Not so fitte a place: English identity and Italian difference in early modern Englan

This dissertation considers the relationship between images of Italy and the construction of national and individual identity in early modern England. It argues that by using Italy to explore the changing nature of political, religious, and economic life in England, English writers took part in a larger cultural contest over the nature of English identity. Favorable and critical readings of Italy alike were designed to produce, define, embrace and/or reject important ideas about Englishness. Furthermore, the unstable nature of Italy in early modern discourse is precisely the source of its value to English texts seeking to treat ideological, political, and cultural conflict. Italy's multiple competing configurations mean that it works to forestall any assertion of hegemonic national or subjective identity in early modern England; indeed Italy permits writers, readers, and theater audiences to imagine alternatives to such assertions. The dissertation begins by arguing that English warnings against travel to Italy respond to anxieties that the more fluid social and economic structures of Italy confer too much freedom on English subjects and implicitly threaten their subjection to English norms. It proceeds to argue that representations of Italy's relatively advanced commercial economy raise the possibility of social dislocation as a consequence of England's own shift away from a land-based economy. It concludes with an extended exploration of gender, arguing that the English identity Italy is feared to threaten is a precarious masculine identity. By contrast, Italy is seen as feminine in English discourse, and its feminized status allows writers to explore and criticize the viability of a masculinist national identity for England.