Bale, John | Jacqueline A. Vanhoutte (essay date 1996)
Jacqueline A. Vanhoutte (essay date 1996)
“Engendering England: The Restructuring of Allegiance in the Writings of Richard Morison and John Bale,” in Renaissance and Reformation, Vol. XX, No. 1, Winter 1996, pp. 50-77.
[In this excerpt, Vanhoutte explores Bale's attempts at building nationalism through engendering England as a maternal figure in King Johan. Vanhoutte claims that King Johan's “primary goal may be … to impress upon its audience that ‘the Reformation will be defeated if it is nothing more than a switch in royal policy’ … [but also has] concerns with the nature of monarchial and papal power, with the crimes of sedition and treason, and with the allegiances of English subjects and the abuses of the clergy.”]
The place to begin is in 1518, in Tudor England, where a disguising staged by Henry VIII's revels department signals the unifying potential of the Pagan figure, the Turk. In honor of the...
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