Master thesis | Classics and Ancient Civilizations (MA)
open access
This thesis examines how Amerigo Vespucci, in his Mundus Novus, resorts to classical knowledge and ideology in order to approach the New World and place it in a conceptual framework. Firstly, it is...Show moreThis thesis examines how Amerigo Vespucci, in his Mundus Novus, resorts to classical knowledge and ideology in order to approach the New World and place it in a conceptual framework. Firstly, it is analysed how Vespucci by means of classical reception in the design and attitude of his letter, aims to meet the taste of his humanist patron Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco. This is done in chapter one. Secondly, it is examined how Vespucci used the frameworks of classical cosmology, geography and natural sciences in order to describe and introduce his new discoveries. The ideas of Ptolemy, Herodotus, Pliny, Vergil and Lucretius, among others, are reviewed. This is done in the following chapter. Furthermore, it should be noted that the framing of the ""other"" and its communication to a wider audience, as in Vespucci's Mundus Novus, go hand in hand with a sense of European hierarchal superiority towards America. Therefore, in addition, both chapters analyse how the classical reception in Vespucci's frameworks may reflect on a world in which colonisation by European powers began to take shape as a result of transatlantic voyages and explorations.Show less
Historiography has characterised Roman North Africa as consisting of 'two worlds', a world of Roman cities on the one hand and indigenous rural hinterlands on the other. Using geographical analysis...Show moreHistoriography has characterised Roman North Africa as consisting of 'two worlds', a world of Roman cities on the one hand and indigenous rural hinterlands on the other. Using geographical analysis, survey archaeology and discourse analysis, this thesis researches the extent to which the marginal hinterlands (or 'shatter zones') of Late Antique North Africa were integrated into the wider Roman, Mediterranean state space. Despite the topographic difficulties for the Roman Empire to control the mountainous and steppe inland of the region, survey archaeology reveals a landscape that became thoroughly transformed under the later Roman Empire. Integration in the third to fifth centuries ended in the sixth century under the pressure of emperor Justinian's ideology of imperial renovatio.Show less
