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

by Philip Schwyzer

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.

208 pages, Hardcover

First published October 21, 2004

Reviews

[Vicky P]

Schwyzer's work in this book is something that required a precise blend of skillsets going in, and overall I found it to be a rewarding read. It was short, concise, and made me ask several questions that I would likely not have encountered many other places, if anywhere else at all. The two criticisms I have that are easiest to voice in this review are that it felt in some ways as if this was such an enormously ambitious project that it was too concise in order to avoid stepping over the edge of a cliff into an ocean of Things; and that being said it also ended with something of a whimper, despite having a very clearly stated thesis on page 3. And in fact, the book did meander a bit, with its ending whimper feeling sort of far from where the clearly-stated thesis started us. However, I cannot stress enough how fresh this book felt relative to a lot of other works in this general area of early modern English/British nationalism, so I would still recommend it.