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Download Introduction (799 KB)
Download Chapter 1: "Bisson Conspectuities": Language and National Identity in Shakespeare's Roman Plays (767 KB)
Download Chapter 2: Profit and Delight? Magic and the Dreams of a Nation (746 KB)
Download Chapter 3: "A Borrowed Blood for Brute": From Britain to England (746 KB)
Download Chapter 4: Queens and the British History (779 KB)
Download Chapter 5: Dido in Denmark: Danes and Saxons on the Early Modern English Stage (771 KB)
Download Chapter 6: Valiant Welshwomen: When Britain Came Back (768 KB)
Download Chapter 7: Athelstan, the Virgin King (752 KB)
Download Conclusion (677 KB)
Document Type
Monograph
Description
This 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. This was a period that saw both Arthur and Alfred, as well as Hengist, Horsa, and Canute. The country was converted to Christianity and saw successive waves of invasions by Angles, Jutes, and Danes, which left both a mark on the language and a record in the physical landscape. By its end, the British Isles had been transformed beyond recognition, and yet a number of early modern plays suggest an underlying continuity, an essential English identity linked to the land and impervious to vicissitudes and 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.
Publication Date
11-30-2017
Publisher
Medieval Institute Publications
Imprint
Medieval Institute Publications
City
Kalamazoo
ISBN
9781580442800
Keywords
Roman invasion, Norman Conquest, Shakespeare, early modern drama
Disciplines
Dramatic Literature, Criticism and Theory | Theatre History
Citation for Published Book
Hopkins, Lisa. From the Romans to the Normans on the English Renaissance Stage.