The Cultural Geography of Colonial American Literatures: Empire, Travel, Modernity

Ralph Bauer presents a comparative investigation of colonial prose narratives in Spanish and British America from 1542 to 1800. He discusses narratives of shipwreck, captivity and travel, as well as imperial and natural histories of the New World in the context of transformative early modern scientific ideologies and investigates the inter-connectedness of literary evolutions in various places of the early modern Atlantic world. Bauer positions the narrative models promoted by the 'New Sciences' during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries within the context of the geopolitical question of how knowledge can be centrally controlled in outwardly expanding empires. This important and highly original study of Early American literature brings into conversation with one another writers from various parts of the early modern Atlantic world including alvar Nùuez Cabeza de Vaca, Gonzalo Fernàndez de Oviedo y Valdes, Samuel Purchas, William Strachey, Mary Rowlandson, Carlos de Sigüenza y Gòngora, William Byrd and Hector St John de Crévecoeur.