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
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... reading early portions of this manuscript and providing extremely important e - mail support . I am also grateful to those individuals who provided me with feedback at the various conferences at which I discussed the importance of ...
... readers , Robarts writes : And if any will alleage , that in this Poeticall praising of him , there be many fictions ( as , Poetis et pictoribus per magna conceditur licentia ) let such learne to reade those manner of bookes , as ...
... Readers " ( 4 ) , transfers the geographical connections into the text itself : Gentlemen , after many bloudy bickerings and dangerous hazards in great perils on the seas , I haue recouered the hauen of my desire , and haue brought for ...
... readers often construct the gender of the implied reader , altering our expe- rience of early modern prose fiction and augmenting the tensions inherent in it . The struggle to differentiate oneself from the experience of fictional prose ...
... readers . The tensions between spaces and places , for de Certeau , mark out ten- sions between what he calls ... reader of the travel report , and women are more likely to stand in for the exotic location the male traveler visits ...
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 |