Strange Communion: Motherland and Masculinity in Tudor Plays, Pamphlets, and Politics

Vanhoutte (U. of North Texas) wonders why England is imagined as a mother, and finds that Tudor polemicists and dramatists relied on maternal representations of the nation to evoke a sense of purpose, and may even have coined the term motherland. She discusses the Henrician reshaping of allegiances; gender and nation in Marian plays, pamphlets, and politics; Elizabethan variations; and monarchy, motherland, and masculinity in Shakespeare's history plays. Distributed in the US by Associated University Presses. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR