Title: Indies and the Medieval West
Description: 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.
Subjects: Geography, medieval, Public opinion, europe, East indies, Description and travel, Early works to 1800, Medieval Geography, Public opinion, History, European Foreign public opinion, Travel, Cultuurcontact, Reisbeschrijvingen, Kulturmöten, Historia, Geografi, Reseskildringar, Kartografi