ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on the analysis of John Smith's Anglo-Saxonism romance of the New World. Anglo-Saxonism properly begins in the New World with the Virginia Company of London and Captain Smith. Smith creates the new form of strictly American romance of the New World style, a romans on the American soil, or the Matiered'Amerique. True Travels illuminates the involvement of authorial collaboration that links Smith to a larger manipulation of national narrative for ideological purposes, establishing Smith as an archetypal hero, like the Welsh King Arthur or the Saxon King Alfred. Smith continued the spirit of his romance material by bringing his chivalric persona from True Travels to Generall Historie, which work provides a striking and more fully-developed example of the Matiered'Amerique. Generall Historie remains Smith's paramount work relating to the nation building ideologies of Anglo-Saxonism in early America for two very important reasons—its publication history and the authorial question in relation to the use of the Pocahontas story.