardy’s philosophical inclinations, that initially attracted him towards Evangelicalism, also instigated his conceptualising of a force he referred to as ‘the Unconscious Will’, or the ‘Immanent Will’.

The epic poem, The Dynasts, is a fundamental text for establishing Hardy’s philosophical principle of ‘the Immanent Will’.

Hardy in his preface explains his decision to introduce ‘as supernatural spectators of the terrestrial action, certain impersonated abstractions or Intelligences, called Spirits’.40 The presence of these figures reinforces the arcane nature of the ‘Immanent Will’ as ‘their doctrines are but tentative, and are advanced with little eye to a systematised philosophy’41 In the stanza describing the ‘Immanent Will, the lilting regular rhymes hold the verse together, depicting a churning cycle in which events are pre-ordained in an a arbitrary fashion: It works unconsciously, as heretofore Eternal artistries in Circumstance, Whose patterns, wrought by rapt aesthetic rote, See in themselves Its listless aim, And not their consequence..42 The deliberate contradiction between the two rhyming words ‘Circumstance’ and ‘consequence’, indicated by their alliterative pattern in the text, emphasises the irony of random chance holding power over destiny, and is reinforced by the capitalisation of the former, to suggest the inferiority of the latter.

S.D. Sharma defines this ‘sort of ripened form of Unconscious Will’ in Hardy’s fiction, stating that ‘the characters appear to be helpless; and yet the tragic characters do not appear mere 40 Thomas

Hardy. The Dynasts. London: Macmillan, 1926, p. 1. p. 1.

42 Ibid., p. 2.

41 Ibid.,

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puppets jerked by a malicious fate’.43 The most heartrending elements of Hardy’s novels are a result of his characters’ prevailing determination to control their fate; this facet greatly contributes to catharsis. The poem ‘Hap’ describes a ‘Crass Casualty’ that ‘obstructs the sun and rain’ and thus explores Hardy’s belief in an unmerciful, ignorant force that controls mankind.44 The title itself is a synonym for ‘chance’ or ‘fortune’. He imagines a ‘vengeful god’ that laugh’s at his suffering.

If but some vengeful god would call to me From up the sky, and laugh: ‘Thou suffering thing Know that thy sorrow is my ectasy, That thy love’s loss is my hate’s profiting!’.45 Hardy did not, however, believe in a malevolent God; he uses the first stanza in the poem to elucidate this terrible concept, only to state in the third stanza ‘But not so.’ The reality, in fact, is worse, for there is no rhyme or reason for suffering caused by fate.

The concept of the ‘Unconscious Will’ is not a true belief in an imagined supernatural force, but Hardy’s method of elucidating his theory of a non-rational world, to offer explanation for the presence of injustice.

Hardy did not, however, see the suffering and cruelty on earth as purely the result of the non-rational state of the universe. He once stated, in an interview with William Archer, that ‘whatever may be the inherent good or evil of life, it is certain that men make it much worse than it need be’.46 Thus, his literature contains an undercurrent of moral advice, for he argues that charity, mercy, 43 S. D. Sharma. Studies in Fiction. London: Atlantic Publishers, 2003, p. 184.

44 Thomas Hardy. “Hap”. In: The Collected Poems of Thomas Hardy.

Ed. by Michael Irwin. Ware: Wordsworth Editions Ltd, 1994, pp. I. 10–12.

45 Ibid., pp. I. 1–4.

46 Laurence Estanove. “From Pessimism to Idealism: The Pressure of Paradox”. In: Thomas Hardy, Poet: New Perspectives. Ed. by Adrian Greefe and Laurence Estanove. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2015, p. 84.

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and kindness are the redeeming features of the human race. Hardy propounds that deliberate both individuals and institutions must take action, in order to facilitate social justice. This is evident in Tess, in which the eponymous heroine, consistently persecuted by conventions and establishments, has only the narrator to defend her character.

Hobbes parochially describes justice as ‘auctoritas non veritas facit legem’, arguing that the laws of the country set the ultimate standard of justice.47 The rejection of the significance of internal conscience, however, is antithetical to Hardy’s principles.

Per legem terrae, meaning ‘by the law of the land’ or ‘according to the domestic law of the state concerned’, Tess is guilty of murder and adultery, yet Hardy’s narrator evokes a compassionate, rather than accusatory, response from the reader.48 In Hardy’s contemporary period, the disillusionment with religious faith brought with it instability in government and law. Hardy’s cynicism did not, however, instigate a belief in an entirely malevolent force. His philosophy may be surmised as astra inclinant, sed non obligant, which means, to use Shakespeare’s words, that the fault ‘lies not in our stars / but in ourselves’.49 The theory of the ‘Unconscious Will’ merely serves to highlight the limitations of a godless universe and the need for humanity’s active efforts to strive for justice.

Astraea Redux is a poem by John Dryden, the title of which means ‘justice brought back’, in reference to Book I of the Metamorphoses.50 In Book I, Ovid talks of the degeneration of mankind 47 Thomas Hobbes. Leviathan: With Selected Variants form the Latin Edition of 1668. Indianapolis, Indiana: Richard Baldwin, 1944, Book II, p. 133.

48 Oxford Reference. Available at http : / / www . oxfordreference . com (2017/03/03).

49 William Shakespeare. “Julius Caesar”. In: The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works. Ed. by John Jowett et al. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005, pp. I. ii. 140–1.

50 John Dryden. “Astraea Redux: A Poem on the Happy Restoration and Return of His Sacred Majesty Charles the Second”. In: The Poems of John Dryden: Volume II: 1682-1685. Ed. by Paul Hammond. London: Routledge,

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from the age of gold, through silver and bronze to the Iron Age.51 In the Age of Iron, Astraea, who is a manifestation of Justice and the predecessor of Iustitia, left the earth. In Ecolgue 4, Virgil prophesies that the golden age is to be renewed and Justice will be restored to the world, when ‘the Virgin returns, the reign of Saturn returns’ and ‘a new generation descends from heaven on high’.52 Shakespeare’s visionary attitude upholds this belief; in his prescient vision, Astraea will return to the earth and the poetical justice he envisages will come to fruition.

Astraea’s name in Ancient Greek is Aστ ραια, which means ‘star-maiden’, yet she is not the same deity as Asteria, the goddess of the stars. Astraea’s association with the celestial, derives from the myth in which, according to Ovid, she ‘vanished from the blood-stained earth’ and rose to heaven to become the constellation Virgo.53 The image recalls Tess’s supposition that there are other ‘stars’ out there in which cruelty, injustice and suffering are proscribed. Hardy suggests that we currently sit on a ‘blight’d star’ gazing up at the distant prospect that we might never reach.

It is plausible that, as Shakespeare believes, this ideal state of justice is latent in mankind, yet equally possible that, as Hardy propounds, it is merely a point of guidance that we will never realise in actuality. If a system of social justice, in which fairness and equality govern all principles, has the potential to exist in reality, it must first be initiated in the imagination. The poetical heralds the poetic.

2014, p. 37.

51 Ovid, E. J. Kenney, and A. D. Melville. Metamorphoses. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. 89–150.

52 The Bucolics and Eclogues by Virgil. Available at http://gutenberg.org (2017/04/12), pp. 4, 5.

53 Ovid, Kenney, and Melville, Metamorphoses, p. I. 150.

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D´ eja vu in Gustave Flaubert’s travel narrative to the Orient Sarah Budasz ravels, and especially travel writings, have an extceptionally T palimpsestic form. Consequently, in the 19th Century, whilst travel to the Orient was being ritualised, the d´ej` a vu acquired many referential layers. Gustave Flaubert (who did not publish any travelogue after his two years journey in the Levant) is very conscious of the risk of repetitions and clich´es, as he writes to his lover, Louise Colet, two years after his own journey: ´ This Enault who goes to the Orient! It puts you off the Orient. When I think that such a man is going to piss on the desert’s sand! And surely (he, like the others), publish an Oriental travelogue! ´ Enault must be magnificent since he came back from the Orient. We will have another Oriental travelogue!

Impressions of Jerusalem! Ah! God! Descriptions of pipes and turbans. We will again be taught what baths are, etc.’1 As noted by Jean-Claude Berchet, in his anthology’s preface: ‘[Travel] is not only carried out; it is ceaselessly dreamt, fantasised, represented—set in text, painting, music. Even though the mystery has been compromised, it still keeps its poise in the Salons or the bookshops. Despite the inevitable repetitiveness, the market seems insatiable. It even appears that the armchair traveller is less in search of the pleasures of discovery or surprises than of those 1 Gustave

Flaubert. Voyage en Orient. 1st ed. Paris: Gallimard, 2006.

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of repetition, recognition: a less than ‘baudelairian’ ideal which bring them to turn their back away from novelty to celebrate their tireless reunion with sameness.’2 When Flaubert embarks on his two year oriental itinerary, in the company of Maxime Du Camp, he is a 28 years old annuitant with unrealised literary ambitions. It is known that, in additions to his predecessors’ travelogues, he read a lot about the Orient, first to prepare an unachieved Conte Oriental, then the first version of The Temptation of Saint Anthony. He has been immersed in Antiquity for months, and this text (which he envisaged as his breakthrough but that his friends, Louis Bouillhet and Maxime Du Camp, severely criticised before his departure) is still haunting him: ‘So I return to the archbishop, he received me with a great deal of courtesy; i was brought coffee and soon I started asking him questions about the trinity, the Virgin, the gospels, the Eucharist. All my ancient erudition from Saint Anthony came back to me. It was superb, the blue sky over our heads. . . etc.’3 I chose, for my analysis of the d´eja vu in Flaubert’s Voyage en Orient (his unpublished travel notes) and his travel letters, a large definition of this phenomenon. I will describe it as a the mobilisation of memories, often visually stimulated, wether those are personal, artistic or literary. It would be too ambitious for a single paper to pretend to offer a a comprehensive study of the intertexts of the Voyage and the Letters. I therefore will, in chosen extracts, demonstrate how are articulated the mechanics of memory and a changing aesthetic vision.

In his first letter from Cairo to Louis Bouillet, Flaubert announces what sounds like a programme, and which will recur periodically during his 18-month journey, a retrouvaille aesthetic: ‘very little impressed by nature here—i.e. landscape, sky, desert (except the mirages); enormously excited by the cities and the people. [. . . ] It probably comes of my having given more imag2 Jean-Claude Berchet. Le voyage en Orient. Anthologie des voyageurs franais ans le Levant au XIXe sicle. 1st ed. Paris: Robert Laffont, 1997.

3 Flaubert, Voyage en Orient.

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ination and thought, before coming here, to things like horizon, greenery, sand, trees, sun, etc. than to houses, streets, costumes and faces. The result is that nature has been a rediscovery and the rest a discovery.’4 However, this ‘retrouvaille’ establishes at once a distinction between an ‘eternal’ (to use a classic romantic phrase) nature, that he did not only ‘dream’ but also digged and ‘imagined’, and the new and wholly ‘other’ civilisation he discovers in Egypt.

The first letter he addresses to his mother from the Egyptian capital city does not make this distinction but elaborates on the meaning he gives to this rediscovery: ‘You ask me wether the Orient is up to what I imagined. Yes, it is; and more than that, it extends far beyond the narrow idea I had of it. I have found, clearly delineated, everything that was hazy in my mind. Facts have taken the place of suppositions—with such perfection that it is often as though I were suddenly coming upon old forgotten dreams.’5 A vision of the Orient preexisted in Flaubert. The vocabulary of reminiscence that he uses outlines that something very ancient rises up inwardly. Beyond imagination, there lays an oriental ‘subconscious’ and his ‘dreams’ become ‘facts’.

This tension between the images that are ‘discovered’ and the ones that are ‘rediscovered’, and the almost unconscious reminiscence of ancient things, thus constitute recurring themes in Flaubert’s travel writings.

One of the extract I chose to illustrate the memorial and aesthetic process of the ‘d´ej` a vu’ is Flaubert’s entrance to Jerusalem; in reality this episode is narrated thrice (in a letter to his mother, in one to Louis Bouilhet and in his notes).

From the outset, in Bouilhet’s letter, a quote from his servant, Sassetti (‘You won’t believe me, Monsieur, but when I caught sight of Jerusalem I must confess it gave me a funny feeling’6 ) estab4 Gustave Flaubert. The Letters of Gustave Flaubert: 1830-1857. Trans.

by Francis Steegmuller. 1st ed. London: Faber and Faber, 1979.

5 Ibid.

6 Flaubert, Voyage en Orient.

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lishes an ironic distance with Flaubert’s own sensations, maybe to hide an emotion deeper than expressed. The quote of his servant’s exclamation is sardonic but is also the admission of an indescribable sensation (‘a funny feeling’) provoked by the Holy City.

Like Chateaubriand, he then invokes biblical memories. Conjuring up Christ, he goes from ‘thinking’ to ‘seeing’: ‘Then I thought of Christ, and saw him climbing the Mount of Olives’.7 A semantical transition from imagination to reality that is rendered more explicit in his travel notes: ‘I think of Jesus Christ coming in and out to go up the Wood of Olives—I see him through the door in front of me.’8 The reference to sanctity is made with even greater precision in the next paragraph: ‘He was wearing a blue robe, his temples were beaded with sweat.’9 This detail gives a realistic dimension to Christ. Flaubert’s gaze superimposes memory and vision.

He continues with another vision of Christ, not on the Mount of Olives but entering Jerusalem. This time he quotes the source of his reminiscence: a mural painted by Hippolyte Flandrin in the church of St-Germain-des-Pr´es. On this very ceremonial neoclassical work, Christ is indeed wearing blue; the ‘great cries’ that Flaubert mentions are, however, absent from the picture. The writer turns around, towards the mountains, and the description also becomes a painting, frozen in time. Like the painted Christ, motionless under a white light, facing an expecting crowd, the traveler is halted on his horse, at the city’s gates, and under a ‘pale sky’ and a light ‘arranged in such a way that it looks like a winter’s day’s, so raw, white and harsh.’, behind him rise the ‘white Hebron mountains’ in a ‘steamy transparency’.10 The colours of this summer afternoon seem to evoke less the earthly Jerusalem, that Flaubert sees in front of him, than the New Jerusalem of the Book of Revelation, the spiritual and atem7 Flaubert, 8 Ibid.

9 Ibid.

10 Ibid.

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Voyage en Orient.

poral place par excellence. However the ‘Then’ opening the next sentence indicates a return to time and the allusion to Maxime Du Camp’s cigarette brings back modernity and mundanity. For a moment yet, time seems to have been suspended and the travel experience became temporal as well as spatial.

The sense of seeing the past come to live runs through the whole journey. In his notes Flaubert writes that he has seen the courtesan Kuchiuk-Hanem’s dance ‘on old Greek vases’. He even offers to Jules Cloquet, an ‘archeologic’ analysis of this art: ‘The dances that were performed in front of us have too hieratic a character not to originate from the dances of old Orient’.11 In an even subtler way, he draws a rapprochement between an Egyptian statue and a Greek woman: ‘in his courtyard, an Egyptian statue [. . . ], seated and her arms folded; it is a woman. Through the window, we see a Greek woman, petite, white, blue eyes, nursing a child.’12 The succession of both images associates both figures and, like in Jerusalem, abolishes the temporal distance between them. There is no difference of nature between the antic statue and the contemporary woman.

In his notes still, he brings back Ancient Egypt to life in a fixed scene. His description of a landscape by the Nile is introduced by a song which he presents as typically Egyptian, but whose knowledge he might have acquired reading the archeologist JeanFranois Champollion’s letters. He then proceeds to depict the complete Panorama of Saul village and its surroundings that he observes from an neighbouring hill. Like an actual painting, he shows the different plans, the geometrical perspective and the play of lights: ‘behind us a line of palm trees in which a setting sun spread out, we had in front of us the arabic chain, the Nile; upstage the country blond with chopped wheat’.13 He concludes once again his description with an antique memory: ‘Nothing reminded 11 Ibid.

12 Ibid.

13 Ibid.

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us better of ancient Egypt, agrarian and golden Egypt’.14 Then, like in Jerusalem, comes the necessary return to the present time: ‘Soon came the night’.15 It is in his letter to Cloquet from Cairo that he best sums up the temporal distorsion entailed by a journey in a ‘pre-dreamed’ Orient: ‘[the] old Orient, which is always young because, there, nothing ever changes. The Bible, here, is a depiction of contemporary mores.’ In the Orient, the relationship with time is abolished, past is uncovered by the visitor as it has always been.

This vision of a timeless past allows Flaubert to typologise the Holy Land before he even sets foot in Jerusalem. Thus in Ramley ‘Some olive trees—nothing looks more like Palestine and the Holy Land than that.’16 In the same way, he describes the land he is travelling through to his mother while making once again a distinction between the city and the countryside: ‘Holy places have no effect on me. The fabrication is everywhere and too obvious. [. . . .] The country, however, looks splendid to me—against its reputation. We never stop thinking about the Bible; sky, mountains, aspect of camels (oh camels!), women’s clothes, everything is to be found again. At every moment, we have living pages in front of us.’17 The ‘fabrication’ of the holy places is obvious because the reality of the Bible is to be found in nature, in a country he reads like a book. He even describes what he sees as ‘living pages’ and advises his mother to read, rather than travelogues, the Bible itself: ‘Thus, dear old darling, if you want to form a good idea of the world I live in, re-read the Genesis, the books of Judges and the book of Kings.’ In Egypt too, looking at two Turks smoking under palm trees in Mahatta, his reaction is primarily literary: ‘it was like a view of the Orient in a book.’18 Continuing his letter to his mother, Flaubert aligns biblical 14 Flaubert, 15 Ibid.

16 Ibid.

17 Ibid.

18 Ibid.

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Voyage en Orient.

books and toponyms almost like a mantra : ‘re-read the Genesis, the books of Judges and the book of Kings . We came back from Jericho, the Jourdan and the Dead sea.’19 Then, the sensation of d´ej` a vu invades him and supplants the description, which stops brutally, as if words were vanishing against the incantatory power of names (‘and then. . . and then everything else’). The rest of the paragraph is saturated with biblical images. The idea of walking in the Holy Book’s landscapes inspire his narration; thus to Cloquet ‘[the women] that we see by the fountains in Nazareth or Betleem are the same than in Jacob’s time. They have not changed more than the blue sky that embraces them.’20 However, these biblical references are mediated by the travellers that preceded him. Thus he writes on Mount Carmel: ‘At the foot of the steep path that leads to the monastery, immense and hollow olive trees—the Holy Land begins, they are down the mountain and on the hillside—we have seen that in the old holy tales. I think of Chateaubriand in Palestine, of Jesus-Christ who used to walk barefoot on these roads.’21 This reference to Chateaubriand inscribes Flaubert’s itinerary, first in the pilgrim’s feet, then in Christ’s ones. Once again, travel is experienced literally like a palimpsest, different layers of texts superimposed on the visited country.

The personal dimension found in even the most historical of Flaubert’s memories is noteworthy. In this extract, he and Du Camp arrive on horseback at the village of Topolia in Greece. It is the only time Flaubert uses the locution ‘d´ej` a vu’ himself: ‘an olive tree wood dominated by the mountains’ high slopes. All of this has a ‘d´ej` a vu’ quality; we rediscover it.’22 In front of this landscape, the notions of memory (‘It seems that we remember very old memories’), painting (‘Are they of paintings whose names 19 Ibid.

20 Ibid.

21 Ibid.

22 Gustave

Flaubert. Correspondance. Tome I. Janvier 1830 – Mai 1851.

1st ed. Paris: Gallimard, 1984.

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we forgot and which we would have seen as children, with our eyes barely open?’) and, in an almost Baudelairian way, that of previous life (‘Did we use to live there once upon a time?’) interlink.

Childhood plays a crucial role in Flaubert’s ideas about travels.

He has dreamed his journey to the Orient for years. If we refer ourselves to the beginning of ‘La Cange’, the text already begins with the memory of a trip. When he was 18 years old, he went to Corsica and after writing his first travelogue, he packed the remaining sheets of papers and saved them away ‘for my next travel’. Since his youth, the grand journey he fantasies about (‘I wanted to get out of home—of myself; to go anywhere’) was, he thought, an inherently literary experience. However, when he does leave, he cannot bring himself to write on the same paper: ‘Sleep in peace under your cover, poor white paper [. . . ]. Your format was too small and your colour too tender.’23 Childhood has passed, the aesthetics premisses of travel have changed. Only remains the memories that he regularly convenes as a mediation with reality. Further down, he writes about his coach journey: ‘Don’t you find here, like me, the beloved memory of the noisy joy of holidays—seventeen years olds’ wanderings— reverie in the air with five horses galloping in front of you on a nice road—and landscapes on the horizon, the smell of hay—wind on your forehead and easy conversations, loud laughs, endless pipes that we stuff and light on again’.24 Even before leaving France, travel is already a nostalgic experience.

Paradoxically, Flaubert seems less nostalgic of his past adventures than of the times where he used to dream about having them. This melancholia for the ‘need for adventures’ is indirectly called upon when he compares himself to Richelieu or the Musketeers (‘We would travel with an army! Such chic! That would be very pompadour, marshal Richelieu and above all grey muske23 Flaubert, 24 Ibid.

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The Letters of Gustave Flaubert: 1830-1857.

teer.’25 ) Some literary references are also allusions to adventure: he mentions Homer in Greece and Cervantes in Lebanon—an apt reference as Don Quixote is, of course, an emblematic novel concerning an adventurous knight with, to the point of detriment, a voracious appetite for literature.

In Topolia, Flaubert completes the landscape with figures he imagines (or remembers) himself, and then is overcome by his own imagination. We go from ‘we can figure’ (process of imagining) to ‘as we expect to see’ (process of conjuring). There is a cultivated feeling, in the whole description, of a ‘return to the native land’.

The term ‘native’ alludes to a reminiscence of Flaubert’s childhood but also, through Greece, to an imagined point in the early days of civilisation. For example, he earlier referenced the painter Nicolas Poussin, famous for his painting of pastoral and antique innocence, Et in Arcadia Ego. Once again, this landscape is delineated, fixed in time. As if Flaubert became aware of the illusion, he slips from memory to dream (‘As a shred of dream that passes in your mind’) then simulates the awakening (‘there. . . there, it’s true! Where was I? How come? After. . . brrr!’).26 The sudden change of tone does not make explicit what causes the final shiver. After antiquity, childhood or awakening, reality seems to prevail.

In this evocation, like in many others, the traveller conjures up his memories through archetypes from an unspecific past (‘the priest in a white robe, the young girl in strips’). At the beginning of his trip he writes to Cloquet: ‘Thus, when I arrived in Alexandria, I saw coming towards me all the living anatomy of Egyptian sculptures: raised shoulders, long torso, lean legs, etc.’27 The figures he encounters are nothing but recreated archetypes, simple images. In a way, this in in line with his early letter to Bouillhet and the distinction between discovery and rediscovery. Since the people he meets are not individuals, but answers to preconceived aesthetic forms, Flaubert is able to ‘rediscover’ them; he knows 25 Flaubert,

Voyage en Orient.

Correspondance. Tome I. Janvier 1830 – Mai 1851.

27 Flaubert, The Letters of Gustave Flaubert: 1830-1857.

26 Flaubert,

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their ‘nature’ if not their ‘houses, streets, costumes, faces.’

Towards the end of his journey, this aesthetic analysis is fully bolstered and he gives this writing advice to Bouilet: ‘I can tell you one nourishing and sincere thing, that is, in regards to Nature, you can boldly carry one. Everything I see here, I actually recall.

(Only cities, men, uses, customs, ustensiles, human things finally, whose precise details I did not yet have). I was not wrong. Poor creatures that those with disillusions.—There are countries I have passed through before, that is certain. Remember this for your education, this is the result of an exact experience with no errors in the last ten month: we know too much about art to be wrong about Nature.’28 Since the beginning of his journey, his aesthetic certainties have been refined. Flaubert feels that he see things as they are and finds himself ready to come to terms with writing, or at least artistic expression, with a lucid distance.

Of course, and my conclusion is going to contest this lucidity, there is something historically annihilating in this ‘rediscovered visions’. If we follow Edward Said’s seminal analysis, referring to the Orient like a land fixed in the past and the matrice of European culture overlooks a great part of the region’s history. In the same way that Flaubert uses the characters of his ‘scenes’ as ahistorical archetypes, the occidental gaze puts in parenthesis the Ottoman empire and Islam’s specific traits to focus on what he is looking to (re)discover in the Orient. However, as Said himself notes, Flaubert is equally fascinated by his ‘discoveries’ than by his ‘rediscoveries’ and, next to the physical manifestation of a fantasied Orient, he compiles with the same wealth of details the familiar and the otherness: ‘Ses notes de voyage et ses lettres r´ev`elent un homme qui rapporte scrupuleusement les ´ev´enements, les personnes, les paysages, qui fait ses d´elices de leurs “bizarreries” sans jamais essayer de r´eduire les incongruit´es qu’il voit devant lui.’29 28 Flaubert, 29 Edward

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Sa¨ıd. Orientalism. 1st ed. London: Routledge, 1978.

If he refuses to publish a travelogue when he returns to France, we can find intertextual traces of his oriental notes in many of his following works. Ten years later he can then give this advice, both as a writer and a traveler, to Ernest Feydeau who is also about to embark on an Oriental tour: ‘Watch without thinking about any book (it is the right way). Instead of one, you will find ten once you are back home in Paris. When we look at things with a purpose, we only see one side.’30

30 Gustave

Flaubert. Correspondance. Tome II. Juillet 1851 - Dcembre 1858. 1st ed. Paris: Gallimard, 1980.

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Voluntarism, Englishness and British Culture Abdulla Omaigan

In this essay, the cultural genre of voluntarism in Britain is explored to determine whether it has contributed to the development of British national identity. To begin with, the concept of national identity is defined and, even though it might be interpreted differently to the notion of culture, it is made clear that they can be synonymous: both capture the experiences shared by a community of people. On this basis, distinctions are briefly made between England and Britain before the cultural genre of voluntarism is investigated in relation to both; throughout this section, it is demonstrated that the genre, as well as related notions such as philanthropy and social action or service, have traditionally been associated more with Englishness than Britishness. Such an argument is based on Britain’s and, more specifically, England’s history. Nevertheless, the more recent example of David Cameron’s Big Society is provided to indicate that aspirations to embody the values of voluntarism, philanthropy and social service still resonate with contemporary British identity in ways. However, it seems to be with certain segments of British society that these values resonated most in the past, and arguably still do. It is therefore concluded that voluntarism has contributed to the development of British national identity, but that this applies only to certain segments of British society, past and present.

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National Identity: A Definition Before exploring whether voluntarism is a facet of British culture, there are two key considerations to make about the Western conception of national identity that will be utilised throughout this essay.1 Firstly, the concept is one that is complex and contentious,2 as well as multi-faceted,3 and can include the following features of a nation:4 ‘historic territory, legal-political community, legal-political equality of members, and common civic culture and ideology’.5 Secondly, the latter aspect seems to be of most significance here given that it focuses on the collective feelings and ideas, hopes and understandings, which bind a group of individuals’ civic interests in a given territory;6 in this case, those experiences shared by volunteers in Britain. If identity is viewed in this way, there does not seem to be a distinction between it and culture, which might be taken ‘as ‘lived experience’, shared by a community of people who relate to one another through common interests and influences’.7 While this chimes with the essence of Kellas’ remark about how national identity and culture delineate similar concepts, it seems overly simplistic in that identity might be conceptualised slightly differently: as how people perceive themselves in relation to others, as well as how they are perceived by these other people.8 Similarly, how people define themselves in relation to their nation can also be a central part 1 For a more eastern perspective see A. D. Smith. National Identity.

London: Penguin Books, 1991 2 M. Storry and P. Childs. British Cultural Identities. Retrieved from: http://lib.myilibrary.com.ezphost.dur.ac.uk/ProductDetail.aspx?id=447339.

2013.

3 Smith, National Identity.

4 Though, it is not necessarily limited to these features.

5 Smith, National Identity, p. 10.

6 Ibid.

7 Storry and Childs, British Cultural Identities, p. 5.

8 Storry and Childs, British Cultural Identities; J.G. Kellas. The Politics of Nationalism and Ethnicity. Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1991.

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of identity.9 However, due to the limited scope available, these nuances, as well as the question of whether identity and culture are separate phenomena or the same phenomenon is outside the purview of this essay. Hence, the latter is assumed to be true to explore the cultural genre of voluntarism in Britain, which will be done next.

Voluntarism, Englishness and British Culture: A Historical Glance Prior to exploring voluntarism in Britain, it is important to note that the British nation, or the United Kingdom, is a multi-national one consisting of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland;10 though, it could be argued that it consists only of England, Scotland and Wales.11 Throughout this essay, both Britain and, more specifically, England, will be referred to.

To begin with, both Barker and Law highlight how voluntarism, in general, has traditionally been a facet of Englishness.12 For instance, Law points out that, around the time of his writing, there were very few community services performed by local government in England which were not based on the idea of part-time voluntary, or unpaid, service work; and he extrapolates from this that, despite the Englishman’s concerns about his own livelihood, there is always a part of him that will remain unfulfilled if he does 9 R. Weight. Patriots: National Identity in Britain 1940–2000. London: MacMillan, 2002.

10 E. Barker. Britain and the British People. London: Oxford University Press, 1942; D. Kerr, C. Twine, and A. Smith. “Citizenship Education in the United Kingdom”. In: SAGE Handbook of Education for Citizenship and Democracy. Ed. by I. Davies J. Arthur and C. Hahn. London: SAGE Publications, 2008, pp. 252–262.

11 Weight, Patriots: National Identity in Britain 1940–2000.

12 Barker, Britain and the British People; E. Barker. “An Attempt at Perspective”. In: The Character of England. Ed. by E. Barker. London: Oxford University Press, 1947, pp. 550–576; R. Law. “The Individual and the Community”. In: The Character of England. Ed. by E. Barker. London: Oxford University Press, 1947, pp. 29–55.

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not contribute to the good of others.13 More importantly, Law goes on to suggest that ‘the example of voluntary, unpaid service . . . spread out and was diffused until it permeated the whole community of England’.14 Similarly, Barker claims the following: ‘It is an old tradition of Englishmen to do things for themselves, on a voluntary basis, in free association with others’.15 From Barker’s and Law’s perspective, English voluntarism might be rooted in earlier Victorian values, such as possessing character and a social ethos. However, Paxman, who nearly half a century later analyses English culture, does not mention voluntarism as a cultural genre.16 This might be because philanthropy, which was once a priority of the middle-class community, waned towards the end of the twentieth century.17 It therefore seems as though voluntarism can be pinned down to English culture but not for the entirety of its history.

If links are to be made between England and Britain, it is important to bear the following remark in mind: ‘Sometimes our social formations or groups cover the whole of the British nation; sometimes they belong only to one of its nationalities; and sometimes there are mixed and borderland cases’.18 Along these lines, it should be noted that there are particularly strong regional and local identities in Britain.19 In these senses, Britishness is a ‘diverse, highly contested and varied label’.20 Thus, one must be weary of considering a facet of English culture to also be a dimension of wider British culture. This is especially the case given that authors such as Storry and Childs, as well as Higgins, Smith 13 Law,

“The Individual and the Community”. p. 38.

15 Barker, “An Attempt at Perspective”, p. 567.

16 J. Paxman. The English: A Portrait of a People. London: Penguin Group, 1998.

17 S. Gunn and R. Bell. Middle Classes: Their Rise and Sprawl. London: Orion Books, 2002.

18 Barker, Britain and the British People, p. 14.

19 Storry and Childs, British Cultural Identities.

20 Ibid., p. 8.

14 Ibid.,

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and Storey—who have written about British culture at large— have mentioned nothing about voluntarism as a cultural genre.21 Of course, this is not to suggest that Barker’s and Law’s attribution of voluntarism to English people cannot be broadly applied to British people. In fact, Harrison considers voluntarism to be a recurring theme in his exploration of the United Kingdom from 1951–1970 and Brewis frames a sub-set of this genre—student volunteering—in a British context from 1880–1980.22 Thus, it appears that voluntarism can be considered a facet of British culture, but that the genre seems to resonate with English culture more specifically.23 However, it is worth repeating that this seems to apply predominantly up until the late twentieth century.24 Hence, considering the nation’s more recent history might be valuable in determining whether voluntarism can truly be considered a facet of British identity; after all, British identity and culture can be seen as a constant process of change that is more concerned with a snapshot of the present than it is with the past.25

21 Once again, this might be due to a persistent decline in philanthropic behaviour within England, and therefore Britain, just before the time of their writings. Gunn and Bell, Middle Classes: Their Rise and Sprawl; Storry and Childs, British Cultural Identities; M. Higgins, C. Smith, and J. Storey. “Introduction”. In: The Cambridge Companion to Modern British Culture. Ed.

by C. Smith M. Higgins and J. Storey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, pp. 1–11 22 B. Harrison. Seeking a Role: The United Kingdom 1951–1970. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2009; G. Brewis. A Social History of Student Volunteering: Britain and Beyond, 1880–1980. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

23 Such an idea rings true with Darwen and Rannard’s point that there has been a long tradition of university student volunteering in England. Of course, this is not to imply that voluntarism is only a facet of British or English identity: as Brewis highlights, voluntary social service was pivotal to an international student movement too. J. Darwen and A.G. Rannard.

“Student volunteering in England: a critical moment”. In: Education and Training 53.2/3 (2011), pp. 177–190; Brewis, A Social History of Student Volunteering: Britain and Beyond, 1880–1980 24 Gunn and Bell, Middle Classes: Their Rise and Sprawl.

25 Storry and Childs, British Cultural Identities.

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Voluntarism: A Facet of British Identity?

Another way of determining whether voluntarism has contributed to the development of British identity or not is by examining the perspectives recently advocated by governments or government officials; it seems, after all, as though a way in which identity comes about is through the deliberate cultivation of it.26 An example of this can be witnessed in ex-Prime Minister David Cameron’s speech about what he labelled ‘The Big Society’.27 In it, he speaks of what he anticipates will be the driving force behind Britain’s prosperous future: its people coming together, voluntarily, to help themselves and their community; in his own words, Britain needs ‘people to come together and work together—because [Britons are] all in [it] together’.28 Specifically, he speaks of how the government’s past top-heavy involvement has deterred individuals from taking civic action and that, instead, the new rule for government should be to do whatever ‘unleashes community engagement’. Additionally, he outlines three strands of the Big Society: social action, public service reform and community empowerment, all of which bring to the fore the British people’s supposed power to help each other.29 Furthermore, he explicitly mentions a ‘new culture of voluntarism, philanthropy, social action’. Interestingly, however, there is no reference to such attributes in the fundamental British values which were expected to be embedded in British schools after they were outlined by the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition that David Cameron lead from 2010 to 2015: these comprised only of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and 26 D. Cressy. “National Memory in Early Modern England”. In: Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity. Ed. by R.G. Gillis. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994, pp. 61–73.

27 GovUK. Big Society Speech. https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/bigsociety-speech. 2010.

28 Ibid.

29 Ibid.

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beliefs.30 While the three strands of David Cameron’s Big Society might have been left out due to fundamental British values being associated with the ‘Prevent’ strategy, which was one element of a wider counter-terrorism agenda, it still begs the question: are values such as voluntarism, philanthropy and social action truly facets of British identity?31 In one last attempt to answer this question, is worth bearing in mind that national identity can intersect with other types of identity such as religious, ethnic and class identity to create a nation.32 On this basis, it is important to return to an earlier point that was made in passing: volunteering one’s time, at least in early twentieth century Britain, was a virtue in the eyes of the ideal upper middle-class character.33 One example of this might be charity schools that were set up for children in need by middle class philanthropists (Smith, 1966). In this sense, volunteering or public service seems to be ‘a luxury that only the rich and secure could afford’.34 Arguably, this still applies to the present day: it seems that the group of individuals who dominate Britain’s volunteering scene are those who find themselves to be a part of the middle-aged, well-educated section of the British middle class.35 30 Department for Education.

Fundamental British values as part of SMSC in schools.

Departmental advice for maintained schools.

Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/promotingfundamental-british-values-through-smsc.

2014; GovUK. Guidance on promoting British Values in schools published. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/guidance-on-promoting-britishvalues-in-schools-published. 2014.

31 GovUK, Guidance on promoting British Values in schools published; GovUK. 2010 to 2015 Government Policy: Counter-Terrorism. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/2010-to-2015-governmentpolicy-counter-terrorism/2010-to-2015-government-policy-counter-terrorism.

2015.

32 Smith, National Identity.

33 Gunn and Bell, Middle Classes: Their Rise and Sprawl.

34 Ibid., p. 105.

35 J. Dean. “Class Diversity and Youth Volunteering in the United Kingdom”. In: Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 45.1 (2016), pp. 95–

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Conclusion In retrospect, the cultural genre of voluntarism in Britain was explored to determine whether it has contributed to a sense of British national identity. This concept, as well as that of culture, was therefore delineated first to emphasise their shared focus on the collective experiences of a group of people. Within these parameters, the differences between England and Britain were made apparent before the cultural genre of voluntarism was explored in relation to both Englishness and Britishness as historically conceived. Afterwards, reference was made to the recent past where David Cameron’s Big Society was considered to indicate how the related values of voluntarism, philanthropy and social action or service have been kept alive in contemporary Britain’s conscience.

Nevertheless, it was pointed out that these values, historically and in the present day, seem to resonate specifically with certain segments of British society as opposed to the entirety of it. It has therefore been concluded that voluntarism has not completely contributed to the development of British national identity.

113.

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The Sons of the Hadramawt: Understanding al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula from a Social Movement Theory Approach Owen Stenner-Matthews ny study of the al-Qaeda network in Yemen is an exercise A that reconciles the chronically understudied (Yemen, the Arabian peninsula’s second most populous state) with a positively saturated subject matter: the extensive and ever-growing bibliography concerned with al-Qaeda itself. Mirroring the Yemeni environment in which it operates, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is an opaque and poorly understood organisation that often escapes definition and frequently resists the attempts of analysts and scholars to present a coherent picture of the group on paper, once farcically described as the ‘Kevin Bacon of al-Qaeda’ by one frustrated analyst due to their hierarchically flat, adaptive and elusive nature.1 Yet in tandem, AQAP is a group widely described as dangerous, effective, and capable. Prior to the stratospheric rise of Islamic State (IS) into the global consciousness in 2014, AQAP was regarded as the premier terrorist threat to at least American national security, and more recently still, considerable debate over whether al-Qaeda or IS constituted the greater threat to global 1 Frank J. Cilluffo.

Testimony of September 18, 2013, before the House of Representatives’ Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence [Transcript]. Available at http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG113hhrg86483/html/CHRG-113hhrg86483.htm. 2013.

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security divided the Obama administration’s senior security officials.2 Given the readiness of analysts and commentators in the Western world to testify to both AQAP’s incomprehensible nature and its disturbing competence, it is clear existing attempts to rationalise the movement have been inadequate. The research questions that therefore arise include how can we best envision al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula? How can we credibly explain their collective activity?

Conventionally described as a group focused largely on directing attacks against the West, operating under assumed names to disguise its intentions from Yemeni and foreign audiences, that has capitalised on a failed Yemeni state, AQAP are better understood as a particularistic movement that consciously project a locallyresonant self-image. AQAP is an indigenous jihadist movement that has gained renewed prominence during Yemen’s civil war not by merely exploiting a wartime security vacuum but by engaging successfully with the political opportunities afforded by Yemen’s civil war, which have allowed AQAP to position itself as a mainstream bulwark against perceived Houthi expansionism and assert its credibility as a guarantor of security and justice in the relative absence of the state.

Thematically, literature concerning Yemen tends to be dominated by case studies in state failure, under-development, insurgency and proliferation of terrorism, humanitarian crises, and the like, and accordingly is viewed near-exclusively through the lens of security. This appears latent enough a tendency to have been commented on by numerous critics, who have all noted a preoccupation with security on the part of many contemporary commentators on Yemen. Indian diplomat and former ambassador to the UN Hardeep Singh Puri has accused the United States of ‘[viewing] Yemen through a single prism—of the [sic] AQAP and terrorism’.3 Lackner concurs with this view, writing that 2 Eric Schmitt. “ISIS or Al Qaeda? American Officials Split Over Top Terror Threat”. In: The New York Times (2015).

3 Hardeep Singh Puri. Perilous Interventions: The Security Council and

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US policy towards Yemen is ‘largely defined’ by counter-terrorism objectives.4 Humanitarian organisations have made similar observations, with Civilians in Conflict asserting that Yemen is ‘largely [seen] through a counterterrorism lens’ by the international community. Other observers also aware that the security perspective generates the majority of interest invested in the country. Introducing a think-tank hosted panel discussion on Yemen in 2009, moderator Christopher Boucek noted that ‘most people are probably primarily interested in the security and the terrorism aspects, which is what I think probably brought most of you here today’.5 Confounding the issue further is Yemen’s infamy as the ancestral home of the bin Laden family and its usage as the ‘training ground for a number of Islamist jihadists who have attempted to operate internationally’.6 The logical question is whether this security-dominated approach is an accurate and appropriate one—is the indisputable bias towards a security agenda we see evident in the literature likely to complement our efforts to understand issues in Yemen or detract from them? There is ample evidence to suggest the excessive emphasis placed on security neglects factors far more significant in a Yemeni context. There are a number of concurrent voices supporting this sentiment. Bonnefoy and Poirier have written critically about the contemporary research agenda’s bias towards Yemeni security, arguing that armed Islamist militancy has been ‘wrongly labelled the primary threat to stability’ in Yemen and that the emphasis on security has ‘eclipsed’ the more contextual studies necessary for a more accurate and holistic understanding of the issues Yemen faces. ‘International jihadism and security issues’, Lackner writes, ‘are not the most important isthe Politics of Chaos. London: HarperCollins, 2016, p. 14.

4 Helen Lackner, ed. Why Yemen Matters: A Society in Transition. London: Saqi Books, 2014, p. 2.

5 Christopher Bouchek and Marina Ottaway, eds. Yemen on the Brink.

Washington: Carnegie Endowment for Peace, 2010.

6 Lackner, Why Yemen Matters: A Society in Transition, p. 2.

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sues’ for Yemen’s inhabitants compared with the more potent and numerous economic and social issues the country faces, such as ‘staggering demographic challenges’, skyrocketing unemployment, inflation, and rapidly dwindling oil and water reserves7 Such positions are not merely reductivist. Rather, there is independent evidence which suggests that criticism of the securityled approach is justified. One such source that supports this notion is the Yemen Polling Center, a research consortium based incountry, which produced a survey in 2013 concerned with gauging public perceptions of Yemen’s security sector. Despite the unquestionable severity of the political crisis in-country at the time the research was conducted, a decisive majority of respondents to the survey, which had an equal number of male and female participants and a broad geographical spread which included a total of 1990 respondents from all of Yemen’s 21 governorates, convincingly rejected personal insecurity as a major issue in Yemen.

45% of citizens polled chose the most decisive response, answering that they ‘always felt safe’ in their environment, with a further 28% considering themselves feeling ‘mostly safe’, the next most assertive option—the combined 73% of respondents stating a high or the highest degree of confidence on their own personal security presenting a stark contrast to the 5% of survey participants who felt ‘always unsafe’.8 Immediately, the popular notions of state failure and rampant insecurity seem debatable at least and invalid at worst by these findings. Indeed, data shows that inhabitants in Yemen’s apparently worst-policed province, Lahij, perceived themselves as markedly safer than respondents from any other governorate.

In a clear contrast to the confidence most Yemeni citizens appear to have in the domestic security environment, there are unambiguous anxieties about social and economic issues reflected in the polling data. This, again, lends support to the view that the 7 Ibid.,

p. viii.

Polling Center. Public Perceptions of the Security Sector and Police Work in Yemen. Major Survey Findings. Sanaa: YPC, 2013.

8 Yemen

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provable bias towards security in Yemen studies is unwarranted.

After ‘Nothing’, which was—strikingly—cited as the biggest threat to personal security by a sizeable 37% of survey respondents nationwide, the second most common response was ‘Living expenses and unemployment’, selected by 17.3% of participants.

This is not to play down the issue of security, or claim that the threat posed by militancy and terror in Yemen is a marginal one. Indeed, it is likely that the severity of Yemen’s crippling social and economic woes simply dwarf a nonetheless very real and potent threat posed by terrorism in-country, accounting for the marginalisation of the former and the preponderance of the latter in survey results. Rather, the issue of security in Yemen is an exaggerated one, and an issue that does not appear to merit the vast body of literature dedicated to it in comparison to other indigenous issues, and the claim can be made that the intricacies of Yemen’s domestic context has been largely overlooked. ‘The Struggle For Yemen’, as one US government publication is entitled, may be far more about water, bread, oil and jobs than it is about ‘The Challenge of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’ of its subtitle (Terrill, 2013), the jihadi movement to which we now turn.

Given the demonstrable preoccupation with international security on the Yemeni research agenda, it comes as little surprise that AQAP and the threat it presents is a widely discussed phenomenon. As a jihadi movement, AQAP are seen as highly effective, adept, and a posing a potent threat to regional and global security, and are widely considered as an instrumental arm in a definitively global, transnational, and centrally-directed network.

Articulations of this interpretation abound. In his capacity as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, David Petraeus expressed a view typical of this approach, describing the group as ‘the most dangerous central node in the global jihad’, an epithet which reflects both of these sentiments.9 Elsewhere in official testi9 David

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H. Petraeus. ‘Statement by the Director of the Central Intelligence

mony, AQAP were characterised as ‘the greatest immediate threat from a terrorist group’ that the United States faced before a 2013 Congress Committee on Homeland Security.10 In short, AQAP’s reputation as a threat to international security is, rather fittingly, truly global. Some critics, however, have alleged that this reputation is ‘highly sensationalised’ and claims and made about the group are rarely treated critically11 ).

Perhaps the most pressing flaw in the existing approach to AQAP is the overt tendency to consider the jihadi movement from a purely external standpoint—one that treats the group solely according to its capacity to launch attacks internationally. This propensity is most evident in policy literature relating to AQAP, which is overwhelmingly concerned with the group’s ability to stage operations outside of Yemen, rather than the movement’s indigenous capabilities, or even priorities.

This sentiment colours much of the Western discourse surrounding AQAP, especially in the intelligence, think-tank and government sectors. In a hearing before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center delivered an assessment that was entirely focused on AQAP’s external capabilities. According to Nicholas J. Rasmussen, the primary threat posed by AQAP was its ‘efforts to radicalize and mobilize individuals outside Yemen’.12 A 2014 Defence Intelligence Agency assessment also characterises the ‘resolute[ness]’ of Agency David H. Petraeus to Congress on the Terrorist Threat Ten Years After 9/11’, transcript. https://www.cia.gov/news-information/speechestestimony/speeches-testimony-archive-2011/statement-on-the-terroristthreat-after-9-11.html. 2011.

10 Cilluffo, Testimony of September 18, 2013, before the House of Representatives’ Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence [Transcript].

11 Alexandra Lewis. “Unpacking Terrorism, Revolution and Insurgency in Yemen: Real and Imagined Threats to Regional Security”. In: Perspectives on Terrorism 7.5 (2013).

12 Nicholas J. Rasmussen. Hearing Before The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence: Current Terrorist Threat to the United States. 2015. url: https://www.nctc.gov/docs/Current_Terrorist_Threat_to_the_United_ States.pdf.

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AQAP’s activity ‘in targeting the [American] homeland’.13 It is understandable that the US national security apparatus is concerned primarily with AQAP’s ability to launch attacks against the West, but it is an approach that divorces the movement from its indigenous context.

The proliferation of this view can be partly attributed to the high visibility of AQAP English-language media, most notably the electronic magazine Inspire, which was described as central to AQAP strategy in Rasmussen’s testimony and occupied a prominent place in his analysis of the group. AQAP has been described as ‘pioneers’ for its exploitation of social media and the Internet as a platform for propaganda. Inspire’s articles, most infamously in its ‘Open Source Jihad’ feature, tutors its readers in improvised bomb-making—one such article was entitled ‘Make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom’ — and offers guidance on ‘lone wolf’ attack methodology. Much of Inspire’s notoriety can be attributed to its implication in several high-profile incidents in the Western world, having been found on the hard drive of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, responsible for the 2013 bombing of the Boston Marathon,14 which doubtless has contributed to its notoriety. As an English-language publication readily available online, it also functions as an easily accessible source, something of a rarity in the field of Yemeni studies.

However, Inspire, and ‘al-Malahim Media’, the media ‘agency’ responsible for the production and distribution of the magazine, is only one aspect of a fairly sophisticated AQAP media apparatus. Ultimately, Inspire’s value is exaggerated and it is afforded a disproportionate status by many commentators. More in-depth analysis of Inspire has argued that the magazine is not particularly concerned with AQAP’s ‘primary message of grassroots in13 Michael T. Flynn. Anual Threat Assement: Statement before the Senate Armed Services Committee. 2014. url: https : / / www . armed - services . senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Flynn_02-11-14.pdf, p. 9.

14 Richard Valdmanis. “Boston bomb suspect influenced by al-Qaeda: expert witness”. In: (2015).

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citement’, messages that are conveyed not through Inspire but through alternative outlets.15 Much of AQAP’s Yemeni-directed, Arabic-language media output stems from the ‘al-Athir Agency’, a media wing associated with the group. al-Athir, which was established in January 2016, distributes a weekly Arabic-language newsletter, al-Masra and maintains official channels on the Telegram electronic messaging service.16 An Arabic-language journal, ‘Sada al-Malahim’, also pre-dates Inspire by at least two years, having first been distributed in 2008.17 Elisabeth Kendall has described AQAP’s Arabic-language output as ‘culturally adapted to their Yemeni context and adapted to the prevailing local conditions’,18 an observation that stands in contrast to AQAP’s more widely cited but far less representative Inspire, which goes as far as to dissuade its intended audience from travelling to Yemen19 and instead encourages Western Muslims to stage attacks in their own countries.

This is a practice that certainly undermines Inspire’s capacity to offer any insights as to how AQAP are able to mobilise grassroots support in Yemen, from Yemenis.

A cursory examination of al-Athir’s Arabic-language output demonstrates the shortcomings of perceptions based predominantly on misrepresentative evidence such as Inspire. There is a strong thematic and content contrast between the inflammatory and combative rhetoric of Inspire, which is characterised by its didactic 15 Benedict Wilkinson and Jack Barclay. The Language of Jihad: Narratives and Strategies of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and UK Responses.

London: Royal United Services Institute, 2011, p. 26.

16 Elisabeth Kendall. “Al-Qaeda and Islamic State in Yemen: A Battle for Local Audiences”. In: (2016). url: http://www.academia.edu/15757466/ Al- Qaida_and_Islamic_State_in_Yemen_A_Battle_for_Local_Audiences, p. 96.

17 Gabriel Koehler-Derrick, ed. A False Foundation? AQAP, Tribes and Ungoverned Spaces in Yemen. 2011, p. 6.

18 Kendall, “Al-Qaeda and Islamic State in Yemen: A Battle for Local Audiences”, p. 89.

19 Wilkinson and Barclay, The Language of Jihad: Narratives and Strategies of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and UK Responses, p. 26.

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and apologetic content, and the releases of al-Athir media, which almost exclusively feature local concerns and social issues (Fig. 1).

Figure 1: al-Athir screenshots from April 2016: original sources have since been taken down from Twitter. Clockwise from top left: food distribution, Koranic recital competition, road resurfacing, pipeline construction, medicine distribution.

As evidenced in Figure 1, al-Athir media output between January and April 2016 is characterised by its prominent local, social thematic emphasis. During this period (at least) the jihadist imagery typical of Inspire’s content was marginalised at the expense of highlighting AQAP’s public service enterprises. What allusions were made to Yemen’s war in early 2016 generally seek to construct a victim mentality narrative: media releases around this time include the repairing of a bomb damaged bridge, restoration of a local school, and bomb-proofing school windows with metal grilles. Whilst most Inspire-driven external commentary appears 116

fixated on AQAP’s desire to stage external attacks, the bulk of AQAP’s own media output suggests that much of the group’s resources have been dedicated towards establishing local credentials as a governing authority, which is certainly the image that AQAP’s own al-Athir media agency is seeking to present. This is an approach that has been critically overlooked, further emphasising the latent shortcomings of existing conceptualisations of AQAP and underlining the need for a more comprehensive approach.

This thesis proposes that an approach rooted in social movement theory (SMT) provides a more appropriate framework for the study of AQAP in their indigenous context. An approach drawing on key features on SMT helps a researcher to avoid many of the methodological pitfalls that have hindered and discredited terrorism research, allowing for a theoretically consistent approach that treats with equal weight the role of the state, the role of the individual, and the role of ideology without the rhetorical and emotional controversies surrounding the agency of these factors.

Social movement theory is an enterprise that attempts to explain the inception, the endurance, and, frequently, the demobilisation of social movements. Tarrow’s definition of a ‘social movement’ is as follows: Collective challenges, based on common purposes and social solidarities, in sustained interaction with elites, opponents, and authorities.20 A complementary definition can be found in, who conceptualise a social movement as: A broad collection of individual and organisational actors unified by historical moments, critical cultural experiences, and communication flows. In social movements, a sense of solidarity or unity enables the articu20 Sidney

Tarrow. Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011, p. 9.

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lation and realization of profound (even revolutionary) changes in societies and across them.21 Social movement theory analyses the nature of these phenomena through a broadly tripartite approach composed of ‘framing’ analysis, ‘resource mobilisation’ analysis, and ‘political opportunity’ analysis.22 Beck (2008) and Tarrow (1998) are another two scholars who also conceptualise SMT as being principally composed of these three elements.

In an SMT context, ‘framing’ refers to the way in which a social movement ‘constructs its self-presentation’—how, in other words, the commonality and solidarity cited by both Tarrow and Comas as characteristics of a social movement is articulated.23 Furthermore, framing theory also seeks to explain how individuals can become mobilised participants in social movements due to the movement articulating particularly potent ‘resonant’ framing processes24 that (eventual) participants strongly identify and align with. The most significant of the tripartite elements of SMT for the purposes of this study, framing theory will be used to demonstrate how AQAP seeks to mobilise support by consciously presenting a locally resonant self-image through its nomenclature, symbolism, propaganda and activity.

Bearing in mind the definition of ‘framing’ processes proffered

by Oliver and Johnson, one of the more obvious examples of a social movement’s framing enterprises is its nomenclature. It is well acknowledged that AQAP employ and operate under a range of names in Yemen. Having been founded in 2009 as AQAP, 21 Jordi Comas. “Terrorism as Formal Organization, Network, and Social Movement”. In: Journal of Management Inquiry (2014), pp. 1–15.

22 Sarah V. Marsden. “A Social Movement Theory Typology of Militant Organisations: Contextualising Terrorism”. In: Terrorism and Political Violence 28.4 (2016), p. 753.

23 Pamela Oliver. “What a Good Idea! Frames and Ideologies in Social Movement Research”. In: Mobilization 5.1 (2000), p. 1.

24 Robert Benford and David Snow. “Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment. Annual Review of Sociology”. In: 26 (2000), p. 619.

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by 2011-2012 the moniker Ansar al-Sharia was increasingly being used formally, dividing analysts as to whether Ansar al-Sharia was a separate ‘wing’ founded by the group, the same organisation ‘rebranded’, or a distinct and independent but affiliated movement. The latest trend, which appears to date from 2014 or 2015, is for AQAP to style itself after the Yemeni province in which it operates. ‘Sons of the Hadramawt’ and ‘Sons of Abyan’ have both been recorded in those respective provinces, prompting the Australian government to officially recognise ‘Sons of the Hadramawt’ as an alias of AQAP by the time of writing, the first (and only) Western government to do, to date.

Traditionally, AQAP’s varied use of nomenclature in Yemen is conceptualised as an attempt to disguise the group’s intentions and true nature, an attempt to avoid Western attention (and US drones), or, most commonly, an attempt to ‘re-brand’ away from a supposedly repellent and discredited ‘al-Qaeda brand’. In what stands in contrast to existing analysis on Yemen’s Houthis, al-Qaeda’s adopted names have generally been used to support, rather than contest, the idea of existing as a rigid, definable organization. Subscribers to this view are widespread and a number of publications and official bodies have espoused this interpretation, most frequently used to explain the usage of ‘Ansar al-Sharia’ specifically. As late as 2015, Foreign Policy magazine argued that a supposed shift to the Ansar al-Sharia moniker was due to an ‘acknowledgement of the toxicity of al-Qaeda’s brand’.25 The US State Department considers Ansar al-Sharia as simply an ‘alias’ of AQAP with the unsubtle implication that the organisations are one and the same. The State Department proscribed Ansar alSharia, ‘a new alias’ of AQAP, as a terrorist group in October 2012, describing AAS as ‘AQAP’s effort to rebrand itself with the aim of manipulating people to join AQAP’s terrorist cause’.26 By 25 Evan Hill and Laura Kasinof. “Playing a Double Game In the Fight Against AQAP”. in: Foreign Policy (2015).

26 Bureau of Counterterrorism and Countering Violent Extremism.

Terrorist Designations of Ansar al-Sharia as an

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and large, other US officials have followed this line. One regional expert testified that ‘aware of AQAP’s divisive reputation, AQAP introduced itself to locals in Yemen as Ansar al-Sharia. Again, the implications are clear. AQAP’s varied nomenclature is explained only as a method of obfuscation, with any further nuance discouraged. A further example of this traditional view comes from an unlikely source. In an article disparaging the group in Islamic State’s English-language Dabiq magazine, both Ansar al-Sharia and Sons of the Hadramawt are cited as the ‘new names’ of alQaeda in the Arabian Peninsula that the group uses in order to ‘dodge’ the al-Qaeda brand.

In both of these instances, political considerations have likely influenced how AQAP’s relationship with Ansar al-Sharia/Sons of the Hadramawt is qualified by these actors, a politicisation that a social movement theory approach would seek to counter. Officials of a US administration that claims to have significantly degraded al-Qaeda’s capacity to function and prosecute attacks have little to gain from portraying or even implying al-Qaeda as an organisation with flourishing affiliates, and supporters of al-Qaeda’s leading rival for leadership of the global jihadist movement have a similar interest in portraying the adoption of various monikers as an indication of weakness rather than of capability.

In this instance, AQAP’s self-naming traditions, which social movement theorists assert is a significant and vital part of mobilisation and recruitment processes on the ground, are all too often ‘explained away’ as simply deliberate smokescreens that AQAP have deployed to protect their membership from external targeting. From this perspective, the audience to whom the framing is directed is presumed to be external actors rather than for Yemenis themselves, and this approach also hinders comprehensive by treating AQAP, Ansar al-Sharia and Sons of the Hadramawt as a single rigid organisation rather than fellow-traveller components Alias for Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.

Available https://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/other/des/266604.htm. 2012.

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at:

of a broader movement. Rather than a projection for the international stage, AQAP’s willingness to operate under locally adaptable banners in Yemen is far better understood as the locallytargeted deliberate framing process of a social movement concerned with mobilising support and recruiting participants across Yemen.

Framing analysis is not the only approach drawn from a SMT framework that can add to our understanding of participation in AQAP-linked movements and AQAP activity and behaviours.

Political opportunity theory adds another dimension to the equation of mobilisation. Whilst framing theory considers primarily the self-presentation of a movement, which is largely an internal process, political opportunity theory examines the relationship between a movement and the external factors that influence it.

The ‘basic premise’ of political opportunity theory, according to one definition, maintains that the success or failure of a social movement is influenced by ‘exogenous factors [which] enhance or inhibit prospects for mobilization’.27 In order to move towards the goal of re-contextualising the study of AQAP, political opportunity theory is therefore a vital tool, offering a theoretical model with which to explain AQAP mobilisation and recruitment in which the idiosyncrasies of the Yemeni environment play a key role.

A major exogenous political opportunity for AQAP has been the ongoing civil war in Yemen. This widely-held assertion is commonly espoused by governments, world media, academia, and the think-tank industry. The war, according to one UK Government report, has ‘opened vast opportunities for AQAP to expand’ (IAGCI, 2016, p13). Further examples of this widely-shared view are abundant. The International Crisis Group has described AQAP as ‘thriving in an environment of state collapse’, describing AQAP as the biggest beneficiary of the war in Yemen, and private 27 David

Meyer. “Protest and Political Opportunities”. In: Annual Review of Sociology 30.125 (2004), p. 1457.

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intelligence company Stratfor has attributed AQAP’s ‘rapid expansion’ to the ‘implosion’ of the Yemeni state.28 Whilst not an entirely inaccurate approach—that AQAP have enjoyed resurgence in Yemen’s civil war is not contested—these assertions are generally unsubstantiated and fundamentally state-centric, ultimately contributing to a misrepresentative understanding of AQAP’s relationship with the wartime context.

Firstly, such claims visibly rest on the ‘failed state’ paradigm that has already been demonstrated to be of limited value when applied to Yemen. According to the conventional narrative, the breakdown of the state security apparatus in governorates such as Abyan and Hadramaut has enabled AQAP to operate more freely and expand. However, this perspective is of limited value, and is adequate only insofar as explaining al-Qaeda’s increased mobility in various Yemeni governorates, and ability to operate more openly. The conventional understanding of AQAP’s relationship with the wartime context does not account for mobilisation and recruitment into the movement.

Adopting a political opportunity theory approach offers a more nuanced perspective; where proliferation of the AQAP jihadi movement in the context of Yemen’s civil war is best framed as a successful engagement with two political opportunities afforded by the that previous commentators have certainly been correct to identify but have until now explained insufficiently. In this environment of security collapse, AQAP has been able to position itself as a mainstream element of the southern, predominantly Sunni resistance to what is perceived as the encroachment of the expanding Zaydi Shi’ite Houthi movement after the state security apparatus collapsed in south-eastern Yemen.

Yemen’s Houthi movement is drawn overwhelmingly from the Zaydi Muslim community, who constitute around 40% of the population of Yemen but a majority of the population of the formerly independent North. Although technically a branch of Shi’ite 28 Stratfor.

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Jihadism in Yemen: A Long History, a Long Future. 2016.

Islam, Zaidism is generally considered closely related to orthodox Sunnism, lacking the major theological disputes that divide Twelver Shi’ism and Sunnism. Consequently, Yemen has never been overly characterised by sectarianism; cross-denominational marriage is common, and observers note that Zaidis and Sunnis pray at the same mosques.29 However, AQAP have capitalised on Houthi expansion from the movement’s northern powerbase into the largely Sunni southern governorates, moving to establish themselves as an integral but independent component of the broad church of resistance to the Houthis by directing the bulk of their resources against the Zaydi rebels. This shift is also apparent in AQAP’s media engagement.

AQAP usually issue official claims of responsibility for assassinations of Houthi commanders—releasing in February 2017 a list of 22 Houthi officers the group has killed since October 2016, providing dates and locations of the killings.30 These efforts appear to have paid dividends for AQAP—a BBC reporter found fighters from Ansar al-Sharia fighting alongside pro-Hadi militias during the siege of Taiz, and allegations persist of a tacit understanding between AQAP and the Hadi government.31 Regardless of whether collusion occurs between AQAP and the rest of the forces mobilised against the Houthi movement, AQAP has also deliberately moved to discredit its competitors for leadership of the anti-Houthi campaign. In a feature-length video released in March 2016, ‘The Baghdadi Group,’ an Islamic State defector to AQAP accuses IS of staging attacks on Houthi forces that it filmed and released. Likewise, AQAP’s al-Masra newspaper has taken care to issue the claim that ‘We’re not fighting 29 International Business Publications.

Yemen Country Study Guide: Strategic Information and Developments. Washington: International Business Publications, 2013, p. 48.

30 Elisabeth Kendall. #alQaeda wire names 22 Houthi commanders killed in #Yemen by #AQAP so far during the year 1438 AH (= since Oct 2016) https://t.co/r4bHXu8swd. Tweet.

31 BBC News. “Yemen conflict: Al-Qaeda seen at coalition battle for Taiz”.

In: (2016).

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Figure 2: Screenshot from al-Athir Agency’s ‘The Baghdadi Group’ video, March 2016. A former Islamic State insurgent debunks an IS propaganda video, calling on IS members to ‘leave this group, which demolished more than it built, and dispersed more than it joined’. Original source deleted. the Houthis and Saleh for Hadi’, distancing themselves from other movements fighting the Houthis.32 In terms of social movement theory, this behaviour can be seen as typical of the removal of barriers to participation—a typical activity of social movements, according to Klandermans and Oegema.33 An approach that draws on social movement theory allows for a far more satisfying explanation of AQAP’s wartime proliferation than conventional interpretations. A fixation on state security has led most commentators to ascribe the spread of AQAP influence and activity during Yemen’s civil war as the result of a simple security vacuum in Yemen; an assertion sufficient to explain how the group can operate more openly, but one that does not ac32 Kendall, “Al-Qaeda and Islamic State in Yemen: A Battle for Local Audiences”.

33 Bert Klandermans and Dirk Oegema. “Potentials, Networks, Motivations, and Barriers: Steps Towards Participation in Social Movements”. In: American Sociological Review 52.4 (1987), pp. 519–531.

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count for AQAP’s ability to mobilise on the ground. This is a process best understood through a framework of political opportunity theory. In adopting this methodology, we can understand AQAP’s resurgence as the result of a successful engagement with the exogenous opportunities afforded to the group in a wartime context. AQAP have re-oriented their agenda towards combating the Houthi insurgency in Yemen, an agenda implicit in its media output.

In conclusion, the field of contemporary Yemeni studies is permeated by an overriding and self-perpetuating emphasis on security; whilst literature relating to what is undoubtedly the Arab world’s least studied country has grown exponentially in recent years, international and regional security concerns dominate the research agenda. Popular perceptions of Yemen as a ‘failed state’ and staging point for transnational jihadism have exacerbated this tendency at the cost of marginalising contextual studies of Yemen , which is partly explicable on account of the inherent difficulties in conducting original research and obtaining primary sources in Yemen. What research has been done on the ground has produced evidence that suggests the security-dominated approach is unwarranted, and appears to call into the question of the ‘failed state’ paradigm so often applied to Yemen.

In tandem, prior studies of AQAP have been heavily influenced by presumption in much the same way. Much of the public discourse surrounding AQAP derives from policy literature of various Western governments, many of whom who have been targeted by AQAP directly; consequently, AQAP tend to be decontextualised even further, analysed primarily from an external perspective concerned with the group’s ability to stage attacks outside of Yemen. Much of the qualitative evidence cited in orthodox studies stems from AQAP’s prolific but fundamentally misrepresentative English-language media, in particular its Inspire magazine, which has correctly been identified as a potent tool of radicalisation that has been implicated in a number of attacks, but its usefulness as a source for generating insight into AQAP is lim125

ited when compared with AQAP’s less widely distributed but far more voluminous Arabic-language output which is undoubtedly more demonstrative of the group’s agendas.

Traditionally interpreted as a clandestine network directing its resources towards staging attacks against the West that has been emboldened by a presumed collapse of the Yemeni state, adopting a social movement theory-based approach can produce a more nuanced analysis. Drawing on some of the key theoretical tools within the SMT framework, a more holistic interpretation of AQAP is one that understands the group as an indigenous jihadi movement that exhibits behaviours typical of a social movement. AQAP has a complex bilateral relationship with the idiosyncratic environment it operates within, a context all too often marginalised in contemporary analyses of the group. AQAP are considered noteworthy for their pioneering usage of the Internet as a platform, but most commentators fixate disproportionately on the group’s English-language output directed at a foreign audience; whereas the more voluminous Arabic-language content offers has far more to offer the researcher in terms of allowing insight into the movement. With a social movement theory approach, the researcher can produce an explanation more sophisticated than the existing interpretations, concluding that AQAP is a movement which consciously projects a locally resonant self-image in pursuit of its existential goal. This is not merely to launch attacks against distant ideological enemies, but to translate the image it presents, of a credible authority contesting the legitimacy of the Yemeni state, and challenging its right to rule, into reality—a far more dangerous notion from the perspective of any Western policymaker.

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The Scottish National Party’s Vacillating Position on Europe Frederik Siedelin

The vision of a politically united—or at least harmonious— Europe has been mooted throughout modern history. That vision seemed unrealistic during much of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries where war was the norm in European affairs, but it has incrementally come closer to its realisation after the end of the Second World War. Since then, European institutional frameworks in various guises have been created to encourage stability through economic interdependence, political co-operation, and gradual convergence between European countries in a large number of policy areas. Today, the European Union is a continental political and economic bloc with some 500 million inhabitants, and the European Economic Area has a combined gross domestic product exceeding all other economies in the world.1 During this period of European history, Britain’s relationship with Europe has alternated between enthusiasm—especially regarding trade and military co-operation—and hostility towards 1 World

Bank, ‘GDP per capita, PPP (current international $)’, World Bank Open Data.

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the political project, with the apparent nadir being the ‘Brexit’ vote in 2016, when the British public narrowly voted in a referendum to withdraw from the EU. Likewise, most political parties in Britain have had changing platforms regarding the European project throughout the period. Despite their present calls to keep Scotland within the EU, the Scottish National Party (SNP) have had four distinct phases. Immediately following the Second World War, the party generally favoured European co-operation. However, the party adopted a Eurosceptic platform during the 1960s and 1970s because independence and European union were seen as irreconcilable. During the 1980s and 1990s, the party leadership successfully cultivated a more pragmatic approach. This pragmatism was captured in the ‘independence in Europe’ policy adopted by the party conference in 1988. Since the turn of the century, the SNP have continued to support membership the EU whilst opposing further integration.2 Paolo Dardanelli has shown that regionalist parties across Europe are generally more in favour of the EU than the average of political parties in Europe, which is due to ideological conviction to some extent, certainly, but often also due to rational strategic calculations about the support structures offered to regions within the EU.3 Richard Haesly has called such an approach ‘instrumental Europeanism’, namely a focus on the utilitarian benefits of the EU, as separate from outright ‘Europhile’ Europeanism per se.4 Indeed, Seth Jolly and Dardanelli have argued that the SNP’s policy reversal during the 1980s was in large part dictated by ‘viability logic’, specifically the perceived need to portray Scottish 2 Valeria Tarditi, ‘The Scottish National Party’s Changing Attitude Towards the European Union’, SEI Working Papers, no. 112 (January 2010), pp. 10-38.

3 Paolo Dardanelli, ‘Ideology and Rationality: The Europeanisation of the Scottish National Party’, sterreichische Zeitschrift fr Politikwissenschaft, 32 (2003), 271-284.

4 Richard Haesly, ‘Euroskeptics, Europhiles and Instrumental Europeans: European Attachment in Scotland and Wales’, European Union Politics, 2 (2001), 81-102.

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independence as economically practicable and not isolationist.5 Consequently, scholars of the SNP’s policy on Europe have tended to focus on the EU as a ‘political opportunity structure’ for the SNP to legitimate independence for Scotland.6 In the broadest of senses, Tom Gallagher has argued that the leadership of the SNP play up the European union as an alternative to the British union.7 Atsuko Ichijo has highlighted the SNP’s somewhat nebulous image of the EU as instrumental to the people of Scotland reaching their potential.8 Valeria Tarditi has remarked on the party’s use of arenas created by the EU to increase their political visibility and prove their statesmanship.9 These scholars, along with others, have suggested that the SNP’s European platform also serves to create the perception of political distance between Scotland and the rest of Britain—especially England. For instance, Ichijo and Gallagher have both touched on nationalists using ‘conservative England’ as a cultural and political foil to ‘liberal Scotland’, which allegedly has more in common with ‘social Europe’ than with England.10 Another example is Tarditi, who mentions throughout her article that the SNP’s stance on Europe at any given point was the opposite of England’s.11 These are examples of the fact that the existing literature primarily observes that the European project is used by the SNP to distance Scotland from England without analysing how ‘Europe’ is used to this end. This paper attempts to show how and why the SNP’s changing policies on Europe can be seen as instru5 Seth Kincaid Jolly, ‘The Europhile Fringe? Regionalist Party Support for European Integration’, European Union Politics, 8 (2007), 109-130 (p. 123); Dardanelli, pp. 281-282.

6 Jolly, p. 124.

7 Tom Gallagher, The Illusion of Freedom: Scotland under Nationalism (London: Hurst, 2009), pp. 189-190.

8 Atsuko Ichijo, Scottish Nationalism and the Idea of Europe (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 101-102 and 148-149.

9 Tarditi, p. 39.

10 Ichijo, pp. 148-149; Gallagher, pp. 189-190.

11 Tarditi, 10-38.

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mental both to their claim to independence for Scotland and to their campaign against England and London. We shall do so by analysing the language and the acts of legitimation through association and dissociation in a number of SNP documents regarding their European policy.12

The Early Europeanism of the SNP There are indications that the Scottish nationalists were observing other regionalist-nationalist movements in Europe closely after the end of the Second World War. Robert McIntyre—SNP’s chairman between 1947 and 1956 and then president until 1980—collected pamphlets, newsletters, party manifestos, conference agendas, and many other ephemera from such groups. The materials he kept in his personal library were from a wide range of groups throughout Western Europe, including materials from Basque, Breton, and Celtic nationalists. Closer to Scotland, McIntyre also had inter alia newsletters from the Scottish League for European Freedom, and the Highland Independent Party.13 McIntyre’s possession of this broad collection of nationalist materials suggests that he and others in the party envisaged a shared (imagined) community between the Scottish and the Welsh, Irish, Cornish, and Bretons as peoples with a shared culture. Almost all of these materials foreground the differences between their own group and an Other, including differences in morals, culture, language, social life, and geography.14 Indeed, most of the materials vilify their Others as imperialist, such as the Highland Independent Party claiming that the English beat the Scottish clan 12 For more information on the importance of association and dissociation in legitimating policies, please see Anna E Wieczorek, Clusivity: A New Approach to Association and Disassociation in Political Discourse (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars, 2013).

13 All of the materials are kept in McIntyre’s files at the National Library of Scotland (NLS), Acc 10090/179.

14 See, for instance, ‘Halting the Decline: National Revival in Welsh Education’, The Celtic Times, May 1948, p. 2, NLS Acc 10090/179.

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system into submission by ‘identical scheming technique, since perfected by Hitler and Himmler ’ (added emphasis).15 It could be said that the separatist sentiments in McIntyre’s collection were part of the global anti-imperialist climate in the post-war era, when the European empires gradually unravelled.

However, most of the publications were not narrowly separatist, but envisaged communities between nations based on the commonalities of their peoples. Indeed, concurrent with the separatist strand runs a Europeanist strand, an obvious example being the Congrs des Communauts et Rgions Europennes, whose programme and agenda for the second meeting in 1948 were also in McIntyre’s library. McIntyre himself believed that the people of Scotland could regain ‘effective political freedom’ within a European Federation, which would ensure the ‘self-government’ of peoples across the continent.16 Despite these early flirtation with European federalism, however, the SNP grew increasingly sceptical of the European project as it took shape during the 1950s.

The Eurosceptic Campaign to Leave Europe Along with Denmark and Ireland, Britain applied for membership of the European Economic Community in 1961 and 1967, but their applications were vetoed by French President, Charles de Gaulle, and not until 1973 did the three countries accede to the European Community. Britain joined under the auspices of Edward Heath’s Tory government, whose party manifesto for the 1970 general election had included a commitment to negotiate terms of membership.The accession was ratified by the Houses of Parliament in 1972, and there was initially no consultation of the British public in a referendum. In the population, opinion on the country’s accession was divided, and wings for and against the EC 15 Highland

Independent Party Manifesto, NLS Acc 10090/179.

McIntyre quoted in ‘Scotland and a European Union’, Celtic Times, May 1948, p. 3.

16 Robert

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quickly formed within the political parties.17 After the general election in February 1974, Harold Wilson became prime minister of a minority Labour government; the prospects of stable government were small, and Wilson called another general election to be held in October. In their manifesto, Labour pledged to hold a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EC to settle the European question and restore stability to British politics.18 Wilson’s electoral tactic gave Labour only a pyrrhic victory of a razor-thin majority which was soon lost through by-elections and defections. Indeed, far from restoring the three-party system at Westminster, the election upset the dynamics of British politics as an unprecedented number of seats were taken by region-specific parties. With 30% of the vote in Scottish constituencies, the SNP took 11 seats in the Commons; Plaid Cymru took three seats; and to the backdrop of ‘the Troubles’ worsening in Northern Ireland, 10 out of 12 Northern Irish seats were won by right-wing unionists.19 Nevertheless, Labour delivered the promised referendum on British membership of the EC was held on 5 June 1975, with ‘Britain in Europe’ campaigning for staying in the EC and the ‘National Referendum Campaign’ for leaving.

The SNP, however, did not join the British campaign to leave, and Margo MacDonald, deputy leader of the SNP, was appointed director of the SNP’s campaign effort. Thus, in the months before the referendum, the party leadership circulated numerous memos to branches and constituency associations outlining the SNP’s reasons why Scotland should reject EC membership. One report asserted that EC membership was not in Scotland’s interests, particularly because membership had increased food prices, had imperilled both Scottish agriculture and fishing, and had caused Scot17 David Reynolds, Britannia Overruled: British Policy and World Power in the Twentieth Century, 2nd edn (Harlow: Longman, 2000), pp. 224-233.

18 Ibid., pp. 232-235.

19 Keith Robbins, The Eclipse of a Great Power: Modern Britain 18701992, 2nd edn (Harlow, UK: Pearson, 1994), p. 416; Reynolds, pp. 232-233.

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tish capital to flow out of Scotland.20 Similarly, MacDonald wrote that Britain’s EC membership had ‘jeopardis[ed] control over the oil industry and the steel industry in Scotland’, and made Scottish agriculture and fishing vulnerable.21 However, rejection of the EC was not simply about the Scottish steel industry, Scottish agriculture, fishing, oil, or higher food prices ‘for Scottish housewives’—all of which were presented in these internal documents as arguments against the EC. Indeed, the SNP campaign was clearly an integral part of the party’s general desire to distance Scottish politics from the rest of Britain, particularly from the prevailing winds of the London establishment. In February, MacDonald asserted in an internal memo that ‘the SNP is quite capable of running our own “Scottish” campaign’, and the SNP National Executive Committee urged their party not to assist ‘these “British Sovereignty” campaigns’ (added emphases): ‘we must use this Referendum to promote Scottish self-government’ (original emphasis).22 The language in the memos outlining the party line on EC membership clearly disparaged Britain, with one document for instance claiming that ‘[f]or the British Establishment EEC entry represented a desperate last chance’ to escape the post-war decline of ‘[d]evaluation, withdrawal from East of Suez, policies of state intervention’, etc. (added emphases).23 Moreover, the SNP justified their anti-EC campaign by the fact that Scotland’s international interests diverged from England’s.

MacDonald hoped for a strong Scottish vote to leave in the referendum as a ‘demonstration that both the EEC itself and the terms agreed to by the Wilson Government are not suitable for 20 [Stephen Maxwell?], ‘Points against EEC Membership’, [February 1975], pp. 1-2, NLS Acc 10090/157.

21 Margo MacDonald, letter to SNP branches and constituency associations, 1 May 1975, pp. 1-2, NLS Acc 10090/157.

22 Margo MacDonald, ‘SNP Campaign for EEC Referendum’, February 1975, p. 1, NLS Acc 10090/157.

23 [Maxwell?], p. 1.

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Scotland’.24 One of the internal reports asserted that Scotland’s trade was primarily with the wider world, not the EC.25 Indeed, MacDonald specifically stated in one memo that while England’s trade with the EC was high and increasing, Scotland’s whisky trade was with the United States and the future of Scottish trade lay with OPEC countries and the Commonwealth.26 In other words, the SNP used the referendum in 1975 to communicate their vision of which wider community they believed Scotland belonged to. Though the premise of the argument was not mentioned overtly, it is fair to surmise that MacDonald’s claim about Scotland’s connections with the US and the Commonwealth was based on the large Scottish diaspora there and the consequent ties of language and culture. The rest of the United Kingdom could of course also have made claims to these ties, and it is noteworthy how MacDonald explicitly portrayed England as belonging to a different community, namely Europe. On the whole, in addition to campaigning for Britain to leave the EC, the SNP used the referendum on British membership of the EC as a vehicle for foregrounding differences between Scotland and the rest of Britain.

Regrouping in the 1980s: Independence in Europe In contrast to their electoral success in the mid-1970s, the SNP suffered a reversal of fortunes which lasted from 1979 and well into the 1980s.

In 1979, legislative devolution was offered to Scotland and Wales in separate referendums. Public appetite was fairly low, however: the proposal failed outright in Wales with only 20% voting for a devolved parliament, while the turnout of 63% in Scotland meant that the small majority did not satisfy a require24 MacDonald,

letter, 1 May 1975, p. 1. p. 2.

26 MacDonald, letter on 1 May 1975, p. 2.

25 [Maxwell?],

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ment for a qualified majority.27 In the Commons, these unsuccessful referendums compounded the dissatisfaction with Gallaghan’s government over the ongoing industrial crises in Britain, and the Callaghan government was toppled by the Liberals, Tories, and the SNP in late March 1979.28 This triggered a general election, which ushered in an era of Conservative government. Worse for the SNP, their share of the popular vote slumped by 40% in 1979 meaning the loss of all but two of their seats as well as 29 of their 71 deposits.29 The SNP became smitten by internal wings vying for control over the direction of the nationalist movement. At the extremes, the 79 Group attempted to steer the party towards republican and socialist policies as well as civil disobedience, whereas Sol nan Gidheal were an ultra-nationalist faction. Moderates such as the party’s convenor Gordon Wilson and the popular MEP Winifred Ewing represented the social-democratic consensus established by Wolfe and Wilson himself in the 1970s.30 This factionalism threatened to tear the party apart and divide the nationalist vote even further.31 In late 1982, Wilson’s wing managed to end the in-fighting and set about a gradual re-alignment of the policies of the party, a process which lasted until the beginning of the 1990s.32 One of the most conspicuous policy changes was on the EC, which assumed a more central role in the SNP’s political platform. In stark contrast with the party’s strong Euroscepticism of the mid-1970s, they adopted a new slogan in 1988: ‘Scotland’s 27 Vernon

Bogdanor, The New British Constitution (Oxford: Hart, 2009), pp. 179 and 182-184.

28 Robbins, pp. 352 and 416; Bogdanor, p. 184.

29 James Mitchell, Lynn Bennie, and Rob Johns, The Scottish National Party: Transition to Power (Oxford University Press, 2011), table 2.2.

30 Ibid., pp. 27-30.

31 Tarditi, p. 17.

32 David Torrance, ‘The Journey from the 79 Group to the Modern SNP’, in The Modern SNP: From Protest to Power, ed. by Gerry Hassan (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), p. 171-173.

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Future—Independence in Europe’.33 However, as with any policy reversal of this magnitude, the SNP’s volte-face on the EC was not the result of a single decision but the end of a long, painstaking process.

A number of SNP documents show how the party gradually changed their approach to and their language about the EC, eventually re-purposing it as a vehicle for Scottish independence. The SNP assumed a less hostile approach to the EC in the party manifestos as early as the general election in 1983 and the election for the European Parliament in 1984.34 Following this softening of policy, the party flew a test balloon in 1985 in a pamphlet written

by Jim Sillars.35 The pamphlet outlined the historic position of the SNP on the European project but argued that Euroscepticism was no longer a credible policy.36 Instead, Sillars urged fellow nationalists to face the reality that ‘bosom companions in the Commonwealth have sought new partnerships’ and that the EC had become a permanent fixture of Scottish politics.37 In addition to stating that Scotland’s being part of the EC was an economic necessity, Sillars also argued that a pro-EC policy would give the SNP a viable counter-argument for rejecting unionist claims that Scottishh independence would mean economic and political isolation for the country.38 Thus, by the middle of the decade, we see the notion taking shape that the viability of Scottish independence was directly linked to a Europeanist platform.

By 1988, this instrumentalist Europeanism had saturated most of the party’s platform. Some aspects of the EC were however still viewed with apprehension by many in the party, particularly the implications of the European single market for Scotland’s econ33 Tarditi,

pp. 17-18. pp. 14-15 and 24-25.

35 An influential member of the SNP, Sillars joined the party after the demise of his Scottish Labour Party—a leftist Labour splinter party—and served as the SNP’s vice chairman for policy 1981-83.

36 Jim Sillars, Scotland: Moving on and up in Europe, NLS QP4.85.1530.

37 Ibid., pp. 1-3.

38 Ibid., pp. 4-5 and 10.

34 Ibid.,

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omy. Spearheaded by Britain in particular, the single market was created by the 1986 Single European Act (SEA) and would come into effect in 1992. Consequently, the issues raised by the SEA were debated extensively by the SNP’s National Executive Committee. For the meeting of the NEC on 12 March 1988, one member, Niall Johnson, had prepared a paper outlining the European policy of the party, highlighting that ‘the SNP rejects the creation of a unitary European state’. A specific concern in relation to creeping European federalism, according to Johnson, was that ‘the explicit terms of the Single European Act ... when fully enacted will result in the creation of an EEC superstate with a considerable erosion of national sovereignty’, and he recommended that ‘the NEC adopts a critical view of the Single European Act’.39 However, a critical view of a cornerstone of EC co-operation— no matter how recent—would put the SNP’s policies at odds with Brussels, a move which could potentially be diplomatically unwise.

Perhaps for that reason, party treasurer Alasdair Morgan circulated a counter-proposal. Morgan’s paper was a motion seeking to adopt an unequivocally pro-EC position whilst also assuaging mild Eurosceptics who might fear that the SEA would diminish the very sovereignty that the nationalists were seeking. Thus, Morgan’s motion recognised that the SEA would be ‘expanding the powers of certain European institutions’, but it nevertheless asserted that the SEA would ‘not threaten the position of national governments on vital areas of sovereignty or particular national interest’ and that implementing the SEA posed ‘no contradiction to existing SNP policy toward membership of the EEC’. Moreover, Morgan reiterated Sillars’ point made three years previously that backing the SEA would invalidate unionists’ argument that ‘Scottish Independence can be construed as political or economic separatism’.40 Morgan’s utilitarian arguments convinced the NEC, 39 Niall Johnson, ‘Implications of the Single European Act vis-a-vis Existing SNP Policy’, 3 March 1988, pp. 1-2, NLS Acc 11987/50.

40 Alasdair Morgan, ‘Motion to the NEC’, 10 March 1988, p. 1, NLS Acc 11987/50.

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and his pro-EC motion defeated Johnson’s by 14 votes to four.41 Although itself not necessarily definitive, the stance that the NEC adopted on the SEA can nevertheless be seen as one of the final pieces in the puzzle of converting the SNP into an instrumentalist European party. Only eleven weeks later, the European Election Unit (EEU) comprising some of the highest-ranking members of the party were discussing the campaign for the election for the European Parliament in 1989. A paper prepared for the EEU meeting on 30 May 1988 stated that the ‘principal theme’ of the campaign should be ‘the building of support for Scottish independence’ within the common theme of ‘Scottish Independence within Europe’ (original emphasis). The paper went on to suggest that the election provided the SNP with the opportunity to ‘produce a plausible and well supported argument for the benefits to be gained for Scotland not only from independence but from positive membership of the European Economic Community’.42 At the meeting, the conclusions of the paper were accepted, and the minutes record that the meeting agreed on the ‘provisional slogan to be “Scotland’s Future—Independence in Europe.”’43 Much more than a provisional slogan, this phrase would become the rallying call not only of a single election for the European Parliament but also the leading tenor of the SNP’s independence policy throughout the 1990s.

Affirming the New Europeanist Platform The agenda, reports, and speeches for the SNP’s National Conference in 1988 cemented the re-alignment of the party’s European policy. Wilson’s introductory letter in the conference programme 41 Minutes of the meeting of the NEC, 12 March 1988, p. 2, NLS Acc 11987/50.

42 Paper on campaign planning and organisation, sent to EEU, 26 May 1988, p. 2, NLS Acc 13099/47.

43 Minutes of meeting of European Election Unit, 30 May 1988, p. 1, NLS Acc 13099/47.

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explained the party’s reversal on Europe. In stark contrast to the party’s position during the referendum campaign 13 years previously, Wilson asserted that ‘Scotland has always been a European country’. Moreover, he argued that the new policy had ‘proved to be electorally attractive’ and that a successful election for the European Parliament would ‘catapult us into a winning position for the General Election’.44 Wilson also linked the party’s Europeanism directly to the party’s independence and couched this in strongly anti-English language: ‘we should not be tempted to drop Scottish internationalism to join the anti-European little Englanders’. The chairman framed the SNP’s policies on independence and the EC as a war against an imperialist ‘new Unionism, [which] will not tolerate any culture or control other than English’ (added emphasis).45 Continuing his battle cry, Wilson contended that ‘England is moving to destroy Scotland’s national institutions’ (added emphasis). Indeed, he alleged that the war-effort of Thatcher’s government was ‘[s]upported by a Quisling regime at the Scottish Office [in Whitehall]’ (added emphasis), thus denouncing compatriots involved in governing the country as traitors and not true Scotsmen. Wilson concluded his letter apocalyptically by claiming that ‘Scotland’s survival is at stake as never before’, meaning that ’the SNP has a duty to assert and win our claim to liberty’ (added emphases).46 Echoing the chairman’s letter, Ewing’s speech at the conference also portrayed the SNP’s central policy of independence as a war against English imperialism. To legitimate the party’s new 44 Gordon Wilson, ‘A Message from the Chairman’, in Scottish National Party, Scotland’s Future: Independence in Europe (Edinburgh: SNP, 1988), p. 3, NLS QP.sm.160.

45 Ibid., p. 3. Wilson portrayed Unionism as an alien, English ideology, ignoring the historical fact that unionism has always had supporters across Great Britain, with some of its most ardent proponents having come from Scotland. For more on this, please see Colin Kidd, Union and Unionisms: Political Thought in Scotland, 1500-2000 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

46 Wilson, p. 3.

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EC policy, she invoked the symbolism of the Wars of Scottish Independence, which started in 1296. Thus, she asserted that an internationalist outlook for Scotland—i.e. a positive stance on the EC—could help ‘make the seven centuries-old Scottish dream [of independence from the English] a reality. We have been too long in this condition.’47 In other words, both Wilson and Ewing legitimated a Europeanist platform—and thereby Scottish independence—by vilifying the English and dissociating Scotland from this Other.

Meanwhile, several of the conference motions foregrounded the differences between Scotland and England by associating Scotland with the Nordic countries, portraying Scandinavia as an alternative to the Scottish partnership with England. For example, the perceived ideological gulf between Scotland and England is invoked in motion 18, which contends that while ‘Thatcher looks for inspiration to the market-led model of the United States[,] the SNP looks instead to the small social democratic countries of ...

Norway, Sweden and Finland’.48 This imagined shared community between Scotland and Scandinavia is repeated in motion 31, which proposes that ‘Scotland [should] declare her common interest with Scandinavia, and seek representation at the Nordic Council’ as part of the effort to ‘break [Scotland’s] shackles to Westminster’ and ‘seek alignment with the other nations of the North’ (added emphases).49 Thus, the party conference in 1988 sought to portray Scotland not just as an underdog inside the United Kingdom but also as part of a different community, with both portrayals employed as vehicles for the separatist policy of the party.

47 Winifred Ewing quoted in Scottish National Party, Conference ’88 Report, pp. 3-4, NLS QP.sm.160.

48 Motion 18, in SNP, Scotland’s Future, p. 14.

49 Motion 31, in SNP, Scotland’s Future, p. 21.

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The SNP’s European Policy in Government We have seen how the debate within the party structure has seen the SNP change their policy between Euroscepticism and Europeanism. By the turn of the century, the Eurosceptic decades of the SNP had been all but forgotten by the electorate in Scotland.

Indeed, since coming to power in 2007, the SNP have continued to use other European countries as models for an independent Scotland, legitimating independence both by associating Scotland with a wider community of European countries and dissociating the country from England.

Within the first year of the SNP government, First Minister Alex Salmond gave a number of speeches on the topic of Scotland’s place in Europe and its part of the ‘Arc of Prosperity’, a term he used to amalgamate the Celtic Tiger economy of Ireland with Scandinavian social democracies, particularly Norway and Iceland. These countries whose economies are in large part based on oil revenue and financial services served in Salmond’s conception of Scotland’s as an alternative to England.In late 2007, the first minister gave a speech in Edinburgh, devoting a third of it to the ‘layers of Scottish identity’. First, Salmond claimed that ‘we Scots’ have an inherent ‘unique culture and character’, and that ‘our Celtic heritage ties us closely together ... with our cousins in Northern Ireland, the Irish Republic and Wales ... [and] cousins in Brittany, Galicia and Cornwall’ (added emphases).50 Although he recognised that Scotland has been part of ‘a political union—the United Kingdom’ (added emphasis), he added that Scotland ‘played its full part in the Union ... without ever losing sight of our distinctive identity and values. And our destiny.’51 Thus, Salmond contrasted Scotland’s inherent values and ties of Celtic heritage, which suggest enduring family relations, on the one hand, with a temporary political union of con50 Alex Salmond, ‘Vision for Scotland in the European Union’, Scottish Government, gov.scot, 12 December 2007.

51 Ibid.

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venience, which changed neither Scotland’s identity nor indeed its destiny, on the other. Four months later in a speech at Harvard University, Salmond once again invoked the family metaphor when he compared Scotland to ‘our European cousins’ (added emphasis), namely Ireland and the Scandinavian countries, asserting that Scotland should emulate its family members to ‘become a Celtic Lion ... an economy that is the envy of Europe.’52 Though Salmond dedicated much of these speeches to an international audience in an effort to set out his vision for Scotland’s contribution to the European project, his speeches were also intended for a Scottish audience. In particular, his acts of associating Scotland with the Arc of Prosperity whilst simultaneously dissociating Scotland from Britain were part of the SNP’s objective to implicitly legitimate two aspects of their independence policy.

First, by comparing Scotland to countries with thriving economies and populations between four and ten million, Salmond purported to demonstrate that Scotland would be more successful outside the United Kingdom: ‘the disadvantages of smaller nations have disappeared’.53 Second, as we saw above in both Morgan’s and Sillars’ internal documents, Salmond’s speeches sought to dispel the notion that Scottish independence would be narrowly nationalist; indeed, Scotland would simply ‘re-connect’ with the wider community that it truly belonged to.

Unsurprisingly, the SNP also employed these strategies of legitimating Scottish independence during the referendum campaign in 2014. On the one hand, the Yes Scotland campaign went to great lengths to foreground the differences between Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom, both on Twitter54 and in the 52 Alex Salmond, ‘Free to Prosper: Creating the Celtic Lion Economy’, Scottish Government, gov.scot, 31 March 2008.

53 Ibid.

54 See, for instance, @YesScotland, “‘The two parts of the United Kingdom are moving in very different directions” - Professor Joseph Stiglitz #indyref’, Twitter, 21 August 2014.

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televised debates.55 On the other hand, the campaign for independence suggested that a Yes vote would naturally bring about a more social-democratic Scottish society, which would reject ‘Westminster cuts’56 and emulate e.g. Denmark and the Netherlands.57 Despite the electorate in Scotland voting against independence in 2014, the SNP have persevered with these associative and dissociative acts, particularly in the period since the Brexit vote in June 2016. Because voters in Scotland voted to remain in the EU, the SNP have sought to elevate the popular mandate given in 2016 above the one given in 2014. First minister Nicola Sturgeon has for instance sought to portray England’s and Scotland’s interests as diametrically opposite, citing Scotland’s inherent European interests in an attempt to galvanise support for a second referendum on Scottish independence.58 Indeed, there is little to suggest that the SNP will cease seeking to legitimate Scottish independence through associating Scotland with countries other than England.

Anything But English In conclusion, the SNP have not had a consistent policy on the European project in the past 70 years, although they have consistently used their European policy to distance Scotland from England and associate the country with a different international community. Indeed, the nationalists have vacillated between associating Scotland with the Celtic nations, Scandinavia, the Commonwealth, the United States, and Europe more broadly at different times since the end of the Second World War. The common 55 See, for instance, Alex Salmond in Salmond & Darling: The Debate, STV, 5 August 2014.

56 Ibid.

57 @YesScotland, ‘If we spread our wealth around like the Dutch or Danes, 99% of us would be better off #ScotDecides’, Twitter, 5 August 2014.

58 See, for instance, the speech in which Sturgeon publicly announced the Scottish Government’s intention to call a second independence referendum: Nicola Sturgeon, ‘First Minister speech’, Scottish Government, gov.scot, 13 March 2017.

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thread that emerges from the period we have reviewed is that, in their attempts to legitimate Scottish independence, the SNP have consistently used anti-English language to portray Scotland’s national interests as fundamentally different from those of the rest of the United Kingdom—particularly England’s.

A fair question to ask might be why this research is significant, aside from its topicality. Populism is a political term which is often used without proper qualification, whether in academia or in the press, and it is commonplace to use ‘populism’ as shorthand for ‘right-wing ethno-chauvinist nationalism’ and ‘anti-globalist Euroscepticism’. Although these are arguably accurate descriptions for many populist parties in Europe, they clearly do not fit mainstream opinion in the SNP. However, we can employ a definition of populism which instead focuses on populists’ overt use of association and dissociation in acts of legitimation as well as their belief in the existence of a singular ‘popular will’, which a populist party will claim to represent exclusively.59 SNP politicians certainly exhibit these traits, and their consistent invocation of Europe to vilify England as an illegitimate Other forms a central platform of their populist politics. The argument I have made in this paper is thus an important part of my thesis which seeks to demonstrate that the SNP is a manifestation of the populist wave of protest which has washed over Europe since the 1970s.

59 For a good introduction to populism, please see Jan Werner-Mller, What Is Populism? (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania University Press, 2016); or Ben Stanley ‘The Thin Ideology of Populism’, Journal of Political Ideologies, 13 (2008), 95-110.

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