Why read The Imaginative Landscape of Christopher Columbus?

Book cover of The Imaginative Landscape of Christopher Columbus

Book description

Rather than focusing on the well-rehearsed facts of Columbus's achievements in the New World, Valerie Flint looks instead at his imaginative mental images, the powerful "fantasies" that gave energy to his endeavors in the Renaissance. With him on his voyages into the unknown, he carried medieval notions gleaned from a…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Imaginative Landscape of Christopher Columbus as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Toby Lester

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This is a lapidary introduction to the stories and ideas that prompted Columbus to sail away from Europe into the Atlantic in search of a direct sea route to Asia—and that determined how he interpreted what he came across after making landfall in the Americas. In just 200 pages, Flint nimbly covers all sorts of material: Christian theories of cosmology and eschatology; medieval conceptions of geography; the travel stories of St. Brendan, Sinbad the Sailor, Sir John Mandeville, and Marco Polo; the books that Columbus read, and the notes he made in them to himself; and more. In doing so,…

From Toby's list on The best books on the geographical ideas that informed the age of discovery.