Voyage and Discovery: Myth and Memory of the Canadian New World
Date of Award
Spring 5-15-2015
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Degree Type
Dissertation
Abstract
The New World, the unknown lands of the west, for the French explorers of the early 16th century, are filled with strange and new peoples, unknown customs and seemingly incomprehensible savagery. When Jacques Cartier, André Thevet and François Rabelais' Pantagruel set sail from France towards the new continent, whether to search for the infamous northwestern passage, or as a kind of early modern ethnographer or on a quest for the Word of the Oracle of the Holy Bottle, parts of the New World had already been discovered by Europeans, but much remained to be explored.
This work shows how each of these three authors experienced and wrote about their particular encounters with the Canadian New World. Moreover, this work demonstrates how the works of Jacques Cartier, André Thevet and François Rabelais, detailing their respective voyages to the New World, work in unision, either through intertextual borrowings or as epistemological inspiration, to create an image of the New World that gives a contemporary reader of the 21st century an idea of how the New World was perceived and understood in the early modern era.
Language
English (en)
Chair and Committee
Colette Winn
Committee Members
Julie Singer, Stamos Metzidakis, Nina C Davis, Pascal Ifri, Emily Thompson
Recommended Citation
Rowley, Brendan, "Voyage and Discovery: Myth and Memory of the Canadian New World" (2015). Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 491.
https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/art_sci_etds/491
Comments
Permanent URL: https://doi.org/10.7936/K72F7KKN