Sacred Seeds

New World Plants in Early Modern English Literature

Edward McLean Test

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781496207883
• eBook ISBN:
  9781496212894
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

More than fivehundred years after the fact, present-day writers still use hyperbolic adjectives to describe the "discovery" of the Americas. Columbus's crossing of the Atlantic—and the age of exploration that ensued—dramatically and forever changed the early modern world. The societies, economies, cultures, arts, and burgeoning sciences of Europe were quickly transformed by the ongoing encounter with the New World. The meeting of the New and the Old Worlds, however, was more than a meeting of disparate civilizations. It was also a confluence of exciting and often surprising associations that continually created new interfaces between materials and knowledge. The Western and Eastern Hemispheres, brought together by sailing ships for the first time on a large scale, helped create the global landscape we take for granted today. Central to this formative moment in global history were New World plants. The agriculture of indigenous peoples mythically and materially shaped English society and, subsequently, its literature in new and startling ways. Sacred Seeds examines New World plants—tobacco, amaranth, guaiacum, and the prickly pear cactus—and their associated Nativemyths as they moved across the Atlantic and into English literature. Edward McLean Test reinstates the contributions of indigenous peoples to European society, charting an alternative cultural historythatexplores the associations and assemblages of transatlantic multiplicity rather than Eurocentric homogeny.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. New Seeds, Strange Countries
• 2. People of the Figs
• 3. King Tobacco
• 4. The Holy Wood of America
• 5. Love Lies Bleeding
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• About Edward McLean Test
• Series List