Mysterious and the Foreign in Early Modern England

Description:

"The essays collected in this volume explore many of the most interesting, and some of the more surprising, reactions of English people in the early modern period to their encounters with the mysterious and the foreign. In this period the small and peripheral nation of English speakers first explored the distant world from the Arctic, to the tropics of the Americas, to the exotic East, and snowy wastes of Russia, recording its impressions and adventures in an equally wide variety of literary genres. Nearer home, fresh encounters with the mysterious world of the Ottoman Empire and the lure of the Holy Land, and, of course, with the evocative wonders of Italy, provide equally rich accounts for the consumption of a reading and theatergoing public. This growing public proved to be, in some cases, naive and gullible, in others urbanely sophisticated in its reactions to "otherness," or frankly incredulous of travelers' tales."--Jacket.

subjects: English literature,  History and criticism,  Exoticism in literature,  Travel in literature,  Supernatural in literature,  Other (Philosophy) in literature,  Difference (Philosophy) in literature,  Curiosities and wonders in literature,  Travelers' writings, English,  Foreign countries in literature,  English literature, history and criticism, early modern, 1500-1700,  Curiosities and wonders,  Travelers' writings, history and criticism,  Philosophy in literature

Times: Early modern, 1500-1700