The Call of the North in British Romanticism : study of a geo-cultural dynamic in the works of William Wordsworth and Sir Walter Scott, among others

• Main Author: Briand, Maxime
• Other Authors: Université Paris-Saclay (ComUE), Borm, Jan
• Format: Thesis
• Language: French
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: Littérature romantique; Grande-Bretagne; Idée du Nord; Identité; Primitivisme; Romantic literature; Great-Britain; Idea of the North; Identity; Primitivism; litt; hist; Arctic
• Online Access: http://www.theses.fr/2016SACLV015/document

The idea of the North appears in diverse forms expressive of a real geo-cultural magnetism that gave birth to many myths and ideologies. The second half of the 18th century in Great Britain was the theatre of a battle for cultural primacy between Celticism and Gothicism, which ended up coexisting in virtue of a certain northern congeniality. Beyond the conventional romantic formula, the call of the North was a crucial dynamic in the emergence of a British Romantic literature. What’s more, this marked interest for the northern space, symptomatic for many of a rejection of the South epitomized by revolutionary France and the emperor Napoleon, tends to reinforce our conviction as to the reality of the call of the North in British Romanticism. However, the scope of such a phenomenon was hardly restricted within the British isles and extended to the Nordic and Arctic regions. Let us finally remind that the aim of this latitudinal study has never been to provide a narrow definition of Romanticism, but more of a geo-cultural reading of the movement, directed by the idea of the North as featured in the national identity-making process of Great Britain L’idée du Nord se manifeste sous diverses formes révélatrices d’un réel magnétisme géo-culturel ayant donné naissance à plusieurs mythes et idéologies. On assiste dès la seconde moitié du XVIIIe siècle en Grande-Bretagne à un affrontement pour la primauté culturelle entre gothicisme et celtisme, qui finirent par coexister en vertu d’une certaine congénialité septentrionale. Au-delà de la simple formule romanesque, "l’appel du Nord" fut une dynamique centrale dans la naissance du mouvement romantique britannique. En outre, cet intérêt marqué pour l’espace nord-britannique, symptomatique pour beaucoup d’un rejet du Sud incarné par la France révolutionnaire et l’empereur Napoléon, aurait tendance à renforcer notre certitude quant à la réalité de l’appel du Nord dans la littérature romantique britannique, qui, au demeurant, ne se confina pas aux frontières nationales, mais ...