Imagining a Medieval English Nation

The first comprehensive analysis of English national identity in the late Middle Ages. During the late Middle Ages, the increasing expansion of administrative, legal, and military systems by a central government, together with the greater involvement of the commons in national life, brought England closer than ever to political nationhood. Examining a diverse array of texts--ranging from Latin and vernacular historiography to Lollard tracts, Ricardian poetry, and chivalric treatises--this volume reveals the variety of forms "England" assumed when it was imagined in the medieval West. 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. Imagining a Medieval English Nation is not only a collection of new readings of major canonical works by leading medievalists, it is among the first book-length analyses on the subject and of critical interest.

Summary

These ten specially commissioned essays demonstrate that during the Middle Ages the idea of an English nation was not fixed. The contributors examine and contrast the thinking behind the ways in which medieval philosophers and writers imagined or fantasised about an English nation.

Product details

• Authors: Kathy Lavezzo, Kathy (Assistant Professor of English Lavezzo, LAVEZZO KATHY ASSISTANT PROFESSO
• Assisted by: Kathy Lavezzo (Editor)
• Publisher: University Of Minnesota Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 18.12.2003
• EAN: 9780816637348
• ISBN: 978-0-8166-3734-8
• No. of pages: 394
• Series: Medieval Cultures S.; Medieval Cultures (Hardcover); Medieval Cultures; Medieval Cultures
• Subject: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies