Psalmanazar’s Others

Abstract

Abstract Who speaks writing? This question must hover as the thematic of the study with which I will begin—an account of the writings of the eighteenth-century forger, impostor, and friend of Samuel Johnson, “George Psalmanazar.” We know no other name than this pseudonym, which he took from 2 Kings 17:3—“Shalmaneser,” one of a line of Assyrian kings by this name. From 1702 to 1708, Psalmanazar presented himself to British society as a Formosan pagan converted to Christianity. Furthermore, he wrote a widely accepted Historical and Geographical Description of his “native” country. The aberration Psalmanazar poses in the description of otherness is an aberration that is nonetheless typical of a period in which, as we have seen, the claims of writing—the claims of authorship, originality, genius, and documentation—-were in tremendous flux.