The Knot in the Sphere

Original Title: El nudo y la esfera

Travel transforms the physical image that man has of the world, but it also transforms his psychological perceptions. All of a sudden, spaces that had never even been guessed at become reality, whilst others materialise that had been either forgotten or silenced. The Knot in the Sphere investigates the importance of the meeting of peoples and cultures, as well as the appreciation of reality that was implied by the ethnographic contacts made in the East, in Africa and in America by Portuguese navigators in the 15th and 16th centuries. The figure of the voyager who leaves the West bearing his own world on his shoulders and returns home carrying with him a new vision of reality – from the Medieval knight to the explorer, the businessman, the adventurer and the discoverer – demonstrates the dialogue that is necessary with the past, with the other, with the new. At the same time, it enables us to take note of the cultural changes that the new geographical scene produced: the ability to read a new world and the constant effort of Western thought to apprehend it.

Praises

«An exemplary essay on comparative culture in which art, science, thought and politics unfold on a unified front».
Rafael Argullol, El País

«An extremely useful study for anyone having the curiosity to discover the origins of the world we live in».
Félix de Azúa, El País

«A prose that flows like sea currents. Its great merit is to show us that travel has been, and still is, the measure of all things».
Manel García, El Periódico

Discover other books from Isabel Soler

• 

  Miguel de Cervantes: The Algier Years

• 

  The King's Dream

• 

  The Course of Vasco da Gama

• 

  The Shipwrecked Seas

Details

Acantilado

January 2003

1 pages

Essay, Human Studies