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Spice Race: The Island Princess And The Politics Of Transnational Appropriation, Carmen Nocentelli
Spice Race: The Island Princess And The Politics Of Transnational Appropriation, Carmen Nocentelli
Carmen Nocentelli
Recent scholarship has located John Fletcher’s The Island Princess (1621) in the historical context of the early modern “spice race” but has not addressed the extent to which the intra-European tensions staged in the play also enact an international contest for symbolic and cultural resources. Taking as its starting point Fletcher’s acknowledged sources, Bartolomé Leonardo de Argensola’s Conquista de las islas Malucas (1609) and Louis Gédoyn de Bellan’s “Histoire memorable de Dias espagnol, et de Quixaire princesse de Moluques” (1615), this essay places The Island Princess in the thick of an appropriative process that moved from Portugal’s periphery to Spain, …
The Erotics Of Mercantile Imperialism: Cross-Cultural Requitedness In The Early Modern Period, Carmen Nocentelli
The Erotics Of Mercantile Imperialism: Cross-Cultural Requitedness In The Early Modern Period, Carmen Nocentelli
Carmen Nocentelli
This article explores the early modern vogue for intermarriage narratives, arguing that cross-cultural unions served as both a crucial instrument of and a privileged metaphor for European imperialism. Adapting medieval precedents to the exigencies of colonial governance and mercantile penetration, plots of interracial requitedness exorcized the specter of European “degeneration” abroad and legitimized the subordination of countries from which enormous profits could be extracted. At the same time, these popular narratives bolstered a regime of domestic heterosexuality that increasingly confined eroticism within the bounds of marriage. With their exotic backdrops and amorous exploits, they celebrated heteropatriarchy while racializing practices and …