The poetics of English nationhood, 1590-1612
By: Claire McEachern.
Series: Cambridge studies in Renaissance literature and culture ;; 13
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 1996
Place of publication: Cambridge; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 239
Subjects: English literature -- Early modern, 1500-1700 -- History and criticism; Politics and literature -- Great Britain -- History -- 17th century; Politics and literature -- Great Britain -- History -- 16th century; National characteristics, English, in literature; Nationalism -- England -- History -- 17th century; Nationalism -- England -- History -- 16th century; Nationalism in literature; Renaissance -- England; Poetics -- History -- 16th century; Poetics -- History -- 17th century; Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1558-1603; Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1603-1625; England -- In literature
Description: 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.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 198-235) and index.