Transformation of the common: The English reformation, English national sentiment, and the vernacularization of the English culture

This study analyzes the impact of the English Reformation on English national identity. It examines the discourse that the English state developed in the aftermath of the Reformation to justify its practices. While this discourse incorporated previous cultural trajectories into its narratives and transformed them, it caused restructuring of English historical perception since it included discursive elements that intended to destroy the Papal allegiances. In turn, the discourse of the English state, through transforming religious imagery and politicizing cultural differentia, attempted to provide an alternate allegiance for the English public, which emphasized obedience to the king. In the late sixteenth and seventeenth century, this state discourse of obedience was transformed into a national one. In this national discourse, sedition during the reign of an ungodly king was within the new discursive framework, which was translated into a political reality in the seventeenth century at the expense of the monarchical tradition.