Review of Eckart Voigts-Virchow (ed.): Janespotting and Beyond: British Heritage Retrovisions Since the Mid-1990s.

Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of the review:

With this collection of essays Eckart Voigts-Virchow has brought together an impressive range of perspectives on the British heritage phenomena since its heyday period of the 1980s and early 1990s. Janespotting and Beyond should appeal to various segments of scholarship, as well as be of use to the general reader. Divided into four main sections, each section concentrates on an evolving heritage facet or issue of the ongoing heritage debate in British Culture Studies. Two of the four sections focus on the principal British writers, Jane Austen and William Shakespeare (only E. M. Forster has received as much "heritage" attention as Austen and Shakespeare). Section three "From Auntie's Heritage to Anti-heritage" discusses the turn away from heritage aesthetics, which opens up timely issues for the twenty-first century. Section four "Transnational Productions/Transnational Classrooms" evidences Voigts-Virchow's German context as the three essays in this section explore the British heritage film's international appeal, especially from a German perspective.