ABSTRACT
This introduction chapter presents an overview of the key concepts discusses in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines the importance of physical and conceptual displacement in the formation of early modern English national identity. It focuses on primarily on early modern printed works rather than exilic texts that exist in the manuscript tradition. The book defines and demonstrates the mens exili evident in English literature of the late middle ages by examining its presence in the medieval story of Constance as it appears in the works of Nicholas Trivet, John Gower, and Geoffrey Chaucer. It shows that how William Thorpe's narrative representation of a mind of exile rewrites a disempowering interrogation into an ideologically affirming testimony. The book examines a rhetorical phenomenon in Catholic exilic polemics of the Allen-Persons's party from the later sixteenth century. It describes that much of Edmund Spenser's work engages with the concept of nationhood and England's growing importance on a world stage.
