Premodern places
Subtitle: Calais to Surinam, Chaucer to Aphra Behn
By: David Wallace.
Publisher: Blackwell Pub.; Wiley-Interscience; Wiley-Blackwell
Published: 2004
Place of publication: Malden, MA
Language: eng
Number of pages: 342
Subjects: English literature -- Foreign influences; English literature -- Middle English, 1100-1500 -- History and criticism; English literature -- Early modern, 1500-1700 -- History and criticism; Geography in literature
Description: "This book recovers places in the mental mapping of medieval and Renaissance writers, from Chaucer to Aphra Behn. Beginning with Calais, peopled by the English from 1347 to 1558, and ending with Surinam, traded away for Manhattan in 1667, this well-illustrated book recreates the distinctive cultural life of a range of locations: from Flanders, which led the world in technological innovation; to Somerset, which provided a fitting home for Dante; to the Canaries (the Fortunate Islands), which formed the limits of western dreaming." "The book's exploration of premodern places features vignettes, such as an English merchant learning love songs in Calais, coupled with insights into broader economic narratives of political, technological, religious, and economic change. In particular, it provides long genealogies of blackness and whiteness, race and slavery, in the premodern world."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.