Heroes of Empire: The British Imperial Protagonist in America, 1596-1764

During the English Enlightenment the British imperial project in America had a substantial impact on the way England viewed itself. Frohock (18th century British and American literature, Oklahoma State U.) examines this process as an ongoing dialogue that constructed different forms of heroic narrative for describing the colonial project. He discusses the fictions of Aphra Behn and Thomas Southerne as attempts to connect the heroic and capitalist worlds, discusses the scientist and the agricultural laborer as alternative heroes of appropriation, and looks at the creation of satirical heroes as critiques of colonial rationales. Distributed in the US by Associated University Presses. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR