In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Europeans invented 'Indians' and populated the world with them. The global history of the term 'Indian' remains largely unwritten and this volume, taking its cue from Shakespeare, asks us to consider the proximities and distances between various early modern discourses of the Indian. Through new analysis of English travel writing, medical treatises, literature, and drama, contributors seek not just to recover unexpected counter-histories but to put pressure on the ways in which we understand race, foreign bodies, and identity in a globalizing age that has still not shed deeply ingrained imperialist habits of marking difference.
Reviews / Votes
'In 1614, Samuel Purchas noted that India was a term that had begun to be used to describe 'all farre-distant Countries.' This volume is a careful, thought-provoking and wide-ranging analysis of the meaning, implications and consequences of that usage. It uncovers the astonishing diversity of peoples and locations signified by the term in early modern English writings. Even more important, it tracks the connections between the different 'Indians' forged through material as well as imaginative channels. 'India' and 'Indians' emerge as important points of entry into the early histories and discourses of globalization. An important and illuminating book.' - Ania Loomba, Catherine Bryson Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania
"The geographic miscalculation that persuaded Columbus to identify the New World as part of 'India' is at once so gross and so familiar that its imaginative consequences have never seemed to deserve serious consideration. The brilliant tessellation of essays that make up Indography show how mistaken that neglect has been. By opening a fascinating variety of perspectives on the many 'Indias' of the Renaissance imaginary, Gil Harris and his contributors promise to transform our understanding of early modern ethnography and its relation to the discourses of trade and empire." - Michael Neill, emeritus professor of English, University of Auckland
Series
Edition
Language
Place of publication
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Paper over boards
Illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 236 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 23 mm
Weight
ISBN-13
978-0-230-34137-1 (9780230341371)
DOI
Schweitzer Classification
Jonathan Gil Harris is a professor of English at George Washington University.
Introduction: Forms of Indography; J.G.Harris PART I: INDOLOGY: DISCOVERY, ETHNOGRAPHY, PATHOLOGY How To Make an Indian: Religion, Trade, and Translation in the Legends of Mõnçaide and Gaspar da Gama; B.Malieckal Looking for Loss, Anticipating Absence: Imagining Indians in the Archives and Depictions of Roanoke's Lost Colony; G.Caison From First Encounter to 'Fiery Oven': The Effacement of the New England Indian in Mourt's Relation and Histories of the Pequot War; T.Cartelli Trafficking in Tangomóckomindge: Ethnographic Materials in Harriot's A Briefe and True Report; K.Boettcher Translation and Identity in the Dialogues in the English and Malaiane Languages; M.Walter Playing Indian: John Smith, Pocahontas, and a Dialogue about a Chain of Pearl; K.Robertson Tobacco, Union, and The Indianized English; C.Rustici Sick Ethnography: Recording the Indian and the Ill English Body; J.G.Harris PART II: INDOPOESIS: POETRY, DRAMA, ROMANCE Spenser's 'Men of Inde': Mythologizing the Indian through the Genealogy of Faeries; M.Hollings From Lunacy to Faith: Orlando's Own Private India in Robert Greene's Orlando Furioso; J.W.Stone 'Enter Orlando with a scarf before his face': Indians, Moors, and the Properties of Racial Transformation in Robert Greene's The Historie of Orlando Furioso; G.Hollis 'Does this become you, Princess?': East Indian Ethopoetics in John Fletcher's The Island Princess; J.Tran Playing an Indian Queen: Neoplatonism, Ethnography, and The Temple of Love; A.Sen Made in India: How Meriton Latroon Became an Englishman; C.Nocentelli 'A Well-Born Race': Aphra Behn's The Widow Ranter; or, The History of Bacon in Virginia and the Place of Proximity; S.Eaton Afterword: Naming and Un-naming 'all the Indies': How India Became Hindustan; J.G.Singh
