The Old Lie: Rhetorics of Heroism in Early Modern England

Date of Award

Spring 1-1-2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

English Language and Literature

First Advisor

Nicholson, Catherine

Abstract

In 1585, England went to war after two long decades of avoiding military engagement. Soldiers serving in the Low Countries soon learned that their pay would be slow in coming, if it came at all. Even as English authorities delayed and withheld troops’ wages, they recruited soldiers by casting military service as a route to social advancement. These myths of reward drew on the heroic idiom of the Elizabethan chivalric revival, enlisting romance on behalf of state interests to convince underpaid soldiers to serve. “The Old Lie” examines literature produced against this political backdrop. It argues that while romantic rhetoric is often associated with the uncritical celebration of militarized violence, romance also cultivates skepticism by drawing attention to its own fictionality. Literature of the Elizabethan war years both staged heroic myths of upward mobility and exhibited them as fantasy. Reading historical documents against poetry, drama, and prose, this dissertation articulates a new relationship between literary romance, social politics, and the rhetoric used by state authorities. By tracing the language of reward and disillusionment that ties together George Gascoigne’s satirical war poetry, biographies and elegies produced in the wake of Sir Philip Sidney’s death, William Shakespeare’s history plays, Edmund Spenser’s allegorical epic romance, and Thomas Dekker’s city comedy, I demonstrate how these early modern literary texts craft blueprints for navigating modern questions of military commemoration, recruitment, welfare, and loss.

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