Colonial Writing Research Articles

Amazons, Savages, and Machiavels. Travel and Colonial Writing in English, 1550–1630: An Anthology. Ed. Matthew Dimmock and Andrew Hadfield. 2 nd edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022.

Amazons, Savages, and Machiavels. Travel and Colonial Writing in English, 1550–1630: An Anthology. Ed. Matthew Dimmock and Andrew Hadfield. 2 nd edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022.

Weep for the Coming of Men: Epidemic and Disease in Anglo-Western Colonial Writing of the South Pacific

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, epidemics ravaged South Pacific islands after contact with Westerners. With no existing immunity to introduced diseases, consequent death tolls on these remote islands were catastrophic. During that period, a succession of significant Anglo-Western writers visited the South Pacific region: Herman Melville, Robert Louis Stevenson, Louis Becke, Jack London, and Fredrick O’Brien. In a remarkable literary conjunction, they each successively visited the Marquesas Islands, which became for them a microcosm of the epidemiological disaster they were witnessing across the Pacific. Instead of the tropical Eden they expected, these writers experienced and wrote about a tainted paradise corrupted and fatally ravaged by contact with Western societies. Even though these writers were looking through the prism of Social Darwinism and extinction discourse, they were all nevertheless appalled at the situation, and their writing is witness to their anguish. Unlike the typical Victorian-era traveller described by Mary Louise Pratt as the “seeing-man”, who remained distanced in their writing from the environment around them, this group wrote with the authority of personal felt experience, bearing witness to the horrific impact of Western society on the physical and mental health of Pacific Island populations. The literary voice of this collection of writers continues to be not only a clear and powerful witness of the past, but also a warning to the present about the impact of ‘civilisation’ on Pacific Island peoples and cultures.

Pina Ballario's Colonial and Travel Writing: Desserts, Breastfeeding and Pleasure as Opposition to Fascism

ABSTRACTA prolific author whose production extends over four decades, Pina Ballario was an overt supporter of fascism who later enjoyed a successful career in Republican Italy. In this article I explore her treatment of alimentary images in the travel book Come ho visto la Russia e altri paesi del mondo and the colonial novels Fortuna sotto vento and Il figlio che mi hai dato. I argue that Ballario’s use of alimentary images reveals an opposition to Fascist policies that belies her openly declared support for the regime. The analysis considers the centrality of alimentary discourses in the 1930s, at both cultural and economic levels, and also considers alimentary imagination as expression of personal emotions and subjectivities. Alimentary discourse is therefore crucial to our understanding of literary support for, or opposition to, Fascism.

The Scope of Colonial Writing in Enhancing Sri Lankan Cultural Diplomacy

The Scope of Colonial Writing in Enhancing Sri Lankan Cultural Diplomacy

“The First English Lady Seen in These Parts”: Autoexoticizing Race and Gender in Colonial Women's Writing on Cyprus

I have before remarked upon the … excitement which our presence caused in many villages, where we were assured that, with the exception, of course, of a Turk, we were the first Europeans seen…. The extraordinary sight of the first English lady ever seen (indeed, few Europeans had got so far) brought a crowd….—Scott-Stevenson, Our Home in CyprusFrom its earliest literary representations in english, Cyprus has been associated with intersecting anxieties toward race, religion, and sexuality. Inaugurating this theme, Shakespeare's Othello appropriates the culturally hybrid setting among Africa, Asia, and Europe as a space of uneasy female autonomy and as a locus of dangerous political and sexual activity orchestrated by men: Venus's island is, for European Venice, a “business of some heat” (211; 1.2.47), a commercial hub degrading into a deathbed of intercultural, interfaith, interracial sex. On the cultural frontiers among Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Islam, staged temporally between Western Europe's waning crusading past and the rise of the Ottoman Empire, the island is an exoticized and effeminized space treated axiomatically as requiring the protection of Western paternalism. These themes pervade subsequent textual depictions of the space, a de facto British colony from 1878 to 1960, in works that venerate a reclaiming of the Ottoman possession by neo-Crusaders in the Orient. While academic scrutiny has addressed narratives such as Lawrence Durrell's Bitter Lemons (1957), there has been little focus on the patriarchal structuring of empire in this oeuvre of colonial travel writing or on the “persistent gendering of the imperial unknown” during this period (McClintock 24).

‘A book is a book, all the world over’: New Zealand and the Colonial Writing World 1890–1945

The idea that literary expatriation was a prevalent and often necessary phenomenon for early twentieth-century Antipodean writers is well established, as it is widely believed that New Zealand and Australia were places not conducive to the nurturing of literary talent. In order to succeed, writers were forced to leave for places with developed publishing infrastructure and sympathetic communities of like-minded people like London, choosing expatriation over failure or mediocrity at home. This study, which is based on an empirical investigation into the lives and publication records of New Zealand authors, questions this long-held assumption by emphasising the transnational elements involved in literary production. New Zealand writers were able to remain in New Zealand and still be successful because of the existence of the ‘colonial writing world'—a system of cultural diffusion, literary networks and personal interactions that gave writers access to all the cultural capital of Britain (and other hubs of empire) through the lines of communication established by colonial expansion. The opportunities provided by international connections have been largely overlooked or dismissed until very recently because of the persistent nationalist framework within which New Zealand literary history has been written.

A Stylistic Analysis of a Selected Short Story in Agnes Newton Keith's Land below the Wind: Narratorial Shift, Ambivalence and Mimicry in Colonial Writing

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate how the story short A Man of the River Goes Home (henceforth MRGH) by Agnes Keith in her Land Below the Wind (1939) differs from the rest of the stories in this compilation. As an autobiographical work, Land Below the Wind deals mostly with the author's account of her own life and experience in Sabah during the British colonial era. This may include things she needs to endure, how she feels about the country and her inner thoughts as a white woman who just starting to adapt to a new life in Sabah. This paper is based on this particular short story (MRGH) since it demonstrates how the author changes her style of writing from an autobiographical to a creative mode (i.e transforming fact to fiction). In other words, this is among few instances where Agnes seems to offer a different stroke of her penmanship and that the language and element of fiction used in her narrative is particularized in such a way that it enables her to explore the life of the main character, Abu Nawas while at the same time reflects her own situation being away from home in North America. A Man of the River Goes Home as a short story also testifies Agnes's ability to critically empathise with the native during the era where colonial rules were taking its roots and that her narration of ‘Abanawas versus the White Man's Law’ definitely offers a perspective of a white woman spreading the message of humanity to her western readers amidst her ambivalent position as a wife to a colonial administrator.

Channeling Indigenous Geopolitics: Negotiating International Order in Colonial Writing

Recent comparative approaches to early American studies have described the networks of literary exchange that linked colonial writing from different imperial contexts. Current methodologies should be expanded to account for the relation between colonial writing and indigenous forms of political media. This essay compares two colonial texts, theEendrachtwritings (1632—34), by a group of Dutch colonial agents, andSimplicities Defence(1646), the Puritan Samuel Gorton's appeal to Parliament. While these texts present radically different versions of New World sovereignty, both use print reproductions of indigenous political media to construct models of republican colonial order that are meant to contrast with Spanish New World regimes. The editorial practices authors employed in preparing indigenous texts for publication often embodied the political relation between imperial states and indigenous polities.

The Literature of "British America"

A decade and a half ago or so, William Spengemann inaugurated in these pages what has often since been called a sort of “revolution” in early American literary studies, as early Americanists have declared their independence from the bonds of (American) national literary history, and particularly from what has been called a “proto-nationalist” approach that would be beholden to explain how the literature of the thirteen colonies were the “origins” of American national literary history. One of the consequences of this declaration of independence has been that early American literature has once again become British—at least in the work of some early Americanists, who, inspired by social and political historians of early America, have begun to recontextualize colonial American writings within the literature of the British Empire. They hereby have been increasingly mindful of scholarship in early modern and eighteenth-century studies, while their colleagues in these fields, inspired by the postcolonial studies movement that swept through the humanities during the 1990s and early 2000s, have increasingly been interested in colonial writing. This critical turn among early Americanists should not be confused for a variant of the more recent trend toward “transnationalism” in American studies; rather, by shifting the context from “American” to “British,” the British Americanists have reinforced the notion of the nation as the organizing principle of literary studies. In fact, one of the recurring themes running through the books under consideration here is the notion that the colonial experience from the late sixteenth to the late eighteenth centuries was crucial in the formation not primarily of an American but rather of an English (or British) national identity and literature. Hence, these accounts of early America have placed renewed emphasis on the defining role played by the vernacular (English)

Modernity and Empire: A Modest Analysis of Early Colonial Writing Practices

During colonial times, various British Indian educational institutions and practices, including writing pedagogies at these institutions, introduced modernity to British India. This essay explains the manner in which some students internalized modernity and in their writings used modernist beliefs and premises to critique some precolonial Indian discourses.

Teaching & Learning Guide for: ‘Nowhere is a Place’: Travel Writing in Sixteenth‐Century England

Teaching & Learning Guide for: ‘Nowhere is a Place’: Travel Writing in Sixteenth‐Century England

Book Review: Taiwan’s Imagined Geography: Chinese Colonial Travel Writing and Pictures, 1683-1895

Book Review: Taiwan’s Imagined Geography: Chinese Colonial Travel Writing and Pictures, 1683-1895

:Amazons, Savages, and Machiavels: Travel and Colonial Writing in English, 1550-1630

:<i>Amazons, Savages, and Machiavels: Travel and Colonial Writing in English, 1550-1630</i>

Amazons, Savages, and Machiavels. Travel and Colonial Writing in English, 1550-1630: An Anthology

Amazons, Savages, and Machiavels. Travel and Colonial Writing in English, 1550-1630: An Anthology

Amazons, Savages, and Machiavels. Travel and Colonial Writing in English, 1550–1630: An Anthology

Amazons, Savages, and Machiavels. Travel and Colonial Writing in English, 1550–1630: An Anthology

Literature, Travel, and Colonial Writing in the English Renaissance 1545-1625 by Andrew Hadfield (review)

Reviews 800 Literature, Eravel, and Colonial Wrzting inthe English Renaissance I545-I625. ByANDREW HADFIELD. Oxford: Clarendon Press.I998. XiV + 305 PP£4°. Theimpact ofpostcolonial theory uponRenaissance literary studies hasbeen,as oneofitsmost notorious practitioners, HomiBhabha, would bepleased tolearn, deeply ambivalent. Whilst attempts tohistoricize travel, colonization, race, slavery, andemerging concepts ofimperial authority aretobewelcomed, theapplication of thetheoretical arguments ofcritics suchas Bhabha, Gayatri Spivak, andEdward Saidtotheliterature ofthesixteenth andearly seventeenth centuries hasoften led toglaring anachronisms andimpositions ofconceptual models upontheliterature ofthe period that issimply unsustainable. It is therefore a great relief tofind that Andrew Hadfield's study ofLiterature, Eravel, and Colonial Writing inthe English Renaissance I545-I625 eschews this approach inoffiering a historically rigorous butalsotheoretically nuanced account ofthe rapid growth oftravel writing andtherepresentation ofoverseas territories andpeoples intheEnglish Renaissance. From theoutset Hadfield emphasizes thathisbook makes noattempt ata comprehensive survey ofEnglish travel writing. Hisargument israther, 'that much early modern travel writing andcolonial writirlg waswritten, inwholeorinpart, inorder toparticipate incurrent pressing debates aboutthe nature ofsociety' (p. I 2). Theseincluded 'the limitations ofthe existing constitution, themeans ofrepresenting thepopulace atlarge, therelative distribution ofpower within thebodypolitic, fearofforeign influences undermining English/British independence, theneedto combat thesuccess ofother rivalnations, religious toleration andpersecution, andthe protection ofindividual liberty' (p. I 2). With great analytical skill andprecision Hadfield teases these issues outofthe texts heproceeds toanalyse. Beginning with English travellers inEurope, Hadfield explores theriseofthegenre oftravel writing inearly-sixteenth-century England, arguing thatitsvery instability as a genre madeita particularly useful medium through which todebate, andoften critique, English political authority. Starting with ThomasStarkey's A Dialogue between PoleandLupset, which Hadfield seesas deploying themyth ofVenice as theperfect constitution 'as a stick with which to beat the comparatively flawedconstitution of the Englishmonarch' (p.22) Henry VIII,a similar line istraced through William Thomas's Historie of Italie, Lewis Lewkenor's translation ofContarini's 7heCommonwealth andGovernmentof Venice, Robert Dallington's TheView of France and,perhaps most controversially, Thomas Coryat's Crudities. Hadfield thengoeson toconsider English colonial literature, focusing primarily on Richard Eden'stranslation ofPeter Martyr's De Orbe JWovo Decades, published inEnglish in I555, Richard Hakluyt's 'Discourse ofWestern Planting', andThomasHariot's A Briefe andTrue Reporte ofthe J%ew Found Landof Virginia. ForHadfield, these texts offiered a spacetoreflect uponpolitical issues at home,as wellas theemerging ethics ofempire, a pointmadeperhaps most persuasively inhisdiscussion ofthe career ofEden.Moving ontothe representation oftravel inEnglish fiction, Hadfield traces theways inwhich suchdiverse texts as Painter's 7he Palace of Pleasure, Fenton's Certaine Tragicall Discourses, Lodge's Rosainde, Nashe's7heUnfortunate Eraveller andparadigmatically, Lyly's influential Euphues and his England, 'like somany sixteenth-century English literary texts, attempts tomould andfix a national identity and,inevitably, becomes entangled inthelogicofthat slippery problem' (p. I 80),particularly inrelation totheintense religious conflict of theperiod.Hadfield concludes witha discussion of the significance of the geographical and cultural locations ofa rangeofRenaissance plays, including Marlowe's IheMassacre atParis, Othello, and 171e Wempest. Marlowe's playisseenas 'perhaps lessanobviously Protestant polemic, orattack onsectarianism per se,than MLR,96.3,200I 80I an indictment ofthefailures ofa central manifestly unrepresentative ruling elite' (P. 2I2), readincloseproximity toMarlowe's unfinished translation ofLucan's Pharsalia. However, Othello israther lessconvincingly seenaspossessing 'a (ghostly) Irishcontext' (p.226),despite Hadfield's fascinating account ofthepresence of Ireland inElizabethan drama. Whatemerges from Hadfield's admirable bookistheways inwhich notions of 'home'werequestioned through literary representations of'abroad',and how TudorandStuart ideology 'wascontinually interrogated, challenged, andundermined bythemanifold writings ofthegrowing literate populace'(p.266).This approach offers persuasive newreadings offamiliar texts byNashe, Marlowe, and Shakespeare, whilst alsobringing more unfamiliar texts tothe fore, such asWilliam Baldwin's AMarvelous Hystoty Intitulede, Beware the Cat. Whilst Hadfield isatpainsto stress that hisapproach doesnotforeclose other accounts oftherepresentation of travel andcolonization intheliterature oftheperiod, thebookdoesprovoke the question ofhow, inthe process ofdefining national identity, texts such asOthello and Raleigh's Discoverze ofGuiana shapedsubsequent English discourses ofempire, slavery, andracism, andhowdifferent geographical locations affiected political reflection; didtheEnglish reachthesameconclusions when they travelled eastas they didwhentravelling westwards intotheNewWorld? Nevertheless, Literature, Eravel, andColonial Wr?ting inthe English Renaissance isa distinguished andimportant addition tothe critical debate ontravel andcolonization inthe early modern period. ROYAL HOLLOWAY, LONDON JERRY BROTTON 7he Arts of Empire. 7hePoetics ofColonialism from Ralegh to Milton. ByWALTER S. H. LIM. Cranbury, NJ:University of DelawarePress;London:Associated UniversityPresses. I998 275PP £35 Walter Lim'sstudy follows inthefootsteps ofsomehighly distinguished scholars whohavebeenconcerned toemphasize theoften neglected colonial andimperial dimensions...

Literature, Travel, and Colonial Writing in the English Renaissance 1545-1625

Literature, Travel, and Colonial Writing in the English Renaissance 1545-1625

Rethinking Early American Colonial Writings

Colonial Writing in the New World 1583-1671: Allegories of Desire. By Thomas Scanlan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. 242 pages. $59.95 (cloth). BROWSING THROUGH THOMAS SCANLAN'S RECENT SCHOLARLY MONOGRAPH, ONE cannot help being captivated by the glossy illustrations in chapter two, and these black and white reproductions of sixteenth century engravings emerge as the most arresting attribute of the book's physicality. Indeed, these illustrations, which beautifully and graphically render natives in the New World, serve as an effective "pre-introduction" to Scanlan's work; the illustrations portray Native Americans in a variety of postures and activities, ranging from scenes of noble hunting to the horrific preparation of human flesh over an open fire. Underneath each vivid reproduction, Scanlan provides a caption indicating the source(s) in which the work originally appeared. In each instance, the artist and publisher were Europeans portraying a mysterious "other" to their "civilized" readers. Throughout his book, Scanlan posits that the European portrayal of the New World, including the natives who inhabited it, often served as an allegory in which the Europeans, regardless of nationality, addressed deeper issues plaguing their homelands. Scanlan's primary focus is the unique English and Protestant depiction of the New World and its inhabitants and the resulting allegories that emerge from these sermons, tracts, and travel narratives. In his introduction, Scanlan places his own study of colonial writing within the context of recent scholarly conversations: "Accordingly, the [End Page 148] study of the colonial period has remained surprisingly insular, as scholars from two distinct fields have consistently failed to engage in a dialogue" (1). He criticizes those scholars who view the colonial history of the New World as either a singularly European or especially American experience and asserts that contemporary European history and upheavals cannot be divorced from their colonial efforts in the New World, especially in Virginia and New England where English efforts were most focused. Unlike their Spanish competitors, the English were trying to establish a burgeoning Protestant nation in the New World in fervent opposition to the Catholic successes and excesses of Spain's colonial expansion. Scanlan begins by focusing on the colonial tract, Brevíssima relación la destrucción las Indias, written by Bartolomé de Las Casas, a Spaniard who "became known as a tireless advocate for Indian rights and as a proponent of a colonialism driven not by commercial interests but by the zeal for converting the native populations to Catholicism" (19-20). Las Casas, who was a Catholic bishop at the time his narrative was published in 1552, wrote of the mistreatment the natives suffered at the hands of the Spanish, and he described the humanity and nobility exhibited by the natives he encountered when he served as a Catholic missionary. Scanlan asserts that Las Casas's intention was surely to reveal "the cruelty and inhumanity of the Spanish in the New World to bring about changes in Spanish colonial policy" (8). Whether or not Las Casas was successful at changing his own country's attitudes toward the natives in the New World is not addressed in Scanlan's study, yet the effect this disturbing narrative had on the English becomes Scanlan's primary focus in the first chapter. Interestingly, Las Casas's narrative achieved widespread success in England and was "translated into English and published in London four times between 1583 and 1699" (8). To the English, the narrative provided concrete evidence of a barbaric colonialism that was propagated by the Spanish in their efforts to secure wealth and spread Catholicism throughout the New World. Further, Spain's distasteful methods of subduing the natives provided the English a model of what they did not want their own colonial efforts to become, establishing their own treatment of the natives as one dominated by a humane mixture of "fear and love." 1 England's quest for a stronger national identity through colonial effort crystallizes in two narratives that Scanlan examines: Thomas Harriot's Brief and True Report and...

Colonial Writings and the New World, 1583-1671: Allegories of Desire (review)

Reviewed by: Colonial Writings and the New World, 1583–1671: Allegories of Desire E. Thomson Shields (bio) Colonial Writings and the New World, 1583–1671: Allegories of Desire. Thomas Scanlan. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999. x + 242 pp., illus. As editor of The Roanoke Colonies Research Newsletter, I am excited to see new books that treat texts related to Roanoke colonization, such as Thomas Hariot's 1588 A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, especially when looked at in conjunction with the Theodore de Bry engravings that accompanied the publication of some of the editions of Hariot's work. My interest is piqued even further when such a text is juxtaposed to a discussion of the various editions of Bartolomé de las Casas's 1552 Brevissima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (A Brief Relation of the Destruction of the Indies) as translated into English between 1583 and 1656. Moreover, these are but two of the many items covered by Thomas Scanlan in Colonial Writings and the New World, 1583–1671: Allegories of Desire. Other texts discussed include Jean de Léry's 1578 History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil; Edmund Spenser's 1596 A View of the Present State of Ireland; sermons promoting English colonization in North America by Robert Gray, William Symonds, William Crashaw, and John Donne delivered and published between 1609 and 1623 (which Scanlan labels the Virginia sermons); Roger Williams's 1643 A Key into the Language of America; and John Eliot's 1671 Indian Dialogues. As this list indicates, Scanlan's book is broad in coverage, yet its topic is much more focused—the use of writing about native Americans in the discussion of colonial endeavors, especially those in North America, to create of a sense of English nationalism. While there are some problems with Scanlan's book, the issues he raises have enough interest and validity to make Colonial Writings and the New World a useful entry into the discussion of early American writing. [End Page 307] The value of Scanlan's work comes from two different strengths. First, it posits some interesting overarching arguments about writing in English concerning England's colonies.1 Scanlan argues that colonization "is never an end unto itself " in colonial writing (3). Instead, though telling about events in the colonies, colonial writing "must connect itself to some ultimate goal, which is inevitably removed from the colony" (3). In English colonial writing between the 1580s and 1670s, this ultimate goal, according to Scanlan, was English nationalism: "[T]he colonial project became one of the primary ways that the English used to articulate and define their own emerging sense of nationhood" (3). The most interesting element of Scanlan's argument develops a complex interrelationship between English national identity, Protestantism, and the representation of Native Americans. For Scanlan, English Protestants consistently described their relationship with native Americans in terms of fear and love—usually meaning that the Native Americans both feared and loved the English. Yet the English revealed a sense of fear and love about Native Americans themselves. What is particularly good about Scanlan's argument is his recognition that there is not just one static representation of Native Americans or of the English themselves in terms of fear and love. As objects of writing, Native Americans can sometimes stand for people to be colonized, sometimes as allegorical figures representing English Protestants, sometimes as people in need of the civilizing effects of Protestant conversion, and sometimes as being more Christian than professedly Christian, particularly Puritan, people. However, for Scanlan, these representations of Native Americans are not ends unto themselves in English colonial writing. Instead, they serve an "ultimate goal, which is inevitably removed from the colony." It is in arguments about nationhood as connected to religion that Scanlan's analysis of colonial English writing becomes its most engaging. The period that Scanlan chooses to write about is one of religious turmoil in England—from the time of Queen Elizabeth I's assertion of Protestant control over England in the late sixteenth century with its coinciding tension between more traditional Anglicans and the increasingly powerful Puritans; through to the...

Colonial Writing and the New World, 1583-1671: Allegories of Desire

Most scholars of Anglo-American colonial history have treated colonialism either as an exclusively American phenomenon or, conversely, as a European one. Colonial Writing and the New World 1583–1671 argues for a reading of the colonial period that attempts to render an account of both the European origins of colonial expansion and its specifically American consequences. The author offers an account of the simultaneous emergence of colonialism and nationalism during the early modern period, and of the role that English interactions with native populations played in attempts to articulate a coherent English identity. He draws on a wide variety of texts ranging from travel narratives and accounts of the colony in Virginia to sermons, conversion tracts and writings about the Algonquin language.