The author analyses the features of English cultural nationalism in the second half of the 18th – first half of the 20th centuries. The author analyses the discourse of cultural nationalism through its representation in the texts of Thomas Gray, Gilbert Keith Chesterton and Ivor Gurney. The novelty of the study lies in the analysis of the history of English cultural nationalism, which in historiography has been studied lesser than the historical, cultural and political experiences of minority nationalisms in Great Britain. Cultural history is perceived as a space for the development and actualization of nationalist ideas. Methodologically, the article is based on the achievements of modern interdisciplinary historiography, including the history of ideas and intellectual history, which allows us to expand our understanding of literary texts of the past, analyzing them not only as literary monuments, but also as moments of social and cultural history. The article shows that 1) English identity was represented and actualised mainly in literature, which turned culture into the main space for the English nationalist imagination – therefore cultural nationalism in English society was more developed than other nationalisms, including ethnic and political, 2) English poets of the 18 – the first half of the 20th centuries played a leading role in the development of nationalism, forming and reproducing narratives that became the basis of the nationalist imagination, 3) the invented cultural tradition of the absence and invisibility of the Englishmen and England as a nation and nation-state played a central role in the actualisation of English identity in the British cultural and political contexts. It is assumed that English nationalism migrated from the political sphere to cultural spaces, since its theorists were unable to realise the English political or cultural project of the nation-state.
Maksym Waler'evich Kyrchanoff (Thu,) studied this question.