Utopia/Dystopia: European Images and Representations of the

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Utopia/Dystopia European Images and
Representations of the New World

• Edward Hicks (1780-1849), The Peaceable
  Kingdom. Westervelt-Warner Museum of American
  Art. Tuscaloosa, AL. http//www.warnermuseum.org/
  quicktour8.htm

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Discovery, Colonization, and the Written Word

• Intersection between writingespecially
  printingand the representation, imagination, and
  conquest of the New World
• First printed book, the Gutenberg Bible, came
  only 30 years before Columbus landed in America
• Writing and other media of representation
  participated in the construction and thus the
  appropriation of America
• How do experiences fit into existing European
  world view? What hopes, expectations, and fears
  are being projected onto the New World?

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America as Utopia/Dystopia

• What remedies does America offer to European
  maladies (overpopulation, moral disintegration,
  autocratic political structures)?
• How do American discoveries reflect on European
  society?
• What kind of template does America offer for the
  renewal or development of European
  society/culture/politics?
• What is the significance of travel to
  faraway/unknown lands affirmation of self or
  challenge of self?
• Does America offer a threat or an opportunity to
  European society?

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America and the Dreams (and Nightmares) of
Western Civilization

• Insertion of America into Events and Predictions
  of Biblical History
• The Creation
• Mono-genesis or poly-genesis of Native American
  peoples
• The Earthly Paradise
• Is the Garden of Eden or Earthly Paradise still
  extant on Earth?
• The New Jerusalem
• Will Christ rebuild Jerusalem on earth, possibly
  during his 1000-year rule (the Millennium)?
• The Apocalypse and the Millennium
• Pre and Post-Millennialism

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Visions of the Old World Cartography

• MAPPING

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Hartmann Schedel (1440-1514), Liber Chronicarum
Nuremberg Anton Koberger, 1493.
ltwww.folger.edu.The Last Pre-Columbian Map of
the World
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• The Liber Chronicarum or Nuremberg Chronicle is
  Schedel's illustrated history of the world from
  Genesis to 1493.
• Schedel uses this Ptolemaic style map to
  illustrate the second of the six ages of the
  world.
• The first age of the world began with the
  Creation, the second with Noah, the sixth with
  the birth of Christ. Here Noah's sons Shem,
  Japheth, and Ham display their inheritance Asia,
  Europe, and Africa, respectively.
• Jerusalem is at the center of the known world,
  and the monsters that were described as
  inhabiting the outskirts of the world in medieval
  travel tales are depicted in the margins.
  Ptolemy's Geographia, which summed up nearly
  six centuries of Greek geographical knowledge,
  was written in the second century A.D. and then
  was virtually forgotten until its rediscovery in
  the fourteenth century. It was first printed in
  1475 without maps.
• In 1477, only fifteen years before Columbus's
  first voyage, it was printed with maps similar to
  this one in Schedel's Chronicle. Though Schedel
  knew of Columbus's voyage, his map reflects
  Ptolemy's understanding of the world as three
  continents separated by a vast ocean from the
  west coast of Europe to the east coast of Asia.

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Martin Waldseemüllers Map of the World (1507)
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• Martin Waldseemüllers 1507 map documented and
  updated new geographic knowledge derived from the
  discoveries of the late fifteenth and the first
  years of the sixteenth centuries.
• Waldseemüllers large world map included data
  gathered during Amerigo Vespuccis voyages of
  15011502 to the New World.
• Waldseemüller christened the new lands "America"
  in recognition of Vespucci s understanding that
  a new continent had been uncovered as a result of
  the voyages of Columbus and other explorers in
  the late fifteenth century.

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Hernando Cortés, Praeclara Ferdinandi Cortesii
de nova maris oceani Hyspania narratio...
Nuremberg F. Peypus, 1524. (attributed to
Albrecht Dürer) (source Jay I. Kislak
Foundation, Cultural Readings Colonization and
Print in the Americas lthttp//www.library.upenn.ed
u/exhibits/rbm/kislak/promotion/cortes2.html gt
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• Tenochtitlan was destroyed by the Spanish in 1521
• Cortés built Mexico City on its ruins.
• Map shows the city before its destruction, with
  the principal Aztec temples in the main square,
  causeways connecting the city to the mainland,
  and an aqueduct supplying fresh water.
• Much of the information on this map must have
  come from Aztec sources - as did a great deal of
  the intelligence Cortés relied upon in his
  conquest.
• This map circulated in numerous histories of the
  New World.
• (CULTURAL READINGS Colonization Print in the
  Americas lthttp//www.library.upenn.edu/exhibits/rb
  m/kislak/promotion/cortes2.htmlgt

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Ambrosius Holbein, woodcut map of Utopia (1518).
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Visions of the New World

• The People/The Other
• Ancient Theories of Non-Western Peoples
• Roman scholar Pliny and his portrayal of
  monstrous races who inhabited the rim of the
  world (men with heads of dogs, men win their
  heads beneath their shoulders, men with one large
  foot under whose shade they rested in the desert
  sun)

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Ancient Theories of Non-Western Peoples

• Herodotus, History (425 B.C.)
• Account of the Scythians, a people living on the
  northern shore of the Black Sea
• Said to have taken possession of a deserted
  land far to the East
• Later believed to be the ancestors of Native
  Americans
• Scythians also said to have merged with the
  Amazons, which were searched for in the Americas

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Ancient Theories of Non-Western Peoples

• Barbarians and Noble Savages
• In ancient Greece, all non-Greek peoples,
  identified by their beards
• Lower culture, religion, intellect, and social
  norms
• Tacituss Germania praising Germans of Roman
  times as noble savages

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Other Contexts of European Encounters with
Others

• Reconquista and struggle against Moors
• Crusades
• Expulsion of the Jews from Spain
• Struggle against Ottoman Turks in Eastern
  Mediterranean and Eastern Europe
• Colonization of Africa

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Sir John Mandeville, Books of the Marvels of
the World.

• Renaissance representations/imaginations

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America/Americans and the History of Christian
Salvation (Eschatology)

• The map of Christian Europe did not include
  America
• Question Was America and its inhabitants
  included in the Christian scheme of salvation?
  Did Indians have souls?
• Columbus understanding himself as
  Christoferens or Christ-bearer
• Four Voyages Jerusalem and Mount Sion are to be
  rebuilt by the hand of a Christian who this is
  to be, God declares by the mouth of His prophet
  . . . Psalm 147. Abbot Joachin said that hew
  was to come from Spain. St. Jerome showed the
  way of it to the holy lady. The emperor of
  Cathay China, some time since, sent for wise
  men to instruct him in the faith of Christ. Who
  will offer himself for this work? If Our Lord
  bring me back to Spain, I pledge myself, in the
  name of God, to bring him there in safety.
• Ferdinand Columbus his father as Christ-bearer
  who carried the grace of the Holy Ghost to that
  New World . . . That the Indian nations might
  become dwellers in the triumphant Church of
  Heaven.

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America/Americans and the History of Christian
Salvation (Eschatology)

• Thus Columbuss geography of salvation included
  the Indians because to him the West Indies were
  part of Eastern Asia and per consequence shared
  in the terrain of Christs earthly kingdom
• C. believed to have found the earthly paradise at
  the summit of a mountain in the Orinoco River
• Believed that there the globe was not spherical,
  but pear-shaped he interpreted the river as
  Gihon, the second river of Paradise (Gen.
  29-14)
• Four Voyages all these features are great
  indications of the earthly paradise
• thus in keeping with medieval tradition that God
  had removed the lost Paradise to India

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America/Americans and the History of Christian
Salvation (Eschatology)

• Jose de Acosta (Spanish Jesuit) The Natural and
  Moral History of the Indies (1604)
• Satan had in former ages led several nations of
  Scythians to America over a land bridge in East
  Asia (now submerged)
• They built temples to Satan in Mexico and other
  American regions
• Here they remained out of the reach of
  Christianity until the arrival of Christian
  missionaries (such as himself)

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America/Americans and the History of Christian
Salvation (Eschatology)

• Joseph Mede (1586-1638) (English theologian)
• America as the seat of hell, from which Satan's
  minions, Gog and Magog (Rev. 208-9) would arise
  at the end of the millennium to encompass the
  Saints of the terrestrial New Jerusalem
• The nations seated outside of the terrestrial
  seat of the saints, (hence, the Indians) would
  be destroyed by fire from heaven

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America/Americans and the History of Christian
Salvation (Eschatology)

• In defense of European settlement of America,
  other theologians (e.g. Cotton Mather) argued
  that it was indeed part of Gods plan to wrest
  America out of the Hands of its old Land-lord,
  Satan, and give these utmost ends of the Earth to
  our Lord Jesus
• Thus Puritans and other Christian peoples
  settling in America could interpret their
  presence as a preparation of the Second Coming of
  Christ
• Puritan presence, therefore, was an Errand into
  the Wilderness

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Columbus and the Discovery of
America__________Christopher Columbus, De
insulis nuper in mari Indico repertis. Bound with
Carlo Verardi, In laudem...Ferdinandi
Hispaniarum regis... Basel Johann Bergmann de
Olpe, 1494.
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Christopher Columbus, De insulis nuper in mari
Indico repertis. Bound with Carlo Verardi, In
laudem...Ferdinandi Hispaniarum regis... Basel
Johann Bergmann de Olpe, 1494.
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Simon Grynaeus and Johann Huttich,Novis orbis
regionum ac insularum veteribus incognitarum.
Basle Johann Hervagius, 1532 detail from map.
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Jean de Léry,Histoire d'un voyage fait en la
terre du Bresil, autrement dite Amerique...
Geneva For the heirs of Eustache Vignon, 1594.
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Jan van der Straet and Theodor Galle (engraving),
America. Ca. 1580.
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The Tears of the Indians Being an historical and
true account of the cruel massacres and
slaughters of above twenty millions of innocent
people committed by the Spaniards... London
J.C. for Nath. Brooke, 1656.
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Visions of the New World

• Mythological Places and Societies
• El Dorado
• Legend began in the 1530s, in the Andes of
  present-day Colombia
• Conquistador Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada first
  found the Muisca
• Story of the Muisca rituals was brought to Quito
  by Sebastian de Belalcazars men
• Mixed with other rumors, arose the legend of El
  Dorado (meaning the golden man, rather than a
  place
• Ritual king, chief, or priest of the Muisca was
  covered in gold and plunge into a mountain lake
• Legend turned from identification of a man to
  meaning a city, place, or state
• Gave rise to countless expeditions
• But all actual conquests, especially the
  conquest of the Aztec empire by Cortes and the
  Inca empire by the Pizarro brothers, were
  informed by the search for mythical gold

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Mythological Places and Societies

• Seven Cities of Cibola
• Myth originated around the year 1150, when the
  Moors conquered the Spanish city of Merida
• According to legend, seven bishops fled the city,
  not only to save their lives but also to prevent
  the Muslims from obtaining sacred religious
  relics
• Years later, rumor circulated that that the
  bishops had founded seven cities of gold in a far
  away land
• With the discover and conquest of America, the
  seven cities were believed to lie in America, and
  many expeditions tried to discover them
• Thus intersection of material quest and
  religious mission

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Bibliography and Further Reading

• Cultural Readings Colonization Print in the
  Americas. University of Pennsylvania Libraries.
  http//www.library.upenn.edu/exhibits/rbm/kislak/i
  ndex/cultural.html. August 20, 2007.
• Franklin, Wayne. Discoverers, Explorers,
  Settlers The Diligent Writers of Early America.
  Chicago U of Chicago P, 1979.
• Grafton, Anthony. New World, Ancient Texts The
  Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery.
  Cambridge, MA Beknap Press of Harvard UP, 1992.
• Greenblatt, Stephen. Marvelous Possessions The
  Wonder of the New World. Chicago U of Chicago
  P, 1991.
• ---. New World Encounters. Berkeley U of
  California P, 1993.
• Hemming, John. The Search for El Dorado. New
  York E. P. Dutton, 1978.
• Sale, Kirkpatrick. The Conquest of Paradise
  Christopher Columbus and the Columbian Legacy.
  New York Plume, 1990.
• Sanders, Ronald. Lost Tribes and Promised Lands
  The Origins of American Racism. Boston Little,
  Brown, 1978.