Bringing together heritage studies and literary studies, this book
examines heritage as a ubiquitous trope in contemporary Britain, a
seemingly inescapable figure for relations to the past. Inheritance
has been an important metaphor for characterizing cultural and
political traditions since the 1970s, but one criticized for its
conservatism and apparent disinheritance of "new" Britons. Engaging
with contemporary literary and cinematic texts, the book
interrogates metaphoric resonances: that bestowing past, receiving
present, and transmitted bounty are all singular and unified; that
transmission between past and present is smooth, despite heritage
depending on death; that the past enjoins the present to conserve
its legacy into the future. However, heritage offers an alternative
to modern market-driven relations, transactions stressing
connection only through a momentary exchange, for bequest resembles
gift-giving and connects past to present. Consequently, heritage
contains competing impulses, subtexts largely unexplored given the
trope's lapse into cliche. The volume charts how these resonances
developed, as well as charting more contemporary aspects of
heritage: as postmodern image, tourist industry, historic
environment, and metaculture. These dimensions develop the trope,
moving it from singular focus on continuity with the past to one
more oriented around different lines of relation between past,
present, and future. Heritage as a trope is explored through a wide
range of texts: core accounts of political theory (Locke and
Burke); seminal documents within historic conservation;
phenomenology and poststructuralism; film and television
(Merchant-Ivory, Downton Abbey); and a broad range of contemporary
fiction from novelists including Zadie Smith, Julian Barnes, Hilary
Mantel, Sarah Waters, Alan Hollinghurst, Peter Ackroyd, and Helen
Oyeyemi.
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