England the Nation is the first book to pay detailed attention to the earlier fourteenth century in England as a literary period in its own right. Thorlac Turville-Petre surveys the wide range of writings by the generation before Chaucer, and explores how English writers in the half-century leading up to the outbreak of the Hundred Years War expressed their concepts of England as a nation, and how they exploited the association between nation, people, and language. At the centre of Turville-Petre's work is a study of the construction of national identity that takes place in the histories written in English. The contribution of romances and saints' lives to an awareness of the nation's past are also considered, as in the questions of how writers were able to reconcile their sense of regional identity with commitment to the nation. A final chapter explores the interrelationship between England's three languages - Latin, French, and English - at a time when English was attaining the status of the national language, Middle English quotations are glossed or translated into modern English throughout. England the Nation takes the current debate on nationalism into a new area, and will be of interest to anyone studying medieval English literature and history, as well as the development of nationalism, and the rise of English as a national language.
In his lucid and penetrating account of this formative period, Gerald Harriss illuminates a richly varied society, as chronicled in The Canterbury Tales, and examines its developing sense of national identity.
Written with flair and authority by Guardian columnist and London Times former editor Simon Jenkins, this is the definitive narrative of how today's England came to be.
David Edgerton's fascinating perspective produces refreshed understanding of everything from the nature of British politics to the performance of British industry.
Publisher Description
This book examines how concepts of national identity, imperialism, colonialism, and orientalism were worked out and represented for English readers in early travel and ethnographic writings.
"Controversial, entertaining and alarmingly topical ... a delight to read."Philip Ziegler, Daily Telegraph
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.
In this reinterpretation of the history of England, Edwin Jones reveals that a false view of the English past, created during the reign of Henry VIII, became one of the...
In showing how these writers engaged with, and promoted, concepts of national identity, the book makes a significant contribution to our broader understanding of the early modern period, demonstrating that nationhood was not a later ...
These essays disrupt conventional thinking about the relationship between premodernity and modernity, challenge traditional preconceptions regarding the origins of the nation, and complicate theories about the workings of nationalism.