No Room in History?<\/h1>\n
Making Room in History\u00a0<\/em>takes its title from an observation in Richard Cox’s 1689\u00a0Hibernia Anglicana<\/a><\/em>. Speaking of Ireland, Cox remarks:<\/p>\n It is strange that this Noble Kingdom, and the Affairs of it,\u00a0should find no room in History, but remain so very obscure, that not only the Inhabitants know little or nothing of what has pa\u017f\u017fed in their own Country; but even England, a Learned and Inqui\u017fitive Nation, skilful beyond comparison in the Histories of all other Countries, is nevertheless but very imperfectly informed in the Story of Ireland, though it be a Kingdom subordinate to England, and of the highest importance to it. (n. pag.)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n My research is very much concerned with the question of which texts, traditions, and genres are allowed to have “room” in history\u2014and of how early modern historical texts shaped the\u00a0national identities of the kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland.\u00a0Making Room in History<\/em> represents my attempt to encode some answers to these questions into early modern national histories themselves, representing through markup the various ways that writers label and taxonomize texts, make claims about history and poetry, and invoke historical and legendary materials to construct arguments about sovereignty.<\/p>\n Cox’s claims about all of the previous histories of Ireland\u2014that they do not merit the title of “History” at all\u2014as well as his his expression of surprise that England should be so ill informed on the past of this “subordinate” kingdom, indicate both the stakes and the rhetoric of early modern disciplinary assertions.\u00a0Cox\u2019s particular charges against the texts that made up Ireland\u2019s historical record\u2014that they are incoherent, inaccurate, and incapable of distinguishing fact from fiction\u2013are characteristic of many early modern writers\u2019 complaints about their sources, especially those that were penned by medieval chroniclers. The purpose Cox gives for his work in enabling England to understand this important subordinate kingdom and secure its re-conquest demonstrates an explicit political focus often apparent in early modern national histories, which were generally\u00a0designed\u00a0to produce national identities and establish claims of sovereignty.<\/p>\n Cox was one of a great many writers staking\u00a0claims about\u00a0the proper concerns and methods of history in order to control national narratives and influence the sovereignty of the kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland. Despite the prevalence of disciplinary gatekeeping\u00a0such as Cox’s, a great many writers also constructed their national histories as texts able to support a range of genres, including medieval legends and what Cox dismisses as “very silly Fictions.” Early modern historical and literary texts are thus quite complex, as writers deliberately transgressed the field\u2019s boundaries even as they were in the process of establishing them.<\/p>\n To capture some measure of\u00a0this complexity, I have developed a\u00a0TEI customization<\/a> based on my previous\u00a0research<\/a>\u00a0and begun test encoding of\u00a0an initial set of texts<\/a>, working with the TEI-encoded files recently released by the EEBO-TCP <\/a>partnership. Once I have completed this first phase of encoding, I will refine my customization and documentation and publish the encoded texts through the TEI Archive, Publishing, and Access Service<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n
Making Room in History<\/h1>\n
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