Nation, State and Empire in English Renaissance Literature

This book, original in emphasis, daring in execution, maps out the shaping power of English Renaissance literature in creating and contesting national and colonial identities through the work of major canonical authors including Shakespeare, Spenser and Milton. Informed throughout by the burgeoning fields of the new British history and postcolonial criticism, this volume marks a dramatic shift in studies of the early modern period, from Irish to British concerns, thus accounting for the interplay of union, plantation, and conquest.

'Willey Maley's important book on 'the British problem' in relation to English Renaissance literature is a welcome contribution to the fields of Renaissance and colonial studies...the book brings those essays together beautifully, enabling us to hold in hand, and to teach, a series of strongly linked and very significant pieces...[his] view of Macmorris is fascinating and at odds with the conventional criticism surrounding that character.' - The Spenser Review

Autorentext
WILLY MALEY is Professor of Renaissance Studies at the University of Glasgow. His many publications include two previous books with Palgrave Macmillan: A Spenser Chronology (1994), and Salvaging Spenser: Colonialism, Culture and Identity (1997). He is also co-editor of Representing Ireland: Literature and the Origins of Conflict, 1534 - 1660 (1993), Edmund Spenser: A View of the Present State of Ireland: From the First Published Edition (1997), Postcolonial Criticism (1997), and British Identities and English Renaissance Literature (2002).

Inhalt
Foreword by John Kerrigan Introduction 'The Sceptred Isle': Shakespeare and the British Problem Postcolonial Cymbeline : Sovereignty and Succession from Roman to Renaissance Britain Shakespeare, Holinshed, and Ireland: Resources and Contexts Forms of Discrimination in Spenser's A View of the State of Ireland (1596, 1633): Form Dialogue to Silence 'Another Britain?': Bacon's Certain Considerations Touching the Plantation in Ireland (1606, 1657) Fording the Nation: A Bridging History in Perkin Warbeck (1633) Milton's Observations (1649) and 'the complication of interests' in Early Modern Ireland Index