Writing Captivity in the Early Modern Atlantic

“A fresh, compelling study. . . . Creates original pathways for further study of the diffusion of knowledge.” — Journal of British Studies

“Theoretically sophisticated. . . . Relevant to readers interested in many forms of biographical and autobiographical writing, not only captivity narratives. . . . [A] thorough, insightful, and significant work of scholarship.” — Biography

“The work Voigt does here to make connections around the world is brave and important. . . . The simultaneous translations from the Portuguese and Spanish into English in the text are quite brilliant. . . . A worthwhile contribution to a critical area of understanding.” — Reviews in American History

“Covers an impressive range of material. . . . A dynamic work of history and an insightful literary study. . . . Voigt maintains a clear critical focus throughout, balancing a differentiated portrait of the Atlantic world with a cohesive argument about this diversity. . . . Voigt’s work delivers successfully and convincingly.” — Western Historical Quarterly

“Offers engaging, detailed, and materially situated examinations of relatively understudied texts. . . . Voigt’s carefully detailed study will be very useful to scholars in early American and early modern studies. Her examination of the ways captivity narratives informed knowledge about the Americas and her attention to the complexities and differences among them result in a series of deep, reflective case studies that consider and reconsider points central to early American studies today.” — Early American Literature

“[Voight] studies a corpus of Spanish, Portuguese and English writings related to captivity…stressing ways in which captivity fashioned the production of knowledge, the construction of authority and the ways captives were able to develop crucial mediating abilities through their cross-cultural experience.” — The Year’s Work in Modern Language Studies

“There is no book that addresses captivity in such a rich, comparative framework as Voigt’s Writing Captivity in the Early Modern Atlantic. Voigt convincingly shows how captivity — and the shared knowledge that it implies — complicates any straightforward account of national identity or imperial expansion.” — Barbara Fuchs, University of Pennsylvania

“From the perspective of rival European states, imperial expansion was all about drawing bright lines on maps. But as Voigt’s richly researched literary and cultural study abundantly demonstrates, the early modern Atlantic was a domain of cross-cultural encounter that depended critically on knowledge gained through the experiences of captives; transcended national, religious, and linguistic boundaries; and resulted in interconnected histories and the development of common imperial ideologies in the region.” — David Harris Sacks, Reed College