Empires of Love: Europe, Asia, and the Making of Early Modern Identity
Carmen Nocentelli, "Empires of Love: Europe, Asia, and the Making of Early Modern Identity"
English | ISBN: 0812244834 | 2013 | 272 pages | PDF | 8 MB
English | ISBN: 0812244834 | 2013 | 272 pages | PDF | 8 MB
"Winner of the 2014 MLA Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literary Studies
Awarded the 2014 Roland H. Bainton Book Prize in Literature by the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference"
Through literary and historical documents from the early sixteenth to late seventeenth centuries—epic poetry, private correspondence, secular dramas, and colonial legislation—Carmen Nocentelli charts the Western fascination with the eros of "India," as the vast coastal stretch from the Gulf of Aden to the South China Sea was often called. If Asia was thought of as a place of sexual deviance and perversion, she demonstrates, it was also a space where colonial authorities actively encouraged the formation of interracial households, even through the forcible conscription of native brides. In her comparative analysis of Dutch, English, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish texts, Nocentelli shows how sexual behaviors and erotic desires quickly came to define the limits within which Europeans represented not only Asia but also themselves.
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