For centuries England s writers used the metaphor of their country as an island garden to engage in a self-conscious debate about national identity. In "The Island Garden: England s Language of Nation from Gildas to Marvell, "Lynn Staley suggests that the trope of Britain as an island garden catalyzed two crucial historical perspectives and thus analytic modes: as isolated and vulnerable, England stood in a potentially hostile relation to the world outside its encircling sea; as semi-enclosed and permeable, it also accepted recuperative relationships with those who moved across its...
For centuries England s writers used the metaphor of their country as an island garden to engage in a self-conscious debate about national identity...
