Twelth meeting of research group: the image of Other on the example of french periodics and enlish colonial "travelogues"
On january 28th another meeting of the research group «Languages for Describing the Other in Early Modern Europe: Social Contexts and Repertoires of Interpretation» was held.
The student of the Department of History of the Higher School of Economics, Saint Petersburg Anastasia Novikova presented a paper on the image of Muscovy in the French society in the 17th century. The paper was based on the French travelogues and newspapers. Novikova focused on certain aspects of the perception of the Other - religion, everyday life, political organization and etc. She demonstrated that French Rossica had already emerged in the 17th century.
Iaroslav Kuznetsov, master student of the Department of History of the Higher School of Economics, Saint Petersburg, compared early modern English colonization projects by Thomas Smith, who propagated colonization of Ireland, and Thomas Harriott, the first English scholar who visited the New World by chance. Kuznetsov emphasized similarities and differences between the two colonization projects and images of the Englishmen in them.
The participants discussed the sources which inspired French descriptions of Muscovy and the role of imperial discourses in Smith’s and Harriott’s projects.