British Identities and English Renaissance Literature

by Edited by David J. Baker , Willy Maley

• ISBN13: 9780521189682
• ISBN10: 0521189683
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-06-02
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Though British history and identity in the early modern period are intensively researched areas, the role of literature in the construction of "Britishness" has not been thoroughly studied. In this volume, leading Renaissance literary critics review a broad range of texts from the period, including plays of Shakespeare, in view of the new British history. This collection opens up a new kind of literary history with immediate relevance to contemporary discussions of "Britishness."

Table of Contents

Introduction

Opening the Field:

British history and 'the British history': the same old story?

An uncertain union

Revising criticism: Ireland and the British model

Contested Peripheries:

'The lost British lamb': English Catholic exiles and the problem of Britain

'Making history': Holinshed's Irish chronicles, 1577 and 1587

British Shakespeare:

Henry IV: metatheatrical Britain

Uncertain unions: Welsh leeks in Henry

Delving to the root: Cymbeline, Scotland, and the English race

Union Questions:

Reinventing the matter of Britain: undermining the state in Jacobean masques

Mapping British identities: Speed's Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine

Britain's Brave New World:

Bruited abroad: John White and Thomas Harriot's Colonial Representations of Ancient Britain

The Commonwealth of the Word: New England, Old England, and the Praying Indians

Restoring Britain:

Orrery's Ireland and the British problem, 1641-1679

Jacobite literature and national Identities

Historians respond: literature and the new British and Irish histories

Text, time, and the pursuit of 'British Identities'

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