The Isle of Pines, 1668: Henry Neville's Uncertain Utopia

Description

A short fiction of shipwreck and discovery written by the politician Henry Neville (1620-1694), The Isle of Pines is only beginning to draw critical attention, and until now no scholarly edition of the work has appeared. In the first full-length study of The Isle of Pines, supported by the first fully critical edition, John Scheckter discloses how Neville's work offers a critique of scientific discourse, enacts complicated engagements of race and gender, and interrogates the methods and consequences of European exploration. The volume offers a new critical model for applying post-colonial and postmodern examination strategies to an early modern work. Scheckter argues that the structure and publication history of the fiction, with its separate, unreliable narrators, along with its several topics-shipwreck survival, the founding of a new society, the initial phases of European colonization-are imbued with the sense of uncertainty that permeated the era. Cover Contents List of Figures Acknowledgments Preface Introduction A Critical Text of The Isle of Pines 1 “Which Copy hereafter followeth” 2 “If hereafter any ſhould come and find them out” 3 “I ſhall enquire more particularly” 4 “A great help to one another” 5 “The Countrey being thus ſettled” 6 “The ſtrange effects of Powder” Appendix A Appendix B Works Cited Index