ABSTRACT
William Browne's relevance to the subject of nationalism and the construction of national identity is evident, however, from the title of his most ambitious poem, Britannia's Pastorals. His avowed aim in writing the Pastorals is to sing the unsung lays of 'dear Britannia', thus enabling his Muse 'To reach the sacred Helicon'. One question rarely asked by commentators on Britannia's Pastorals is what Browne means by 'Britannia'. Part of what is at issue in Browne's depiction of Britannia is a problem of genre. Critics of Britannia's Pastorals have hesitated over the question of its generic status. Annabel Patterson's self-consciously eclectic description of the poem as 'a generic blend of pastoral, georgic, epic, and allegorical romance' in fact does not exhaust the possibilities, since it says nothing of chorography. Browne's chorographic method appears at its most successful in the marginal note to the first line of Britannia's Pastorals.
