Writing from the Marches: Cheshire Poetry and Drama, 1195-1656

FAIN: FT-52210-04

Robert W Barrett
Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois (Champaign, IL 61801-3620)

"Writing from the Marches" examines texts produced in Cheshire, one of medieval and early modern England’s key border counties. Cheshire’s border status entangled it in ongoing debates over ethnicity, territoriality, and nationality, and the literature the county generated is no stranger to these concerns. The Cheshire works I study--monastic chronicles, biblical plays, civic triumphs, and chivalric romances--demonstrate how localities and regions construct their own distinct cultures, cultures that complicate traditional schemes of literary periodization. They also reveal the extent to which so-called regional literatures contest the totalizing claims of national literary canons and literature departments.