04995nam 2200817 450 991081336670332120211014015100.00-8122-2377-20-8122-0914-110.9783/9780812209143(CKB)3710000000020876(EBL)3442282(SSID)ssj0001071275(PQKBManifestationID)11603192(PQKBTitleCode)TC0001071275(PQKBWorkID)11114543(PQKB)10355521(OCoLC)867741688(MdBmJHUP)muse27259(DE-B1597)449754(OCoLC)979577390(DE-B1597)9780812209143(Au-PeEL)EBL3442282(CaPaEBR)ebr10780886(CaONFJC)MIL682675(OCoLC)864358403(MiAaPQ)EBC3442282(EXLCZ)99371000000002087620130418h20142014 uy 0engurnn#---|u||utxtccrSeasons of misery catastrophe and colonial settlement /Kathleen DoneganFirst edition.Philadelphia :University of Pennsylvania Press,[2014]©20141 online resource (288 p.)Early American StudiesDescription based upon print version of record.1-322-51393-7 0-8122-4540-7 Front matter --Contents --Introduction: Unsettlement --Chapter 1. Roanoke: Left in Virginia --Chapter 2. Jamestown: Things That Seemed Incredible --Chapter 3. Plymouth: Scarce Able to Bury Their Dead --Chapter 4. Barbados: Wild Extravagance --Afterword: Standing Half-Amazed --Notes --Index --AcknowledgmentsThe stories we tell of American beginnings typically emphasize colonial triumph in the face of adversity. But the early years of English settlement in America were characterized by catastrophe: starvation, disease, extreme violence, ruinous ignorance, and serial abandonment. Seasons of Misery offers a provocative reexamination of the British colonies' chaotic and profoundly unstable beginnings, placing crisis—both experiential and existential—at the center of the story. At the outposts of a fledgling empire and disconnected from the social order of their home society, English settlers were both physically and psychologically estranged from their European identities. They could not control, or often even survive, the world they had intended to possess. According to Kathleen Donegan, it was in this cauldron of uncertainty that colonial identity was formed. Studying the English settlements at Roanoke, Jamestown, Plymouth, and Barbados, Donegan argues that catastrophe marked the threshold between an old European identity and a new colonial identity, a state of instability in which only fragments of Englishness could survive amid the upheavals of the New World. This constant state of crisis also produced the first distinctively colonial literature as settlers attempted to process events that they could neither fully absorb nor understand. Bringing a critical eye to settlers' first-person accounts, Donegan applies a unique combination of narrative history and literary analysis to trace how settlers used a language of catastrophe to describe unprecedented circumstances, witness unrecognizable selves, and report unaccountable events. Seasons of Misery addresses both the stories that colonists told about themselves and the stories that we have constructed in hindsight about them. In doing so, it offers a new account of the meaning of settlement history and the creation of colonial identity.Early American studies.Frontier and pioneer lifeUnited StatesHistoriographyFrontier and pioneer lifeUnited StatesHistorySourcesGreat BritainColoniesAmericaHistoriographyGreat BritainColoniesAmericaHistorySourcesBarbadosColonizationHistoriographyBarbadosColonizationHistorySourcesUnited StatesColonizationHistoriographyUnited StatesColonizationHistorySourcesUnited StatesSocial conditionsTo 1865HistoriographyUnited StatesSocial conditionsTo 1865SourcesUnited StatesHistoryColonial period, ca. 1600-1775HistoriographyUnited StatesHistoryColonial period, ca. 1600-1775SourcesAmerican History.American Studies.Frontier and pioneer lifeHistoriography.Frontier and pioneer lifeHistory973Donegan Kathleen1658973MiAaPQMiAaPQMiAaPQBOOK9910813366703321Seasons of misery4013346UNINA