Lecture Notes, Tuesday, June 17: Walter Ralegh and Colonization Narratives

17 June 2008
English 3I06 / The Development of English Drama
Travel and Colonization: Walter Ralegh and Colonization Narratives


LECTURE OUTLINE
*configuring the new world
*paradise
*cornucopia
*curiosity
*already possessed
*hell

Configuring the New World
*new world representation always a reflection of European culture and values
*why? Politics of the contact zone
*contact zone definition, Mary Louise Pratt:
“the space in which peoples geographically and historically separated come into contact with each other and establish relations, usually involving coercion, radical inequality, and intractable conflict”(from Imperial Eyes).
*narrative as a key to expressing how the reader should view the new territory
*things to watch for: disconnects between “adventure” narrative and conclusions; projection of European concerns and issues onto the new zone; a mixture of idolizing and dehumanizing the native peoples in the new territory

Paradise
*Michel de Montaigne, “Of Cannibals” (1588), pg 365 (bv)
*Ralegh 352 “I never saw a more beautiful country”
*Ralegh 357 “Guiana is a country that hath yet her maidenhead”
*Ralegh 356 “both for health, good air, pleasure, and riches, I am resolved it cannot be equalled either in the east or west”358 “

Hell
*Ralegh’s journey, 347, “the air breeding great faintness”
*Ralegh 348 “At the last we determined to hang the pilot”

Cornucopia
*Ralegh 340 “The island of Trinidad…will bear sugar, ginger, or any other commodity that the Indies yield.”
*342 “All the vessels of his house, table, and kitchen, were of gold and silver”
*Ralegh 345, “These Amazons have likewise great store of these plates of gold” (see also 344, relation of these Amazons to classical Amazons)
*Ralegh, 356: “The common soldier shall here fight for gold, and pay himself, instead of pence, with plates of half-a-foot broad”

Curiosity
*Jenkinson 362, description of the “Nagayans” (southern European Russia)
*Ralegh 353 “a nation of people whose heads appear not above their shoulders”

Already possessed
*Ralegh 341 “The Spaniards seemed to be desirous to trade with us” (story of Cantyman)
*Ralegh 355 “because I have not myself seen the cities of Inca I cannot avow on my credit what I have heard”
*347 “Of these people those that dwell upon the branches of the Orinoco…are for the most part carpenters…” (note lingering on detail of the corpses)