Reforming Empire: Protestant Colonialism and Conscience in British LiteratureUniversity of Missouri Press, 2002 - 304 páginas ""The strength of Empire," wrote Ben Jonson, "is in religion." In Reforming Empire, Christopher Hodgkins takes Jonson's dictum as his point of departure, showing how for more than four centuries the Protestant imagination gave the British Empire its main paradigms for dominion and also, ironically, its chief languages of anti-imperial dissent. From Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene to Rudyard Kipling's "The Man Who Would Be King," English literature about empire has turned with strange constancy to themes of worship and idolatry, atrocity and deliverance, slavery and service, conversion, prophecy, apostasy, and doom." "Focusing on the work of the Protestant imagination from the Renaissance origins of English overseas colonization through the modern end of England's colonial enterprise, Hodgkins organizes his study around three kinds of religious binding - unification, subjugation, and self-restraint. He shows how early modern Protestants like Hakluyt and Spenser reformed the Arthurian chronicles and claimed to inherit Rome's empire from the Caesars: how Ralegh and later Cromwell imagined a counterconquest of Spanish America, and how Milton's Satan came to resemble Cortes; how Drake and the fictional Crusoe established their status as worthy colonial masters by refusing to be worshiped as gods; and how seventeenth-century preachers, poets, and colonists moved haltingly toward a racist metaphysics - as Virginia began by celebrating the mixed marriage of Pocahontas but soon imposed the draconian separation of the Color Line." "Yet Hodgkins reveals that Tudor-Stuart times also saw the revival of Augustinian anti-expansionism and the genesis of Protestant imperial guilt. From the start, British Protestant colonialism contained its own opposite: a religion of self-restraint. Though this conscience often was co-opted or conscripted to legitimize conquests and pacify the conquered, it frequently found memorable and even fierce literary expression in writers such as |
Dentro del libro
Resultados 1-5 de 51
Página ix
... claiming all of their lands and services for Queen Elizabeth . A few hours later , as I relaxed at a showing of John Huston's film version of Rudyard Kipling's “ The Man Who Would Be King , ” I suddenly realized that I was seeing ...
... claiming all of their lands and services for Queen Elizabeth . A few hours later , as I relaxed at a showing of John Huston's film version of Rudyard Kipling's “ The Man Who Would Be King , ” I suddenly realized that I was seeing ...
Página 2
... claims . Having no Vatican , says Armitage , the reformed powers in Europe , Eng- land , and Scotland had trouble articulating any right to universal , “ catholique ” imperial possession ; such claims seemed “ Romish , ” and the ...
... claims . Having no Vatican , says Armitage , the reformed powers in Europe , Eng- land , and Scotland had trouble articulating any right to universal , “ catholique ” imperial possession ; such claims seemed “ Romish , ” and the ...
Página 4
... claim that “ what looks to us like subversion in the art of the past . . . is merely something orthodoxy makes strategic use of in order to sustain itself . ” 8 On the contrary , there is much within orthodoxy — in this case , Christian ...
... claim that “ what looks to us like subversion in the art of the past . . . is merely something orthodoxy makes strategic use of in order to sustain itself . ” 8 On the contrary , there is much within orthodoxy — in this case , Christian ...
Página 6
... claiming that the Seven Years ' War of 1756–1763 “ did indeed bring the British Empire into being ” by adding Canada and India to Britain's possessions . See Donald J. Greene , “ Samuel Johnson and the Great War for Empire , ” 39. Yet ...
... claiming that the Seven Years ' War of 1756–1763 “ did indeed bring the British Empire into being ” by adding Canada and India to Britain's possessions . See Donald J. Greene , “ Samuel Johnson and the Great War for Empire , ” 39. Yet ...
Página 7
... claim to the translatio imperii , the inheritance of Caesar's mantle . Fitfully under the early Tudors and emphatically after the Reformation , English writers recovered and reinvented the “ British ” identity . Key texts include Dee's ...
... claim to the translatio imperii , the inheritance of Caesar's mantle . Fitfully under the early Tudors and emphatically after the Reformation , English writers recovered and reinvented the “ British ” identity . Key texts include Dee's ...
Índice
10 | |
Two The Uses of Atrocity | 54 |
Three Stooping to Conquer | 77 |
Four The Nubile Savage and the Soulless Slave | 113 |
Five Prophets against Empire | 137 |
Six Hollow All Delight | 191 |
Moravians in the Moon | 241 |
Index | 267 |
Otras ediciones - Ver todo
Reforming Empire: Protestant Colonialism and Conscience in British Literature Christopher Hodgkins Vista previa restringida - 2002 |
Reforming Empire: Protestant Colonialism and Conscience in British Literature Christopher Hodgkins Vista de fragmentos - 2002 |
Términos y frases comunes
American anti-imperial Artegall Arthur Arthurian Aziz Black Legend Blake blood Britain British Empire British imperial Burke C. S. Lewis Caliban called Casas century chapter Christian humanist chronicle civility claim colonial conquered conquest Conrad Cortés countertradition cultural Cymbeline Dee's divine E. M. Forster early Elizabethan England English Protestant epic Evelyn Waugh expansionist Faerie Queene Ferrar further citations Geoffrey Hakluyt Heart of Darkness Henry History Houyhnhnm Howards End human Ibid imperial imagination imperialist Indian island John Dee King kingdom land literary London Lord Matter of Britain Milton modern moral myth native Paradise parenthetically Pocahontas poem political possession Prince Principal Navigations Protestant imperial Purchas Ralegh Reformation religion religious restored revival Richard Robert Rolfe Roman Samuel Johnson Satan savage Shakespeare Significantly Sir Francis Drake Sir Thomas slave Spain Spaniards Spanish Spenser spiritual Swift Tennyson translatio imperii Tudor University Press Victorian Virginia voyage Waugh William worship writes Yahoo