New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery [Paperback]

Anthony Grafton (Author), April Shelford (Contributor), Nancy Siraisi (Contributor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0674618769 | ISBN-13: 978-0674618763 | Publication Date: March 15, 1995

Describing an era of exploration during the Renaissance that went far beyond geographic bounds, this book shows how the evidence of the New World shook the foundations of the old, upsetting the authority of the ancient texts that had guided Europeans so far afield. What Grafton recounts is a war of ideas fought by mariners, scientists, publishers, and rulers over a period of 150 years. In colorful vignettes, published debates, and copious illustrations, we see these men and their contemporaries trying to make sense of their discoveries as they sometimes confirm, sometimes contest, and finally displace traditional notions of the world beyond Europe.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Grafton's book is about the identity of the Americas--an identity hewn out of intellectual conflict, just as much as military or political conflict.
--David McKitterick (New York Times Book Review )

In his eloquent disquisition...Grafton demonstrates his mastery of the world of the Renaissance text and his skills as a historian of scholarship, scholarly processes, and intellectual debates.
--Larry Ceplair (Los Angeles Times Book Review )

Beautifully presented and delightful to read. Grafton's prose has a rare combination of qualities, smooth-flowing and hard-hitting...The concentrated power, the broad erudition, the impeccable aim which characterize Grafton's vignettes are enviable.
--Felipe Fernández-Armesto (London Review of Books )

Grafton is massively erudite and scrupulous as a scholar; at the same time he has command of a relaxed narrative style: his book about the reconfiguration of knowledge in Renaissance Europe is aimed at the general reader and no doubt finds its mark.
--Mary Baine Campbell (Arion )

About the Author

Anthony Grafton is Henry Putnam University Professor of History at Princeton University.

April Shelford is a graduate student in history at Princeton University.

Nancy Siraisi is Distinguished Professor of History at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Product Details

• Paperback: 296 pages
• Publisher: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (March 15, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674618769
• ISBN-13: 978-0674618763
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #143,562 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #96 in Books > History > Historical Study > History of Ideas

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars overseas overviews, May 19, 2003

By 

Alvaro Lewis "jwatson5" (Redwood City, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery (Paperback)

Not the most stunning or innovative of Professor Grafton's works, <New Worlds, Ancient Texts> makes a sweeping review from the expectations held by the world of humanists received from Greek, Latin, and Arabic forerunners to the explosion and expansion of these expectations due to America's discovery. Grafton is a smooth and engaging writer, who can bind the vast realms of his study into fine sentences and clear argumentation.

The text consists of five chapters, intermittent miniature biographies of more interesting or less frequently known players, and luxurious black and white reproductions of images and manuscripts of the age. The text runs its course and neither references the small biographies nor acknowledges the handsome illustrations. It is very possible that one will skip over these images as accessory to follow the sweep of the author's narrative, only to revisit them later. Sweeps and anecdotes describe the nature of the investigation rather than patient analysis of sites and sights. This book seems to share only the prettiest berries plucked from Grafton's years as a tender of the tree.

This book more than adequately accounts for the changes in European thought on account of the discovery not just of new lands, but of new worlds, new diseases, drugs, and, as important, the discovery of the limitations of many ancient texts. Again, Grafton is beguiling, informative and masterful at his craft. <New Worlds, Ancient Texts> will be equally welcome reading for those who enjoy the period and those who wish to find a compelling way to enter it.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Re-imagining the (Renaissance) World, March 20, 2007

By 

Steve Ruskin (Colorado, United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery (Paperback)

'New Worlds, Ancient Texts' was the companion to a 1992 exhibition of the same name at the New York Public Library. What is amazing is how well this book still stands on its own years later and in absentia from that exhibition.

Grafton (with help from Nancy Siraisi) shows how the ancient authors--on which 16th/17th c. Europeans relied so heavily to explain the known (and unknown) world--utterly failed to provide an adequate roadmap to the cosmos in the face of the discovery and exploration of the Americas. "Between 1550 and 1650," writes Grafton, "Western thinkers ceased to believe that they could find all important truths in ancient books."

As a result, Europeans were forced to confront the paucity of much of the classical knowledge on which they had relied for so long, and begin to develop their own mechanisms, theories, and models for understanding the world. This suggests the beginning of 'modern' knowledge; early-modern Europeans finally began to think for themselves, even if they still operated under the "shades of old images."

Grafton offers some fascinating examples of just how far the Europeans were willing to stretch the authority of the ancients to try accommodate new knowledge. In almost every case, the ancients were stretched so far they snapped.

In Grafton's capable hands, this short (and nicely illustrated) work is one of the best books available for understanding the impact of the discovery of the new world on the West's classical intellectual heritage.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Well worth discovering, November 19, 2010

By 

reader 451 - See all my reviews

This review is from: New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery (Paperback)

Grafton's New Worlds, Ancient Texts is surprisingly accessible for a book on a quintessentially cultural subject: the impact of the fifteenth-century discovery of America on the classics and their position in European scholarship. It does not require more than superficial knowledge of ancient authors. It is clearly and economically written. It has useful captions on less well-known texts. And it is beautifully illustrated.

Grafton explains that a scholastic culture centring on a few authors, especially Greco-Roman ancients, and on the Bible was already under challenge, in the early sixteenth century, by the `humanists', writers who were rediscovering the classics in fresh translations or based on hitherto unavailable copies rescued from Constantinople. The discovery of the new world added fresh and dramatic impetus to this questioning of established authority. For example Aristotle, in his Meteorology, had written that no one could survive in the tropical zone, which was too hot. When the first Europeans crossed the equator, this began to look ridiculous. But the discoveries' impact was much broader, including that of tobacco, for example, challenging the main botanical and medical treatises, and spawning a pamphlet war as to whether it was the devil's tool. New Worlds, Ancient Texts examines a whole variety of such controversies, ranging from mapping, anthropology, medicine, and astronomy to philosophy. At the same time, it argues that the classics had a longer lease of life than is sometimes presumed, and retained relevance until well into the Enlightenment and beyond. This is an exciting work with lessons on travel, writing, and books which it is well worth reading both for its historical value and its implications about the nature of knowledge in general.