tailieunhanh - LAW AND EMPIRE IN ENGLISH RENAISSANCE LITERATURE

It is with great pleasure that I acknowledge and thank my mentors, Derek Attridge, Ronald Levao, Bridget Gellert Lyons, Jacqueline T. Miller, and Michael McKeon, who have supported this project from its beginning to the present day. Although I did not realize it at the time, this book also owes a substantial debt to my participation in Constance Jordan’s Folger Institute Seminar (Fall, 1994), which helped me to formulate an intellectual framework from which to consider intersections between fictional works and legal discourse\ . | Law and Empire in English Renaissance Literature 9780521858618 This page intentionally left blank LAW AND EMPIRE IN ENGLISH RENAISSANCE LITERATURE Early modern literature played a key role in the formation of the legal justification for imperialism. As the English colonial enterprise developed the existing legal tradition of common law no longer solved the moral dilemmas of the new world order in which England had become instead of a victim of Catholic enemies an aggressive force with its own overseas territories. Writers of romance fiction employed narrative strategies in order to resolve this difficulty and in the process provided a legal basis for English imperialism. Brian C. Lockey analyzes works by such authors as Shakespeare Spenser and Sidney in the light of these legal discourses and uncovers new contexts for the genre of romance. Scholars of early modern literature as well as those interested in the history of law as the British Empire emerged will learn much from this insightful and ambitious study. BRIAN c. LOCKEy is Assistant Professor of English at St. Johns University New York. He has published articles in the Journal of the History of Ideas English Literary Renaissance and the Journal for Early Modern Cultural .