Truth and Wonder in Richard Head's Geographical Fictions
Keywords:
Richard Head, Brazile island, Truth and wonder, Deception, Plurality of worldsAbstract
In The Floating Island (1673), The Western Wonder (1674) and O-Brazile (1675), Richard Head explores the verisimilitude of geographical discourse in supporting the existence of the mysterious Brazile and uses the factual discourse of the travel diarist to present a semi-mythical place, stretching the limits of believability. Following Kate Loveman’s interpretation of late seventeenth-century fiction as deceptive, and setting the reading of Head’s narrations in the context of theories about the plurality of worlds, I argue that Head’s short fictions are a means of testing the readers’ gullibility at a time when the status of prose fiction is at debate.
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