Print, rhetoric, and 'plantation,' 1571-1641

More definitively than kingdom, colony, or commonwealth, the word plantation yoked the civil and the ecclesiastical, and transformed the colonial promotional pamphlet into a space where monarch and subject could publicly, but indirectly, contest competing conceptions of the relationship between temporal and spiritual authority. Through rhetorical analysis which considers how the printed form was engaged in the making of meaning, the thesis provides a study of the colonial promotional pamphlet from 1571, when print was first used to promote a particular English colonial project, to 1641, when violence broke out on “plantation” lands in Ireland.

It offers new readings of colonial texts by Walter Ralegh, Francis Bacon, Thomas Blenerhasset, John Davies, John Donne, and John Cotton; an examination of the rhetoric of “plantation” as it was deployed by James VI/I; and an analysis of the word’s appearances in the 1641 Depositions.