British Aristocracy in Popular Culture

As traditional social hierarchies fall away, ever steeper levels of economic inequality and the entrenchment of new class distinctions lend a new glamor to the idea of aristocracy: witness the worldwide popularity of Downton Abbey, or the seemingly insatiable public fascination with the private lives of the British royal family. This collection of essays investigates the enduring attraction with the icon of the aristocrat and the spectacle of aristocratic society. It traces the ambivalent reactions the aristocracy provokes and the needs (political, ideological, psychological, and otherwise) it caters to in modern times when the economic power of the landed classes have been eroded and their political role curtailed. In this interdisciplinary collection, aristocracy is considered from multiple viewpoints, including British and American literature, European history and politics, cultural studies, linguistics, visual arts, music, and media studies.

"The collection applies various research methodologies to literary, artistic, and film representations of the British nobility to examine the enduring symbolic role and place of the aristocracy in culture and history. ... These essays expand understanding of why these representations of British nobility matter--how they create and perpetuate a persistent 'modern imagery' of a historic aristocracy that many in the British and Anglophile world crave. ...recommended."--Choice

Stefania Michelucci is a full professor of English Studies at the University of Genoa, Italy. She is specialized in Modernism and the visual arts and on 20th century angloamericano poetry and fiction. She has been a visiting scholar and has lectured all over the world, including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, South Africa and Japan. Ian Duncan is the Florence Green Bixby Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, where he teaches the history of the novel, 19th-century British literature, and Scottish literature. Luisa Villa is a professor of English literature at the University of Genoa, Italy. She has published books in Italian on Henry James, George Eliot, ressentiment in late 19th century fiction, and on the representation of the British military campaigns in the Sudan.