In this timely and impactful contribution to debates over the relationship of politics to storytelling, Lee Manion uncovers the centrality of narrative to the European concept of sovereignty. In Scottish and English texts traversing the political, the legal, the historiographical, and the literary, and from the medieval through to the early modern period, he examines the tumultuous development of the sovereignty discourse and the previously underappreciated role of narratives of recognition. Situating England and Scotland in a broader inter-imperial milieu, Manion shows how sovereignty's hierarchies of recognition and stories of origins prevented more equitable political unions. The genesis of this discourse is traced through tracts by Buchanan, Dee, Persons, and Hume, histories by Hardyng, Wyntoun, Mair, and Holinshed, and romances by Malory, Barbour, Spenser, and Melville. Combining formal analysis with empire studies, international relations theory, and political history, Manion reveals the significant consequences of literary writing for political thought.

‘Lee Manion's book takes seriously political patterns in both Scottish and English literary traditions, paying particular attention to Scottish works unfamiliar south of the Border. It offers new insights into the articulation of empire, sovereignty and identity in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.'

Nicola Royan - Professor of Older Scottish Literatures, University of Nottingham