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

当英国在16世纪末和17世纪初开始其海外事业时，它转向了它的殖民历史来想象它自己的帝国可能是什么样子。我的研究分析了描述征服前英国历史的历史剧，其中戏剧化了不列颠群岛的三次入侵-分别是罗马人、盎格鲁-撒克逊人和丹麦人。这些历史剧通过对同时也是祖先的侵略者的矛盾呈现，展示了早期现代英格兰努力摆脱罗马文明强大影响的焦虑，并通过挪用历史探索自己的帝国道路。

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.