"The rethoricke of pedlers, tinkers, coblers, rogues": Popularizing national identity in Elizabethan pamphlets and plays.
Item
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Title
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"The rethoricke of pedlers, tinkers, coblers, rogues": Popularizing national identity in Elizabethan pamphlets and plays.
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Identifier
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AAI9946179
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identifier
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9946179
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Creator
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Hutchins, Christine Ellen.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Angus Fletcher
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Date
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1999
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, English | History, European | Theater
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Abstract
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In this dissertation, "'The Rethoricke of Pedlars, Tinkers, Coblers, Rogues': English National Identity and the Popular Press in the Sixteenth Century," I examine the roles sixteenth-century writers and playwrights give to popular literary traditions in their visions of shared English culture. Many recent studies of early modern English national identity focus on icons of monarchic power, state institutions, and personifications of a unified England. I argue that the symbols early modern writers use to gather power into a center appear alongside equally compelling symbols that represent power as dispersed among the provinces and peoples of England. The nation is a fundamentally popular concept. As such, sixteenth-century English writers' appeals to national bonds are also appeals to the popular politics and popular traditions that supposedly give the nation its authority and power. Through analysis of sixteenth-century print editions of the Works of Chaucer and the Medieval English Piers Plowman poet, Robert Greene's A Quip for an Upstart Courtier, Robert Wilson's The Cobbler's Prophecy, Julius Caesar, and Thomas Dekker's The Shoemaker's Holiday, I show how Elizabethan writers use Reformation-inspired literary traditions to create an image of England as a country that defines itself through its popular traditions and its populace.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
