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Article: Vernacular nostalgia and 'The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature'.
- Article from:
- Texas Studies in Literature and Language
- Article date:
- March 22, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 University of Texas at Austin (University of Texas Press). This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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In a recent report commissioned by the Runnymede Trust, an organization dedicated to promoting racial justice in Britain, author Bhikhu Parekh has critiqued the idea of Englishness as a code word for an insular form of Whiteness. Englishness bespeaks a view of nation as an unbroken history, centered in the British Isles, where certain qualities of character are attached to both place and language--and also to race. According to the report, "Whiteness nowhere features as an explicit condition of being British, but it is widely understood that Englishness, and therefore by extension Britishness, is racially coded. 'There ain't no black in the Union Jack.'" (1) "Englishness," ...