Study Questions:
1.  What is Strachey's stated goal in publishing The True Repertory of the Wrack? What literary and rhetorical means does he use to achieve this goal?  What other goals or purposes emerge from the language of his text?

2.  Compare the political, social, literary, and religious goals of the other two texts excerpted in the Signet edition (Jourdain's Discovery and The True Declaration of the Estate of the Colony in Virginia) to those of Strachey.  Why do all these writers seize on accounts of the New World and of European's experiences therein?  What makes the topic so hot?

3.  Montaigne idealizes the indigenous people of the Americas, but he frames his discussion of their "natural" existence with allusions to Lycurgus, Plato, and the whole tradition of the "golden age" in Western "Poesy."  How does this approach to the topic affect the reader's response?

4.  What is Montaigne's attitude toward the mainstream of his own culture?

5.  Montaigne's essay is, among other things, a meditation on the power of language, and of naming in particular.  What does he have to say on this subject?

6.  Highlight at least one passage in the reading assigned from Shakespeare's Caliban for particular attention in class.