'Incorporating Ireland: cultural conflict in Holinshed's Irish Chronicles': edges: dangerous encounters and identity formation

“Holinshed’s” Chronicles of England, Scotlande and Irelande are a prime resource for the study of the political and cultural history of early modern Britain and Ireland; indeed, this text serves as a crucial reminder of the need to construct an early modern or early colonial literary history attentive to writers and readers throughout the British Isles. “Incorporating Ireland” explores questions of identity formation and deformation in the much-neglected 1577 and 1587 editions of “Holinshed’s” Irish Chronicles. The two editions of the Irish Chronicles foreground competing, conflicting claims to English political and cultural identity by rival (Old and New English) representatives of Englishness in colonial Ireland. The Irish Chronicles bear witness to a discursive struggle for English identity in Ireland, a struggle that took place on the apparent margins of English culture yet had a profound impact on both sides of the Irish Se