Emissaries in early modern literature and culture

Charry, Brinda [u.a.] (Hrsg.):
Emissaries in early modern literature and culture : mediation, transmission, traffic, 1550-1700 / edited by Brinda Charry and Gitanjali Shahani. - Farnham, England ; Burlington, VT : Ashgate, 2009. - x, 265 S. : Ill. - (Transculturalisms, 1400-1700)
ISBN 978-0-7546-6207-5 / 0-7546-6207-1
£ 55,00

Beschreibung
With its emphasis on early modern emissaries and their role in England's expansionary ventures and cross-cultural encounters across the globe, this collection of essays takes the messenger figure as a focal point for the discussion of transnational exchange and intercourse in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It sees the emissary as embodying the processes of representation and communication within the world of the text, itself an "emissary" that strives to communicate and re-present certain perceptions of the "real." Drawing attention to the limits and licenses of communication, the emissary is a reminder of the alien quality of foreign language and the symbolic power of performative gestures and rituals.
   Contributions to this collection examine different kinds of cross-cultural activities (e.g., diplomacy, trade, translation, espionage, missionary endeavors) in different world areas (e.g., Asia, the Mediterranean, the Levant, the New World) via different critical methods and approaches. They take up the literary and cultural productions and representations of ambassadors, factors, traders, translators, spies, middlemen, merchants, missionaries, and other agents, who served as complex conduits for the global transport of goods, religious ideologies, and socio-cultural practices throughout the early modern period. Authors in the collection investigate the multiple ways in which the emissary became enmeshed in emerging discourses of racial, religious, gender, and class differences.
   They consider how the emissary's role might have contributed to an idealized progressive vision of a borderless world or, conversely, permeated and dissolved borders and boundaries between peoples only to further specific group interests. [Buchumschlag]

Inhalt
List of illustrations. vii
Notes on contributors. ix
Acknowledgments. xi
Brinda Charry and Gitanjali Shahani: Introduction. 1
PART 1: DISCOURSE OF DIPLOMACY
    1. Jonathan Burton: The Shah's two ambassadors: The travels of the three English brothers and the global early modern. 23
    2. Ania Loomba: Of gifts, ambassadors, and copy-cats: diplomacy, exchange, and difference in early modern India. 41
    3. Virginia Mason Vaughan: Representing the king of Morocco. 77
PART 2: AGENTS OF EXCHANGE
    4. Pompa Banerjee: Just passing: Abbé Carré, spy, harem-lord, and 'made in france'. 95
    5. Barbara Sebek: 'After my humble dutie remembered': factors and versus merchants. 113
    6. M. G. Aune: Passengers, spies, emissaries, and merchants: travelers and early modern English identity. 129
PART 3: LANGUAGE AND TECHNOLOGIES OF MEDIATION
    7. Linda McJannet: The translator as emissary: continental works about the Ottomans in England. 147
    8. Hannah Chapelle Wojciehowski: The Queen of Onor and her emissaries: Fernão Mendes Pinto's dialogue with India. 167
    9. Marianne Montgomery: Listening to the emissary in Middleton's No wit, no help like a woman's. 193
PART 4: TRANSMISSION AND TRANSFORMATION
    10. Brinda Charry: 'Backward and abysm of time': negotiating with the dead in the tempest. 207
    11. Sheila T. Cavanagh: 'Thrown from the rock': emissaries as midwives and impediments of a new world. 225
Bibliography. 237
Index. 257

Herausgeberinnen
BRINDA CHARRY is Assistant Professor of English at Keene State College, NH. Profile page.
GITANJALI SHAHANI is Assistant Professor of English at San Francisco State University. Faculty profiles.

Quellen: Ashgate; Google Books; Amazon; WorldCat