ABSTRACT
Joan Pong Linton Recent studies have brought new interest to the cony-catching pamphlet by treating the genre as ‘‘narrative . . . that mediates between fact and fiction’’ (Kinney 2004: 378). Among others, Craig Dionne argues that, with a market economy and a new urban culture developing in London, ‘‘the cony-catching pamphlet can be read as a handbook for the urban pedestrian, a rhetorical primer into the ways of social miming’’ (Dionne 2004: 52). And Steve Mentz finds in the pamphlets of Robert Greene a ‘‘deep romance coding’’ of wandering and recovery through which these texts provide ‘‘tactical instruction manuals for urban life’’ (Mentz 2004b: 350). Seen in this light, cony-catching pamphlets have their ideological counterpart in the emerging city romances celebrating the citizen who rises from humble beginnings to wealth and power through his domestic and self government. In connecting these emerging genres, I have in mind Nashe’s Unfortunate Traveller, a text that has eluded generic classification. Scholars have already noted the ‘‘initial posture of coney-catcher’’ in Nashe’s protagonist, Jack Wilton (Hutson 1989: 219; cf. Jones 1983: 61) and a ‘‘meta-critical’’ romance dimension in his relationship with Diamante (Mentz 2001: 341). In building on these insights, I hope to show how differently disposed to the world Jack ultimately is from both the cony-catcher and the citizen, and how this difference marks him a trickster whose transgressions constitute a form of cultural critique.
