Translating Empire, Translating Cartier and Léry into English: text and context in comparative narratives of expansion and the new world

Abstract

This article provides comparative texts and contexts between Brazil and Canada in the Atlantic world, not simply an Inter-American comparison, but a trans-Atlantic and global typology. It focuses on the translation of empire through translation, particularly of part of Jacques Cartier’s narratives about Canada by John Florio in 1580 and of Jean de Léry’s account of the voyage to Brazil in Samuel Purchas’ collection in 1625. English travel or encounter literature is in the service of contact, exploration, encounter and possible possession and settlement. The Spanish, through Columbus, and the Portuguese as well as the French are part of this comparative literature and these cultural texts, which are intertextual and translational, among themselves and with English culture and literature. The encounter between the Indigenous peoples and Europeans in the New World, in Brazil and Canada is central to changing the literature and cultures of the Americas, Europe, Africa, and of the world as seen in the texts analyzed here. The building of English travel accounts, literature and empire is also, to an important degree, intertextual, intercultural, and translational.