Ships of State:Literature and the Seaman’s Labour in Proto-Imperial Britain

by: Laurie Ellinghausen (Author)

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Publication Date: 2024/4/4

Language: English

Print Length: 216 pages

ISBN-10: 1487529473

ISBN-13: 9781487529475

Book Description

The ideological roots of the British Empire have been widely discussed in early mode 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 seaboe 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 seaboe labour and its literary representations in creating and sustaining empire.

About the Author

The ideological roots of the British Empire have been widely discussed in early mode 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 seaboe 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 seaboe labour and its literary representations in creating and sustaining empire.

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