Writing the Nation in Reformation England, 1530–1580

Abstract

Abstract Studying neglected authors such as Andrew Borde, John Leland, William Thomas, Thomas Smith, and Thomas Wilson, Writing the Nation in Reformation England offers a major re-evaluation of English writing between 1530 and 1580. It highlights the significance of those decades to the formation of English nationhood and examines the impact of the break with Rome on the development of a national language, literary style, and canon. As well as demonstrating the close relationship between literary culture and English identities, it explores the sense of civic humanism which motivated these Tudor writers. As authors, counsellors, and thinkers, they were active citizens participating within, and helping to shape, a national community. In the process, their works were used to project an image of themselves as authors, playing — and fitted to play — their part in the public domain. 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 Elizabethan phenomenon and that the Reformation had an immediate impact on English literary culture, before England emerged as a ‘Protestant’ nation. Finding literary invention in often surprising places (medical handbooks, treatises on spelling reform, topographical surveys), it also counters the characterisation of mid-16th-century literature as ‘drab’, or as a period in retreat from fictive forms. On the contrary, Writing the Nation demonstrates that the Elizabethan ‘Golden Age’ would have been impossible without the preceding generations of writers.

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