What was the purpose of representing foreign lands for writers in the English Renaissance? This innovative and wide-ranging study argues that writers often used their works as vehicles to reflect on the state of contemporary English politics, particularly their own lack of representation in public institutions. Sometimes such analyses took the form of displaced allegories, whereby writers contrasted the advantages enjoyed, or disadvantages suffered, by foreign
subjects with the political conditions of Tudor and Stuart England. Elsewhere, more often in explicitly colonial writings, authors meditated on the problems of government when faced with the possibly
violent creation of a new society. If Venice was commonly held up as a beacon of republican liberty which England would do well to imitate, the fear of tyrannical Catholic Spain was ever present - inspiring and haunting much of the colonial literature from 1580 onwards. This stimulating book examines fictional and non-fictional writings, illustrating both the close connections between the two made by early modern readers and the problems involved in the usual assumption that we can make sense
of the past with the categories available to us. Hadfield explores in his work representations of Europe, the Americas, Africa, and the Far East, selecting pertinent examples rather than attempting to
embrace a total coverage. He also offers fresh readings of Shakespeare, Marlowe, More, Lyly, Hakluyt, Harriot, Nashe, and others.
Industry Reviews
`The ideas raised by Literature, Travel, and Colonial Writing are both interesting and challenging - and not infrequently radical in their questioning of received thinking. ...an especially important contribution to the interpretation of Renaissance travel writings and concepts of place. ... There is an unmistakably optimistic sense in Hadfield's speculative arguments that the linking of so-called 'travel' writings with works of creative fiction will prove
to be one of the most productive critical and historical perspectives of the last two decades.'
Michael G. Brennan, September 2000.
`an especially important contribution to the interpretation of Renaissance travel writing and concepts of place ... Hadfield's sheer range of primary references provides a secure foundation for his empirical investigations.'
Michael G. Brennan, Notes and Queries, Vol.47, No.3, Sept. 2000.
`There is an unmistakably optimistic sense in Hanfield's speculative arguments that the linking of so-called 'travel' writings with works of creative fiction will prove to be one of the most productive critical and historical perspectives of the last two decades.'
Michael G. Brennan, Notes and Queries, Vol.47, No.3, Sept. 2000.
`Hadfield here turns to travel and colonial writing, which he examines both for its intrinsic value and importance as well as for its influence on early English prose fiction and Renaissance plays. Through covering material that has been the subject of much scholarly attention, Hadfield's study is important both for the special focus he brings to this area and for the breadth of its research.'
Robert Boerth, Sixteenth Century Journal XXXI/3, 2000.
`Hadfield's ... overarching argument - that foreign locales furnished Renaissance writers with a fertile, shifting ground upon which to consider and comment upon the state of England - is both forceful and productive ... Hadfield effectively calls for us to reconsider some texts, writers and genres to which we have not devoted sufficient critical attention.'
Robert Boerth, Sixteenth Century Journal XXXI/3, 2000.
`Literature, Travel, and Colonial Writing is an ambitious and nuanced treatment of a genre - travel writing - that was coming into being in the early modern period. Its strength lies in its willingness to extend itself among the many discourses that were being folded into this genre or that had implications for it. In his rewarding book Handfield shows us just how 'multiple' the intellecutual and politcal 'contexts' for early modern travel were and
consistently juxtaposes those contexts with travel accounts in a way that brings their import home.'
Thomas F. Mayer, Sixteenth Century Journal, XXXI/2. 00.
`He ... can make these traveler's tales meaningful in ways that probably haven't been appreciated since they were first published. Even the usual stuff of travel writing in this period - the lists of places visited, the detailed renderings of sights seen - becomes newly significant.'
Thomas F. Mayer, Sixteenth Century Journal, XXXI/2. 00.
`Hadfield is especially good at sketching in the intellectual background that these travellers brought with them and in bringing out the republican overtones of their accounts.'
Thomas F. Mayer, Sixteenth Century Journal, XXXI/2. 00.
`This important and timely book brings a new expansiveness and sophistication to its field.'
David J. Baker, Shakespeard Quarterly.
