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Domesticating empire : enlightenment in Spanish America
\"Recovers the themes, intent, and legacy of 18th century Spanish American literature that often are lost in the broader scholarship of Latin American literature. Affirms importance of early period colonial Spanish American literature in world literature\"-- Provided by publisher.
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Nature in the New World
InNature in the New World(translated 1985), Antonello Gerbi examines the fascinating reports of the first Europeans to see the Americas. These accounts provided the basis for the images of strange and new flora, fauna, and human creatures that filled European imaginations.Initial chapters are devoted to the writings of Columbus, Vespucci, Cortés, Verrazzano, and others. The second portion of the book concerns theHistoria general y natural de las Indiasof Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, a work commissioned by Charles V of Spain in 1532 but not published in its entirety until the 1850s. Antonello Gerbi contends that Oviedo, a Spanish administrator who lived in Santo Domingo, has been unjustly neglected as a historian. Gerbi shows that Oviedo was a major authority on the culture, history, and conquest of the New World.
eBook
The alchemy of conquest : science, religion, and the secrets of the New World
\"This book explores the role that the verbal, conceptual, and visual language of alchemy played in the literature of the conquest of America and in the rise of an early modern paradigm of discovery in both science and international law. While the roots of the modern 'conquistadorial' attitude toward nature lie in late medieval alchemy, which fused Aristotelian reason with Christian apocalypticism in the militant context of crusade and spiritual conquest, this book argues that the modern idea of what it means to discover something has a colonial history in which conquest legitimated the modern (Baconian) idea of discovery by underwriting it with religious messianism and early modern state power. Thus, the book traces the intellectual and spiritual legacies of such late medieval alchemists as Roger Bacon, Arnald of Villanova, and Ramon Llull in the early modern literature of the conquest of America in texts written by authors such as Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, Josâe de Acosta, Nicolâas Monardes, Walter Raleigh, Thomas Harriot, Francis Bacon, and Alexander von Humboldt\"-- Provided by publisher.
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Fernández de Oviedo's chronicle of America : a new history for a New World
No detailed description available for \"Fernández de Oviedo's Chronicle of America\".
eBook
An Arab's journey to colonial Spanish America : the travels of Elias al-Mمusili in the seventeenth century
Rediscovered in Syria in the late 19th century, this account relates the experiences of Reverend Elias al-Musili, a priest of the Chaldean Church and the first known visitor to the Americas from the Middle East. Supported by Spain and the pope, he offers a unique perspective on the New World.
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The return of Hans Staden : a go-between in the Atlantic world
Hans Staden's sixteenth-century account of shipwreck and captivity by the Tupinambá Indians of Brazil was an early modern bestseller. This retelling of the German sailor's eyewitness account known as the True History shows both why it was so popular at the time and why it remains an important tool for understanding the opening of the Atlantic world.
Eve M. Duffy and Alida C. Metcalf carefully reconstruct Staden's life as a German soldier, his two expeditions to the Americas, and his subsequent shipwreck, captivity, brush with cannibalism, escape, and return. The authors explore how these events and experiences were recreated in the text and images of the True History. Focusing on Staden's multiple roles as a go-between, Duffy and Metcalf address many of the issues that emerge when cultures come into contact and conflict.
An artful and accessible interpretation, The Return of Hans Staden takes a text best known for its sensational tale of cannibalism and shows how it can be reinterpreted as a window into the precariousness of lives on both sides of early modern encounters, when such issues as truth and lying, violence, religious belief, and cultural difference were key to the formation of the Atlantic world.
eBook
Heaven’s Wrath
Heaven's Wrath explores the religious thought and religious rites of the early Dutch Atlantic world. D. L. Noorlander argues that the Reformed Church and the West India Company forged and maintained a close union, with considerable consequences across the seventeenth century. Noorlander questions the core assumptions about why the Dutch failed to establish a durable empire in America. He downplays the usual commercial explanations and places the focus instead on the tremendous expenses incurred in the Calvinist-backed war and the Reformed Church's meticulous, worried management of colonial affairs. By pinpointing the issues that hampered the size and import of the Dutch Atlantic world, Noorlander revises core notions about the organization and aims of the Dutch empire, the culture of the West India Company, and the very shape of Dutch society.
eBook
Mathematical Works Printed in the Americas, 1554–1700
This magisterial annotated bibliography of the earliest mathematical works to be printed in the New World challenges long-held assumptions about the earliest examples of American mathematical endeavor. Bruce Stanley Burdick brings together mathematical writings from Mexico, Lima, and the English colonies of Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New York. The book provides important information such as author, printer, place of publication, and location of original copies of each of the works discussed.
Burdick's exhaustive research has unearthed numerous examples of books not previously cataloged as mathematical. While it was thought that no mathematical writings in English were printed in the Americas before 1703, Burdick gives scholars one of their first chances to discover Jacob Taylor's 1697 Tenebrae, a treatise on solving triangles and other figures using basic trigonometry. He also goes beyond the English language to discuss works in Spanish and Latin, such as Alonso de la Vera Cruz's 1554 logic text, the Recognitio Summularum; a book on astrology by Enrico Martínez; books on the nature of comets by Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora and Eusebio Francisco Kino; and a 1676 almanac by Feliciana Ruiz, the first woman to produce a mathematical work in the Americas.
Those fascinated by mathematics, its history, and its culture will note with interest that many of these works, including all of the earliest ones, are from Mexico, not from what is now the United States. As such, the book will challenge us to rethink the history of mathematics on the American continents.
eBook