THE TALENTED MR. PSALMANAZAR:A FOOTNOTE TO AN ENLIGHTENED ENGLAND
THE TALENTED MR. PSALMANAZAR:A FOOTNOTE TO AN ENLIGHTENED ENGLAND

Summary/Abstract: Considered a ‘minor model of fraud and repentance’, a man who called himself George Psalmanazar, the fabricator of a country and a language, based his imaginary description of the island of Formosa on a credulous and ignorant early eighteenth century English public. The 18th century reader was in search of the exotic and the fabulous, and Psalmanazar’s story met the two requirements. The emergence of the printing press and commercial publishing made possible not only an increase in quantity of prose fiction, but also a certain disregard for its quality, as more books were demanded and editors and publishers were less vigilant when it came to carefully correcting and revising the text. Consequently, Psalmanazar’s imaginary description of the island of Formosa, published in English in 1704 under the name of An Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa, was so successful that a second ‘improved’ edition was issued, containing considerable changes dictated not by the chronology of his voyage, but by that of the reading experience.The talents displayed by Mr. Psalmanazar were multiple; yet, his main ability lay in inventing and reinventing himself in a plausible manner, according to the circumstances. He might be seen as a footnote in the sense that even if he was and still is considered unimportant in the study of literature, he still stands as an explanation of the 18th century, offering reference and insight into the age, as well as having been used as a source of reference himself (Goldsmith, Swift, etc.). He might be a footnote to an Enlightened England, but could be a perfect title page to a revisionist project. Psalmanazar should be reconsidered. It is worthwhile taking all this into consideration and cast a little doubt over the sentence all his judges have agreed upon: ‘guilty of imposture.’

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