Talk:Merry England

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As racial slur[edit]

Merry England (or 'Olde England') is also used as a racial slur by many Americans, as seen in things like the Olde English District or similarly named American theme pubs. Should we address this? Matthew Platts 23:10, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Why is that a slur, rather than just antiquarianism? I'd have thouught the reference to half-timbered was enough. Charles Matthews 09:17, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I'm English, and I've never heard "Merry England" (or perhaps more frequently "Merrie Olde England") except in the dialogue of American films, in which it is clearly a condescending expression of ignorance (I wouldn't call it a "racial slur"). I don't think this is covered by the article. — Chameleon 14:11, 25 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I remember those Christmas cards with the snowy tally-ho coaching scenes, Hollywood's idea of Pickwick Papers-1830, with the yellow light coming through ye olde inn's diamond-paned casements and the sparkle glued onto the snow— all printed in America of course.
I believe Matthew Platts misunderstands the force of Olde Englysshe. It's directed, not at the English, but at over-enthusiastic American anglophilia. Septentrionalis 03:15, 27 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And snowy Christmas sards depicting Merry Old England also lead to the common American misconception that snow is common in England, when it is in reality about as rare as in the far southeast US. Americans have similar misconceptions regarding the Netherlands. Or, may this imagery be a relic of the Maunder minimum/Little Ice Age era? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.115.9.254 (talk) 20:48, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

John Major[edit]

There is a view that the comments on John Major is not required in this article.

My view is that he is an example of a prominent believer in Merry England, and therefore it is not inappropriate.--jrleighton 10:09, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

It certainly seemed like a joke. But I have received the following note at my Talkpage (Wetman 10:57, 17 August 2005 (UTC)):[reply]
Re. Merry England. The comment you reverted refers to an actual speech made by [[John Major], referring to a comment by George Orwell. Here are a variety of references.

Matthew Platts 09:55, 17 August 2005

Please someone work this material into a paragraph beginning with John Major's remark about "Merry England" and add the following references. --Wetman 10:57, 17 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Stanley Baldwin was much better at expressing the escapist theme of village England than Major was. Johnbull 00:29, 28 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, there isn't a complete copy of the relevant speech on the internet. But Major insists in his memoirs that the relevant passage (which quoted from Orwell) was misinterpreted, and I'm inclined to believe that this is the case. I'm not sure if the issue is worth a paragraph of its own. Ancus 16:52, 8 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Gothic[edit]

The reference to the Gothic revival is bizarre. Gothic architecture was of course a pan-European 'movement,' but English Gothic (at least after c. 1200) really _was_ fairly distinct from (though not uninfluenced by) Continental Gothic. Terms such as Early English, Decorated and Perpendicular refer to real, and distinclty English, architectural and artistic styles.

Text removed from article in chief, preserved here. Not sure I follow the complete tenor of the argument anyways, which seems to be an anti-Protestant rant. (Anon.)

Specious. The phrase "a specific "Merry England" that was not Catholic (always an issue with the Gothic style), yet full of lively detail" is not about our issues, but about English Protestant reservations about the Gothic Revival, expressed both before and after Catholic Emancipation. Surely such strains that run through the culture can be referred to without having to be demonstrated at every turn. As for Gothic architecture in England (locally "Early English"), one of the very first things one comes to understand when one first picks up a book or article on the subject is that it was being built by French masons in England in the 13th century as often as northern French cathedrals were built by English ones, working in a common style for patrons in an upper class, both lay and ecclesiastical, who were mostly related to one another. There is more variation [within England. But I think everyone knows that. Confidence outrunning competence. --Wetman 15:51, 12 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Half-timbered?[edit]

Is this really the right phrase?

TheLateDentarthurdent 10:16, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It's metonymic but pretty good, I'd say. Charles Matthews 10:42, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

merry, deep, and little[edit]

Are deep and little different than merry? Or are they perjorative terms for merry? The article didn't make it clear (at least not clear enough for me).

Little Englander emphasises the basic 'isolationism', which is correct. 'Deep England' is the invention of a couple of guys, one of whom is a Scot-Nat; it's not a major term. Charles Matthews 09:08, 12 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It's a mirror of "la France profonde" isn't it? is there anything more to "Deep England" than that?
But it's easy to be a Little Englander without going for Merry England (Richard Cobden, for example); whereas Puck of Pook's Hill at least glances at Merry-Englandism. While connected, these should be different articles. Septentrionalis 03:13, 27 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This article needs work[edit]

I came upon this article by combo-Googling certain names in Patrick's Wright's piece in the London Review of Books, 7 Sept. 2006. It's a handy synopsis as far as it goes, but hardly authoritative. The following comments amount to a plea by a non-expert for a bit more focus and rigour. From the top:

MERRY ENGLAND

1. "It is a utopian and not completely consistent vision: a revisited England, [quotation]." (a) The term "revisited England" is obscure as it stands: is it short for "revisited England of the mind" or something of the sort? (b) Is the quotation real? If so, who said it?

2. The 1st para. of "Merry England" is quite strong. I wonder: can Robin Hood and His Merry Men be tied in?

3. 2nd para. "At various times since the Middle Ages" is distressingly vague. The list that follows is unacceptably random. (a) "authors" would seem to comprise poets and propagandists. (b) What are "romanticists"? (c) What are "others"?

4. 3rd para. (a) The jump to Gothic Revival is disconcerting: it needs a segue. (b) Evidently the term Jacobethan was coined by Betjeman: the term should be attributed and linked. (c) The sentence beginning "They were peopled ..." contains too many ideas in confusing juxtaposition: e.g., "not Catholic ... yet full of lively detail." The parenthesis needs elaboration.

5. 4th to 6th paras. (a) Useful as far as they go, but they need to be synthesized in a discussion of conservative and radical reactions against industrial modernity. One of the most fascinating aspects of "Merry England" is its appeal to both reactionary and revolutionary critics of the new industrial order and the synthesis of those responses in the thought of William Morris, which in turn appealed to thinkers as diverse as Tolkien and E.P. Thompson. (b) I don't understand the meaning of "interested" in the 1st sentence of para. 4, or that of the first clause of the 2nd sentence. (c) In 6th para., presumably "version" should be "vision".

6. 7th para. The allusion to Storm Jameson needs clarifying.

DEEP ENGLAND

No doubt more could be said, but what is said is logical. But in the 3rd para., the allusions to "a particular political purpose" and "some political organisations" are disappointingly vague. And does "retrospective" mean "reactionary"? Why not say so? If not, what?'

"The concept of Deep England may imply an explicit opposition...." How does one imply an explicit opposition? Something is either explicit or implicit, and cannot be both.

LITTLE ENGLAND AND PROPAGANDA

Also rather sketchy. The allusion to Journey Through England needs explaining.

LITERATURE AND THE ARTS

(a) I don't understand the first sentence. (b) What does "Reference points might be taken as" (2nd para.) mean? (c) What is the "shift" that the quotation from Moorcock supposedly illustrates? Is the quotation accurate? I have my suspicions about the 2nd sentence (must check).

pmr 13:03, 11 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • I checked the Moorcock quotation: it is correct. pmr 14:19, 11 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
At Wikipedia, having such a clear view of what needs doing is already half the job. Start applying your criticisms directly to the article and it will bear more copious fruit! --Wetman 15:32, 11 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That would be a lot of work, not to be undertaken lightly, and in any case it would help if previous writers clarified their contributions. But as an initial contribution I have inserted an example of the term's use by Friedrich Engels. pmr 18:21, 14 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
At the bottom of the introduction: "Each Old England of the past reveals its own colour of nostalgia for an earlier age from which it was conscious of declining."
Are there separate Old Englands? This sentence doesn't seem to fit into the rest of the paragraph's tone. The phrasing waxes far more poetic than the rest of the article, which indicates it may have been lifted from somewhere (though there's no separate reference). I'm going to remove some of the excess flavoring and try to streamline it into the rest of the paragraph. The Cap'n (talk) 16:05, 4 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Twelve years on, I still think the Literature and the Arts section needs refining. I think if the essential medievalism associated with the pre-Raphaelites and Morris is to be mentioned in this context, then that needs justifying with reference to whichever critics of Morris's etc might have levied that charge. Otherwise this risks becoming a repository for prejudice against English pastoral in any form and with any intent (fine by me, but let's draw a line somewhere). There is nothing explicitly 'Merrie England' about Morris's Ruskinian socialist utopia, though plenty implicitly: it is a matter of opinion, which could likewise be extended to myriad expressions of the pastoral, but such a lack of discrimination would undercut the concept by abandoning the principle of using recognised examples (see: OR). I would use this section purely for notable literary and artistic references to the concept, or well recognised tendencies towards the trait backed up by scholarship. --Tosk Albanian (talk) 12:46, 5 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

other strands[edit]

There ought to be a reference to Belloc and Chesterton here I think as well. And then there's C S Lewis and Charles Williams...Deipnosophista (talk) 17:54, 27 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

And Hobsbawn's concept, the Invention of History. Profhum (talk) 10:07, 20 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Merry England in America[edit]

Nobody believes more fully in Merry England than we Americans, particularly the vast majority, who have never been to England. As I write, here in San Francisco, there is the annual Dickens Christmas Fair going on by the Bay-- actors dressed up as Dickens characters in a charming recreation of Victorian London that the audience strolls around in. American children are watching the latest Harry Potter movie at the Cineplex, and reading the book (even if they read no other books.) Oprah has made Dickens her new author in the Oprah reading club. (Too complicated to explain.) Nobody has ever been more Anglophile or Merry England than the 1930s Hollywood Jewish movie moguls. Look at the quaint representation of England in the movies they made-- Goodbye, Mr Chips, Mrs. Miniver... And speaking of Miniver, if America had not believed in Merry England, it would have followed Charles Lindbergh and the America Firsters and let the Germans do what they wanted to England. The Special Relationship's power rests on the Merry England myth in the United States. Americans on their first visit to the England, encountering the country Theodore Dalrymple writes about instead of Merry England, are shocked. It's depressing to sit in a lovely pub in the green countryside and be given an amateur anti American lecture full of schoolboy Marx. The upcoming Royal Wedding will revive the whole Merry England trope. One of my students, a stocky working class lady, has gone into hock but will be there in the crowd. Merry England, then, has been an important political, military and financial asset for England. Profhum (talk) 10:07, 20 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Walter Scott / Ivanhoe[edit]

The reference to Hazlitt mentions his lecture/essay on Merry England as being appended to an 1819 book. The Wikipedia article on Hazlitt says that this lecture/essay was first published in 1825.

The phrase was surely popularised by Sir Walter Scott - it is in the opening sentence of Ivanhoe (1820): "In that pleasant district of merry England which is watered by the river Don...." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.189.97.52 (talk) 14:14, 19 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified (January 2018)[edit]

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Midsomer Murders[edit]

Does Midsomer Murders deserve a mention on this page? After all, the series became famous for using quaint, picturesque villages as its setting in every episode. Steinbach (talk) 18:34, 18 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting comment. There are many films and TV programs that present country life in an idyllic manner in a modern context (although in the one you mention the participants keep murdering each other, so one wonders how the population density of the area is maintained). This suggests that the Merrie England trope is still alive. You could add something: I suggest short and general and sourced. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:31, 19 August 2018 (UTC).[reply]

Arable, sheep men?[edit]

"If there was a period after the Black Death when labour shortages meant that agricultural workers were in stronger positions, and serfdom was consequently eroded, the growing commercialisation of agriculture – with enclosures, rising rents, and pasture displacing arable, sheep men" - not a native English speaker but I still think something else was intended here...? 93.136.19.110 (talk) 00:59, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I presume its supposed to mean sheep are displacing men, as pasture is displacing arable farming. I don't have access to the source, so I don't know if its a typo, or just a clunky expression (I think that is a valid phrasing, but a rather poetic or archaic one). I've changed it accordingly. Iapetus (talk) 14:25, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
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