ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 moves into the early modern period and takes as case studies the Protestant polemicists William Turner, John Bale, and John Ponet. These polemicists, especially Turner and Bale, leverage a discourse of exile to identify and limit political and religious centers of power through the concentration of authority in written texts and through metaphors of texts. Additionally, I argue that discourse of exile helps these polemicists define and explore a nascent sense of English national identity formed extra-nationally, a self-fashioning declaration both spiritual and national.
