Law and empire in English Renaissance literature
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Law and empire in English Renaissance literature
Cambridge University Press, 2006
- : hbk
Available at 11 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
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 Lockey analyses 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.
Table of Contents
- Introduction: romance and the ethics of expansion
- Part I. Romance and Law: 1. Transnational justice and the genre of Romance
- 2. Natural law and charitable intervention in Sir Philip Sidney's Old Arcadia
- 3. Natural law and corrupt lawyers: Riche, Roberts, Johnson, and Warner
- 4. Spenser's legalization of the Irish conquest
- Part II. The Prerogative Courts and the Conquest Within: 5. Historical contexts: common law, natural law, civil law
- 6. Roman conquest and English legal identity in Cymbeline
- 7. Love's justice and the freedom of Brittany in Lady Mary Wroth's Urania Part One
- Conclusion: English law and the early modern Romance.
by "Nielsen BookData"