Mimesis and Empire: The New World, Islam, and European Identities

Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture

by Barbara Fuchs

Here the author explores the dynamics of imitation among early modern European powers in literary and historiographical texts from sixteenth and early seventeenth-century Spain, Italy, England, and the New World. The book considers a broad sweep of material, including European representations of New World subjects and of Islam. It supplements the transatlantic perspective on early modern imperialism with an awareness of the situation in the Mediterranean and considers problems of reading and literary transmission; imperial ideology and colonial identities; counterfeits and forgery; and piracy.

228 pages, Hardcover

First published August 15, 1997

About the author

Barbara Fuchs is Professor of Spanish and Portuguese and Professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her Exotic Nation: Maurophilia and the Construction of Early Modern Spain is also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.