Discourse and Identity: Colonial American Writing 1584-1637

• Main Authors: Hsi, Yung-hui, 奚永慧
• Other Authors: Yao-fu Lin
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2002
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/12527472061302151976

博士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 外國語文學系研究所 === 90 === National identity is as much a composition of generations of text and discourse as it is a product of political and social-historical forces. Long before the stage was set for American Independence, early English New World writing had provided the discursive power that finally engendered the new republic. The thesis is a textual study of late sixteenth-century and early seventeenth-century English writing on the New World of North America, notably Virginia and New England, in light of Post-colonial studies. It studies texts such as the younger Richard Hakluyt’s Discourse of Western Planting (1584), Thomas Harriot’s A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1590), John Brereton’s Discoverie of the North Part of Virginia (1602), William Wood’s New England’s Prospect (1635), and Thomas Morton’s New English Canaan (1637). After the introductory chapter one, chapter two establishes the episteme of the time, i.e. England as God’s true chosen country. Registering England in Biblical and ecclesiastical contexts, the chapter traces the historical, ideological, and textual origins of the British Empire. Chapter three demonstrates how this sense of election was carried over to justify overseas colonialism and characterized early accounts of English contact with the New World. Chapter four catalogues the discursive characteristics shared by the target texts and how they helped the English settlers to subdue or tame the terra incognita while appropriating the New World to consolidate England’s identity as the elect nation. Chapter five examines how early English New World writing claimed hegemony over the New World through negating and othering the peoples and cultures of the inhabiting native population. Chapter six sums up different forms of “othering” in the context of early English New World writings and discuss how different identities try to hold the center. In conclusion, the final chapter shows how identity, constructed by the dialogue between the text and the episteme, are constantly in flux. As a result, early English New World writing entertained the momentum of an American national identity at a time when few people were thinking about establishing a new country in North America.