New Worlds, Old Worlds
Dr Jane Grogan (co-ordinator)
The literary, political and diplomatic constructions of East and West in the early modern period cast a long shadow even today. This module examines the texts and intertexts of such constructions, and the store of moralised and classicised motifs and paradigms in which so-called ‘new’ worlds as well as the ‘old worlds’ of the Atlantic archipelago were conceived in the period. This project was intimately related to the questions and instabilities of national identity much closer to home, particularly after the accession of King James VI of Scotland to the English throne in 1603. We will therefore explore the making and re-making of English and British national identity, the investment in ideas of ethnic difference, and the literary provenance and performance of empire in genres as varied as travelogue, prose romance, colonial propaganda, drama and masque. In sum, this module investigates the purposes and means by which early modern English writers mapped themselves and others by connecting ideas of old and new worlds, all the way from Anglo-Saxon Britain,'Scythian' Ireland and classical Rome to colonial America, Catholic Ireland and as far East as the Islamic Ottoman empire.