Nashe's (Self-)Portrait of a Town

Abstract

Thomas Nashe took refuge in  Yarmouth after his involvement in the The Isle of Dogs scandal. In the coastal town he found hospitality and in 1598, during Lent, he was working on his pamphlet Lenten Stuff: an encomium of Yarmouth and of its major resource, the herring, in which history and myth are freely intermingled. Aim of this paper is to analyse and discuss Nashe’s peculiar mythical method as a means of celebrating the town and, most of all, his own writing.