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Fashioning England and the English pp 97–118Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Gendering the Archipelago: Nation, State and Empire in the Prophetic Writings of Lady Eleanor Davies

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Abstract

This essay makes a strong call to reconsider women’s writing in the context of nation, state and empire. It situates the mid-seventeenth-century prophetic writings of Lady Eleanor Davies within the four-nation, three-kingdom archipelagic context from which they emerged and upon which they critically reflect. Through her family and marital connections, Lady Eleanor was well placed to comment on the political, religious and social crises that historians and literary historians are currently reinvestigating within a wider archipelagic framework. Like Milton, Lady Eleanor gives powerful voice to an English nationalism grounded in a Protestant confessional identity; she does so, however, as a female prophet of an angelic English nation at risk of being incorporated into a brutish British state.

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Acknowledgements

Willy Maley undertook the work for this article during a research fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust for which he is most grateful.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Bath Spa University, Bath, UK

    Christopher Ivic

  2. University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK

    Willy Maley

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  1. Christopher Ivic
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Thun, Switzerland

    Rahel Orgis

  2. University of Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland

    Matthias Heim

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Ivic, C., Maley, W. (2018). Gendering the Archipelago: Nation, State and Empire in the Prophetic Writings of Lady Eleanor Davies. In: Orgis, R., Heim, M. (eds) Fashioning England and the English. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92126-6_5

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