March 11

Mary Fuller
Dept of Literature
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

England and America 1587-1620: Reassessing the Tropes of Discovery

READINGS

Thomas Harriot, "A Briefe and True Report (1590)" (Dover, 1972)

Sir Walter Ralegh, "Selected Writings" (Penguin, 1986)

OR "Discoverie of the Large, Rich and Beautiful Empire of Guiana," (Works issued for the Hakluyt Society, vol. 3, 1848)

OR the facsimile reprint of the "Discoverie" (Da Capo)

Richard Whitbourne, "Discourse and Discovery of New-Found-Land" (London, 1620)

SUMMARY

Thomas Harriot's "Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia" (1590) and Walter Ralegh's "Discoverie of Guiana" (1596) are two of the best-known and most studied accounts of English contact with the Americas before colonization. Harriot's text describes the setting for a planned colony under Ralegh's sponsorship which, had it survived, would have been England's first foothold on the American continent. Ralegh's own text describes a different encounter on different terrain, the search for a legendary golden city in which English and Spanish competed not simply for resources but also for indigenous allegiances. Both Harriot's and Ralegh's accounts received wide circulation, not only in multiple English versions but also on the continent; crucially, both appeared as illustrated volumes in the "America" of the Flemish engraver and printer Theodor de Bry. Ralegh's patronage of Harriot connects the two men over and above Harriot's participa- tion in Ralegh's project; Ralegh's different participation in the Roanoke and Guiana enterprises allows both to be read in the larger context of his career and of court politics more generally.

It is not surprising, then, that these two texts (along with the narratives of Martin Frobisher) have been foundational for recent understand- ings of early English involvement with the Americas. Accomplished in them- selves, the Ralegh and Harriot texts are densely woven into the cultural narratives of early modern England. We'll begin by discussing these two texts in light of what they can tell us about early modern English theories and experiences of the Americas, with some reference to secondary sources and fictional reappropriations.

If the Ralegh and Harriot texts are central for us, it is also the case that they are only a small part of what was a much larger documentary record on English "discovery," much of it in print by 1600. The second topic for this session will be Richard Whitbourne's "Discourse and Discovery of New- Found-Land." Whitbourne's proposal for a colony in Newfoundland, published in 1620, postdates the other two texts by several decades; at the same time, it reflects some forty years of direct, personal experience in an English fishery at Newfoundland which some see as dating back to the 1480's. Whitbourne's text overlaps at several points with the other two: notably, in the coincident use of the place name "New Found Land" and also in an encounter with Ralegh's captains as they returned from the second, fatal voyage to Guiana. Yet for a number of reasons, Whitbourne's text -- which represents not only a larger body of print material on Newfoundland but also a vast amount of English experience there -- suggests an alternate account of England's early relations with the Americas. We will explore what kinds of understanding this text yields under the kind of interpretive pressure brought to bear on Harriot and Ralegh's texts, and ask whether it tells us anything which adds to or qualifies the composite narrative of Anglo-American encounters and foundations.