Mapping the Renaissance World: The Geographical Imagination in the Age of Discovery (The New Historicism: Studies in Cultural Poetics)

At the turn of the sixteenth century, princes and navigators presided over a geographical revolution that fundamentally altered the way people viewed the world. Focusing on the great traveller and map maker, André Thevet, Lestringant examines the audacity of the cosmographer, who rivaled God in the creation of new worlds. Accused of blasphemy and mocked for his encyclopedic aims, Thevet is a wonderful example of how knowledge was transformed during the decline of the Renaissance.

Lestringant describes Thevet's mapping of a Brazil of Amazons, cannibals, and kings. He describes how French colonialists' experience with the Tupinamba Indians gave rise to the myth of the noble savage. He discusses the European acceptance of the image of the naked cannibal at a time of religious and social crisis. Mapping the Renaissance World is a brilliant account of the part played by the French in the conquest of the New World.

Frank Lestringant is Professor of Renaissance Literature at the University of Lille III.