Cosmographical Glasses: Geographic Discourse, Gender, and Elizabethan FictionA fresh perspective on Elizabethan fiction In Cosmographical Glasses Constance Relihan examines the ways in which sixteenth-century English texts--traveler's reports, ethnographic studies, and geographic guides--provide the foundation for how fictional prose of the period envisions the locations in which its tales are set. Relihan suggests that this nonfictional discourse becomes central to how the fictional prose of the period imagines cultural identity, fictional purpose, and gender identity. Places and cultures were defined in opposition to each other in early modern romances. In the examples in Cosmographical Glasses, writers attempt to define the spaces of their texts in an effort to identify what it means to be male, English, and Elizabethan. Through these texts, Relihan considers the various ways in which fictional pieces seize the spirit of ethnographic and geographic texts, as well as the ways in which historically identifiable and overtly fictional places were used to complicate representations of utopian fantasies. A number of prose romances and novella collections and their use of historical and geographical facts are analyzed in order to explore the associations between the genre, the discourses of colonialism, and the construction of gender. These texts become "glasses" that reflect and refract the social and cultural realities of early modern England. Those interested in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English literature, the history of the novel, and the influence of travel literature on fictional texts will appreciate Cosmographical Glasses. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 38
... creating the moral character of both the women and men who will encounter his text . His travels will become a " glasse " for women , helping them to improve their behavior so " their good maners may shine as well as their beautie ...
... creates both cultural difference and cultural assimilation . And as the dedicatory ma- terial from Robarts's texts suggests , the reading experience is affected both by gender as well as geography.2 Specific authorial or narratival xiv ...
... create a homogenized national narrative that disregards the complex nature of the lived experience , the " locality " of a culture ( 140 ) .2 The discursive categories that supply the geographic information Blundeville seeks ...
... creating texts that both assert and undercut their factual accuracy . The early modern English ethnographic representation of foreign cul- tures is , above all , a fictional representation , and detangling the two narra- tive strands is ...
... create fictional , colonized , gendered alterity . Fictional Facts and Cosmographical Glasses : Reading Early Modern Geography William Watreman's 1555 The Fardle of Facions , a translation of Johann Boe- mus's Omnium gentium mores ...
Contents
1 | |
The Gendered and Geographic Glasses of the English Novella | 27 |
Full Works to Excellent Geographers | 45 |
Trapalonia Machilenta and the Uses of Fictional Glasses | 69 |
The Ethnographic Function of Latin | 86 |
Conclusion | 108 |
Notes | 113 |
Works Cited | 134 |
Index | 144 |