The Image of the English Gentleman in Twentieth-Century Literature : Englishness and Nostalgia (Hardcover)

Contents: Part I The Gentleman, Englishness and Nostalgia: Approaches, Explanations, Definitions: The gentleman - an elusive term; From knight to public-school boy - following the gentleman through the ages; A popular literary trope - a brief history of the gentleman in literature. Part II Of Heroes, Survivors and Dinosaurs: The Gentleman in 20th-Century Literature: The survival of the gentleman - Siegfried Sassoon, England and the sporting gentleman; Dancing to the music of Widmerpool - the gentleman in Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time; Arcadia revisited? Evelyn Waugh's gentlemen; A pillar upholding nothing: nostalgia, Englishness and the English gentleman in Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day. Part III The End of the Line?: Regression and reaction: past realities and future possibilities; Bibliography; Index.