Title: Community Imagination in Ben Jonson’s Court Masques

Abstract: The fashioning of state imagery was inseparable from scholars’ literary imagination and discourse construction in early modern England. Ben Jonson, one of the most famous playwrights in the English Renaissance, actively takes part in the fashioning of English state imagery and national consciousness imaginatively portrayed in his court masques. He feigns in The Masque of Blackness and The Masque of Beauty a white England-centered imperial community, which is ruled by the virtuous King James I. Then, he consolidates and propagates this community through stage performance, publication and circulation.

Keywords: Ben Jonson, masque, community imagination, cultural imperialism

Author: Meiqun Wu, Lecturer, School of Foreign Languages, Changsha University, Changsha, Hunan, China.