Abstract

While John Bale (1495–1563), in his contributions to the 1549 The Laboryouse Journey & Serche of Johan Leylande, attempted to mark a decisive break in England's literary history by radically differentiating, in Bale's view, the light of England's evangelical present from the darkness of its Catholic past, he felt compelled to deal with the persistence of the darkness he saw embodied by his contemporaries' treatment of English texts. Bale understood this treatment in an economic sense, insistently playing on the terms commodity and profit, which were invoked similarly by a moral economic discourse and an emerging politico-economic discourse articulated by Sir Thomas Smith (1513–77). Thus English literary texts appear in Bale's construction of national community both as trade-objects that circulate in an international economy, and as ideal tokens of English identity itself.

pdf

Share