New World, Known World: Shaping Knowledge in Early Anglo-American WritingNew World, Known World examines the works of four writers closely associated with the early period of English colonization, from 1624 to 1649: John Smith's Generall Historie of Virginia, William Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation, Thomas Morton's New English Canaan, and Roger Williams's A Key into the Language of America (in conjunction with another of Williams's major works, The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution). David Read addresses these texts as examples of what he refers to as "individual knowledge projects"- the writers' attempts to shape raw information and experience into patterns and narratives that can be compared with and assessed against others from a given society's fund of accepted knowledge. Read argues that the body of Western knowledge in the period immediately before the development of well-defined scientific disciplines is primarily the work of individuals functioning in relative isolation, rather than institutions working in concert. The European colonization of other regions in the same period exposes in a way few historical situations do both the complexity and the uncertainty involved in the task of producing knowledge. Read treats each work as the project of a specific mind, reflecting a high degree of intentionality and design, and not simply as a collection of documentary evidence to be culled in the service of a large-scale argument. He shows that each author adds a distinct voice to the experience of North American colonization and that each articulates it in ways that are open to analysis in terms of form, style, convention, rhetorical strategies, and applications of metaphor and allegory. By applying the tools of literary interpretation to colonial texts, Read reaches a fuller understanding of the immediate consequences of English colonization in North America on the culture's base of knowledge. Students and scholars of early modern colonialism and transatlantic studies, as well as those with interests in seventeenth-century American and English literature, should find this book of particular value. |
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... texts and writers represents a sort of latter - day sequel to Wayne Franklin's Discoverers , Explorers , Settlers : The Diligent Writers of Early America , a book that predates the massive waves of literary - critical and ...
... texts and writers represents a sort of latter - day sequel to Wayne Franklin's Discoverers , Explorers , Settlers : The Diligent Writers of Early America , a book that predates the massive waves of literary - critical and ...
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... texts in this book, projects that are crafted rather than engineered, and display the imperfections, quirks, and changes of purpose and direction that inevitably characterize the handi- work of single artisans. A number of recent books ...
... texts in this book, projects that are crafted rather than engineered, and display the imperfections, quirks, and changes of purpose and direction that inevitably characterize the handi- work of single artisans. A number of recent books ...
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... texts, since the pursuit of (and commerce in) knowledge is one of the great preoccupations of the early modern period, up to and through the Enlightenment. I will offer a single representative example, from John Frampton's Joyfull Newes ...
... texts, since the pursuit of (and commerce in) knowledge is one of the great preoccupations of the early modern period, up to and through the Enlightenment. I will offer a single representative example, from John Frampton's Joyfull Newes ...
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... texts: American travel books tell us . . . about the enormous Old World ener- gies which went into the attempt at controlling the West by means of the symbol system of language. As structures of language in their own right, they offer a ...
... texts: American travel books tell us . . . about the enormous Old World ener- gies which went into the attempt at controlling the West by means of the symbol system of language. As structures of language in their own right, they offer a ...
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... texts understood as el- ements in a discursive field back to such texts understood as the efforts of individual writers to articulate a historical phenomenon and their own involvement in it. 14 I have two main reasons for trying to ...
... texts understood as el- ements in a discursive field back to such texts understood as the efforts of individual writers to articulate a historical phenomenon and their own involvement in it. 14 I have two main reasons for trying to ...
Contents
1 | |
17 | |
2 Silent Partners | 43 |
3 Importing the Metropolis | 71 |
4 American Consciences | 95 |
Conclusion | 131 |
Appendix | 137 |
Notes | 141 |
Bibliography | 163 |
Index | 171 |
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Common terms and phrases
activity Adams Algonquian Allerton appears argue argument Ben Jonson Bloudy Tenent Bradford chapter character Christ church civil claim colonial texts colonial writers colonists Complete Writings conscience critical culture describes discourse discussion Dutch early colonial effort England English Canaan European Famous Voyage Francis Bacon Generall Historie Harriot’s hath Hayden White Historie of Virginia Hulme human Ibid Indians interpretation Jamestown Jehlen Jonson kind knowledge project Landskipp Language least literary literature Ma-re Mount Massachusetts material means Miantonomi Miller mind Morison Mount Wollaston Narragansetts narrative Native Americans nature offers Opechancanough passage perhaps Perry Miller Pilgrims Plymouth Plantation poem Powhatan presents problem providential providentialist Puritan readers reading rhetorical Richard Hakluyt Roger Williams Schweitzer second book seems sense separatists settlers seventeenth century sort speak suggests Testament Teunissen and Hinz things Thomas Morton tion trade Truth typology voice wilderness Williams's Wood words