Literature, Travel, and Colonial Writing in the English Renaissance, 1545-1625

Literature, Travel, and Colonial Writing in the English Renaissance, 1545-1625

Author: Andrew Hadfield

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 0198184808

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What was the purpose of representing foreign lands for writers in the English Renaissance? This innovative and wide-ranging study argues that writers often used their works as vehicles to reflect on the state of contemporary English politics, particularly their own lack of representation inpublic institutions. Sometimes such analyses took the form of displaced allegories, whereby writers contrasted the advantages enjoyed, or disadvantages suffered, by foreign subjects with the political conditions of Tudor and Stuart England. Elsewhere, more often in explicitly colonial writings,authors meditated on the problems of government when faced with the possibly violent creation of a new society. If Venice was commonly held up as a beacon of republican liberty which England would do well to imitate, the fear of tyrannical Catholic Spain was ever present - inspiring and hauntingmuch of the colonial literature from 1580 onwards. This stimulating book examines fictional and non-fictional writings, illustrating both the close connections between the two made by early modern readers and the problems involved in the usual assumption that we can make sense of the past with thecategories available to us. Hadfield explores in his work representations of Europe, the Americas, Africa, and the Far East, selecting pertinent examples rather than attempting to embrace a total coverage. He also offers fresh readings of Shakespeare, Marlowe, More, Lyly, Hakluyt, Harriot, Nashe,and others.


Curiosity and Wonder from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment

Curiosity and Wonder from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment

Author: R.J.W. Evans

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-03-02

Total Pages: 449

ISBN-13: 1351946668

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'Curiosity' and 'wonder' are topics of increasing interest and importance to Renaissance and Enlightenment historians. Conspicuous in a host of disciplines from history of science and technology to history of art, literature, and society, both have assumed a prominent place in studies of the Early Modern period. This volume brings together an international group of scholars to investigate the various manifestations of, and relationships between, 'curiosity' and 'wonder' from the 16th to the 18th centuries. Focused case studies on texts, objects and individuals explore the multifaceted natures of these themes, highlighting the intense fascination and continuing scrutiny to which each has been subjected over three centuries. From instances of curiosity in New World exploration to the natural wonders of 18th-century Italy, Curiosity and Wonder from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment locates its subjects in a broad geographical and disciplinary terrain. Taken together, the essays presented here construct a detailed picture of two complex themes, demonstrating the extent to which both have been transformed and reconstituted, often with dramatic results.


Letterwriting in Renaissance England

Letterwriting in Renaissance England

Author: Folger Shakespeare Library

Publisher: University of Washington Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13:

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Reproduces in full size and transcribes a number of letters from the early sixteenth to the early eighteenth centuries


The Fatal Gift of Beauty: The Italies of British Travellers

The Fatal Gift of Beauty: The Italies of British Travellers

Author: Manfred Pfister

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2023-04-12

Total Pages: 570

ISBN-13: 9004650857

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This is the first anthology of British travel writing on Italy which traces the development of the genre and the history of the British perception of Italy from the Renaissance to the present. As an anthologie raissonnée it presents the texts in thematic clusters and chronological order, providing commentary and annotations for each of them and their nearly hundred authors (some of them, like Smollett, Byron, Dickens or Huxley, well-known, others virtually unknown, amongst them many unduly neglected women writers). Further features are a substantial introduction to the travelogue and the writing of Italy, more than thirty illustrations visualizing the British experience of Italy, and an extensive bibliography of primary and secondary sources.


Shakespeare And Renaissance Europe

Shakespeare And Renaissance Europe

Author: Andrew Hadfield

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2014-05-13

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13: 1408143690

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This collection of essays explores the diverse ways in which Shakespeare and his contemporaries experienced and imagined Europe. The book charts the aspects of European politics and culture which interested Renaissance travellers, thus mapping the context within which Shakespeare's plays with European settings would have been received. Chapters cover the politics of continental Europe, the representation of foreigners on the English stage, the experiences of English travellers abroad, Shakespeare's reading of modern European literature, the influence of Italian comedy, his presentation of Moors from Europe's southern frontier, and his translation of Europe into settings for his plays.


Borders and Travellers in Early Modern Europe

Borders and Travellers in Early Modern Europe

Author: Thomas Betteridge

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-03-02

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 1351954911

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Early modern Europe was obsessed with borders and travel. It found, imagined and manufactured new borders for its travellers to cross. It celebrated and feared borders as places or states where meanings were charged and changed. In early modern Europe crossing a border could take many forms; sailing to the Americas, visiting a hospital or taking a trip through London's sewage system. Borders were places that people lived on, through and against. Some were temporary, like illness, while others claimed to be absolute, like that between the civilized world and the savage, but, as the chapters in this volume show, to cross any of them was an exciting, anxious and often a potentially dangerous act. Providing a trans-European interdisciplinary approach, the collection focuses on three particular aspects of travel and borders: change, status and function. To travel was to change, not only humans but texts, words, goods and money were all in motion at this time, having a profound influence on cultures, societies and individuals within Europe and beyond. Likewise, status was not a fixed commodity and the meaning and appearance of borders varied and could simultaneously be regarded as hostile and welcoming, restrictive and opportunistic, according to one's personal viewpoint. The volume also emphasizes the fact that borders always serve multiple functions, empowering and oppressing, protecting and threatening in equal measure. By using these three concepts as measures by which to explore a variety of subjects, Borders and Travellers in Early Modern Europe provides a fascinating new perspective from which to re-assess the way in which early modern Europeans viewed themselves, their neighbours and the wider world with which they were increasingly interacting.


India in Early Modern English Travel Writings

India in Early Modern English Travel Writings

Author: Rita Banerjee

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2021-07-15

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 9004448268

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Comparing the variant ideologies of the representations of India in seventeenth-century European travelogues, India in Early Modern English Travel Narratives concerns a relatively neglected area of study and often overlooked writers. Relating the narratives to contemporary ideas and beliefs, Rita Banerjee argues that travel writers, many of them avid Protestants, seek to negativize India by constructing her in opposition to Europe, the supposed norm, by deliberately erasing affinities and indulging in the politics of disavowal. However, some travelogues show a neutral stance by dispassionate ethnographic reporting, indicating a growing empirical trend. Yet others, influenced by the Enlightenment ideas of diversity, demonstrate tolerance of alien practices and, occasionally, acceptance of the superior rationality of the other's customs.