Householder, Michael (Author)
Ashgate
Physical Details: x + 228 pp.; ill.; bibl.; index
Language: English
Inventing Americans in the Age of Discovery traces the linguistic, rhetorical, and literary innovations that emerged out of the first encounters between Europeans and indigenous peoples of the Americas. Through analysis of six texts, Michael Householder demonstrates the role of language in forming the identities or characters that permitted Europeans (English speakers, primarily) to adapt to the unusual circumstances of encounter. Arranged chronologically, the texts examined include John Mandeville's Travels, Richard Eden's English-language translations of the accounts of Spanish and Portuguese discovery and conquest, George Best's account of Martin Frobisher's voyages to northern Canada, Ralph Lane's account of the abandonment of Roanoke, John Smith's writings about Virginia, and John Underhill's account of the Pequot War. Through his analysis, Householder reveals that English colonists did not share a universal, homogenous view of indigenous Americans as savages, but that the writers, confronted by unfamiliar peoples and situations, resorted to a mixed array of cultural beliefs, myths, and theories to put together workable explanations of their experiences, which then became the basis for how Europeans in the colonies began transforming themselves into Americans.
...MoreReview Shields, E. Thomson, Jr. (2013) Review of "Inventing Americans in the Age of Discovery: Narratives of Encounter". Renaissance Quarterly (p. 1467).
Similar Citations
Article
Surekha Davies;
(2014)
Science, New Worlds, and the Classical Tradition: An Introduction
(/isis/citation/CBB682086951/)
Book
Jaime Marroquín Arredondo;
Ralph Bauer;
(2019)
Translating Nature: Cross-Cultural Histories of Early Modern Science
(/isis/citation/CBB895561865/)
Book
Carey, Daniel;
(2012)
Richard Hakluyt and Travel Writing in Early Modern Europe
(/isis/citation/CBB001421379/)
Article
Smithers, Gregory D.;
(2015)
Beyond the “Ecological Indian”: Environmental Politics and Traditional Ecological Knowledge in Modern North America
(/isis/citation/CBB001422283/)
Article
Stouraiti, Anastasia;
(2013)
Talk, Script and Print: The Making of Island Books in Early Modern Venice
(/isis/citation/CBB001202085/)
Book
Chapman, Anne;
(2010)
European Encounters with the Yamana People of Cape Horn, before and after Darwin
(/isis/citation/CBB001212236/)
Article
Rowse, Tim;
(2014)
“Rooted in Demographic Reality”: The Contribution of New World Censuses to Indigenous Survival
(/isis/citation/CBB001201587/)
Book
Short, John Rennie;
(2009)
Cartographic Encounters: Indigenous Peoples and the Exploration of the New World
(/isis/citation/CBB001022546/)
Article
Alisha Rankin;
(2022)
New World Drugs and the Archive of Practice: Translating Nicolás Monardes in Early Modern Europe
(/isis/citation/CBB211051838/)
Book
Silva, Ignacio Alberto;
(2014)
Latin American Perspectives on Science and Religion
(/isis/citation/CBB001422634/)
Article
Valle, Ivonne del;
(2013)
From José de Acosta to the Enlightenment: Barbarians, Climate Change, and (Colonial) Technology as the End of History
(/isis/citation/CBB001201895/)
Book
Matthew James Crawford;
Joseph M. Gabriel;
(2019)
Drugs on the Page: Pharmacopoeias and Healing Knowledge in the Early Modern Atlantic World
(/isis/citation/CBB528992656/)
Book
Raudzens, George;
(2001)
Technology, Disease, and Colonial Conquests, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries: Essays Reappraising the Guns and Germs Theories
(/isis/citation/CBB000100035/)
Book
Giuseppe Patota;
(2023)
Parole di Galileo
(/isis/citation/CBB522118146/)
Article
Magnone, Sophia;
(2014)
Bien Manger, Bien Mangé: Edible Reciprocity in Jean de Léry's Histoire d'un voyage faict en la terre du Brésil
(/isis/citation/CBB001421605/)
Book
Ralph Bauer;
Anna Brickhouse;
Kirsten Silva Gruesz;
(2019)
The Alchemy of Conquest: Science, Religion, and the Secrets of the New World
(/isis/citation/CBB352018741/)
Book
Scott, Anne M;
Hiatt, Alfred;
McIlroy, Claire;
Wortham, Christopher;
(2011)
European Perceptions of Terra Australis
(/isis/citation/CBB001201481/)
Book
Brett, Annabel S;
(2011)
Changes of State: Nature and the Limits of the City in Early Modern Natural Law
(/isis/citation/CBB001201179/)
Book
Maifreda, Germano;
(2012)
From Oikonomia to Political Economy: Constructing Economic Knowledge from the Renaissance to the Scientific Revolution
(/isis/citation/CBB001201675/)
Book
Euben, Roxanne Leslie;
(2006)
Journeys to the Other Shore: Muslim and Western Travelers in Search of Knowledge
(/isis/citation/CBB001200958/)
Be the first to comment!