Department of English

We tend to think of empire as the product of military might and political intrigue.  The premise of this class is that empire is also born out of the imaginative power of fiction, drama, and poetry.  That is, an empire must first be imagined before it can become a reality.We will test this theory through a broad survey of various plays, novels, and travel narratives that cover the period from even before the discovery of the Americas to the dawn of a British overseas empire in the eighteenth century.
Syllabus and Course Web Page: http://www.english.upenn.edu/~mulready/english248.html

Fulfills pre-1700 and pre-1900 seminar requirements and sector 3