The Isle of Pines, 1668: Henry Neville's Uncertain Utopia (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781409435846)

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.

Author: John Scheckter
ISBN-10: 1409435849
ISBN-13: 9781409435846
Publisher: Routledge
Language: English
Published: 10/28/2011
Pages: 240
Format: Hardcover

Review Citation(s):
Reference and Research Bk News 04/01/2012 pg. 43