Building on our discussion of the Water Margin (the most important surviving versions dating to the 1590s), we go “back”—notice the scare quotes!—to what is usually at least passively assumed to be the source of the culture of capitalist modernity, merry aul England. What we will find, of course, is that we need to re-orient our view of the birth of modern capitalism along the lines long established by world historians like Janet Abu-Lughod, Andre Gunder Frank, Samir Amin, Emmanuel Wallerstein, Giovanni Arrighi, et al, because Europe was in fact a late-comer to industrial modernity, borrowing all the basic innovations necessary for capitalism from the Afro-Asiatic silk road powers: the Muslim world, India, and China. The same is true for the cultural superstructure of capitalism, as all the core elements of modern, novelistic, secular modernity can also be found first in Afro-Asiatic forms like the Arabic Maqama, the Arabian Nights, the vernacular epics of early modern India, and the Ming Dynasty novel. It was from here that “modern consciousness” spread to the North Mediterranean, and from there to the imaginary homeland of chivalry in the mind of a nascent “Europe”, Britannia. This time we outline the basic activities and characteristics of several lesser-known English writers of the 1590s, all of whom played important roles in the rise of state pageantry, venture capitalism, and intelligence agencies in that storied isle: this time we mainly discuss Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nashe, and Anthony Munday.

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