Nature and Culture in the Early Modern Atlantic (Hardcover)

In the sixteenth-century Atlantic world, nature and culture swirled in people's minds to produce fantastic images. In the South of France, a cloister's painted wooden panels greeted parishioners with vivid depictions of unicorns, dragons, and centaurs, while Mayans in the Yucatan created openings to buildings that resembled a fierce animal's jaws, known to archaeologists as serpent-column portals. In Nature and Culture in the Early Modern Atlantic, historian Peter C. Mancall reveals how Europeans and Native Americans thought about a natural world undergoing rapid change in the century following the historic voyages of Christopher Columbus. Through innovative use of oral history and folklore maintained for centuries by Native Americans, as well as original use of spectacular manuscript atlases, paintings that depict on-the-spot European representations of nature, and texts that circulated imperfectly across the ocean, he reveals how the encounter between the old world and the new changed the fate of millions of individuals. This inspired work of Atlantic, European, and American history begins with medieval concepts of nature and ends in an age when the printed book became the primary avenue for the dissemination of scientific information. Throughout the sixteenth century, the borders between the natural world and the supernatural were more porous than modern readers might realize. Native Americans and Europeans alike thought about monsters, spirits, and insects in considerable depth. In Mancall's vivid narrative, the modern world emerged as a result of the myriad encounters between peoples who inhabited the Atlantic basin in this period. The centuries that followed can be comprehended only by exploring how culture in its many forms-stories, paintings, books-shaped human understanding of the natural world.

General

Imprint:	University of PennsylvaniaPress
Country of origin:	United States
Series:	The Early Modern Americas
Release date:	December 2017
First published:	2018
Authors:	Peter C. Mancall
Dimensions:	254 x 178 x 23mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Hardcover - Paper over boards
Pages:	212
ISBN-13:	978-0-8122-4966-8
Categories:	Books > Arts & Architecture > History of art / art & design styles > Art styles not limited by date > Art of indigenous peoples Books > Humanities > History > History of specific subjects > Social & cultural history Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Ethnic studies > Indigenous peoples Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Anthropology > General Books > Science & Mathematics > Biology, life sciences > Human biology & related topics > Biological anthropology > General Books > History > History of specific subjects > Social & cultural history
LSN:	0-8122-4966-6
Barcode:	9780812249668

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