Writing the North of England in the Middle Ages

Uncovering the medieval origin of England's North-South divide, Joseph Taylor examines the complex dynamics of regionalism and nationalism.

Writing the North of England in the Middle Ages examines the origins of England's North-South divide, illustrating how discourse of the modern divide is established and cultivated in medieval English literature including works such as the Canterbury Tales, the ballads of Robin Hood, and even medieval mystery plays.Writing the North of England in the Middle Ages offers a literary history of the North-South divide, examining the complexities of the relationship – imaginative, material, and political – between North and South in a wide range of texts. Through sustained analysis of the North-South divide as it emerges in the literature of medieval England, this study illustrates the convoluted dynamic of desire and derision of the North by the rest of country. Joseph Taylor dissects England's problematic sense of nationhood as one which must be negotiated and renegotiated from within, rather than beyond, national borders. Providing fresh readings of texts such as Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the fifteenth-century Robin Hood ballads and the Towneley plays, this book argues for the North's vital contribution to processes of imagining nation in the Middle Ages and shows that that regionalism is both contained within and constitutive of its apparent opposite, nationalism.