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Moorings

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Moorings Synopsis

How Africa was perceived in the early modern imaginary

In this first book to study Portuguese texts about Africa, Moorings brings an important but little-known body of European writings to bear on contemporary colonial thought. Images of Africa as monstrous, dangerous, and lush were created in early Portuguese imperial writings and dominated its representation in European literature. Moorings establishes these key works in their proper place: foundational to Western imperial discourse.

Attentive to history as well as the nuances of language, Josiah Blackmore leads readers from the formation of the "Moor" in medieval Iberia to the construction of a full colonial imaginary, as found in the works of two writers: the royal chronicler Gomes Eanes de Zurara and the epic poet Luìs de Camões. Blackmore's original work helps to explain how concepts and myths-such as the "otherness" of Africa and Africans-originated, functioned, and were perpetuated.

Delving into the Portuguese imperial experience, Moorings enriches our understanding of historical and literary imagination during a significant period of Western expansion.

About This Edition

ISBN: 9780816648337
Publication date: 26th December 2008
Author: Josiah Blackmore
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
Format: Paperback
Pagination: 224 pages
Genres: European history
Literature: history and criticism