Literature and Nationalism (English texts & studies) - Hardcover

This collection of essays traces the representation of nationalism in a number of literary texts, ranging from the poems of Thomas Wyatt, written at the court of Henry VIII, to the plays of Tom Murphy, written in Ireland in the 1980s. The essays focus mainly on the periods of Shakespeare and of Yeats and on the troubled interaction between English and Irish nationalism, but Cowper, Coleridge, Byron and Strindberg are also featured. The writers discussed, whether they are ostensibly celebrating the innocent early days of English imperialism, reacting to the American War of Independence or the French Revolution and the rise and fall of Napoleon, or doggedly rewriting the story of the "National Question" in Ireland, include those who are attracted by the glamour of nationalism and eager to participate in its rhetoric as well as those who are sceptical, cynical, even hostile.