Forgone Nations

"And is it possible that an Englishman. can find such liking in that barbarous rudeness that he should forget his own nature and forgo his own nation?" - Edmund Spenser, A View of the Present State of Ireland, c. 1596 With striking frequency, Elizabethan writings on Ireland refer to the past in order to explain the troublesome present: even at this early point, the 'Irish problem' was perceived as a historical one. The book examines English representations of history written in the last quarter of the sixteenth century, both in Ireland and England. It explores in how far the colonial situation in Ireland, and the historical dimension it was viewed in, prompted and influenced the reflection on 'Englishness' and its historical forms.