The return of Hans Staden
Subtitle: a go-between in the Atlantic world
By: Eve M. Duffy, Alida C. Metcalf
Contributors: Metcalf, Alida C., 1954-
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Baltimore
Language: eng
Number of pages: 216
ISBN-13: 9781421403458; 9781421403465
Subjects: Social life and customs; Early works to 1800; Description and travel; Travel; Indians of South America; Tupinamba Indians; Early accounts to 1600
Description: Hans Staden's sixteenth-century account of shipwreck and captivity by the Tupinambá Indians of Brazil was an early modern bestseller. This retelling of the German sailor's eyewitness account known as the True History shows both why it was so popular at the time and why it remains an important tool for understanding the opening of the Atlantic world. Eve M. Duffy and Alida C. Metcalf carefully reconstruct Staden's life as a German soldier, his two expeditions to the Americas, and his subsequent shipwreck, captivity, brush with cannibalism, escape, and return. The authors explore how these events and experiences were recreated in the text and images of the True History. Focusing on Staden's multiple roles as a go-between, Duffy and Metcalf address many of the issues that emerge when cultures come into contact and conflict. An artful and accessible interpretation, The Return of Hans Staden takes a text best known for its sensational tale of cannibalism and shows how it can be reinterpreted as a window into the precariousness of lives on both sides of early modern encounters, when such issues as truth and lying, violence, religious belief, and cultural difference were key to the formation of the Atlantic world.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.