Research Catalog

Title

Metaphors of dispossession : American beginnings and the translation of empire, 1492-1637 / by Gesa Mackenthun.

Author

Mackenthun, Gesa, 1959-

Publication

Norman : University of Oklahoma Press, ©1997.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xii, 370 pages : illustrations; 25 cm

Summary

In this timely contribution to colonial studies, Gesa Mackenthun analyzes English and Spanish narratives of the "discovery" and colonization of America, from the Caribbean and Mexico north to Virginia and New England. She shows how Europeans wrote themselves into possession of America by translating their deep-seated colonial anxiety into the ideology of native savagery and rightful territorial ownership. The Europeans' metaphors of domination depended on silencing indigenous voices even as the writers pretended to record Native leaders. This series of theoretically informed readings includes Hernan Cortes and Motecuhzoma, Richard Hakluyt, Ralph Lane, Sir Walter Ralegh, John Smith and Powhatan, and the Puritans. Mackenthun's New Historicist and postcolonial scholarship reveals the verbal and physical translation of empire from New Spain to New England. Her concluding chapter uses gender theory to draw a brilliant connection between the the Puritans' expulsion of Anne Hutchinson and the genocide of the Pequots, whose relationship to the land was seen as dangerously feminine in contrast to the Puritan model of masculine mastery.

Subject

• Indians > First contact with other peoples > Historiography
• Indians, Treatment of > Historiography
• Peuples autochtones > Premiers contacts avec d'autres peuples > Historiographie
• Indios de América > Trato recibido > Historiografía
• Colonization > Historiography
• Indians > First contact with other peoples > Historiography
• Indians, Treatment of > Historiography
• Eroberung
• Geschichtsschreibung
• Ontdekkingen
• Kolonisatie
• Beeldvorming
• Engels
• Spaans
• Letterkunde
• Indians > First contact with Europeans > Sources
• Indians, Treatment of
• America > Discovery and exploration > British > Historiography
• America > Discovery and exploration > Spanish > Historiography
• America > Early accounts to 1600 > History and criticism
• America > Colonization > Historiography
• Amérique > Découverte et exploration espagnoles > Historiographie
• Amérique > Récits avant 1600 > Histoire et critique
• Amérique > Colonisation > Historiographie
• América > Descubrimientos y exploraciones > Españoles > Historiografía
• América > Descubrimientos y exploraciones > Británicos > Historiografía
• America
• Amerika
• America > Early accounts to 1600

Genre/Form

• Criticism, interpretation, etc.
• Early works

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 337-361) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

1. Books for Empire: The Colonial Program of Richard Hakluyt -- 2. Motecuhzoma and the White God: The Genealogy of a Colonialist Myth -- 3. The Politics of Colonial Representation -- 4. "A Mortall Immortall Possession": Virginian Battlefields -- 5. Rituals of Exclusion: 1637.

ISBN

• 0806129530
• 9780806129532

LCCN

96052787

OCLC

• 36112169
• SCSB-10008999

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library