George Psalmanazar, An Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa
Edited by Alice Wickenden
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ISBN: 978-1-839547-97-3 (hardback) • RRP £51.99, $69.99, €59.99 ISBN: 978-1-839547-98-0 (paperback) • RRP £18.99, $26.99, €22.99 ISBN: 978-1-839547-99-7 (JSTOR ebook) George Psalmanazar’s An Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa (1704) claims to be a true description of the island of Formosa (Taiwan), written by a native. Psalmanazar describes how he was brought to Europe from Formosa by a Jesuit, before ultimately converting to Protestantism. In fact the Description is a work of pure imagination: a fantastical narrative in the vein of More’s Utopia and looking ahead to Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. As with the latter, many readers were at first taken in by the hoax. Psalmanazar was appointed to teach Formosan at Oxford, shortly before his story was disproved. A later edition includes an apology for the ‘scandalous romance’ and ‘mere forgery’ that Psalmanazar describes as having deceived ‘the world’. The Description includes detailed reports on Formosan culture, from government to religion, from clothing to gender roles. For example, we learn that upper-class men mostly go without clothes but wear brass, gold, or silver plates over their genitals; country women, meanwhile, wear ‘nothing but a bear’s skin’. We read of the frequent cannibalism of wives and the tendency towards polyamory — necessary to sustain the population, ‘since our God requires the hearts of so many young boys to be offered up in sacrifice’. Illustrations depict elements of Formosan culture, religion, housing, dress, and the alphabet. This fascinating work of imaginative literature is ripe for re-evaluation as a text that has much to say about developing forms of literary narrative at the beginning of the eighteenth century, about fraud and literary scams, about travel literature and empire, and about the Western fascination with Eastern cultures. Alice Wickenden is a Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge. Bibliography entry: Wickenden, Alice (ed.), George Psalmanazar, An Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa, Critical Texts, 79 (MHRA, 2029) First footnote reference: 35 George Psalmanazar, An Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa, ed. by Alice Wickenden, Critical Texts, 79 (MHRA, 2029), p. 21. Subsequent footnote reference: 37 Wickenden, p. 47. (To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.) Bibliography entry: Wickenden, Alice (ed.). 2029. George Psalmanazar, An Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa, Critical Texts, 79 (MHRA) Example citation: ‘A quotation occurring on page 21 of this work’ (Wickenden 2029: 21). Example footnote reference: 35 Wickenden 2029: 21. (To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.) Permanent link to this title: www.mhra.org.uk/publications/George-Psalmanazar-Historical-Geographical-Description-Formosa www.mhra.org.uk/publications/ct-79 |
2029