The Cultural Geography of Colonial American Literatures

Empire, Travel, Modernity

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by Ralph Bauer

Cambridge University Press

Due/Published October 2003, 310 pages, cloth

ISBN 0521822025

Ralph Bauer presents a comparative investigation of colonial prose narratives in Spanish and British America from 1542 to 1800. He discusses narratives of shipwreck, captivity, and travel, as well as imperial and natural histories of the New World in the context of transformative early modern scientific ideologies and investigates the inter-connectedness of literary evolutions in various places of the early modern Atlantic world. Bauer positions the narrative models promoted by the 'New Sciences' during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries within the context of the geopolitical question of how knowledge can be centrally controlled in outwardly expanding empires. 15 half-tones

 Contents

Illustrations
Acknowledgements
1. Prospero's progeny
2. Mythos and epos: Cabeza de Vaca's empire of peace
3. The geography of history: Samuel Purchas and 'his' pilgrims
4. 'True history': the captivities of Francisco Nunez de Pineda y Bascunan and Mary White Rowlandson
5. 'Friends and compatriots': Siguenza y Gongora and the piracy of knowledge
6. 'HUSQUENAWING': William Byrd's Creolean humors
7. Dismembering the empire: Alonso Carrio de la Vandera and J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
Notes