Show notes
CONTENT WARNINGS: Discussion of slavery and the transatlantic slave trade, and colonization.
Ahoy mateys! Let's set sail onto the Caribbean-blue waters of pirates in romance books. In this episode Jen and Jackie discuss what led to the Golden Age of Piracy, where pirates entered the literature, and what the differences between romantic pirates and popular pirates (Jack Sparrow anyone?) look like. Dive on in...the water's fine!
Vocab:
- lestai - Greek for "thieves" - early reference to maritime pirates
- peirato - latin for "pirate"
- Buccaneer - From French "boucanier" meaning a pirate; a curer of wild meats, a user of a boucan, or a native grill for roasting meat
- Privateer - a private merchant/ship owner who carried a letter of marque that gave them permission on behalf of their monarch/country to capture enemy merchant ships, take a profit, and then give the rest of the profit back to the state.
- Golden Age of Piracy - Appr. 1690-1730 CE and refers especially to European pirates who operated in the Mediterranean, Atlantic, and Caribbean theaters
Books/authors/poets/plays we mention:
- The Iliad and The Odyssey
- The Buccaneers of America by Alexandre Exquemelin (1678)
- A General History of the Robbers and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates by "Captain Johnson" (1724)
- "Blackbeard or The Captive Princess" (play/musical 1798)
- "The Corsair" by Lord Byron (1814)
- Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (1883)
- Peter Pan by JM Barrie (1904 play, 1911 book)
- Longarm series by Tabor Evans
- The Gift by Julie Garwood
- Gentle Rogue by Johanna Lyndsey
- The Flame and The Flower by Kathleen Woodiwiss
- The Rogue Pirate's Bride by Shana Galen
- The Other Miss Bridgerton (Rokesby series) by Julia Quinn
- Corsairs and Corsairs Brothers series by the queen, Ruby Dixon
- Fable duology by Adrienne Young
- All The Stars and Teeth duology by Adalyn Grace
- Bridge Kingdom series by Danielle Jensen
- Sea of Ruin by Pam Godwin
- Rogue Booty by Golden Angel
- A Worthy Opponent by Katee Robert
- Hooked by Emily McEntire
- The Reef by Nora Roberts
- Sabrina Jeffries
Sources:
- "The Chinese Female Pirate Who Commanded 80,000 Outlaws" (Banerji, 2002)
- "History of Piracy" (abdn.co.uk)
- Greek inscribed marble fragment descr. Cleomis
- Polycrates
- "Medieval Pirates" (Vallar)
- "The Lure of Piracy; Realty vs. Romanticism" (Vallar)
- "Golden Age of Piracy" (Cartwright, 2021)
- "8 Reasons Being in a Pirate Romance Novel Would Actually Be Awful" (Passell, 2014)
- "Ahoy, Romance! Pirates As A Romantic Hero In Fiction" (Harris, 2018)
- "Pirates: Romance Versus Reality" (Houston Museum of Natural Science2010)
- "The Radical Romanticism of Piracy" (Waite, 2019)
- "Why Do We Love Pirates?" (Kennedy, 2015)
- "The Timeless Allure of Pirates" (bbc.com)
- "The Sea Dogs - Queen Elizabeth's Privateers" (Cartwright, 2020)
- "A Brief History of the Age of Exploration" (Briney, 2020)
- "Letters of Marque" (Royal Museums Greenwich)
- "History of the Spanish Doubloon"
- "A Glimpse of Genre: The Gothic Romance" (2017)
- "Fantasy or Reality: Analyzing Pirates in Peter Pan" (Krebs, Levine, 2011)
- "Why J. M. Barrie Created Peter Pan" (Lane, 2004)
TV shows/movies mentioned:
- Black Sails
- Our Flag Means Death
- Pirates of the Caribbean
- Firefly
- Into The Blue
Recommended reads/podcasts!: