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Full-Text Articles in History
Keep Calm And Carry On: Uncovering The True Blitz Spirit, Lauren Niedergeses
Keep Calm And Carry On: Uncovering The True Blitz Spirit, Lauren Niedergeses
Honors Theses
First shown by Britain’s civilian population during the Blitz, this Blitz Spirit is widely understood today as a heroic display of courage, cheerfulness, unity, and the ability to “keep calm and carry on” in the face of danger and discomfort. Drawing from radio broadcasts, photographs, propaganda posters and films, and the wartime morale reports of Mass-Observation, I seek to uncover the true Blitz Spirit and how it became an integral – if somewhat mythicized – element of Britain’s modern identity. First, I explore the emergence of the Blitz Spirit during World War II, identifying gaps between reality and propagandistic myth. …
A Prosaic People? Literature, Propaganda, And National Identity In Second World War Britain, William L. Maines
A Prosaic People? Literature, Propaganda, And National Identity In Second World War Britain, William L. Maines
Honors Theses
During the early years of the Second World War, a typically unofficial and loose coalition of British newspapers, publishers, propagandists, and booksellers mobilized Britain’s imagined literary past and present as a part of the war effort. They defined the nation through its imagined literary proclivities— its penchant for literary production and consumption, and its “unique” attitude toward literary freedom— and in opposition to the literary tyranny of Nazi Germany. Marshaling the nation’s mythological literary heritage, they enlisted Shakespeare and Milton in the war effort, portraying them as temperate and civilian English heroes. While the rhetoric of “British bookishness” hardly went …