Beholding a ‘Brave New World’: Sir Walter Raleigh’s The Discovery of Guiana and William Shakespeare’s The Tempest

Abstract

During the 15th and 16th centuries, the idea of the world was broadened on an unprecendented scale. The Portuguese and the Spaniards dominated a first stage in the maritime expansion and even divided the planet into two halves. Those times were primarily characterized by a need to overcome the fear of the unknown, to explore and cross the oceans, to reach coast after coast and to register in maps and charts the new found lands. In the wake of the first explorers and benefiting from the extraordinary advancements in the art of navigation, the English, the French and the Dutch, particularly motivated by mercantile interests, started dominating a second stage of sea voyages. Beyond circumstances and motivations, both moments involved unparalleled events in the field of mentality and worldview: fragile ships managed to cross the vast oceans and arrive in unknown lands inhabited by unimaginable human races, plants and animals. From then on, an immense variety of works on voyages, discoveries and adventures was produced. After a brief approach to the general context of the time, I explore the broad dichotomy ‘Civilization versus Nature’ in two Renaissance English texts that, in very different ways, tell of sea voyages and behold a ‘Brave New World’: Sir Walter Raleigh’s The Discovery of Guiana (1595) and William Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1623).