Lecture Notes, Thursday, June 19: Thomas Hariot's Brief and True Report

19 June 2008
3I06 / The Age of Elizabeth I

Thomas Harriot’s Brief and True Report

Lecture Outline
Tobacco
The Occasion of the Text
Commodity
“Trifles”
Religion
“Invisible Bullets”
“Temperature”
The True Pictures and Fashions of the People in that parte of America
De Bry’s intro
Comparison of images: John White’s paintings vs. De Bry’s engravings

Tobacco
Tobacco, Tobacco
Sing sweetly for Tobacco.
Tobacco is like love
O love it
For you see I will prove it.

Love maketh leane the fatte mens tumor,
So doth Tobacco.
Love still dries uppe the wanton humor,
So doth Tobacco.

Love makes men sayle from shore to shore,
So doth Tobacco.
Tis fond love often makes men poor,
So doth Tobacco.

Love makes men scorne all Coward feares,
So doth Tobacco.
Love often sets men by the eares,
So doth Tobacco.

Tobaccoe, Tobaccoe
Sing sweetely for Tobaccoe.
Tobaccoe is like Love,
O love it,
For you see I have provde it.

Anonymous lyrics, set to music by Tobias Hume in 1605.


The Occasion of the Text
*”There have been divers and variable reportes with some slaunderous and shamefull speeches bruited abroad” (pg 5)

Commodity
*a core purpose of Harriot’s text – what is “marchantable”

“Trifles”
* "In respect of us they are a people poor” (pg 25)
*pg. 45 on “The arrival of the Englishmen”

Religion
* an echoing of Christian faith in his description of the native belief system, bottom pg. 25
* “For mankind they say a woman was made first”
*the stories of heaven(ish) and hell(ish): 26 “They beleeve also the immortality of the soul
*27 idolatry re: Bible

“Invisible Bullets”
*pg 28 and 29; the microbiology of the contact zone

“Temperature”
*from “The Conclusion”, pg. 31-32

The True Pictures and Fashions of the People in that parte of America
The first image (pg 39):

De Bry’s intro
*Attitude toward the native population? pg. 41 “Although man by his disobedience…by their trauailes into the contrye.”
* “they be verye familiar with deuils” pg 54
*pg 60 “Yet are they moderate in their eatinge wher by they avoide sicknes”
*pg 71 and 72 Ther Idol Kiwasa “the keeper of the kings dead corpses”


Comparison of images: John White’s paintings vs. De Bry’s engravings
http://www.virtualjamestown.org/images/white_debry_html/jamestown.html

*pg 76 “The trvve picture of one Picte”