The Discoverie of the Large, Rich, and Bewtiful Empyre of Guiana (American Exploration and Travel)
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.43 (785 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0806130202 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 240 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 0000-00-00 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
difficult but rewarding Little needs to be said about Ralegh's text beyond the obvious--it is a fascinating example of Renaissance self-fashioning through travel writing. It is reproduced carefully and faithfully here, with a minimum of editorial intrusion, for which readers should be grateful.Whitehead's long introduction poses more of a problem. It is shockingly badly written--one imagines that the editors threw up their hands in despair at the atrocious quality of the prose. Only professional anthropologists and historians are likely to strug. "Another work by an armchair anthropologist" according to Benito Nova. This book is basicaly a rehash of Walter Raleigh's work. Whitehead, never having done any long-term fieldwork in Amazonia, offers little new insight to his readers. He gets away with this by theorizing, as postmodernists often do, from a distance (and using the hard work of others). This book, as so much of his other work, is a sign of the decay of anthropology in USA.. "The Discoverie of the Large, Rich, and Bewtiful Eympyre of G" according to Luke. I think that this book was excellent. The author was a very talented man. I recommend this book to any one who would like to learn more about the history of South America.
However, because of these apparently fantastical elements, this key text on the European expansion into the Americas remains poorly understood. Military encounters with the Spanish, diplomatic encounters with native kings, and enigmatic encounters with monstrous marvels, are woven into a near-mystic quest for hidden gold. "The Discoverie", by Walter Raleigh, narrates his expedition to South America in quest of an indigenous 'empire' in the highlands of Guiana. Newly transcribed and annotated, this edition for the first time provides an anthropological commentary of the original edition of "The discoverie" and challenges existing evaluations of both Raleigh and of early travel texts more generally.