Untrue Reports: Colonial Promotional Literature, Factional Rhetoric, and the Dissolution of the Virginia Company of London

abstract:This article examines the use of promotional rhetoric in the factional texts that record the dissolution of the Virginia Company of London in order to demonstrate that the individual forms and tropes of colonial promotional literature carried political connotations and effects beyond the general political nature of promotional literature as a whole. Through close analysis of the differences of the forms and rhetorical figures used by different Virginia Company factions, this article recovers how particular promotional tropes draw connections between commercial and colonial practices and contemporary arguments over political authority in order to support different approaches to organization. Ultimately, the article argues that close formal and rhetorical attention to colonial promotional texts is necessary if we are to fully understand their ideological effects.