From There to Finistère: Finding Henry Neville's ISLE OF PINES
2011; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 69; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/00144940.2011.627803
ISSN1939-926X
Autores Tópico(s)Historical Economic and Social Studies
ResumoClick to increase image sizeClick to decrease image sizeKeywords: Henry NevilleRestoration courtsatireseventeenth century Notes 1. Terra Australis Incognita was shown on all early maps, but its existence was only assumed and it would remain unseen until 1820. Never making landfall, Captain James Cook during his second voyage of discovery determined that the frozen continent was much smaller than surmised with most of its landmass lying within the Antarctic Circle. Maps of the world, many produced by Dutch cartographers and engravers, were widely available throughout the late seventeenth century. 2. PDFs of the text of this nine-page stand-alone anonymously published pamphlet can be found at EEBO (Wing / N505). The year of the Indian Merchant shipwreck is 1569. Elizabeth's elder half-sister Mary died in November 1558; although Elizabeth's accession was immediate, her coronation was not until January 1558/1559. 3. PDFs of the conflated text and woodcut illustration for The Isle of Pines, also anonymously published, can be found at EEBO (Wing / N506). A lightly annotated text based on the Worthington Chauncey Ford edition of 1920 can be found in Susan Bruce's Three Early Modern Utopias. For the two letters, see The Isle of Pines sig. [A2v] facing the first page of text on sig. A3r. 4. La Rochelle was a major port situated on the Bay of Biscay at 46° 10′ N and 01° 09′ W. It lies between the most westerly French headland Finistère and the most westerly Spanish headland Cape Finisterre—literally land's end. It would not be easily missed; Restoration audiences would know that no such mid-Atlantic island existed. Keek's fantasy island remains in the middle of the North Atlantic whether we select Land's End in Cornwall at 50° 03′ N and 05° 43′ W or Cape Finisterre in Spain at 42° 53′ N and 09° 16′ W. 5. The coordinates for Finistère in Brittany are 48° 15′ N and 04° 00′ W. One league is three nautical miles, where the nautical mile corresponds to one minute of arc along any meridian. Greenwich was only internationally accepted as the prime meridian in 1884. Previously, other locations, ultimately just as arbitrary, were used by seafarers, including: Amsterdam, Paris, El Hierro in the Canaries and Ilha de Santo Antão in the Cape Verdes—then considered by Spain and Portugal respectively as the western limits of the Old World. 6. See The Isle of Pines sig. D1v (p. 22). PDFs of the 1556 Robinson translation of Utopia can be found at EEBO (STC (2nd ed.) / 18095.5). The second book begins with Raphael Hythloday's description, “The island of Utopia containeth in breadth … 200 miles … fetching about … a compass of 500 miles,” but Hythloday does not reveal where the island lies, see Utopia sig. G5v (facing G6r p. 46). 7. See The Isle of Pines sig. D1v (p. 22). Long before the Dutch, Vasco da Gama pioneered this route via the Cape of Good Hope to the Malabar Coast of India.
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