SOURCE: "The Unfortunate Traveller: Nashe's Narrative in a 'Cleane Different Vaine'," in The Journal of Narrative Technique, Vol. 10, No.l, Winter, 1980, pp. 1-15.

In the following essay, Sulfridge analyzes the effect of Nashe's explicitly unconventional style on the reader, arguing that the text makes the reader a sort of victim of its alienating style.

In the letter of dedication for The Unfortunate Traveller, Thomas Nashe described his text as being in a "cleane different vaine" from anything else he had ever written.¹ He gave no explanation of how he envisioned this new vein, but readers of The Traveller have long since acknowledged that it is an unconventional narrative. For want of a better explanation of its peculiarities, decades of critics dismissed the work as a primitive forerunner of the novel, influenced by Lazarillo de Tormes and the rise of the Spanish pícaro. Most critics today, however, agree...