Mimesis And Empire: The New World, Islam, And European Identities

Mimesis and Empire: The New World, Islam, and European Identities Barbara Fuchs Cambridge University Press In Mimesis and Empire Barbara Fuchs explores the intricate dynamics of imitation and contradistinction among early modern European powers in literary and historiographical texts from sixteenth- and early seventeenthcentury Spain, Italy, England, and the New World. The book considers a broad sweep of material, including European representations of New World subjects and of Islam, both portrayed as ‘‘other’’ in contemporary texts. It supplements the transatlantic perspective on early modern imperialism with an awareness of the situation in the Mediterranean and considers problems of reading and literary transmission; imperial ideology and colonial identities; counterfeits and forgery; and piracy. is Associate Professor of English and Adjunct Associate Professor of Spanish at the University of Washington, Seattle. She has published a number of articles on Anglo-Spanish relations, Cervantes and ‘‘passing,’’ and early-modern nation formation. MMMM MMMM This Page Intentionally Left Blank Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture 40 Mimesis and Empire Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture General Editor STEPHEN ORGEL Jackson Eli Reynolds Professor of Humanities, Stanford University Editorial board Anne Barton, University of Cambridge Jonathan Dollimore, University of York Marjorie Garber, Harvard University Jonathan Goldberg, Johns Hopkins University Nancy Vickers, Bryn Mawr College Since the 1970s there has been a broad and vital reinterpretation of the nature of literary texts, a move away from formalism to a sense of literature as an aspect of social, economic, political and cultural history. While the earliest New Historicist work was criticized for a narrow and anecdotal view of history, it also served as an important stimulus for post-structuralist, feminist, Marxist and psychoanalytical work, which in turn has increasingly informed and redirected it. Recent writing on the nature of representation, the historical construction of gender and of the concept of identity itself, on theatre as a political and economic phenomenon and on the ideologies of art generally, reveals the breadth of the field. Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture is designed to offer historically oriented studies of Renaissance literature and theatre which make use of the insights afforded by theoretical perspectives. The view of history envisioned is above all a view of our own history, a reading of the Renaissance for and from our own time. Recent titles include 32. Heather Dubrow Shakespeare and domestic loss: forms of deprivation, mourning, and recuperation 33. David M. Posner The performance of nobility in early modern European literature 34. Michael C. Schoenfeldt Bodies and selves in early modern England: physiology and inwardness in Spenser, Shakespeare, Herbert, and Milton 35. Lynn Enterline The rhetoric of the body from Ovid to Shakespeare 36. Douglas A. Brooks From playhouse to printing house: drama and authorship in early modern England 37. Robert Matz Defending literature in early modern England: Rena