Degree Type
Honors Capstone Project
Date of Submission
Spring 5-2017
Capstone Advisor
Patricia Roylance
Honors Reader
Scott Stevens
Capstone Major
English
Capstone College
Arts and Science
Audio/Visual Component
no
Capstone Prize Winner
no
Won Capstone Funding
no
Honors Categories
Humanities
Subject Categories
English Language and Literature
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.
Recommended Citation
O'Hara, Emily, "Contested Spaces: Spatial Discourses and the Struggle for Power in the Early Modern English Empire" (2017). Honors Capstone Projects - All. 1033.
https://surface.syr.edu/honors_capstone/1033
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
