1st Edition

India in the Italian Renaissance Visions of a Contemporary Pagan World 1300-1600

By Meera Juncu Copyright 2016
270 Pages
by Routledge

270 Pages
by Routledge

270 Pages
by Routledge

India in the Italian Renaissance provides a systematic, chronological survey of early Italian representations of India and Indians from the late medieval period to the end of the 16 th century, and their resonance within the cultural context of Renaissance Italy. The study focuses in particular on Italian attitudes towards the inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent and questions how... Read more

List of illustrations 1 Changing representations of pagan Indians in Italian culture c.1300 to c.1600 2 Preconceptions of the Indians c.1300 3 Transformations of medieval Indian tradition in Marco Polo’s Il milione 4 A fourteenth-century religious view of the Indians: Odorico’s relatio and its re-presentation by Mandeville 5 Gymnosophists, gods and the Greeks: India among the humanists from Petrarch to Alberti 6 Novelty and humanity in Poggio Bracciolini’s representation of the Indians 7 India ‘recognita’? The fifteenth-century reception of Poggio’s portrayal of the Indians 8 Following Da Gama’s wake: Italian visions of ‘Portuguese’ India (c.1500-c.1514) 9 A new Ulysses’ Indians: the Itinerario of Ludovico de Varthema 10 A polyphony of modern voices: Ramusio’s contribution to understandings of Indians 11 Popularized Jesuit views  12 Late-sixteenth-century merchant perspectives Conclusion Index



Biography

Meera Juncu received her doctorate in Italian Renaissance studies from the University of Cambridge.