Venetian Discovery of America: Geographic Imagination and Print Culture in the Age of Encounters

Venice was the print capital of early modern Europe and had a unique relationship with the Americas. Venetian editors, mapmakers, translators, writers, and cosmographers represented the New World as a place that the city's mariners had discovered before the Spanish, linked to Marco Polo's China, or another version of Venice. Elizabeth Horodowich explores these various modes of imagining the New World, including Venetian rhetorics of firstness, similitude, othering, comparison, and simultaneity, which allowed Venetians to argue for their different but equivalent participation in the Age of Encounters. Venetian newsmongers embraced a fertile tension between the distant and the close, playing a crucial yet unrecognized role in the invention of America.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 343 pages
Publication date: 19 August 2021
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Few Renaissance Venetians had the privilege of witnessing the New World firsthand. Nevertheless, as the print capital of early modern Europe, Venice established a distinctive connection with the Americas. Venetian editors, mapmakers, translators, writers, and cosmographers portrayed the New World in various ways, often presenting it as a place that Venetian sailors had discovered before the Spanish, as a world connected to Marco Polo's China, or as a mirror image of Venice, particularly in the case of Tenochtitlan. Elizabeth Horodowich delves into these diverse and unique modes of imagining the New World, encompassing Venetian rhetorics of firstness, similarity, othering, comparison, and simultaneity, which were generated through forms of textual and visual pastiche that linked the wider world to the Venetian lagoon. These multifaceted stances enabled Venetians to argue for their distinct yet equivalent participation in the Age of Encounters. While historians have traditionally focused on the Spanish conquest and colonization of the New World, as well as the Dutch and English mapping of it, they have overlooked the widespread circulation of Venetian Americana. Horodowich showcases how Venetian newsmongers embraced a fruitful tension between the distant and the close through their printed texts and maps. In doing so, they played a crucial yet previously unrecognized role in the invention of America.

Weight: 644g
Dimension: 179 x 253 x 26 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781316606841