Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T17:12:08.089Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“Plain Broad Narratives of Substantial Facts”: Credibility, Narrative, and Hakluyt’s Principall Navigations*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Julia Schleck
Julia Schleck*
Affiliation:
New York University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article compares voyage narratives printed in Richard Hakluyt’s 1589 Principall Navigations to contemporaneous travel histories in an effort to contextualize the epistemological status of each group of texts and debunk the former’s reputation for greater factuality. It critiques the use commonly made of Hakluyt’s narratives in literary studies, arguing that the privileging of these texts over other sources results in postcolonial studies that ironically valorize a type of writing which promoted the colonial mindset these studies seek to expose.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 59 , Issue 3 , Fall 2006 , pp. 768 - 794
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 2006

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

A preliminary version of this article was read at the annual meeting of The Renaissance Society of America in 2004. I am grateful to the panel’s respondent, Michèle Longino, for her thoughtful commentary and for her enthusiasm regarding the ideas expressed in this paper. Thanks are due as well to Ernest Gilman, John Archer, John Guillory, David Landreth, Elizabeth Bearden, and Kelly Stage, all of whom provided helpful feedback on earlier drafts of this article, and, of course, to John, without whose witty intellect and support my titles (and my work) would fall entirely flat.

References

Archer, John Michael. Old Worlds: Egypt, Southwest Asia, India and Russia in Early Modern English Writing. Stanford, 2001.Google Scholar
Bartels, Emily. “Othello and Africa: Post-colonialism Reconsidered.” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 54, no. 1 (1997): 45–64.Google Scholar
Cartwright, John. The Preachers Travels. London, 1611.Google Scholar
Cribb, T. J. “Writing up the Log: The Legacy of Hakluyt.” In Travel Writing and Empire: Postcolonial Theory in Transit, ed. Clark, Steve, 100–12. London, 1999.Google Scholar
D’Amico, Jack. The Moor in English Renaissance Drama. Tampa, 1991.Google Scholar
Daston, Lorraine. “Perché i fatti sono brevi?” Quaderni Storici 108, no. 3 (2001): 745–70.Google Scholar
Davies, D. W. Elizabethans Errant: The Strange Fortunes of Sir Thomas Sherley and His Three Sons. Ithaca, 1967.Google Scholar
Day, John, Rowley, William, and Wilkins, George. The Trauailes of the three English Brothers. Sir Thomas, Sir Anthony, Mr Robert Shirley. As it is now play’d by Her Maiesties Seruants. 1607. In Three Renaissance Travel Plays, ed. Parr, Anthony, 55–134. Manchester, 1995.Google Scholar
Dear, Peter. “From Truth to Disinterestedness in the Seventeenth Century.” Social Studies of Science 22 (1992): 619–31.Google Scholar
Ferguson, Arthur B. Clio Unbound: Perception of the Social and Cultural Past in Renaissance England. Durham, NC, 1979.Google Scholar
Fleischman, Suzanne. “On the Representation of History and Fiction in the Middle Ages.” History and Theory 22, no. 3 (1983): 278–310.Google Scholar
Floor, Willem. A Fiscal History of Iran in the Safavid and Qajar Periods 1500–1925. New York, 1998.Google Scholar
Floor, Willem. Safavid Government Institutions. Costa Mesa, CA, 2001.Google Scholar
Froude, J. A. “England’s Forgotten Worthies.” In Froude, J. A., Short Studies on Great Subjects, 443–501. London, 1891.Google Scholar
Fuller, Mary. Voyages in Print: English Travel to America, 1576–1624. Cambridge, 1995.Google Scholar
Fussner, F. Smith. The Historical Revolution: English Historical Writing and Thought, 1580–1640. New York, 1962.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hakluyt, Richard, ed. The Principall Navigations, Voyages and Discoveries of the English Nation. 2 vols. 1589. Fascimile reprint, London, 1965.Google Scholar
Helfers, James P. “The Explorer or the Pilgrim? Modern Critical Opinion and the Editorial Methods of Richard Hakluyt and Samuel Purchas.” Studies in Philology 94, no. 2 (1997): 160–86.Google Scholar
Helgerson, Richard. Forms of Nationhood: The Elizabethan Writing of England. Chicago, 1992.Google Scholar
Jauss, Hans-Robert. “Chanson de geste et roman courtois.” In Chanson de geste und höfischer Roman: Heidelberger Kolloquium, 30. Januar 1961, 61–77. Heidelberg, 1963.Google Scholar
Levine, Joseph. Humanism and History: Origins of Modern English Historiography. Ithaca, 1987.Google Scholar
Licoppe, Christian. La formation de la pratique scientifique: Le discourse de ’l expérience en France et en Angleterre (1630–1820). Paris, 1996.Google Scholar
Martyr, Peter. De orbe nov. . . . decades. Trans. Eden, Richard. London, 1555.Google Scholar
Middleton, Thomas. Sir Robert Sherley, sent ambassadour in the name of the King of Persia. London, 1609.Google Scholar
Neville-Sington, Pamela. “‘A very good trumpet’: Richard Hakluyt and the Politics of Overseas Expansion.” In Texts and Cultural Change in Early Modern England, ed. Brown, Cedric and Marotti, Arthur, 66–79. New York, 1997.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nixon, Anthony. The travels of three English brothers. 1. Sir Thomas Sherley. 2. Sir Anthony Sherley. 3. M. Robert Sher-ley. With Sir Thomas Sherley his returne in to England this present yeare 1607. London, 1607.Google Scholar
Parry, William. A new and large discourse on the Trauels of Sir Anthonie Sherley, Knight. 1601. In Illustrations of Early English Popular Literature, ed. Collier, J. Payne, 2:5–55. London, 1864.Google Scholar
Payne, Anthony. “‘Strange, Remote, and Farre Distant Countreys: The Travel ’ Books of Richard Hakluyt.” In Journeys through the Market: Travel, Travellers and the Book Trade, ed. Myers, Robin and Harris, Michael, 1–37. New Castle, DE, 1999.Google Scholar
Pocock, J. G. A. The Ancient Constitution and the Federal Law: A Study of English Historical Thought in the Seventeenth Century. A Reissue with a Retrospect. Cambridge, 1987.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Purchas, Samuel. Hakluytus Posthumus: or, Purchas his Pilgrimes. 20 vols. Glasgow, 1905–07.Google Scholar
Quinn, D. B., ed. The Hakluyt Handbook. 2 vols. London, 1974.Google Scholar
Rabb, Theodore. “Investment in English Overseas Enterprise, 1575–1630.” The Economic History Review, n.s., 19, no. 1 (1966): 70–81.Google Scholar
Raleigh, Sir Walter Alexander. “The English Voyages of the Sixteenth Century.” In The Principall Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques & Discoveries of the English Nation, ed. Hakluyt, Richard, 12:1–120. Glasgow, 1905.Google Scholar
Ramusio, Giovanni Battista. Navigationi et viaggi. Venice, 1550–59.Google Scholar
Savory, R. M. “Safavid Persia.” In The Cambridge History of Islam, ed. Holt, P. M., Lambton, Ann K. S., and Lewis, Bernard, 1a : 394–429. Cambridge, 1970.Google Scholar
Shapin, Steven. A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England. Chicago, 1994.10.7208/chicago/9780226148847.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shapin, Steven, and Schaffer, Simon. Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life. Princeton, 1985.Google Scholar
Shapiro, Barbara. A Culture of Fact: England 1550–1720. Ithaca, 2000 Google Scholar
Sherley, Sir Anthony. His relation of his travels into Persia. London, 1613.Google Scholar
Sidney, Sir Philip. Apology for Poesy. Ed. Shepherd, Geoffrey and Maslen, R. W.. 3rd ed. Manchester, 2002.Google Scholar
Taylor, E. G. R. Late Tudor and Early Stuart Geography 1583–1650. London, 1934.Google Scholar
Taylor, E. G. R., ed. The original writings & correspondence of the two Richard Hakluyts. London, 1935.Google Scholar
A true report of Sir Anthony Shierlies journey ouerland to . . . Persia. London, 1600.Google Scholar
Vitkus, Daniel. “Turning Turk in Othello: The Conversion and Damnation of the Moor.” Shakespeare Quarterly 48 (1997): 145–77.Google Scholar
Willes, Richard. History of travayle. London, 1577.Google Scholar
Williamson, James A. “Richard Hakluyt.” In Richard Hakluyt and his Successors, ed. Lynam, Edward, 2nd ser., 93:22–23. London, 1946.Google Scholar