RHETOR 151 Chapter 14: R151 Reading 4.11.2017 Problem of Recognition
16 Apr 2017
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Impression of the new world was a mix of fact and fantasy. Indies were imagined as featuring fantastic natural phenomena - travellers went to america with premise ideas of what they expected to find - beasts, mermaids, giants. They also believed in black africa a real world of savage people together with unusual and unclassified flora and fauna. Columbia sailed i to the western atlantic drawing on these two sources. Belief that the new could be satisfactorily described by mean of some analogy with the olf. European observers were not equipped with an adequate descriptive. Ex. describe things that looked alike as identical > interchangeability of types was insufficient. When description failed, relied on drawings and drawings. Later, growing awareness that the flora and fauna of america may belong to a different species than those found in the europe and so made increasingly sophisticated descriptions. When it came to describing men, the problem grew even more complex.
