Pageants

Gellner (1983) argues that one of the most central claims of nationalism is ¬that the nation should be a single political and a cultural unit, that the ¬territorial state should also have a national culture. This idea of the¬ modern nation, generated in Europe has now been extended across the globe¬ to new multiethnic states, which have no pre-existing concept of a national ¬culture to build on, extend to or force upon their populace. Arnason ¬suggests that the basic premise of modern nationalism is this close¬re lationship between culture and political power (1990: 213). The central¬ goal of the nation state is to produce homogeneity through education and¬ other cultural policies.
In this paper I want to suggest that such an evolutionary simplification is¬ premature and inaccurate (and many of the other case studies in this volume¬ support this point). The prescribed nationalism of the modern state has not¬ supplanted other forms of national identities, nor has it been superseded¬ by globalism. Instead, modern mass-mediated nationalism coexists with other ¬kinds of nationalist identities that emerge in very different ways. We ¬should think of official nationalism as a competing project, sometimes in¬direct opposition to other forms of nationalism, sometimes working¬ hand-in-hand, sometimes in contradiction and other times in an uneasy¬ coexistence.

This paper considers the persistence of the Renaissance pageant in modern and post-modern culture, both as a recurrent metaphor for history in general and as a feature of stage, cinematic and communal representations of early modern history in particular. After examining the status of public processions in Renaissance London as conscious revivals of the Roman triumph, indebted at the same time to aspects of the medieval mystery plays, the essay examines the English historical pageants of the Edwardian and inter-war years as themselves revivals of both Renaissance pageantry and aspects of the Shakespearean history play. It looks in particular at their emphasis on the Tudor monarchs and on the ethnic origins of Englishness, identifying the fading of the pageant as a genre in the post-war years with the collapse of certain ideas about English exceptionalism and historical continuity.

Lady Florence Bell’s Historic Pageant of Mount Grace Priory in 1927 brought thousands of people from across Durham and Yorkshire, alongside national ecclesiastical and political figures, to the historic country estate of the Bell manufacturing dynasty.  The extensive gathering of some 1,500 players and thousands more spectators transformed the industrial elite family’s North Yorkshire residence from a quaint setting into a hive of activity, in doing so uniting all in celebrating the story of the Carthusians who centuries earlier had occupied the priory - the ruins of which provided the stage for the performances.
This paper explores the role of the historic pageant as a mechanism for industrial elite patronage, performance and power beyond the manufacturing town. In exploring the pageant from its development to its fruition, it will be contended that by engaging a wide range of participants from across the Bell’s business, cultural philanthropic and political networks, The Historic Pageant of Mount Grace Priory reflects the multifaceted engagement of this leading industrialist family and showcases the role pageantry played in wider associational and cultural relations in interwar Britain.  Moreover, it will be contended that the performance and dissemination of the industrial elite’s cultural interest in and knowledge of history highlights the role of the Bells as leading figures in local cultural engagement and as champions of the importance of the past.

There is little geographic work on beauty. Yet beauty offers important insights into spatial, geopolitical, and geoeconomic processes. In this article, we attend to the powerful role of beauty labor, norms, and practices in national development. We center the Miss Tourism Uganda beauty pageant, held annually since 2011, and the centerpiece of tourism-based development in Uganda. Designed to attract foreign visitors and investors and to promote a sense of nationalist pride among Ugandans, the pageant-as-development strategy is increasingly mirrored across the neoliberalized Global South. This approach relies on young women’s beauty labor: the work of self-improvement via intimate beauty technologies, and the intellectual work of learning and showcasing a beautiful, idealized, national imaginary. This labor is physically, emotionally, and financially demanding, and is largely unremunerated. Yet, it is lucratively exploited to promote local and international corporate brands, generate ...

Online here: https://www.vr-elibrary.de/doi/10.7788/9783412510114.199
The article focuses on the appearance of the English delegation at the council of Constance 1414-1418, which was noticed in more detail by Ulrich Richental than any other presentation, and on Sigismund's travel to England, describend by Eberhard Windecke. 
The processes researched in this article illustrate the transformation of staging and perception at the beginning of the 15th century in England and Germany. Expensive architectural alterations accompagnied Sigismund's visit to Westminster palace, Windsor castle and Calais. Sigismund and Henry V exchanged valuable presents. The ceremonial of entrance of king Sigismund into Constance, of spectacle, music and pageants was accompagnied by important semiotic signs, which were described by contemporary chroniclers. However, even modern historians did not realize that the objects were fictitious. They became dispensable as tangible objects. Sigismund verbally and performatively compensated for the lack of visual evidence by receiving the English exuberantly, praising them and participating in their pageant. How convincing the English self-portrayal at the Council was with its real and imaginary elements is evidenced by the contemporary and modern texts as well as by Poggio Bracciolini's journey in the wake of Bishop Beaufort to Winchester. The scholar's disappointment, however, also testifies the gap between Constance staging and British reality. The expected humanistic splendor proved at least from the point of view of the Italian as fictitious as Sigismund’s collar when moving to Constance.
When the Roman and Hungarian King Sigismund of Luxembourg came into the city of Constance from the Petershausener Bridge on January 27, 1417, the display of the English “livery of the collar” at his neck is reported to have made the English liegemen glad. His entry is described by the contemporary English author Johannes Forester, who wrote a letter to King Henry V of England only a few days later. This collar of Esses, which was the necklace or “livery of the collar” given by the king with the motto of the House of Lancaster, was, according to Forester, the most conspicuous sign of English presence. It decorated, as he reported, Sigismund’s neck when he returned to the Council of Constance after a year and a half of absence.
Collar of Esses and coat suited the contemporary writer of the letter, Forester, as a widely perceived semiotic reference system, which characterised the body of the king in the adventus as a medium of English affiliation and political suport. Thus, the universally visible wearing of the chain as a motto of the House of Lancaster was also considered a sign of support of the English nation against the Aragonese and French. Sigismund is said to have reaffirmed his support of the English against the French to all participants of the Council.
However, this plausible reference system that Forester suggested in his letter must be a fiction. Sigismund did not wear the collar when he arrived in Constance. Forester’s fiction has not been revealed yet. To this day, historians tell more or less flowery of the entry of Sigismund to Conctance and imagine him wearing the collar of Esses of the house of Lancaster, which so wonderfully seem to visualise the actual alliance of the two kings. Undisputed, on the other hand, is Sigismund’s clear support for the English side. Has Forester knowingly intended to mislead the English King with the visual reference to the collar in order to cover up Sigismund’s insolvency and the affront of pledging such a valuable gift? Or was the English king himself the author of this fiction, since Forester’s letter was the basis for further reports by other chroniclers, such as Jean de Montreuil or the modern historians quoted above? For example, at the court of Charles V of France in 1378 gift lists were modified to exaggerate the ruler’s generosity. Or could it be that the idea of objects as bearers of thought may have existed? That John Forester imagined the chain comparable to the material presence of hidden objects – such as relics in altars –, so that the collar was invisibly present for Forester and described to the English king as visible to all?

There is little geographic work on beauty. Yet beauty offers important insights into spatial, geopolitical, and geoeconomic processes. In this article, we attend to the powerful role of beauty labor, norms, and practices in national development. We center the Miss Tourism Uganda beauty pageant, held annually since 2011, and the centerpiece of tourism-based development in Uganda. Designed to attract foreign visitors and investors and to promote a sense of nationalist pride among Ugandans, the pageant-as-development strategy is increasingly mirrored across the neoliberalized Global South. This approach relies on young women’s beauty labor: the work of self-improvement via intimate beauty technologies, and the intellectual work of learning and showcasing a beautiful, idealized, national imaginary. This labor is physically, emotionally, and financially demanding, and is largely unremunerated. Yet, it is lucratively exploited to promote local and international corporate brands, generate ...

The opening and closing ceremonies for the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics have transformed the Olympic stadium from an arena of sport into an amphitheatre of pageantry and display telling stories of British national identity. There is a striking precedent for these events in the Pageant of Empire staged at the old Wembley or Empire Stadium in 1924 by the pageant master Frank Lascelles. Demolished in 2003, the old Wembley Stadium is best known as a venue for sporting events including the 1948 Olympics and especially football. Built in 1923 for the British Empire Exhibition the following year with a capacity of over 100,000 and covering over 10 acres, its design was intentionally vast and imposing with distinctive twin towers. It was originally intended to be demolished after the exhibition closed.  The pageant was part part of the exhibition, one of a programme of music festivals and sporting events that continued until the opening of the football season. Originating in 1905, by the time the pageant was staged at Wembley, historical pageants were a well-established form of popular entertainment in Britain, the British Empire and the United States with their own conventions and several individuals made a living as full-time pageant masters. Lascelles was one of the most prolific and his imperial triumphs earned him the epithet 'the man who staged the empire'.

This paper considers the ways in which the vast space of Wembley Stadium was used in the Pageant of Empire by Lascelles and his collaborators. The pageant had a cast of over 15,000 volunteer ‘pageanteers’, including visitors from the Dominions and Colonies, an assortment of exotic animals, music by Edward Elgar and scenery by the artist craftsman Frank Brangwyn. The pageant was Lascelles’ most ambitious and complex undertaking. It was staged over a period of 5 weeks in three parts with each one on a separate day. It told the story of the founding of the British Empire from John Cabot in 1496 via London, Newfoundland, Canada, South Africa, India, New Zealand and Australia, ending with a finale of Empire. Both pageanteers and audience were active participants in the spectacle of the pageant, re-imagining the stadium through different times and places.

IIn this chapter I consider the ways in which the urban ceremony and display of the Pageant of London depicted the capital as an imperial city, paying particular regard to the uses of landscape and space in the pageant performance. Despite such public display, however, pageants were not simply state propaganda. Like exhibitions and other forms of spectacular entertainment, it was the element of participation and the possibilities that pageants gave to their performers to make their own entertainment that was crucial to their success. A diary/scrapbook compiled by a young woman who performed in the Pageant of London vividly illustrates the personal investments and meanings that performers gained from pageants which subverted their organisers’ educational and imperial intentions.

In 1907 a wave of 'Pageantitis' swept across Britain and Frank Lascelles, a professional actor, artist and Oxford graduate, staged the Oxford Historical Pageant. At least six other events were inspired by the success of the 1905 Sherborne Historical Pageant, produced by Louis Napoleon Parker. Staged outdoors, preferably in a place of historical interest, pageants told the history of places in a series of episodes. Crucial to their success was the participation of the general public as actors - or pageanteers - in huge numbers. Relying on visual spectacle rather than the spoken word, pageants were a popular and influential form of early-twentieth-century visual culture that constructed public memories.

This article focuses on the ways in which Lascelles and his pageant reconfigured and visualized memories of Oxford's past in its present. It pays particular attention to the interaction of performers and audience in the pageant, giving them agency in the invention of tradition. Furthermore, by demonstrating the enormous influence the Oxford Pageant had on the development of the genre in both Britain and the United States, this article challenges and revises the historiography of the modern pageant. It also argues for the distinctiveness of Lascelles' visual sensibility and its impact on the development of the genre.