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 29
... historical and geo- graphical facts are analyzed in order to explore the associations between the genre , the dis- courses of colonialism , and the construction of gender . These texts become " glasses " that reflect and refract the ...
... historical figure — an eleventh - century crusader is to become a romance hero whose adventures throughout a range of foreign countries will assume a didactic value in creating the moral character of both the women and men who will ...
... historical and geographic factuality in order to examine the associations between the genre , the discourses of colonialism , and the construction of gender . It argues that within the novella anxieties about the dissolution of national ...
... historical realities , uses the discourses of geogra- phy and ethnography to promote the ends of European colonialism and English nationalism . A final chapter examines the use of Latin with early modern prose ro- mance as a kind of ...
... historical re- port mesh . Medieval travel discourse had , as Margaret Hodgen reported in her very useful Early Anthropology in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries , combined " fragments of ancient learning and superstition ...
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 |