Tonhi Lee

“Migration and Mimesis” traces a literary history of migration in the early modern world. It examines how the phenomenon of migration was registered in Renaissance literature not only on the level of content as depictions of adventure, flight, travel, exotic encounters, and so on, but also on the level of form, i.e., the interpretive horizon that conditions the meaning of what is or can be represented in the first place. Rather than focusing on the epistemological divide between Europe and non-Europe, the project adopts a phenomenological theory of literature that posits the horizon of lived experience—the early modern “world”—as its ultimate frame of meaning. The liminal position of the migrant makes possible a certain “perspective of the world” (Gestalt) that necessitates a shift in the loci of perception between here/elsewhere, inside/outside, self/other: a dialectical mode of knowing which may properly be called “border thinking.” This interplay of perception is shown to inform the distinct sense of estrangement—of having one foot out of reality—that has long been viewed as characterizing the Renaissance and its most distinguishing literary works, such as Thomas More's “Utopia” (1516) and Miguel de Cervantes's “Don Quixote” (1605; 1615).