Shakespeare's Englishes: Against Englishness

Whose English is 'true' English? What is its relation to the national character? These were urgent questions in Shakespeare's England just as questions of language and identity are today. Through close readings of early comedies and history plays, this study demonstrates how Shakespeare resists the shaping of ideas of the English language and national character by Protestant Reformation ideology. Tudeau-Clayton argues this ideology promoted the notional temperate and honest citizen, plainly spoken and plainly dressed, as the normative centre of (the) 'true' English. Compelling studies of two symmetrical pairs of cultural memes: 'the King's English' versus 'the gallimaufry' and 'the true-born Englishman' versus the 'Fantastical Gull', demonstrate how 'the traitor' came to be defined as much by non-conformity to cultural 'habits' as by allegiance to the monarch. Tudeau-Clayton cogently argues Shakespeare subverted this narrow, class-inflected concept of English identity, proposing instead an inclusive, mixed and unlimited community of 'our English'.

Author: Margaret Tudeau-Clayton
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 10/17/2019
Pages: 252
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.10lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.20w x 0.70d
ISBN: 9781108493734

Review Citation(s):
Choice 09/01/2020

About the Author
Tudeau-Clayton, Margaret: - Margaret Tudeau-Clayton is Professor of Early Modern Literature at the Université de Neuchatel, Switzerland.