Writing of Piracy in English Sea Literary Classics

Abstract

Since the 15th century, pirates have played an important role in the development of the British empire, making a remarkable contribution to the early accumulation of primitive capital and overseas expansion. As the embodiment of British imperialist ideology, the Victorian British sea novels had an important impact on the world. Pirate writing has also been a popular theme in British sea literature since the 18th century. Taking the classical works Treasure Island, Coral Island and Captain Singleton as examples, these sea novels, which mostly take pirates as main characters, write about piracy from multiple perspectives. Pirates themselves are violent and barbaric, making their living by plundering and departing from morality and order. But the spirit of piracy has developed and been internalised as the core of British culture and has become an important part of the British national spirit. The British pirate culture also laid the foundation for the formation of the British national spirit. This paper will take this as the main research idea, analyze the pirates in sea literature, and explore and discuss the pirate spirit. In this way, this paper will analyze how these British authors shaped the unique expansion and adventure spirit from the image of savage pirates in novels and analyze how these spirits became the national spirit of the capital expansion of the British Empire.