English 205: Early American Lit
Professor Michael Drexler
16 February 2004
First Reading Quiz
Copy the following into the first page of your blue book(s):
Name:______
All the work below is my own. I did not use my textbook or receive assistance in preparing my responses.
______
Signature
PART I
Discuss the significance of 4 of the following 6 quotes (12.5 points each)
Your answer should draw on what you know from the broader readings from which the selections are drawn and from topics discussed in class. (One paragraph/quote)
1. “read through this book, and ye will find in it the greatest and most marvellous characteristics of the people especially of Armenia, Persia, India, and Tartary, as they are related in the present work. . . this book will be a truthful one”
2. “[the Indians] bartered, like idiots, cotton and gold for fragments of bows, glasses, bottles, and jars; which I forbad as being unjust, and myself gave them many beautiful and acceptable articles. . .taking nothing from them in return; I did this in order that I might the more easily conciliate them, that they might become Christians”
3. “But as for monsters, because they are not news, of them we were not at all inquisitive. For nothing is easier to find, than barking Scyllaes, ravening Celaenos, and Laestrygones devourers of people, and such like great and incredible monsters. But to find citizens ruled by good and wholesome laws, that is an exceeding rare and hard thing.”
4. “Whereby it follows, that there is some other cause than the Climate or the Sun’s perpendicular reflections, that should cause the Ethiopians’ great blackness. And the most probable cause to my judgement is, that this blackness proceeds from some natural infection of the first inhabitants of that Country, and so all the whole progeny of them descended, are still polluted with the same blot of infection”
5. “Such are the Spaniards, such are their fruits: fruits far worse than the fruits of Sodom.”
6. “… Guiana is a Country that hath yet her Maidenhead, never sacked, turned, nor wrought, the face of the earth hath not been torn, nor the virtue and salt of the soil spent…”
PART II
Short Essay Questions (Choose 2; 25 points each)
1. The images below offer two representations of Indians encountered during Walter Ralegh’s expedition to Roanoke in 1585. Discuss the differences between the painting and the engraving. Recall that the engraving to the right accompanied the publication of Thomas Hariot’s A Briefe and True Report. How does it support Hariot’s agenda? In addition to discussing Hariot, you may find it useful to refer to other accounts of contact between Europeans and Indians (John Smith, Amerigo Vespucci)
2. Anthropologists and ethnographers are in the business of producing knowledge about the ‘Other.’ From the perspective of these observers, this means describing people who are distinctly ‘not like us.’ Hariot’s A Briefe and True Report might profitably be viewed as an early example of ethnographic writing. What are some of the difficulties or pitfalls of writing ethnography? How does the question of the motives of the observer enter into any consideration of the “knowledge” that is produced and disseminated? What effect do earlier accounts of Indians have on what observers see themselves when they describe native peoples?
3. The following quote comes from Christopher Columbus’ letter to the King and Queen of Castile: “I discovered many islands, thickly peopled, of which I took possession without resistance in the name of our most illustrious Monarch, by public proclamation and with unfurled banners.” With reference to what you know about the development of the Spanish colonial system (Adelantado, Requerimiento, Encomienda), discuss the significance of the quote in detail.