Cosmographical glasses : geographic discourse, gender, and Elizabethan fiction / Constance C. Relihan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Relihan, Constance Caroline.

Contributor:

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English fiction--Early modern, 1500-1700--History and criticism.

English fiction.

Geographical discoveries in literature.

Women and literature--England--History--16th century.

Women and literature.

England.

History.

Pastoral fiction, English--History and criticism.

Pastoral fiction, English.

Geography in literature.

Ethnicity in literature.

Sex role in literature.

America--In literature.

America.

Physical Description:

xvii, 148 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Kent, Ohio : Kent State University Press, [2004]

Summary:

In Cosmographical Glasses Constance Relihan examines the ways in which sixteenth-century English texts-travelers' 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 interpret 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 recognizable 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.

Contents:

The fiction of ethnography/the ethnography of fiction

The gendered and geographic "glasses" of the English novella

"Full works to excellent geographers"

Trapalonia, Machilenta, and the uses of fictional "glasses"

The ethnographic function of Latin.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 113-143) and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

ISBN:

0873388119

OCLC:

55131578