The Indies and the medieval West : thought, report, imagination / by Marianne O'Doherty.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

O'Doherty, Marianne, author.

Contributor:

Constance L. Rosenthal Book Fund.

Series:

Medieval voyaging ; v. 2.

Medieval Voyaging ; volume 2

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Travel, Medieval--Asia--History.

Travel, Medieval.

Travelers' writings, European--History and criticism.

Travelers' writings, European.

History.

Asia--Foreign public opinion, Western--History.

Asia.

Asia--Description and travel.

Voyages and travels.

Physical Description:

xiv, 377 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Turnhout, Belgium : Brepols [2013]

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Part I Vere unus alter mundus: Traditions and Travellers

Chapter 1 Classical Traditions of India and Medieval Transformations 13

Chapter 2 Other Coordinates: The Indies of Late Medieval European Travellers 53

Part II Embodied Encounters: Travellers' Texts and their Readers

Chapter 3 Changing Places: The Unstable Indies of Vernacular Readers 105

Chapter 4 A Moral and Geographical Education: Latin Accounts of the Indies and their Readers 161

Part III Geographical and Cartographic Reorientations

Chapter 5 Debating Diversity in an Interconnected World: The Indies in the Book of Sir John Mandeville 203

Chapter 6 Placing the Indies in Space and Time: Cartographic Representations, c. 1200-c. 1450 241.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Constance L. Rosenthal Book Fund.

ISBN:

2503532764

9782503532769

OCLC:

839779878

Publisher Number:

99959163935