Description
Book SynopsisThis book examines the late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century engagement with a crucial part of Britain's past, the period between the withdrawal of the Roman legions and the Norman Conquest. A number of early modern plays suggest an underlying continuity, an essential English identity linked to the land and impervious to change. This book considers the extent to which ideas about early modern English and British national, religious, and political identities were rooted in cultural constructions of the pre-Conquest past.
Trade Review"In the context of Brexit, as the rethinking of Europe and its borders is very much part of an enterprise bound up with memory of conquest, empire, and independence, this is a book that will get students reading, critics thinking, and people talking." Willy Maley, University of Glasgow
"Hopkins concludes her compelling study with the statement that there 'is a recurrent acknowledgment that a purely British identity is no longer possible (if indeed it ever was), because bloodlines have been diluted by wave after wave of invasion, but there is also a sense of a link between land and identity' (191). Hers is a book that presents a wealth of material and offers intriguing insights on questions of identity, succession, legitimacy, but also on how early modern writers viewed the distant past and gave it political significance." --Nicole Nyffenegger, University of Bern, Switzerland
Table of ContentsIntroduction Part One: Legacies "Bisson Conspectuities": Language and National Identity in Shakespeare's Roman Plays Profit and Delight? Magic and the Dreams of a Nation "A Borrowed Blood for Brute": From Britain to England Part Two: Ancestors and Others Queens and the British History Dido in Denmark: Danes and Saxons on the Early Modern English Stage Valiant Welshwomen: When Britain Came Back Athelstan, the Virgin King Conclusion Works Cited
