Corporate Christians and Terrible Turks: Economics, Aesthetics, and the Representation of Empire in the Early British Travel Narrative, 1630 - 1780

This dissertation examines the evolution of the early English travel narrative as it relates to the development and application of mercantilist economic practices, theories of aesthetic representation, and discourses of gender and narrative authority. I attempt to redress an imbalance in critical work on pre-colonialism and colonialism, which has tended to focus either on the Renaissance, as exemplified by the works of critics such as Stephen Greenblatt and John Gillies, or on the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, as in the work of scholars such as Srinivas Aravamudan and Edward Said. This critical gap has left early travel narratives by Sir Francis Moore, Jonathan Harris, Penelope Aubin, and others largely neglected. These early writers, I argue, adapted the conventions of the travel narrative while relying on the authority of contemporary commercial practices. The early English travelers modified contemporary conventions of aesthetic representation by formulating their descriptions of non-European cultures in terms of the economic and political conventions and rivalries of the early eighteenth century. Early English travel literature, I demonstrate, functioned as a politically motivated medium that served both as a marker of authenticity, justifying the colonial and imperial ventures that would flourish in the nineteenth century, and as a forum for experimentation with English notions of gender and narrative authority.

Grantor dc:publisher

University of North Texas

Year dc:date

2003

Author dc:creator

• Abunasser, Rima Jamil

Contributors dc:contributor

• Pettit, Alexander
• Preston, Thomas R.
• Vanhoutte, Jacqueline, 1968-

• Travelers' writings, British -- History and criticism.
• English prose literature -- 17th century.
• English prose literature -- 18th century.
• Economics in literature.
• Aesthetics in literature.
• Politics in literature.
• travel narrative
• terrible turks
• aesthetics
• gender
• empire
• economics

Statement dc:rights

• Public
• Copyright
• Abunasser, Rima Jamil
• Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved.

Language dc:language

English

Identifier

oclc: 54104498
https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc4444/
ark: ark:/67531/metadc4444

OAI identifier oai:identifier

info:ark/67531/metadc4444