Nation, culture and self: readings of Andrew Boorde's "Fyrst Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge"

Abstract

This thesis addresses the relevance of Andrew Boorde's Fyrst Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge, complementing the scarce literature on the author with a more detailed survey of the literary strategies of his text. Nation and otherness, authority and self, are some of the themes developed using colonial and cultural materialist approaches. The narrative is paralleled to a map where colonial impulses are explained and boundaries drawn between cultures, disclosing the fragmentation of Europe and promoting the supremacy of England. The relationship of fashion with politics and religion as part of the text's political agenda is also addressed, as well as Boorde's own self-fashioning as national subject and authoritative self. Questions on the generic evolution of travel literature, the debates surrounding our systems of evaluation of the literary text and our historical perceptions, are raised throughout, concluding with a short discussion on the reception of the text as an entity independent from its author and a survey on the influence it had on later writers.