Ordering Empire

This book examines the relationship between empire, its representations in poetry, and the principal ways of ordering the world at certain key historical moments as figured in the work of three poets associated with Southern Africa: Luis Vaz de Camões in the sixteenth century, Thomas Pringle in the nineteenth century, and Roy Campbell in the twentieth century. In its consideration of ways of ‘ordering the world’ the book draws on Michel Foucault’s theory of epistemic periodisation. Positing the various consequences of such epistemic vision, yet connately dealing with the poets as specific individuals with their own predispositions, the book engages in analyses of selected passages from Camões’ epic Os Lusíadas, along with analyses of various poems by Pringle and Campbell.