'Not as a poet, but a pioner': Fancy and the Colonial Gaze in William Davenant's Madagascar (1638)

Lauren Noemie Working

doi:10.1111/rest.12835

'Not as a poet, but a pioner': Fancy and the Colonial Gaze in William Davenant's Madagascar (1638)

Lauren Noemie Working

English and Related Literature

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

In the late 1630s, the court poet William Davenant applied his literary energies to Madagascar, an island off the eastern coast of Africa: ‘Thus in a dreame, I did adventure out…/Betweene the Southern Tropick and the Line’. While previous scholarship has highlighted the poem's ambiguous attitude towards empire, focusing on the rising interest in global travel and eastern diplomacy at Charles I's court, this article revisits the poem's genre and social context by focusing on its specific engagement with colonization. In doing so, it establishes Madagascar as an important example of how cavalier poets helped shape the aesthetics of early Stuart colonialism at court. The use of fancy – explored here through poetic style and wit sociability, female colonial networks at Henrietta Maria's court, and real and imagined objects, including Malagasy artefacts – becomes key to reconciling the seeming incongruities between the poem's lover-conquerors and the colonial aspirations that underpinned the project.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	319-344
Journal	Renaissance Studies
Volume	37
Early online date	27 Nov 2022
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1111/rest.12835
Publication status	Published - 16 May 2023

Bibliographical note

Keywords

Madagascar
cavalier
fancy
colonialism
early Stuart

Access to Document

10.1111/rest.12835Licence: CC BY-NC-ND

Renaissance Studies - 2022 - Working
© 2022 The Author.
Final published version, 9.58 MBLicence: CC BY-NC-ND

Cite this

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