Introduction: Into Africa -- Encountering the African -- Some medieval formulations -- The African in-between -- Expansion and the contours of Africa -- Routes, histories, and chronicles -- Strangeness under the imperial sun -- Africa and the imagination -- The monster of melancholy -- Adamastor melancholicus -- The masculine ship -- The devil's map
Summary
In this first book to study Portuguese texts about Africa, Moorings brings an important but little-known body of European writings to bear on contemporary colonial thought. Images of Africa as monstrous, dangerous, and lush were created in early Portuguese imperial writings and dominated its representation in European literature. Moorings establishes these key works in their proper place: foundational to Western imperial discourse. Attentive to history as well as the nuances of language, Josiah Blackmore leads readers from the formation of the "Moor" in medieval Iberia to the construction of a
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 175-195) and index
