Richard Helgerson Knihy

The author, a Professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has made significant contributions to literary scholarship, including winning prestigious awards for his work on Elizabethan literature. His notable book, Forms of Nationhood, explores the writing of England during the Elizabethan era and has garnered recognition from esteemed organizations. Additionally, he has translated and edited the works of Joachim du Bellay, further showcasing his expertise in the field.

What have poems and maps, law books and plays, ecclesiastical polemics and narratives of overseas exploration to do with one another? By most accounts, very little. They belong to different genres and have been appropriated by scholars in different disciplines. But, as Richard Helgerson shows in this ambitious and wide-ranging study, all were part of an extraordinary sixteenth- and seventeenth-century enterprise: the project of making England.