O Brave New People

Download or read book O Brave New People written by John Francis Moffitt and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The authors reclaim the historical origins of still-evolving attitudes about the Indian myth in precolonial pictorial and literary sources. Essential for the initial European invention of the American Indian were both the scriptural precedent of the Edenic Earthly Paradise, itself often placed in India on medieval maps, and the equally ancient idea of the Noble Savage. The authors document the establishment of psychological boundaries between Europeans and their subject "New Peoples," and how the Europeans' New World was interpreted in light of Christian prophecy. They also reveal that long before Columbus's discovery, Europeans had attached the same conventional imagery to a host of non-European "Primitive Others." The authors examine the explorers' chronicles to show just how they wrote about, and sometimes pictured, a strange new world unfolding its wonders after 1492.