I'm always surprised when people assume that because I studied and taught English, I must be an Anglophile. For one thing, lots of people study "English" without spending a whole lot of time reading English literature; lots of undergraduate English programs are set up to facilitate that--for better or worse.
Anyhow, if I remember correctly, I wrote my dissertation on some books written by an Irish writer ... and even though he was born a British subject and--correct me if I'm wrong--remained one by choice until (and presumably after) his death, he certainly wasn't English. Most 20th century British literature worth reading is likewise not precisely English.
So ... I haven't been to too many exotic and foreign places, and certainly the UK is someplace I'd like to visit, but I don't expect to love it exactly. I don't feel drawn there or anything. I just don't get that--it's not like I'd get to live in any of the books I've come to know and love of the years.
Once I read a paper to the ladies of a local Jane Austen Society chapter, and they were all dressed in some semblance of period costume for their post-lecture "high tea," during which I--trying modestly to avert my eyes from the little old ladies in their Empire dresses while leaning down close enough to hear their enthusiastic discussions--realized that they were engaged with Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy in a way that I just couldn't be. I could live in London for the rest of my life and never be invited to a party at the Dalloway home, is what I'm saying. I don't read the stuff because I want to experience it. Most of the stuff I read about I'd hate to experience firsthand.
It might be that pretend history is easier for people to swallow in places like in the very historical southern town I used to live near, because about that same time I also met a person who had a pronounced--yea, even mispronounced--British accent he had somehow picked up after spending ONE SUMMER in the UK as an ADULT, defying everything anybody knows about dialect acquisition. Embarrassing--to everyone but the one who should have been embarrassed.
That's the kind of thing that makes me leery, to say the least, of Anglophilia.
To be continued ...
2 comments:
Does this mean I cannot count on you to attend this year's Halloween festivities dressed as Septimus Smith? Shit, that throws the whole party off-kilter!
I might not make much of an entrance, but I make a hell of an exit.
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