geographic discourse, gender, and Elizabethan fiction
- Categories
- Book/Boek
- Creator
- Relihan, Constance C.
- Publish Year
- 2004
- Shelfmark
- B5678 - B
- Thesaurus
- literatuur, ruimtelijke ordening, geografie, utopische romans, kolonialisme, identiteit, reisliteratuur, 16e eeuw, vroegmoderne periode, Verenigd Koninkrijk
- Description
- In this book the author 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 discourse becomes central to how the fictional prose of the period imagines cultural identity, fictional purpose, and gender identity. 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.