Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

In 1715 Susannah Centlivre wrote a panegyric to the new monarch, George I, whose title indicates its occasional and public status: A Poem. Humbly Presented to His most Sacred Majesty George, King of Great Britain, France and Ireland. Upon His Accession to the Throne. At the end of the poem, Centlivre signs herself: “I am with the profoundest Respect / Your Majesty's / Most Dutiful and / Most Devoted Subject “ a salutation that makes clear the connection between poetic practice and political persuasion. However, it is not only party affiliation that explains this panegyric; in writing such a poem Centlivre joined a great many of her fellow poets—Whigs, Tories, those without particular party identification—in a chorus of ritual celebration. Centlivre's poem is thus representative of the vast corpus of nationalist poetry written in this period, and allows us to note a great many of the formal, thematic, and rhetorical elements that are crucial to any enquiry into the links between poetry, politics, and empire in the long eighteenth century in England (and, post-1707, in Britain). To work through her poem is to list several of the commonplaces of English nationalism as they were debated and developed; the poem also allows us to assess the characteristically aggressive tone of divine certainty and worldly hope that becomes a staple of poems on “Great Britain” as that entity is forged ... log in or subscribe to read full text