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 54
... narratives are uniquely positioned generically and historically to make the greatest use of the bur- geoning market for travel narratives as a means to catch the reader's atten- tion and influence the reading experience . The opening ...
... narrative of wandering with some accuracy ; second , he presents himself to his read- ers ( here exclusively male ) as a " Pilot . " His readers become , then , part of one of the cultures that the wandering Pheander visits , and as the ...
... narrative discourse.3 " Place , " in his argument , which has broad implications for sociology and cultural studies ... narratives must be set somewhere , or as simple markers differentiating the court and pastoral worlds . If , however ...
... narratives . It argues that both catego- ries of text are engaged in the same cultural work : establishing foreign lo- cations as de Certeauian " spaces " onto which cultural anxieties and the project of colonization may be projected ...
... 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 — ethnography , car- tography ...
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 |