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Neo-Latin ethnographic descriptions of India from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
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Date
2024
Authors
Rajgopal, Shruti
Journal Title
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Publisher
University College Cork
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Abstract
My thesis examines the place of India within the Neo-Latin world, offering the first ever systematic account of Latin writings produced in and about India during the renaissance. I have analysed Latin ethnographies that situate India within a tradition of reception that was transnational and transhistorical, using classicism as a framework to articulate the familiar and unfamiliar features of European experience in India. This includes exploring the extent to which both settlers and Indian natives employed Latin within contact zones and for what purposes they did so. My research surveyed a very wide range of primary sources, from administrative archives and records to the voluminous correspondence of missionaries, as well as multi-volume books, both manuscript and printed, written in humanistic Latin. This study constitutes the first synoptic view of Neo-Latin sources connected with India, but it also entails detailed comparative analysis of the longer ethnographic treatises, examining their sources, style and ideological leanings. As such, it offers substantially new readings of key works by well-known figures such as Poggio Bracciolini, Giovanni Pietro Maffei, Francisco Benci and Jeronimo Osorio, while also bringing new prominence to writers such as Archangelus Madrignanus, Antoni de Montserrat, Thomas Faria, and Andreas Baianus.
My work has thrown particular light on the relationship between Latin and vernacular sources, exploring the role of translation as a vehicle for deploying the resources of reformed Latinity and classical intertextuality to position India within a European intellectual framework. This has required a multilingual approach, tracing the dissemination and retranslation of material across Portuguese, Italian, and Spanish sources in order to identify what is particular to the Latin tradition. This emphasis upon Latin as part of a multilingual intercultural encounter has proved especially fruitful for exploring themes of ethnic and religious character, colonialism and gender.
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Keywords
Neo-Latin , India , Ethnography , Jesuits
Citation
Rajgopal, S. 2024. Neo-Latin ethnographic descriptions of India from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. PhD Thesis, University College Cork.