In order to find an answer to this question, I chose to refer to William Shakespeare’s Tempest and A Dialogue between Old England and New, poem by Anne Bradstreet. I will first oppose the two “worlds” and their representations, and then I will try to find why the writers represented the New World in the ways they described it and not another one.

In The Tempest, the “Old World” is represented by Italy and the “New World” by a deserted Island. Italy is the cradle of the Renaissance but also as Dr. David Salter described it in his lecture as a country of “Machiavellian politics” which implied the ideas of “cunning, scheming, unscrupulous, conspiratorial and murderous people”. The image of the island is seen at the same time as the imaginative “New World” on the arrival of Alonso and others; I quote (act II sc. I, line 34, 37 and 51 respectively) “Though this island seem to be desert,-”

“Uninhabitable, and almost inaccessible,-”

“Here is everything advantageous to life.”

However, it is in a real place in some way as it

Th’ moon! A most credulous monster!”

I afeard of him? A very weak monster! The man i’

That hath such people in’t” (Act V sc. I lines 182-4)

“By this good light, this is a very shallow monster;

Some topics in this essay:
Andrew Taylor, Susan Manning, Act II, Edward Said‘s, David Salter, Caliban Prospero, Anne Bradstreet, World” Bradstreet, John Locke, Ferdinand Europeans, “old world”, “new world”, civil war, understanding “old world”, understanding “old, world” people, ii line, dialogue england, anne bradstreet, american civil war, american civil, scene ii, act scene ii, poem anne bradstreet, “new world” people,