Renaissance Ethnography and the Invention of the Human: New Worlds, Maps and Monsters

ISBN-13: 9781108431828 / Angielski / Miękka / 2017 / 379 str.

Surekha Davies

Opis

Davies examines how Renaissance illustrated maps shaped ideas about peoples of the Americas, revealing relationships between civility, savagery and monstrosity.

Recenzje

'Moreover, at a time of concerted interest in matters of humanism and post-humanism in early modern studies, and the emergence of the Anthropocene as a critical (in all senses of the word) category of analysis that challenges both epistemology and ontology, Davies' considerable achievement anticipates future projects that reconsider the processes of mapping and codifying natural phenomena 'within a longer chronology of attempts to come to terms with the concept of the human … and the implications of understanding 'human' as a fluid, subjective category that is inseparable from its environment'.' Gavin Hollis, Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies

Spis treści

Introduction: Renaissance maps and the concept of the human; 1. Climate, culture or kinship? Explaining human diversity c.1500; 2. Atlantic empires, map workshops and Renaissance geographical culture; 3. Spit-roasts, barbecues and the invention of the Brazilian cannibal; 4. Trade, empires and propaganda: Brazilians on French maps in the age of François I and Henri II; 5. Monstrous ontology and environmental thinking: Patagonia's giants; 6. The epistemology of wonder: Amazons, headless men and mapping Guiana; 7. Civility, idolatry and cities in Mexico and Peru; 8. New sources, new genres and America's place in the world, 1590–1645; Epilogue; Bibliography; Index.