Chapter 4 - Ann Yearsley’s ‘Brutus’ As Evangelical Epic Poem

Summary

My examination of the general trends in epic writings of the 1790s lays the ground for my fourth chapter to explore one of the more curious epics of that decade: ‘Brutus’, by Ann Yearsley. The chapter explores how Yearsley uses the resources of the epic genre to claim a cultural authority that permits her to promote the idea of an uplifting colonialism that seeks to transform indigenous populations. Yet she seeks to qualify and critique this ideology of Christian imperialism by calling attention to its accompanying dangers. Attending to the ways she draws attention to the racial hybridity of conversion narratives – as well as the ways she deflects the anxieties summoned by such hybridity – I show how Yearsley implicitly claims for herself a transcendent interiority that both aligns her with the middle class and allows her to assert independence from those who would exert authority over her, such as her former patron Hannah More.