On Jun 12, 2011, at 1:09 PM, ANNE PRESCOTT wrote:
> One place where all Europe blends into the "other"--but for obvious geographical reasons France (and maybe Spain) would dominate comes right after, or even still during, France's horrible problems with civil war: John of Gaunt's celebration of England as set in the silver sea that serves it as a moat against less happier lands. I do think this means mostly France--not Italy--but there's a sort of merging into "us" here and "Europeans" there. John of Gaunt would have loved the cartoon in Punch some years ago that had a newspaper headline reading "Fog over the Channel--Continent cut off." Good going, Sir Fog, John of Gaunt would say.
Of course the real John of Gaunt, having been born in a little town called Ghent, marrying Costanza of Castile, styling himself King of Castile and León, and being away rather a lot on various (mostly unsuccessful) Continental campaigns, was somewhat more pan-European than Shakespeare's John of Gaunt. Which I think just means that in the sixteenth century Protestant England came to imagine its island geography in terms of its political, religious, and cultural isolation rather than the other way around.
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Craig A. Berry
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