Reforming Empire: Protestant Colonialism and Conscience in British Literature""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 |
From inside the book
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Page 5
... edition; citations will be made parenthetically by act, scene, and line numbers, unless otherwise indicated. 11. Armitage, Ideological Origins of the British Empire, 4. 12. Suvir Kaul, Poems of Nation, Anthems of Empire: English ...
... edition; citations will be made parenthetically by act, scene, and line numbers, unless otherwise indicated. 11. Armitage, Ideological Origins of the British Empire, 4. 12. Suvir Kaul, Poems of Nation, Anthems of Empire: English ...
Page 12
... , 9.16.206. All further citations of this edition will be indicated parenthetically in the text by HKB followed by book, chapter, and page number. 4. Augustine, The City of God against the Pagans, 147. 12 Reforming Empire.
... , 9.16.206. All further citations of this edition will be indicated parenthetically in the text by HKB followed by book, chapter, and page number. 4. Augustine, The City of God against the Pagans, 147. 12 Reforming Empire.
Page 14
... edition will be indicated parenthetically in the text by PN followed by volume and page number. 10. Richard Schoeck, “Renaissance Guides to Renaissance Learning,” 241. 11. Sherman, John Dee, 151, 152. 12. Hugh A. MacDougall, Racial Myth ...
... edition will be indicated parenthetically in the text by PN followed by volume and page number. 10. Richard Schoeck, “Renaissance Guides to Renaissance Learning,” 241. 11. Sherman, John Dee, 151, 152. 12. Hugh A. MacDougall, Racial Myth ...
Page 18
... edition and will be made parenthetically by book, canto, and stanza number. Here the citations are to book and canto number. 16. Dee, Diary 4, 9–10. Characteristically, however, Dee does not tell even his diary just what Elizabeth saw ...
... edition and will be made parenthetically by book, canto, and stanza number. Here the citations are to book and canto number. 16. Dee, Diary 4, 9–10. Characteristically, however, Dee does not tell even his diary just what Elizabeth saw ...
Page 33
... his anti-Roman campaigns, and his last battle. 45. Brian Jay Corrigan, ed. The Misfortunes of Arthur: A Critical, Old-Spelling Edition, 46. L. R. Galyon, “Spenser, Edmund,” in The Arthurian Encyclopedia, 1–3. Once-and-Future Kings 33.
... his anti-Roman campaigns, and his last battle. 45. Brian Jay Corrigan, ed. The Misfortunes of Arthur: A Critical, Old-Spelling Edition, 46. L. R. Galyon, “Spenser, Edmund,” in The Arthurian Encyclopedia, 1–3. Once-and-Future Kings 33.
Contents
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 |
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American appears Arthur authority become begins Black Britain British called century chapter Charles Christian church civility claim colonial comes conquest Conrad conversion cultural Darkness death divine domestic Drake early edition Elizabethan empire England English especially eventually fact faith first further give Hakluyt hand heart Henry History hope human humanist imagination imperial Indians ironic island James John Johnson kind King kingdom land Legend London look Lord Lost Matter means Milton mind moral myth native natural noted origins Paradise person play poem political possession present Press Prince promise Protestant Queen Reformation religion religious restored revival Robert Roman rule Samuel Satan savage says seems sense Significantly Sir Francis Drake Spain Spanish Spenser spiritual suggests Swift things Thomas true turn University Virginia voyage worship writes