http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/25685417

When the other is the self England, Spain, and literature about the new world, 1595-1632

The metamorphosis of the seventeenth-century English national subject was in great part due to the nation's mercurial relations with Catholic Spain, a lightning-rod for pressures on England, especially in the New World as a growing colonial power. I believe that between 1595 and 1630 Anglo-Spanish politics decisively shaped English literature about the New World and its inhabitants: Shakespeare and Fletcher dramatized for the public issues of colonial ambivalence, while the prose of Raleigh, Bacon, and Godwin gave voice to the conflicting concerns of the government and church in their roles in America. This writing manifested the ambiguous identity of the English in America, allied neither with the Spanish nor the Indians, yet wishing to emulate aspects of both.

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