Talk:Merry England

message: The reference to the Gothic revival is bizarre. Gothic architecture was of course a pan-European 'movement,' but English Gothic (at least after c. 1200) really _was_ fairly distinct from (though not uninfluenced by) Continental Gothic. Terms such as Early English, Decorated and Perpendicular refer to real, and distinclty English, architectural and artistic styles. 
Text removed from article in chief, preserved here.  Not sure I follow the complete tenor of the argument anyways, which seems to be an anti-Protestant rant. (Anon.)
:Specious. The phrase "a specific "Merry England" that was not Catholic (always an issue with the Gothic style), yet full of lively detail" is not about our issues, but about English Protestant reservations about the Gothic Revival, expressed both before and after Catholic Emancipation. Surely such strains that run through the culture can be referred to without having to be demonstrated at every turn.  As for Gothic architecture in England (locally "Early English"), one of the very first things one comes to understand when one first picks up a book or article on the subject is that it was being built by French masons in England in the 13th century as often as northern French cathedrals were built by English ones, working in a common style for patrons in an upper class, both lay and ecclesiastical, who were mostly related to one another. There is more variation [within England. But I think everyone knows that. Confidence outrunning competence. --Wetman 15:51, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Gothic

message: Is this really the right phrase?
TheLateDentarthurdent 10:16, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It's metonymic but pretty good, I'd say. Charles Matthews 10:42, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Half-timbered?

message: There ought to be a reference to Belloc and Chesterton here I think as well. And then there's C S Lewis and Charles Williams...Deipnosophista (talk) 17:54, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  other strands 

message: Nobody believes more fully in Merry England than we Americans, particularly the vast majority, who have never been to England. As I write, here in San Francisco, there is the annual Dickens Christmas Fair going on by the Bay-- actors dressed up as Dickens characters in a charming recreation of Victorian London that the audience strolls around in. American children are watching the latest Harry Potter movie at the Cineplex, and reading the book (even if they read no other books.) Oprah has made Dickens her new author in the Oprah reading club. (Too complicated to explain.) Nobody has ever been more Anglophile or Merry England than the 1930s Hollywood Jewish movie moguls. Look at the quaint representation of England in the movies they made-- Goodbye, Mr Chips,  Mrs. Miniver... And speaking of Miniver, if America had not believed in Merry England, it would have followed Charles Lindbergh and the America Firsters and let the Germans do what they wanted to England. The Special Relationship's power rests on the Merry England myth in the United States. Americans on their first visit to the England, encountering the country Theodore Dalrymple writes about instead of Merry England, are shocked. It's depressing to sit in a lovely pub in the green countryside and be given an amateur anti American lecture full of schoolboy Marx. The upcoming Royal Wedding will revive the whole Merry England trope. One of my students, a stocky working class lady, has gone into hock but will be there in the crowd. Merry England, then, has been an important political, military and financial asset for England. Profhum (talk) 10:07, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Merry England in America

message: The reference to Hazlitt mentions his lecture/essay on Merry England as being appended to an 1819 book.  The Wikipedia article on Hazlitt says that this lecture/essay was first published in 1825.
The phrase was surely popularised by Sir Walter Scott - it is in the opening sentence of Ivanhoe (1820):  "In that pleasant district of merry England which is watered by the river Don...."  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.189.97.52 (talk) 14:14, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Walter Scott / Ivanhoe 

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thread_title:  External links modified (January 2018) 

message: Does Midsomer Murders deserve a mention on this page? After all, the series became famous for using quaint, picturesque villages as its setting in every episode. Steinbach (talk) 18:34, 18 August 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Interesting comment. There are many films and TV programs that present country life in an idyllic manner in a modern context (although in the one you mention the participants keep murdering each other, so one wonders how the population density of the area is maintained). This suggests that the Merrie England trope is still alive. You could add something: I suggest short and general and sourced. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:31, 19 August 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  ''Midsomer Murders'' 

message: "If there was a period after the Black Death when labour shortages meant that agricultural workers were in stronger positions, and serfdom was consequently eroded, the growing commercialisation of agriculture – with enclosures, rising rents, and pasture displacing arable, sheep men" - not a native English speaker but I still think something else was intended here...? 93.136.19.110 (talk) 00:59, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: I presume its supposed to mean sheep are displacing men, as pasture is displacing arable farming.  I don't have access to the source, so I don't know if its a typo, or just a clunky expression (I think that is a valid phrasing, but a rather poetic or archaic one).  I've changed it accordingly. Iapetus (talk) 14:25, 6 February 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Arable, sheep men?