At Calais Gate
22 At Calais Gate CHAPTER ONE AT CALAIS GATE In 1749, William Hogarth painted “The Gate of Calais, or O the Roastbeef of Old England” (figure 1). We see, at left, the artist – Hogarth – practicing his art; above him we notice English coats of arms, picked out by a dra- matic, diagonal shaft of light that leads us back down to the artist;1 and at the center we see a drama played out around the massive, newly arrived, English joint of beef that supplies the painting’s subtitle. All this conspires to remind us that Calais stood upon English ground, or under English rule, for better than 200 years, which is to say from 1347 to 1558, a period taking in the lives of Chaucer, Margery Kempe, Sir Thomas Wyatt, and the recent cultural memory of Shakespeare. La Manche, or the English Channel, has come to assume a mythic role in English self-imaginings since the sixteenth century; but how did the sense of national identity differ for English writers when this seaway – between the white cliffs of Dover and the pas de Calais – formed in effect an extension of the highway from London to Canterbury? How did this strongly fortified English presence in continental Europe (boldly represented by the Gough map, ca. 1360, figure 2) affect those living on French or Flemish territory beyond this new frontier? How does their frontier experience (the term “frontiere” is often employed by Eustace Deschamps) compare with that of those living on either side of “St. George’s Channel” (that is, in Ireland and Wales)? And how does the history, culture, and literary production of the Calais colony align with greater and longer narratives of English global movement? At Calais Gate 23 1 William Hogarth, The Gate of Calais.
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