Merry England

Merry England, or in more jocular, archaised spelling Merrie England, refers to an English autostereotype, a utopian conception of English society and culture based on an idyllic pastoral way of life that was allegedly prevalent at some time between the Middle Ages and the onset of the Industrial Revolution. More broadly, it connotes a putative essential Englishness with nostalgic overtones, incorporating such cultural symbols as the thatched cottage, the country inn, the cup of tea and Sunday roast. It may be treated both as a product of the sentimental nostalgic imagination and as an ideological or political construct Merry England is not a wholly consistent vision, a revisited England of which the late Oxford folklorist Roy Judge observed that it is a world that has never actually existed, a visionary, mythical landscape, where it is difficult to take normal historical bearings.By contrast, Ronald Hutton's study of churchwarden's accounts places the creation of Merry England in the years between 1350 and 1520, with the newly-elaborative annual festive round of the liturgical year, with candles and pageants, processions and games, boy bishops and decorated rood lofts... Mehr