| The Poetics of English Nationhood, 1590 1612 Contributor(s): McEachern, Claire (Author) |
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ISBN: 0521030943 ISBN-13: 9780521030946 Publisher: Cambridge University Press OUR PRICE: $63.64 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: January 2007 Annotation: The Poetics of English Nationhood is a study of the formation of English national identity during the early modern period. Claire McEachern argues for the role of Reformation religious culture in the shaping of a Tudor-Stuart nation, and examines its presence in the writings of Spenser, Shakespeare, and Drayton. She shows how in their work the concept of nationality is always fluid; it crucially depends on a sense of intimacy that seeps across and above hierarchies and boundaries. McEachern shows how different kinds of language - literary, exegetical, parliamentary - personify power, thereby sealing the intimacy which binds the nation as an imagined community. The representation of faith, motherland, and crown in Tudor-Stuart texts, she argues, continually personified English political institutions, promoting both social order and collective unity. By focusing on the rhetorical forms of cultural unity in the Reformation era, McEachern traces a profound shift from a monarchically defined Englishness to a system based within the cultural institution of the common law. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | Poetry - Literary Criticism | Renaissance - Literary Criticism | English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh |
| Dewey: 820.935 |
| Series: Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture |
| Physical Information: 0.58" H x 6" W x 9" (0.84 lbs) 256 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - British Isles - Chronological Period - 16th Century - Chronological Period - 17th Century |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: The Poetics of English Nationhood is a study of the formation of English national identity during the early modern period. Claire McEachern shows how the representation of faith, fatherland and crown in Tudor texts continually personified English political institutions. Those texts we traditionally label literary, she argues, already encode and personify power relations, thereby reinforcing the idea of the nation as an imaginary force. McEachern's study revises our understanding of the term literary through an examination of Spenser, Shakespeare and Drayton, tracing the means by which an English national identity was inscribed as part of an enduring social order. |