Imagining Empire: Negotiating English Identity in the Early Modern English Pre-Conquest History Play

16世纪末17世纪初，当英国开始海外扩张时，它会回顾自己的殖民历史，想象自己的帝国会是什么样子。我的研究分析了描绘征服前英国历史的历史剧，其中三次对不列颠群岛的入侵——分别是罗马人、盎格鲁-撒克逊人和丹麦人——被戏剧化了。这些历史剧通过对既是祖先又是入侵者的矛盾表现，展示了近代早期英格兰努力摆脱对罗马文明强大影响的焦虑，并通过对历史的盗用来探索自己的帝国之路。

When England embarked on its overseas enterprise in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, it turned to its colonial past to imagine what its own empire might look like. My research analyses history plays depicting pre-Conquest British history, in which three invasions of the British Isles-by the Romans, the Anglo-Saxons and the Danes respectively-are dramatised. Through their ambivalent presentation of invaders who are also ancestors, these history plays demonstrate early modern England's endeavour to shake off the anxieties of the powerful influence of Roman civilisation and to explore its own path for an empire through the appropriation of history.