Languages, Translation, and Encounters in the Seventeenth-Century North Atlantic World

Early modern migrations to the New World and transatlantic travel presented new challenges and opportunities for translingual practices. Spotlighting encounters between Indigenous people and settlers from England and France, my thesis investigates how languages functioned and were perceived in the seventeenth-century North Atlantic world. From the perspective of cultural history, examining languages and translation enriches our comprehension of the colonial past by illuminating Indigenous voices and transatlantic networks of knowledge production. My thesis covers four regions along the eastern seaboard of North America. The first chapter focuses on encounters in the early years of colonial Virginia. I show how the quest for knowledge of Amerindian languages traversed the Atlantic and enabled both Indigenous and English interpreters to become intermediaries in the early colony. The ensuing chapter is concerned with French-Indigenous encounters in Acadia and Québec. Marc Lescarbot’s writings offer a case-study of how French authors approached Indigenous languages and cultures. Upon their arrival in New France, the Jesuits struggled to access Amerindian languages, and their duality as language students and religious teachers influenced later generations. The third chapter zooms in on mid-century New England, where institutions including Harvard College and local print encouraged translingual dynamics. Through his correspondence, I examine Robert Boyle, the well-known natural philosopher who in London remotely piloted translation and print in New England. The fourth chapter illuminates New France’s end-of-century encounters in the Huron nation and Louisiana. Through the writings of the Jesuit Pierre-Joseph-Marie Chaumonot, I scrutinise language learning methods and the circulation of linguistic knowledge among Francophone and Indigenous communities. During their explorations of Louisiana, French settlers encountered diverse Indigenous peoples and reflected upon translingual issues. Studying these four regions, I consider North American contact zones as a ‘languagescape’ showcasing diverse practices of language learning, oral and written translation, and manuscript and print culture that transformed the European view of the early modern world.

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