Contested Spaces: Spatial Discourses and the Struggle for Power in the Early Modern English Empire
Year: 2017
Type: article
Abstract: This project examines how early modern English spatial discourses can be used to understand power relations at the beginning of American colonization. Through analyzing John Smith’s A True Relation, Smith’s Generall Historie of Virginia, Ralph Hamor’s A True Discourse of the Present Estate of Virginia, and William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, I argue that, despite English attempts to highlight their abilities to exert absolute control over peripheral spaces, English writers ultimately reveal within their texts that the English are unable to definitively control spaces throughout the empire. These spaces include peripheral regions far from English centers of imperial control and regions closer to and even within the imperial center of London.
Author: Emily O’Hara
Language: English
Topic: Spatial and Cultural Studies
Subfield: Geography, Planning and Development
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2955531041