Description
Book SynopsisThe Savage and Modern Self examines the representation of North American Indians in novels, poetry, plays, and material culture from eighteenth-century Britain.
Trade Review"Dr. Richardson [is] completely successful in producing a work that questions, and ultimately undermines, both our notions of fixed identity and the place of "Indians" on the margins of modernity." -- Thomas Donald Jacobs, University of Ghent * Transmotion, vol 4 no 2, 2018 *
"Richardson’s work demonstrates just how varied and rich eighteenth-century representations of North American ‘Indians’ were. While the ‘Indian’ as a representational figure had, since first contact, always been multivalent and employed to critique European culture or justify certain political or religious persuasions, Richardson nonetheless rightly highlights the complexities, fluctuations, and increasing malleability of these representations in the eighteenth century." -- Rachel Winchcombe, University of Manchester *
Journal of British Studies *
"Robbie Richardson’s The Savage and Modern Self is a groundbreaking study of British representations of Native Americans from the Act of Union in 1707 to the dissensus of the 1790s. Over the course of six chapters, Richardson persuasively argues that the construction of modern British subjectivity includes acts of appropriating and disavowing features attributed to the figure of the Indian in the British cultural imaginary." -- Kelly Fleming, Kenyon College *
Eighteenth-Century Fiction *
Table of Contents1. Indians and the Construction of Britishness in the Early Eighteenth Century 2. The Indian as Cultural Critic: Shaping the British Self 3. Captivity Narratives and Colonialism 4. Novel Indians: Tsonnonthouan and the Commodification of Culture 5. Becoming Indians: Sentiment and the Hybrid British Subject 6. Native North American Material Culture in the British Imaginary Conclusion: "Pen-and-Ink Work"
