Shakespeare and the French Borders of English

Early modern England owed a deep historical, lexical and cultural debt to France. Despite this debt, England was anxious to assert itself amid the new and unstable climate of the Reformation, the Renaissance, the book trade, the growth of commerce and the development of the early modern nation. In order to do so, England pursued a series of conflicting advancements: to learn French, to study Anglo-French history, and to glorify England. Shakespeare and the French Borders of English emerges from an interdisciplinary conversation about the theory of translation and the role of foreign language in fiction and society. By analyzing Shakespeare's treatment of France, Saenger interrogates the cognitive borders of England - a border that was more dependent on languages and ideas than it was on governments and shorelines.

Michael Saenger is Associate Professor in the Department of English at Southwestern University, USA. He is the author of The Commodification of Textual Engagements in the English Renaissance and has published widely on Renaissance and other literature, in such journals as Studies in Philology, Notes and Queries, Shakespeare Survey, and James Joyce Quarterly. He has been a finalist for the Southwestern Teaching Award and teaches courses on such subjects as Medieval literature, Shakespeare in film, and Shakespeare through Performance.