6 options
The accidental Indies / Robert Finley.
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Finley, Robert Stuart Martin, 1957-
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Columbus, Christopher--Fiction.
- Columbus, Christopher.
- Discoveries in geography--Fiction.
- Discoveries in geography.
- Explorers--Fiction.
- Explorers.
- West Indies--Fiction.
- West Indies.
- Physical Description:
- 102 p. : ill.
- Edition:
- 1st ed.
- Place of Publication:
- Montreal : Ithaca : McGill-Queen's University Press, c2000.
- Language Note:
- English
- Summary:
- At once moving and lyrical, The Accidental Indies is a tale in which we join Christopher Columbus on a fantastical voyage through western seas and Western imagination. Robert Finley imagines, sings, charts, and paints the story of Columbus's problematic 1492 expedition to the Caribbean, creating a world that is as vivid and compelling as the explorer's own voyage to the misnamed "Indies".It is a journey through wondrous words that begins with Columbus's earliest explorations when he first "tests the heft and roundness of this earth against his infant head" by stepping from the edge of his rocking cradle to come up short on the boards of the nursery floor. Finley charts a course for us through the days at sea, through the voyage itself, its records and commentaries, into the fraught territory of Columbus' imaginary "Indies" and the representation of this New World on his return to Spain.This incisive and luminescent story, scrupulously grounded in sixteenth-century sources, illuminates the power that "naming" has to create a world - in this case a world still haunted by being the accidental Indies. It is a book about how we perceive and represent the world around us, about the creative and destructive power of language. Through its elaboration of the rich and lively ironies of the Columbus story, The Accidental Indies looks at the nature of storytelling itself.
- Contents:
- A Departure
- Notes:
- Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph
- Includes bibliographical references (p. 97-99).
- ISBN:
- 1-282-85838-6
- 9786612858383
- 0-7735-6817-4
- OCLC:
- 929121508
The Penn Libraries is committed to describing library materials using current, accurate, and responsible language. If you discover outdated or inaccurate language, please fill out this feedback form to report it and suggest alternative language.