Journeys to America

Professor B. Harvey

Summary Sheet for Columbus, Vespucci, and Montaigne

--Columbus: filters raw experience of New World/"Indies" according to agenda (commercial exploitation-wealth/nationalist expansion-honor/convert heathen)

--Vespucci: moralizes upon New World/European contrast to establish superiority of latter (but not too emphatically: he's still curious and almost breathless about the New World--note all the "and . . . and . . . and" toward the end of his essay)

--Montaigne: idealizes natural state to critique European culture as corrupt/distorting

--We might want to lean towards Montaigne, but he in some ways is less anthropologically sound than Vespucci.  Montaigne sees New World natives as lacking artifice, but all human communities are cultured one way or another if you think about it.