Christopher Highley's book explores the most serious crisis the Elizabethan regime faced: its attempts to subdue and colonize the native Irish. Through a range of literary representations from Shakespeare and Spenser, and contemporaries such as John Hooker, John Derricke, George Peele and Thomas Churchyard he shows how these writers produced a complex discourse about Ireland that cannot be reduced to a simple ethnic opposition. Highley argues that the confrontation between an English imperial presence and a Gaelic "other" was a profound factor in the definition of an English poetic self.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
List of illustrations; Acknowledgements; Introduction: Elizabeth's other isle; 1. Spenser's Irish courts; 2. Reversing the conquest: deputies, rebels and Shakespeare's 2 Henry VI; 3. Ireland, Wales and the representation of England's borderlands; 4. The Tyrone rebellion and the gendering of colonial resistance in 1 Henry VI; 5. 'A softe kind of warre': Spenser and the female reformation of Ireland; 6. 'If the Cause be not good': Henry V and Essex's Irish campaign; Notes; List of works cited; Index.
