Edward Wilson-Lee
Autore di Il catalogo dei libri naufragati. Il figlio di Cristoforo Colombo e la ricerca della biblioteca universale
Sull'Autore
Edward Wilson-Lee is a Fellow in English at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, where he teaches medieval and Renaissance literature. His research focuses on books, libraries, and travel, which during this project has involved journeys to and through Spain, Italy, India, and the Caribbean. He is also mostra altro the author of Shakespeare in Swahililand. mostra meno
Opere di Edward Wilson-Lee
Etichette
Informazioni generali
- Sesso
- male
- Nazionalità
- UK
- Luogo di residenza
- Kenya
Switzerland
Mexico
Zimbabwe
USA
Cambridge, England - Attività lavorative
- teacher (Renaissance literature)
- Organizzazioni
- Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge (fellow)
Utenti
Recensioni
De gezonken verzameling van Ferdinand Columbus de… di Edward Wilson-Lee
Een wonderbaarlijk boek over een wonderbaarlijke (onechte) zoon van Columbus. Een man die homo universalis wilde zijn door alle informatie te verzamelen die er te verzamelen was. Daarbij het avontuur van zijn leven en het avontuur van het catalogiseren van zijn boeken en zijn "folderwerk". Hoe gezegend wij zijn met computers, Internet, databases, tags en indices, en hoe schatplichtig we zijn aan mensen zoals Ferdinand (Hernando) Columbus.
Enjoyable, thorough and insightful research, well written. The British author does suffer from the "lack-of-paragraph-indent" shortage - I'm sorry, but a paragraph length should not exceed a page. Take a breath now and then. It's not like the indents are expensive or anything like that - apparently the British just suffer from a shortage of them and I, for one, am in favor of donating a few extra ones I have around here, see if that helps (note to British authors - I think they are even reusable, indefinitely). Fascinating story, first rate in that regard. Many things were new to me, and after reading untold numbers of non-fiction books in my life, that is a delight in itself. Go for it, if you like history and sleuthing, you'll like this.… (altro)
First, I recommend the existing reviews on this site. Second it seems this work would be of interest to just about everyone with a thousand or more works listed here. Third, by happenstance I read this shortly after "Life is Simple" by John Joe McFadden, which is basically the role of Occam's razor in organizing scientific thought. These two works together form a nice review of thought and knowledge in world of expanding information and two of the organizing principles that help us deal with it.
Contrary to what you might expect from the title, this is in effect a parallel biography of two Portuguese 16th century figures, the poet Luís Vaz de Camões and the humanist scholar Damião de Góis.
Damião had a high-profile career as a trade envoy in the Low Countries and the Baltic before returning to Lisbon to work as archivist and official historian in the Torre do Tombo. During his travels around Europe he spent time in the universities of Louvain and Padua, and seems to have formed close ties with many of the leading figures of the age, including Erasmus and Luther, as well as with the founders of the Jesuit order. He also developed a fascination with other cultures, especially the non-Christian traditions of Lapland and the non-Western Christianity of Ethiopia, which he extended during his work as historian into a tendency to look at what colonised people said about the Portuguese as well as what the colonisers said to justify themselves. And, of course, it wasn't long before he had the Inquisition knocking on his door.
Wilson-Lee sees Damião's Chronicle as a kind of last-ditch attempt by humanism to present a view of the world in which Western European Christianity is merely one of many cultural traditions, with much to learn from the advanced cultures of places like India and China, and he contrasts it to the assertive, Eurocentric and imperialist neoclassical view projected by Camões in The Lusiads.
It's a cleverly-written book, that manages to turn a fairly abstract literary and historical debate into something very like a murder mystery, full of entertaining glimpses at Camões's experiences in the Lisbon underworld and at the sharp end of colonialism, mirrored by Damião's semi-clandestine encounters with forbidden knowledge (among the things that got him into trouble were his passions for the polyphony of Josquin and the paintings of Hieronymous Bosch...). Necessarily there's a little bit of oversimplification along the way, but it's an interesting glimpse into a period when it wasn't entirely obvious that Europe would be forcibly split between Catholics and Protestants or that Europeans would see it as their mission to finance our culture by robbing the rest of the world for the next few centuries.… (altro)
Damião had a high-profile career as a trade envoy in the Low Countries and the Baltic before returning to Lisbon to work as archivist and official historian in the Torre do Tombo. During his travels around Europe he spent time in the universities of Louvain and Padua, and seems to have formed close ties with many of the leading figures of the age, including Erasmus and Luther, as well as with the founders of the Jesuit order. He also developed a fascination with other cultures, especially the non-Christian traditions of Lapland and the non-Western Christianity of Ethiopia, which he extended during his work as historian into a tendency to look at what colonised people said about the Portuguese as well as what the colonisers said to justify themselves. And, of course, it wasn't long before he had the Inquisition knocking on his door.
Wilson-Lee sees Damião's Chronicle as a kind of last-ditch attempt by humanism to present a view of the world in which Western European Christianity is merely one of many cultural traditions, with much to learn from the advanced cultures of places like India and China, and he contrasts it to the assertive, Eurocentric and imperialist neoclassical view projected by Camões in The Lusiads.
It's a cleverly-written book, that manages to turn a fairly abstract literary and historical debate into something very like a murder mystery, full of entertaining glimpses at Camões's experiences in the Lisbon underworld and at the sharp end of colonialism, mirrored by Damião's semi-clandestine encounters with forbidden knowledge (among the things that got him into trouble were his passions for the polyphony of Josquin and the paintings of Hieronymous Bosch...). Necessarily there's a little bit of oversimplification along the way, but it's an interesting glimpse into a period when it wasn't entirely obvious that Europe would be forcibly split between Catholics and Protestants or that Europeans would see it as their mission to finance our culture by robbing the rest of the world for the next few centuries.… (altro)
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- Opere
- 4
- Utenti
- 719
- Popolarità
- #35,295
- Voto
- 3.9
- Recensioni
- 17
- ISBN
- 32
- Lingue
- 5