In this paper I would like to address the question of the status of fiction in the emerging book market of Elizabethan England, while concentrating on three themes: The impact of the growing interaction between England and the new-world on the literature of the era; the nature of literature as representation of reality; and finally, the status of authorship within the book market, and the relation between authors and their counterparts (patrons, printers and the readership as a whole).
To do so, I will analyze two works from the 16th century: A Margarite of America, by Thomas Lodge (1596), and Utopia, by Thomas Hobbes (1516). Although 80 years apart from one another, both works are involved with the discovery of America and were both published in the atmosphere of the rising book market of late 16th century London (the English version of Utopia was not published until 1551). In my analysis I will not only be concentrating on the texts, but also on the Para-text (dedications to the readers and patrons). Such dedications were common-place at the time and were often used by the authors in order to reveal details about the writing process and address their counterparts.
Lodge – the son of a wealthy family of London merchants, and a well known member of London's literary circles – published A Margarite of America after returning from a privateering journey to South America. There are many references and suggestions to the fact that the plot takes place in South America, namely Peru, but its precise locality remains unclear.
