Literature, identity and the British nations

Gabriel Glickman

British Renaissance literature – origins of national consciousness• Changes in relationship between England, Scotland,

Ireland, Wales.• Influence of Reformation/ Counter-Reformation –

different European kingdoms possessing different religious identities.

• Humanist recovery of classical texts – stimulates idea of the ‘commonwealth’ approximating to the republics of the classical world: importance of subjects as well as monarchs.

• Sense of changing world – need to memorialise the past to retain its wisdom.

John Speed,

The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine (1611)

John Gipkyn, View of London (1616)

Anglo-Welsh union 1536-1543 – Tudors as ‘British’ not English princes• Welsh poets hail Welsh origins of Tudors –

return of original British princes. • Full legal union with England represented as

freedom for Wales from control of baronial ‘marcher lords’.

• Tudors cultivate Welsh identity and Welsh language.

• Protestant Bible translated into Welsh.

Influence of Anglo-Welsh union on idea of ‘Britain’

• Themes arising in Welsh literature used to speak more widely about the context of Britain as a whole.

• Protestantism - Welsh clergy represent Reformation as recovery of true British religion.

• Atlantic colonisation - ancient Welsh princes represented as first Medieval navigators and first discoverers of America.

• Welsh culture represented as common heritage of ‘Ancient Britons’ uniting people of England, Wales and Scotland.

Rise of English national consciousness

• Growing literary interest in a wider ‘Britain’ rivalled by rising concern with preserving and promoting ‘Englishness’.

• England celebrated as dominant country and dominant culture within British Isles.

• Literary satire/ mockery of Celtic peoples as inferior civilisation.

Owen Glendower in Shakespeare Henry IV, Part I, III. 1

“Give me leaveTo tell you once again that at my birthThe front of heaven was full of fiery shapes,The goats ran from the mountains, and the herdsWere strangely clamorous to the frighted fields.These signs have mark'd me extraordinary… I am not in the roll of common men.”

MacMorris in Shakespeare, Henry V, II.1

‘What ish my nation? Ish a villain, and a bastard, and a knave, and a rascal. What ish my nation? Who talks of my nation?”

Nicholas Hilliard, Design for the Great Seal of Ireland,1583

John White, A Pictish Warrior holding a human head (1573)

Reign of James I – revival of idea of British culture and identity

• James enlists scholars and historians for propaganda campaign to promote ‘perfect union’.

• Francis Bacon, Robert Cotton – represent separation of England and Scotland as unnatural, artificial.

• Separate ‘English’ and ‘Scottish’ histories provide distorted perception of the national past.

Michael Drayton, Poly-Olbion (1612)

The Tudor conquests and the growth of Irish identity

• Ireland represented by planters and in English literature as not a fully formed nation.

• Nation of Ireland therefore created anew out of plantations, Protestantism and English rule.

• But literature of Irish identity develops in opposition to English rule: produced by Gaelic bards, priests at exiled Catholic colleges.

• Basis of this identity is Catholic religion - unites the ‘Old English’ and the Gaels in opposition to ‘New English’ and the Protestant faith.