Test, Edward McLean (Author)
***** This dissertation explores the material and mythic influences of the New World environment and culture on European society by reversing the Eurocentric critical approach of "civilized" Europeans determining the colonies; rather than viewing how Europe determines the periphery, this project illuminates the way in which the American periphery determines the European core. By giving voice to alternative societies and their environment across the Atlantic, this interdisciplinary study, which in part considers the ethnographic origins of botanical science in Europe, shows how the works of Spenser, Shakespeare, and Jonson not only reflect the proto-capitalist consumption of New World resources, but also the literary consumption of New World myths. In Chapter 1, I contend that Mexican amaranthus, which was integral to Mesoamerican ecology, diet, and rituals of human sacrifice, finds literary representation in Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene, offering a counterintuitive notion of early modern transculturation: rather than view the New World through the eyes of Greco-Roman culture, I will view European gardens-and Spenser's Faery Land-through the cultural and botanical template of Mexica society. Chapter 2 explores the mythological origins and commercial marketing of the American plant Guaiacum. By illustrating the American wood as a source of holiness and salvation in the works of Spenser, and a marketable commodity in the works of Jonson, this chapter illuminates the assimilation of the Native American environment by the dominant Western civilization. Chapter 3 traces tobacco's journey through English literature from myth to market, from exotic curative to common commodity, from the private herbal gardens of physicians to the public tobacco shops of London streets. Chapter 4 examines Caliban's fishy half, "poor john," in Shakespeare's The Tempest, showing how "poor john," otherwise known as Newfoundland salt-dry codfish, contributed to the highest concerns of the nation-state--domestic stability, national security, and foreign trade--and how it served as a focus for debates about the changing nature of trade in the early seventeenth century. *****
...MoreDescription Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 69/09 (2009).
Chapter
Randall, Robert;
(2008)
Bath Naturalists: Apothecary to Zoologist
(/isis/citation/CBB001022814/)
Book
Parrish, Susan Scott;
(2006)
American Curiosity: Cultures of Natural History in the Colonial British Atlantic World
(/isis/citation/CBB000600679/)
Book
Melissa Bailes;
(2017)
Questioning Nature: British Women's Scientific Writing and Literary Originality, 1750-1830
(/isis/citation/CBB476661069/)
Chapter
Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi;
Paolo Tongiorgi;
(2006)
Natura, verbum, signum: brevi note su imprese e storia naturale
(/isis/citation/CBB955884338/)
Thesis
Emelin Elizabeth Miller;
(2019)
Empire of Ice: Arctic Natural History and British Visions of the North, 1500-1800
(/isis/citation/CBB984131524/)
Chapter
Jorink, Eric;
(2011)
Noah's Ark Restored (and Wrecked): Dutch Collectors, Natural History and the Problem of Biblical Exegesis
(/isis/citation/CBB001221245/)
Book
Sloan, Kim;
(2007)
A New World: England's First View of America
(/isis/citation/CBB000850550/)
Thesis
Bigelow, Allison Margaret;
(2012)
Mining Empire, Planting Empire: The Colonial Scientific Literatures of the Americas
(/isis/citation/CBB001561024/)
Chapter
Tetrada, María Luz López;
(2011)
Flora and the Hapsburg Crown: Clusius, Spain, and American Natural History
(/isis/citation/CBB001221241/)
Book
E. Charles Nelson;
David J. Elliot;
(2015)
The Curious Mister Catesby: A "Truly Ingenious" Naturalist Explores New Worlds
(/isis/citation/CBB747178091/)
Article
Melissa Bailes;
(2018)
Cultivated for Consumption: Botany, Colonial Cannibalism, and National/Natural History in Sydney Owenson’s The Wild Irish Girl
(/isis/citation/CBB800185902/)
Book
Chaplin, Joyce E.;
(2001)
Subject Matter: Technology, the Body, and Science on the Anglo-American Frontier, 1500-1676
(/isis/citation/CBB000100207/)
Thesis
LaCombe, Michael;
(2006)
Food and Authority in the English Atlantic World, 1570--1640
(/isis/citation/CBB001560894/)
Book
Carney, Judith Ann;
Rosomoff, Richard Nicholas;
(2009)
In the Shadow of Slavery: Africa's Botanical Legacy in the Atlantic World
(/isis/citation/CBB001230768/)
Article
Parsons, Christopher M.;
Murphy, Kathleen S.;
(2012)
Ecosystems under Sail: Specimen Transport in the Eighteenth-Century French and British Atlantics
(/isis/citation/CBB001200577/)
Article
González Bueno, Antonio;
(2007)
El descubrimiento de la naturaleza del Nuevo Mundo: las plantas americanas en la Europa del siglo XVI
(/isis/citation/CBB000850035/)
Article
Sweet, Julie Anne;
(2009)
A Misguided Mistake: The Trustees' Public Garden in Savannah, Georgia
(/isis/citation/CBB001231363/)
Book
Davina Benkert;
(2020)
Okonomien Botanischen Wissens: Praktiken Der Gelehrsamkeit in Basel Um 1600
(/isis/citation/CBB702906131/)
Article
Reeves, H. M.;
Gagnon, F.-M.;
Houston, C. S.;
(2004)
“Codex canadiensis”, an Early Illustrated Manuscript of Canadian Natural History
(/isis/citation/CBB000502710/)
Article
Yaya, Isabel;
(2008)
Wonders of America: The Curiosity Cabinet as a Site of Representation and Knowledge
(/isis/citation/CBB001030754/)
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