Fashioning England and the English (Literature, Nation, Gender)

This book explores how literary texts envision England and respond to discourses and conceptions of Englishness and the English nation, especially in relation to gender and language. The essays discuss texts from the fifteenth to the twentieth century and bear witness to changing views of England and the English, highlighting the importance of religion, economy, landscape, the spectre of the "other" and language in this discourse. The volume pays attention to women writers' reflection on the nation and the roles female figures play in male writers' visions of nationhood. It brings into conversation less well-known voices like those of Osbern Bokenham, Thomas Deloney, Eleanor Davies and Jacquetta Hawkes with canonical authors - William Shakespeare, William Wordsworth, Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf - and opens a space for exploring the interplay of dominant and variant voices in the fashioning of England Preface: “Alas, Alas for England” 6 Acknowledgements 17 Contents 19 Notes on Contributors 22 List of Figures 26 List of Tables 27 Chapter 1 Introduction 28 References 44 Part I (Re)Forming the Commonwealth 47 Chapter 2 Engendering a Sense of Englishness: The Use of the Mother Tongue in Osbern Bokenham’s “Vita Sanctae Margaretae” 48 A Saintly Genealogy Against Lollardy—The Case of St. Margaret 52 Bokenham’s Language Policy—A Sense of Englishness Against Lollardy 58 References 67 Chapter 3 Tricking Sir George into Marriage: The Utopian Moral Reform of the English Commonwealth in Thomas Deloney’s Jack of Newbury 71 “The Figure of a Flourishing Common-Wealth”: Reforming the State from Within 73 “Hee That Hath a Charge Must Looke to It”: The Legitimisation of Monarchic Rule 76 “Troubled with a Shrewe”: Anxiety Over Powerful Women 79 “I Would Wish You to Imitate the Like Vertues”: The Reform of National Morals 82 References 92 Chapter 4 Shakespeare’s Style, Shakespeare’s England 94 Background 94 Corpus 96 Methods 97 Results in Comedy 98 Results in Other Genres 105 Discussion 106 Conclusion 108 Appendix A 108 Appendix B 114 References 116 Chapter 5 Gendering the Archipelago: Nation, State and Empire in the Prophetic Writings of Lady Eleanor Davies 119 “If You Keep Not Chronicles, Others Do” 120 “This Book of Mine” 123 “This Islands Denomination, Derived from the Angels Name” 127 “Shadowed Out in Samsons Exploits” 131 References 135 Part II Importing and Exporting Texts and Ideologies 141 Chapter 6 By Deeds of Stealth: English Books Abroad in the Mid-Eighteenth Century 142 Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism 145 The Iconography of Hollis’s Emblems 149 The Bindings and “A Potencie of Life” 159 What Did Hollis Achieve? 161 References 164 Chapter 7 Sons of Nature: The Bourgeois Pursuit of Happiness in the Swiss Alps and Wordsworth’s Lake District 167 Caricaturing the Bourgeois Subject 170 The Agrarian Myth’s Swiss Origins 171 Wordsworth’s Middle-Class Idyll at Grasmere 177 References 187 Chapter 8 Wordsworth Un-Englished 191 Daring Failure 195 Translation and Estrangement 197 Amazed by Virgil 204 Comedy and Consolation 209 Translation in Tranquillity 213 References 218 Part III Explorations of Belonging 221 Chapter 9 “To Be a True Citizen of Highbury”: Language and National Identity in Jane Austen’s Emma (1816) 222 Language and National Character in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries 224 Emma: Language and the Nation 227 References 242 Chapter 10 Renegotiating Home and Away in Virginia Woolf’s The Voyage Out 246 Early Travels 248 Voyaging Out 255 “Other Spaces” 263 References 269 Chapter 11 English Visions: The Work of Jacquetta Hawkes Priestley 272 A Land—Englishness as a Symbolic Form 274 The Priestleys’ English Philosophy of Consciousness 280 A Quest of Love—Ecriture Féminine à l’Anglaise 285 References 289 Chapter 12 Olivier’s Technicolor England: Capturing the Nation Through the Battlefields of Henry V (1944) and Richard III (1955) 291 The Ideological Landscape of Rural England Before the War and in British Cinema 294 Fighting for the English Soil: Henry V and A Canterbury Tale 297 Dislocating War: Conserving England and Its Crown in A Queen Is Crowned and Richard III 304 References 313 Afterword 315 Index 326 Front Matter ....Pages i-xxxi Introduction (Rahel Orgis, Matthias Heim)....Pages 1-19 Front Matter ....Pages 21-21 Engendering a Sense of Englishness: The Use of the Mother Tongue in Osbern Bokenham’s “Vita Sanctae Margaretae” (Katrin Rupp)....Pages 23-45 Tricking Sir George into Marriage: The Utopian Moral Reform of the English Commonwealth in Thomas Deloney’s Jack of Newbury (Rahel Orgis)....Pages 47-69 Shakespeare’s Style, Shakespeare’s England (Hugh Craig)....Pages 71-95 Gendering the Archipelago: Nation, State and Empire in the Prophetic Writings of Lady Eleanor Davies (Christopher Ivic, Willy Maley)....Pages 97-118 Front Matter ....Pages 119-119 By Deeds of Stealth: English Books Abroad in the Mid-Eighteenth Century (Allen Reddick)....Pages 121-145 Sons of Nature: The Bourgeois Pursuit of Happiness in the Swiss Alps and Wordsworth’s Lake District (Patrick Vincent)....Pages 147-170 Wordsworth Un-Englished (Rachel Falconer)....Pages 171-200 Front Matter ....Pages 201-201 “To Be a True Citizen of Highbury”: Language and National Identity in Jane Austen’s Emma (1816) (Anne-Claire Michoux)....Pages 203-226 Renegotiating Home and Away in Virginia Woolf’s The Voyage Out (Suzana Zink)....Pages 227-252 English Visions: The Work of Jacquetta Hawkes Priestley (Ina Habermann)....Pages 253-271 Olivier’s Technicolor England: Capturing the Nation Through the Battlefields of Henry V (1944) and Richard III (1955) (Matthias Heim)....Pages 273-296 Back Matter ....Pages 297-322