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Book Cover
E-book
Author Finley, Robert Stuart Martin, 1957-

Title The accidental Indies / Robert Finley
Published Montreal [Que.] : McGill-Queen's University Press, 2000

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Description 1 online resource (102 pages) : illustrations
Series CEL - Canadian Publishers Collection
Contents The accidental indies -- a departure -- the nursemaid's tale -- who knows what to expect? -- wishful thinking -- why sailors can believe anything -- christopher columbus -- the accidental indies -- translation -- the return -- the threshold -- the letter -- the parade! -- the souvenirs -- notes -- acknowledgments
Summary At once moving and lyrical, The Accidental Indies is a tale in which we join Christopher Columbus on a fantastical voyage through western seas and Western imagination. Robert Finley imagines, sings, charts, and paints the story of Columbus's problematic 1492 expedition to the Caribbean, creating a world that is as vivid and compelling as the explorer's own voyage to the misnamed "Indies".It is a journey through wondrous words that begins with Columbus's earliest explorations when he first "tests the heft and roundness of this earth against his infant head" by stepping from the edge of his rocking cradle to come up short on the boards of the nursery floor. Finley charts a course for us through the days at sea, through the voyage itself, its records and commentaries, into the fraught territory of Columbus' imaginary "Indies" and the representation of this New World on his return to Spain.This incisive and luminescent story, scrupulously grounded in sixteenth-century sources, illuminates the power that "naming" has to create a world - in this case a world still haunted by being the accidental Indies. It is a book about how we perceive and represent the world around us, about the creative and destructive power of language. Through its elaboration of the rich and lively ironies of the Columbus story, The Accidental Indies looks at the nature of storytelling itself
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 97-99)
Notes English
Print version record
Subject Columbus, Christopher -- Fiction
SUBJECT Columbus, Christopher fast
Subject Discoveries in geography -- Fiction
Explorers -- Fiction
FICTION -- General.
FICTION -- Historical.
Discoveries in geography
Explorers
SUBJECT West Indies -- Fiction
Subject West Indies
Genre/Form Electronic books
Biographical fiction
Fiction
Biographical fiction.
Biographical fiction.
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780773568174
0773568174
1282858386
9781282858381
9786612858383
6612858389