Building an English (Early Modern) Identity: "Race" and Capitalism in Heywood's The Fair Maid of the West, or, A Girl Worth Gold

  1. López-Peláez Casellas, Jesús
Revue:
Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses

ISSN: 0211-5913

Année de publication: 2007

Número: 54

Pages: 55-68

Type: Article

D'autres publications dans: Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses

Résumé

In the early modern period England develops a process of construction of national identity based on “racial” and religious differences and the adoption of capitalism. This epistemological and material transition can be perceived in much of the drama of the period, which, like Thomas Heywood’s The Fair Maid of the West, functions as much within this process as in response to it. All these changes, and the resistances to it, can be best analyzed through the semiotic notion of Juri Lotman’s semiosphere