The Afterlife of English Saints: Religion, Gender, and National Identity in Pre-modern England

FAIN: FT-54291-06

Catherine Sanok
Regents of the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1382)

This project seeks to rethink the genealogy of English national identity by exploring late medieval narratives of a native Christian past, whose antiquarian impulse is usually associated with a later Renaissance awareness of history. I investigate vernacular legends of British and Anglo-Saxon saints, a tradition that flourishes suddenly in the fifteenth- century and has a long afterlife in early modern nationalist discourses. Medieval and early modern representations of holy men and women from England's distant past open important questions about the place of gender and religion in emerging definitions of the nation.