America - Europe: In the Mirror of Otherness

Abstract

Vasco de QuirogaIt was precisely when printing became popular in Europe - which, for the first time in history, permitted the conservation and mass diffusion of ancient Greek, Arab, and Latin writings, a fact that signalled the beginning of the Renaissance - that the Letters of Amerigo Vespucci first appeared. These letters, like a revelation, speak of a novus mundus, a new world of unknown flora, fauna, and men, that contradicts the findings of Ptolemy‘s eminent Cosmography (published in 1478, in Rome), Theophrastus's History of Plants (published in 1498, in Venice), and the hallowed treatises of Aristotle, which were then in fashion.