Donna M. Campbell
New England Puritan Culture
Travel Narratives
Travel Narratives
Conventions
Basics:
- “Barbaric” rituals, threats of death, physical suffering, triumph of the European hero.
- Difficult ocean passage
- Deriding earlier reports
- Reporting advantages of European technology
- Describing New World geography
- Mixing practical advice with rhetorical landscape descriptions
- Nature and “savages” as friendly and ferocious
- Expedition plagued by intrigue and disunity
- Emphasizing flaws and virtues of the expedition leaders
- Comparison of virtues of life in a strange foreign land with the idleness and corruption of the old world
- New World plenitude: the catalogue of delights
- Initial successes followed by defeats