Literature, Nationalism, and Memory in Early Modern England and Wales

Abstract

The Tudor era has long been associated with the rise of nationalism in England, yet nationalist writing in this period often involved the denigration and outright denial of Englishness. Philip Schwyzer argues that the ancient, insular, and imperial nation imagined in the works of writers such as Shakespeare and Spenser was not England, but Britain. Disclaiming their Anglo-Saxon ancestry, the English sought their origins in a nostalgic vision of British antiquity. Focusing on texts including The Faerie Queene, English and Welsh antiquarian works, The Mirror for Magistrates, Henry V and King Lear, Schwyzer charts the genesis, development and disintegration of British nationalism in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. An important contribution to the expanding scholarship on early modern Britishness, this study gives detailed attention to Welsh texts and traditions, arguing that Welsh sources crucially influenced the development of English literature and identity.

Building a Wall Around Tudor England: Coastal Forts and Fantasies of Border Control in Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay

“…45 Through the still-common 'topographical slippage' between England and Britain, the speech presents insularity as the 'defining feature' of English identity. 46 Shakespeare recycles the jingoistic metaphor in Cymbeline, but places it in the mouth of the sinister queen, who urges Cymbeline to defy the Romans while reminding him of the natural bravery of your isle, which stands As Neptune's park, ribbed and paled in With oaks unscalable and roaring waters, With sands that will not bear your enemies' boats, But suck them up to th'topmast.…”

“…To ignore that Tudor England was in many respects a 'thoroughly and unapologetically xenophobic society' would nevertheless be irresponsible. 53 In the days of the Armada scare, the Florentine diplomat Petruccio Ubaldini remarked, 'It is easier to find flocks of white crows than one Englishman (and let him believe what he will about religion) that loves a foreigner'. 54 An anonymous libel (signed Tamburlaine) threatened to massacre the entire Dutch community in London in 1593, and Queen Elizabeth herself licensed the expulsion of 'negroes and blackamoors' from the realm in 1601.…”

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“…This essay began with broad strokes, so fittingly it should end with three of them. First, my Ovidian-urban line of analysis intersects the line of literary research on the formation of British nationhood (Helgerson 1992;Schwyzer 2004;Maley 2003). Scholars on all sides of its debates have focused on Spenser as a Virgilian poet with the nation-state as his goal.…”

Archipelagic Orinda? Katherine Philips and the Writing of Welsh Women’s Literary History

“…This is not to say that Wales or Welsh women writers have been completely neglected in literary studies. Philip Schwyzer’s excellent book Literature, Nationalism and Memory in Early Modern England and Wales (2004), is a groundbreaking archipelagic study which makes the Welsh example central to British identity formation in the Tudor era. In addition, Wales is becoming increasingly visible in Shakespeare studies.…”