Stooping to Conquer: Heathen Idolatry and Protestant Humility in the Imperial Legend of Sir Francis Drake
- UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
- Christopher T. Hodgkins, Professor (Creator)
- Institution
- The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
- Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/
Abstract: The Muses seem to have neglected Sir Francis Drake. "It is curious,"
writes W. T. Jewkes, "that Drake's voyages and exploits
have made such a small impact on major English literature, particularly
in his own age."1 On one level, Jewkes is right; as Michael J. B.
Allen has noted, there is nothing about Drake in English to compare
with Luis de Camoens's brilliantly realized Os Lusiados, his national
epic about the Portuguese mariner Vasco da Gama. So, says Allen,
Drake's influence on English literature is only felt "gradually, obliquely,
inconspicuously almost," in the imagery of The Tempest, in Donne's
hymn in his sickness, in Marvell's ode on the Bermudas. "Drake's finest
interpreter might have been Conrad," Allen suggests; but he laments
that Conrad "left Drake unillumined by his intricate, musical prose."2
Stooping to Conquer: Heathen Idolatry and Protestant Humility in the Imperial Legend of Sir Francis Drake
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Additional Information
- Publication
- Studies in Philology 94: 428-64.
- Language: English
- Date: 1997
- Keywords
- English historical figures, Sir Francis Drake, English literarure, Poetry, England