Renaissance Studies Commons^™

“The Whole Is An Idle Dream:” The Early Modern And Post-Modern Quest For Cathay, Adele Lee

Quidditas

This article examines how the Renaissance English understood and responded to the land of Cathay. It argues that although Cathay is technically just another name for China it represented a separate conceptual realm in this period. In other words, Cathay must be considered as being, in many ways, a distinct discursive construct. Viewed as the ‘glittering prize’ of the East India Company, Cathay, which fuelled countless (doomed) attempts at discovery, possessed characteristics both Chinese and Tartar. Descriptions of it converged and diverged simultaneously with descriptions of China and Tartary. As well as being a culturally liminal entity, Cathay was also …