Elena Butoescu - (Il)Legitimate Appendages: The Case of Psalmanazar’s Prefaces
(pag. 29-40)
In 1704, George Psalmanazar, a supposed native of the island of Formosa, added his own fabulous construction of another world to an England which was already abundant in fictitious travel accounts. Written 60 years later, Psalmanazar’s own Memoirs did not manage to cast a clear light on the author’s inauthentic discourse. The problematic of legitimacy in relation to historical writings and works of fiction turned into a debatable cultural issue during the European eighteenth century. The great libraries and collections of manuscripts set up by Cotton or Pepys in the seventeenth century were later to be taken on by eighteenth-century scholars, whose job was to assess and legitimate their value. Psalmanazar’s fictitious account passed for a true description of Formosa after it had promoted textual and visual appendages to legitimate the authorial voice. The present article will look at the methods Psalmanazar used to legitimate both the authorial practices and the cultural and literary background against which eighteenth-century outstanding writers, such as Goldsmith and Swift, used Psalmanazar as a source of legitimate inspiration for their writings.