초록 열기/닫기 버튼
The building of a nation-state in Tudor England was an uneven process in which a whole spectrum of historical agents got involved; as such, it never remained a monarchical project. Instead, nation defined as an imagined community, a term proposed by Benedict Anderson, began to take shape through complex negotiations among people who felt the need for a shared political identity while seeking to promote self-interests. Among the multiple factors that mediated the historical process, Englishness was most prominent. It served as a common anchorage in the development of a collective national identity. Analyzing Henry V and Sir Thomas More, this paper argues that Englishness was not a given political category but a mode of identification creating a fantasy of bond among scrappy individuals divided otherwise by the preexisting formulations of subjecthood, such as class, religion, ethnicity, places of origin, and so on. The most immediately available sources for creating a shared fantasy were found among common cultural practices, especially the ones involving food choices and eating habits. The “band of brothers” in Henry V and the rioters in Sir Thomas More are examined as showcases of the emerging national consciousness in Shakespeare’s time. The first suggests that the subject’s willing imaginary identification is the determining factor of a nation. The second envisions London as a civic body, a form of the national political order on a smaller scale, which is based on fraternal alliance among citizens.
키워드열기/닫기 버튼
Nation, Nationalism, Englishness, Food, Civic Body, Henry V, Sir Thomas More
