The Indies and the Medieval West: Thought, Report, Imagination (Medieval Voyaging)

Marianne O'doherty

ISBN 10: 2503532764 / ISBN 13: 9782503532769

Published by see below, 2013

About this Item

2013 Brepols hardcover edition. Unread copy in very good condition. Seller Inventory # YE-GUSN-CGI5

Bibliographic Details

Title: The Indies and the Medieval West: Thought, ...

Publisher: see below

Publication Date: 2013

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis:

Winner of the 2014 ESSE Book award (in Cat B. Cultural Studies-Jr. Scholar) This volume offers a wide-ranging and interdisciplinary treatment of European representations of the Indies between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries. This volume offers a wide-ranging and interdisciplinary treatment of European representations of the Indies between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries. Drawing on encyclopaedias, cosmographies and cartography, romance, hagiography, and legend, it traces the influence of classical, late antique, and early medieval ideas on the later medieval geographical imagination, including the imagined and experienced Indies of European travellers. Addressing the evidence of Latin and vernacular manuscripts, the book explores readers encounters with the most widely read travellers accounts, in particular, those of Marco Polo, Odorico da Pordenone, and Niccolò Conti. Chapters on The Book of Sir John Mandeville, medieval Europe s most idiosyncratic yet popular work of geography, alongside world maps produced across Europe, point to the ways in which representations of the Indies were inflected by temporal concerns, specifically, their relationship to Latin Christendom s past, present, and future. The Indies relates the texts, documents, maps, and manuscripts it discusses closely to the changing ideological concerns of their times, notably those of mission and conversion, crusade, conquest, and economics. Nonetheless, the relationships that the work delineates between spatial representations and notions of dominance, whether religious, political, economic, or epistemic, have implications for the post-medieval world.