SOURCE: '"Good Sir, Be Ruld by Me': Patterns of Domination and Manipulation in Thomas Nashe's The Unfortunate Traveller," in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. 24, No. 3, Summer, 1987, pp. 243-50.

In the following essay, the critics suggest that Nashe manipulates the reader through the use of specific narrative strategies and thereby implicates the reader in the violence of the text.

 I can never romanticize language again
never deny its power for disguise for mystification
but the same could be said for music
or any form created
painted ceilings beaten gold worm-worn Pietas
reorganizing victimization frescoes translating
violence into patterns so powerful and pure
we continually fail to ask are they true for us1 

Adrienne Rich, appraising literary tradition, asks us to consider the assumptions at the heart of fiction. Her description of the violence often embodied in art touches areas we can explore in a reading of The Unfortunate...