John Bale and the Everywhere “I”

Abstract

In literary studies today there remains a tendency to overlook textual productions of the early- and mid-Tudor period, chiefly on account of their perceived unliterariness. Despite this the age has proved central to our general appreciation of literature and literary history, particularly in its invention of “the medieval,” and prominence in this matter has been bestowed upon the Reformation polemicist, bibliographer, playwright and editor, John Bale. As father of English literary history Bale deserves to be better known, but there are other reasons to read his work too. Bale’s readiness to make himself the subject of his own work is one of these, I argue, because through it we may begin to approach an issue of central importance in Reformation studies, which is what did identity mean to men and women in the age of Reformation, and how was this variously constructed and articulated? In this essay I introduce and sketch out just some of the issues associated with Bale’s unusually pronounced textual selfregard. By showing that it is possible to use even Bale’s most overlooked works in order to engage with and think afresh about important debates in current scholarship, I mean to persuade readers that there is strong reason to take seriously the full range of his writings.