ENGL 265-04, Ideas of Empire in British Literature: Dreams Nightmares and Responses, Fall 2012

Abstract

“Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises”. So says Caliban, dispossessed and colonized subject on Prospero’s island, in Shakespeare’s The Tempest; but – bizarrely – so did the 19th-century engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel in the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics, a ceremony that showed the host culture using literature once again to try to make sense of its history, both proud and shameful, as an empire. “Empire” is a complex term, not least as it applies to that other complex entity, “Britain” (as opposed to the simpler idea of “England”, for instance). This course will focus on literary texts composed during the formation of both Britain and what came to be the British empire(s). We will examine the way they represent and engage with ideas of empire; different attitudes to English dominance in the British Isles; different responses to the growth of English and British commercial dominance and territorial expansion; and both positive and negative evaluations of the imperial project. The course will end by considering some of the literature and movies of the dissolution of Britain’s empire and the emergence of a startlingly multi-cultural society.