| Heroic Reputations and Exemplary Lives |
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Heroic Reputations and Exemplary Lives. Edited by Geoffrey Cubitt and Allen Warren. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2000. Pp. xi + 274. Index, Illustrations. $74.95 cloth, $29.95 paper. This collection of essays arose from a panel at the second York Conference in Cultural History, held in 1997. The authors examine the reputations of heroic figures as "cultural constructions reflecting the values and ideologies of the societies in which they are produced....[W]hat resonates here is not the life as lived, but the life as made sense of, the life imaginatively reconstructed and rendered significant." Geoffrey Cubitt's introduction focuses on this double theme of the cultural construction of reputation and the connection with the particular cultural world from which it emerged. Part one is called "The Intellectual as Hero." Christian Turner's article examines medieval perceptions of Plato, arguing that he was valued in that period as an exemplary personality as well as a "doorway to knowledge." Turner analyzes five medieval sources and finds that all of them portray Plato's life as exemplary, leaving out the negative tradition, yet each one molds his life, suggesting that Plato's life was used "as a dynamic series of signs." Adam Sutcliffe explores the paradox of the wide variety of interpretations of Spinoza's philosophy and the universal framing of his life as "a distilled, exemplary narrative of serene, virtuous philosophical detachment." Patricia Fara's article examines multiple representations of Sir Isaac Newton from the eighteenth century to explore their contribution to the "new category of a scientific genius." The second part, "Heroes of Empire," looks at three British heroes. Like Fara, John M. MacKenzie focuses on the role of visual media while exploring the paradox between the comparative lack of success of Livingstone's own interpretations of the future empire and the wide variety of ways in which the Livingstone legend was interpreted after his death in service of the empire's self-justification. Max Jones's article on the response of the British people to Captain Robert Scott's death on his last trip to the South Pole qualifies MacKenzie's argument in that it weakens the "emphasis both on empire and on deliberate fabrication." Allen Warren examines the various representations of Baden-Powell both as a heroic soldier and as the founder of the scouting movement, as well as examining how attempts to reconcile the two personalities have resulted in a variety of evaluations of his life. The third section is "Ancient Heroes and Historic Exemplars." Norman Vance examines the nineteenth century "afterlife" of Aeneas and Caractacus, in order to gain some insights into contemporary uncertainties about Britain's national self-image as an empire. Rosemary Mitchell explores the nineteenth century historiography of two medieval queens (Eleanor of Aquitaine and Philippa of Hainault) and how they were used to exemplify both good and bad role models for middle-class Victorian women. Dinah Birch looks at the dynamic relationship between Ruskin and Carlyle in light of their own heroic reputations. "Exemplary Types" is the fourth part, which moves away from the focus on specific figures. The first chapter, by Christopher Clark, explores "commercial morality" in the mid-nineteenth century U.S. as revealed through an examination of debates on debt and bankruptcy and the "construction of notions of exemplary behavior" found in credit reports. The second, by Krista Cowman, examines Caroline Martyn, Enid Stacy, Margaret McMillan, and Katharine St. John Conway as examples of "the cult of the good woman socialist." The third chapter, by Richard Holt, looks at some inter-war cricket players who were seen as English heroes, revealing the contradictory underlying values they represented. The final section, part five, is called "The Contemporary Hero" and consists of a single chapter on Nelson Mandela by Tom Lodge. Leslie Kaplan |
