A Study Of The Political Sentiment In Disraeli's Novels

Benjamin Disraeli served as Prime Minister in the Victorian era.He was also Britain's first,and so far only,Jewish Prime Minister.He left an indelible mark on the history of British political culture as a statesman,for his prominent achievement as the leader of the Conservative Party,the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Prime Minister.Besides being an outstanding statesman,Disraeli was also an excellent novelist,whose novels cover an extraordinary range,including silver spoon novels,educational novels,nautical novels,apprenticeship novels,historical romances,political novels and so on.These novels vividly present a kaleidoscopic Victorian society from the perspectives of politics,economy,religion and the state of people's inner world.Hence,his novels are considered as “the documents of the age”.Furthermore,Disraeli has also been called “the novelist's novelist”,for his satirical,bold and humorous writing style influenced profoundly some of the outstanding writers such as George Bernard Shaw,Oscar Wilde and Rudyard Kipling.Owing to the various subjects and unique language styles contained in his novels,studies in Disraeli's novels keep being a popular fashion,covering subjects such as religious thought,colonial thought,political culture,identity,and intertextuality.Among all studies,“politicalness” has always been an important dimension,usually focusing on his political thinking,his political identity and British political culture in Disraeli's novels.However,relatively little research has attempted to address political sentiment,or it is still in the “incidental phase” without a further systematic study of the subject.Based on such status quo,the dissertation takes Disraeli's novels as the object of the study,aiming to break with the previous ways of research.It takes emotion as an essential part of the study of politics,which is considered as the important contributing factor to the political stability and harmony.Political sentiment is a constituent part of the theory of political culture.It deals with people's feelings towards the political system and government output activities,which can be interpreted as people's attachment to,support of or resistance to political subjects.Rooted in his cognition and revaluation of the politics in the Victorian era,Disraeli's political sentiment is taken as the emotional experience and thought expression,composing a kind of compound and multiple emotions characterized by personal property as well as by that of class,party nature,nation and state.This political sentiment of his both served as the driving force of his political behavior and witnessed the political culture of the Victorian era.Meanwhile,due to the major role played by Disraeli on behalf of British elite political culture in British political culture,this dissertation tries to seek a breaking away from the established research oriented in “mass culture” put forward by Almund,and promote a deep interaction between Disraeli's novels and British elite political culture in the Victorian era.From the perspective of elite political culture,the dissertation aims to reveal the growing trend of British political culture in the Victorian era,in order to provide the study of the “political stability” with feasibility.This dissertation takes an interdisciplinary approach and explores the political sentiment in Disraeli's novels written in different periods,with a typical elaboration on its formation,its expression and its values.The dissertation consists of six parts,including the introduction,the political sentiment in Disraeli's novels written during his political apprenticeship,the political sentiment in Disraeli's novels written during his Conservative Party leadership,the political sentiment in Disraeli's novels written during his premiership,the evaluation of the political sentiment in Disraeli's novels,and the conclusion.In the introduction,the author outlines Disraeli's political life and examines the development of his political sentiment as well as its expression in his novels,so as to establish a premise for the study.Then,the author reviews domestic and foreign researches on Disraeli and his novels to establish a basis for this topic.Furthermore,the core concepts of political culture theory and related academic terms of this study are reviewed,so as to build a solid foundation for the study.Based on the previous research,the author puts forward the argument,and presents the research value and the significance of this study respectively.Chapter One explores the expression of Disraeli's political sentiment in the novels written in the period of his political apprenticeship.It shows three stages of the dynamic growth of his political sentiment,namely,from being intrigued,to grow,and arrives at ultimate maturity.Disraeli's anxiety about his identity was triggered by his divided and fractured identity deriving both from his failed identification with his family background and from his failed identification with his nation,which urged him to form a new self through the way of reconstructing his fractured identity.He took the construction of a political identity as the important way to remold his self and seek social identification.With the exploration and construction of his political identity,the “emotion profile”of Disraeli's political identity,gradually evolved into a political expression with a conservative tendency.Though,this tendency was fraught with a nostalgia for the past,it was not a complete retro,but with its purpose of reconstructing a new system of values in Britain instead of returning to the old days.It reveals Disraeli's yearning for and attachment to the English tranquil and harmonious agricultural society,and his disgust with and hatred of the impetuous and noisy industrial society.The nature of the nostalgia implies Disraeli's retrospection of the English traditional political system and his abandonment of the modern political rationalism.Chapter Two makes a further exploration into Disraeli's expression of his political sentiment in his novels written during his party leadership.The author notices that the novel in this period was pervading with the strong conservative sentiment,romantic sentiment and imperial sentiment.Being the leader of the British Conservative Party,Disraeli's thoughts of ruling the country were featured with the conservative political idea of “people first”.He expected to continue the ruling power of the English aristocracy by advocating “good governance”,“moral governance” and “benevolent governance”,throughout which the concern for humanity prevailed.Moreover,in order to retain the dominion of British aristocracy,Disraeli highlighted the importance of the spirit of British aristocracy and gradual reforms.That is to say,he aimed to achieve the maintenance,the inheritance and the development of the traditional political order by adhering to the traditional values and by criticizing the political rationalism in the age of instrumental reason.Disraeli emphasized the romantic symbolic elements in his political sentiment,such as emotion,spirit and faith,which were taken as the counterbalance to Victorian political rationalism.He advocated Victorian heroism,created a political community based on British aristocratic politics,and strengthened political cohesion under the rule of British aristocracy.In addition,influenced by the context of the colonial era,Disraeli's expression of political sentiment shows his feeling for the empire.It not only exposes the “self-anxiety” of Britain in the modern crisis,but also symbolizes the “self-redemption” of Britain on its way to colonial expansion.Compared with the puzzlement and confusion that characterized his political sentiment expressed in the novels written during his political apprenticeship,and the intensity and seriousness that characterized his political sentiment expressed in the novels written during his Conservative Party leadership,Disraeli's political sentiment in the novels during his premiership indicated his cherish for the traditional culture,which was embodied in his trust in traditional religious belief.Through the protagonist's return to British traditional culture and belief culture,the novel presents us with Disraeli's nostalgia for the British history and the tradition,with the emphasis on getting through the dilemma of faith in the Victorian era and rebuilding belief system,that is,shaping the future on the basis of tradition.However,this “return” symbolizes the regain of the political power for British aristocracy,as well as the recognition of the political rights for the marginalized nationality.“Return” as an expression of Jewish-Zionist shows the Jewish desire for political power and yearning for home.In addition,the “return” not only strengthens the internal political power of the nation,but also extends its external power,so as to reconstruct the pattern of British political power.It is worth noting that this type of “return” is an embodiment of transcendence rather than an anachronism,reflecting the progress in the understanding of personal identity,ethnic identity,and national identity.In general,it stresses the relative strength in tradition and conservatism in British political culture.With a further elaboration on Disraeli's political sentiment in the novels of different periods in the first three chapters,Chapter Four comments on the values of Disraeli's political sentiment,involving its duality,constructness,usefulness,and social reflectiveness.From the perspective of identity-based composition,we can find that Disraeli being a Jewish-British,his political sentiment involved in the novels motivates him to identify himself with Jewishness,and to defend and construct his Britishness.At the same time,his political sentiment reveals the relationship between his Jewishness and Britishness: coexistence and co-prosperity.From the view of sociology,emotion,as “subjective social reality”,is considered to be the construction of the original understanding of society,social-emotional structure,social relations and social order.Disraeli's political sentiment reflects his desires for the maintenance and construction of British national identity,the disruption and reconstruction of emotional public sphere,and the construction of the interactive model of the relationship between tradition and modernity.Besides,from an emotive function view of point,the emotion can be evoked and cultivated.The political sentiment in Disraeli's novels is the perfect example of this,which cultivates positive emotions: love,sympathy and trust,and reduces the negative emotions: indignation,hatred and indifference,etc.,for the purpose of strengthening the subject's affective commitment to the political institutions and the leadership.Disraeli's political sentiment played a positive role in enhancing the social stability and harmony.In the context of political culture structure,Disraeli's novels represent the developmental characteristics of the British deferential political culture in the Victorian age: the politics of “domestication” in elite political culture and the politics of “deference” in mass political culture.Both cultures embody the “inclusiveness” and “homogeneity” of British political culture in the Victorian age,working to promote the “harmony” of the society in the process of British political modernization.To sum up,this dissertation conducts a diachronic analysis of Disraeli's political sentiment in his novels through a perspective of elite political culture,followed by a further synchronic analysis of its characteristics.With an in-depth study,the dissertation not only broadens the research perspectives of Disraeli's novels,but also deepens the study of the novels.Moreover,it enriches the research approaches to the study of Victorian political culture.The dissertation provides some insights that may aid China in the modernization on how to deal with the relations among “harmony,stability and development”.