Country House Discourse in Early Modern England

’Seamlessly weaving the findings of social historians into exciting and insightful readings of both famous and lesser known country house poems, McBride brings much recent work on gender and race into a dynamic dialogue with an older body of critical work on the country house, demonstrating beyond a doubt the indispensability of new figurations of femininity and racial subjection to the illusion of timeless legitimacy which is the hallmark of country house discourse. This book will be sought after by everyone interested in the cultural poetics of the English Renaissance.’ Lorna Hutson, Professor of English Literature, University of California at Berkeley ’This is an outstanding contribution to the study of discourse concerning the English country house and its imaginative and ideological resonances in the history of modernity. McBride has provided a valuable synthesis of existing research on the country-house genre in English literature while presenting illuminating new readings of her own and expanding the textual domain in which country-house discourse can be seen to operate. One strikingly original aspect of this fine book lies in its approach, a combination of traditional literary scholarship with methods of discourse analysis developed in cultural studies. The interpretive power of McBride's approach is enhanced by references to research in social and economic history, and by judicious use of current theoretical models concerning gender, race, and class in the formation of modern subjects. In addition to its importance for Renaissance and early modern scholarship, this highly readable, exemplary study will be of interest to scholars in other fields where research focuses on how discourse functions in strategies of legitimation.’ Don Wayne, University of California at San Diego 'excellent book...adds new richness to the understanding of classic texts...a work of original synthesis that college & university libraries will wish to own.' Choice 'Set alo

• Contents: Mapping country house politics; The dissolution of legitimacy; Home economics; Good housekeeping; Simulacra of the country house; Index.