“Our” Home Is “Here”: The Sense of a Homeland in Chaucer and Middle English Romance

In his British Academy lecture “Chaucer and Englishness” (1998), and elsewhere, Derek Pearsall argued that there is no evidence for a coherent sense of nationhood in late medieval England. This article reconsiders the issue by focusing not on ideological constructions of nationhood, but on simpler, more ordinary experiences of “national feeling or a sense of national identity,” as reflected in the representation of England in Middle English romances, and the devices used by writers to create the sense of a homeland shared by narration and audience. Texts discussed include Chaucer’s Man of Law’s Tale, the alliterative Morte Arthure, Malory’s Le Morte Darthur, Guy of Warwick, the Middle English Song of Roland, and Sir Degrevant.