Allegory and Difference in Ralegh and De Bry: Reading and Seeing the Discoverie

Abstract

The travel narratives in Theodor De Bry's America and the collection itself are often read allegorically: the events in the New World are read as signifying Protestant-Catholic conflict on the European continent. Attending to differences between the English text of Sir Walter Ralegh's The Discoverie of the Large, Rich and Bewtiful Empyre of Guiana and its Latin translation in part 8 of America, however, reveals a more complex relationship between individual texts in America and its allegorical project. The differences between Ralegh and De Bry are both textual (passages from the Discoverie that do not appear in the Latin translation) and visual (De Bry's addition of copper-plate engravings). These differences ultimately demonstrate that Guyana and Trinidad—especially because of how they were seen by early modern Europeans—cannot be fully contained within a Protestant allegorical project.