Ships of State : Literature and the Seaman’s Labour in Proto-Imperial Britain
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| Title: | Ships of State : Literature and the Seaman’s Labour in Proto-Imperial Britain |
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| Description: | The ideological roots of the British Empire have been widely discussed in early modern studies, as have maritime settings in the period's imaginative writing. However, these perspectives have not adequately accounted for how literature's evolving representations of the common British seaman shaped the early stages of public discourse about Britain's imperial endeavours. Filling that gap in scholarship, Ships of State argues that literary representations of seaborne labour play a distinct and crucial role in the early formation of British imperial attitudes. The book analyses these representations across an array of popular genres: New World promotion tracts, civic pageantry, stage drama, and broadside ballads. These genres demonstrate how imaginative modes of discourse both reflected and influenced popular conceptions of the common seaman and, by extension, the national ambitions he represented. Placing these depictions into dialogue with the larger national conversation about maritime expansion, Ships of State sheds new light on the role of seaborne labour and its literary representations in creating and sustaining empire. |
| Authors: | Laurie Ellinghausen |
| Resource Type: | eBook. |
| Subjects: | Sailors in literature, Imperialism in literature, English literature--Early modern, 1500-1700--History and criticism, Sailors--Great Britain--History |
| Categories: | LITERARY CRITICISM / Renaissance, HISTORY / Modern / General, HISTORY / Social History |
| Database: | eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) |
| Abstract: | The ideological roots of the British Empire have been widely discussed in early modern studies, as have maritime settings in the period's imaginative writing. However, these perspectives have not adequately accounted for how literature's evolving representations of the common British seaman shaped the early stages of public discourse about Britain's imperial endeavours. Filling that gap in scholarship, Ships of State argues that literary representations of seaborne labour play a distinct and crucial role in the early formation of British imperial attitudes. The book analyses these representations across an array of popular genres: New World promotion tracts, civic pageantry, stage drama, and broadside ballads. These genres demonstrate how imaginative modes of discourse both reflected and influenced popular conceptions of the common seaman and, by extension, the national ambitions he represented. Placing these depictions into dialogue with the larger national conversation about maritime expansion, Ships of State sheds new light on the role of seaborne labour and its literary representations in creating and sustaining empire. |
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| ISBN: | 9781487529475 9781487529482 9781487529499 |
