Framing 'India': The Colonial Imaginary in Early Modern Culture

This book explores what Columbus searched for but did not find: "India". Rather than study the geographical area denoted by that word, it focuses on the figures of "India" and "the East" in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European thought. By analyzing how these figures functioned, Framing "India" sketches the emergence of a European colonial imaginary: ways of thinking, acting, and representing patterns of behavior that made India productive (in all senses of the word) for early modern Europe.Through careful readings of early modern cartography, Camoes's The Lusiads, Fletcher's The Island Princess, Dryden's Amboyna, and Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, the author reveals the subtle but formative relationships between material practices and artistic representations of "India". While placing particular emphasis on England's stage representations, the book also describes England's belated entry into and eventual success in Eastern trade and colonization within broader historical and intellectual contexts. Throughout, the author draws upon a wide range of philosophical and literary texts, maps, and historical documents.The opening chapters examine the medieval antecedents that shaped the course of European expansion both east and west. In contextualizing The Lusiads, which became Portugal's national epic, the author shows how the "voyages of discovery" functioned both as responses to and expressions of a changing sense of self and world. Chapters examining less canonical works by Fletcher and Dryden rethink England's emergence as a colonial power. These plays epitomize England's complex competition with other European powers, notably Portugal and The Netherlands, over thespoils of the East.European and English national identities, the author argues, were shaped in distinctive ways through such colonial competition and resulted in new ways of representing and engaging with "India". The book concludes by examining the traces and imprints of early modern colonialism in present-day theoretical and literary discourse, showing how the figuration of India continues to exercise its functions, silently and subliminally, in the way we speak and think today.