The mythical Indies and Columbus's apocalyptic letter : : imagining the Americas in the late Middle Ages / / Elizabeth Moore Willingham.

• VerfasserIn: Willingham, Elizabeth M.
• Place / Publishing House: Brighton : : Sussex Academic Press,, 2015.
• Year of Publication: 2015
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (426 pages) :; illustrations

"With his Letter of 1493 to the court of Spain, Christopher Columbus heralded his first voyage to the present-day Americas, creating visions that seduced the European imagination and birthing a fascination with those 'new' lands and their inhabitants that continues today. Columbus's epistolary announcement travelled from country to country in a late-medieval media event--and the rest, as has been observed, is history. The Letter has long been the object of speculation concerning its authorship and intention: British historian Cecil Jane questions whether Columbus could read and write prior to the first voyage while Demetrio Ramos argues that King Ferdinand and a minister composed the Letter and had it printed in the Spanish folio. The Letter has figured in studies of Spanish imperialism and of discovery and colonial period history, but it also offers insights into Columbus's passions and motives as he reinvents himself and retails his vision of Peter Martyr's Novus orbis to men and women for whom Columbus was as unknown as the places he claimed to have visited. The central feature of the book is its annotated variorum edition of the Spanish Letter, together with an annotated English translation and word and name glossaries"--Provided by publisher.

Table of Contents

Foreword: Aims and apparatus -- An introduction to Columbus's letter -- Discovery and commerce : a letter in folio -- A slippery job : identifying the folio's printer -- Lasting impressions : the initial and the types -- The letter goes abroad : the Roman connection -- Lost, found, and yet undiscovered : peninsular quartos -- Manuscripts : real and imagined -- Reading the Variorum -- A Variorum edition of the Spanish folio -- Debriefing : ink and paper, men, and stemma -- An English translation of the folio -- Parsing the reading -- Columbus and his apocalyptic letter -- Guide to abbreviations, frequent short references, proper names and symbols -- Glossary -- Publications of the Columbus letter -- Incunabula and early sixteenth-century books cited.