Alexander Bell, also known as Filson Young, (1876- 1938) was the author of The Relief of Mafeking (1900), Ireland at the Cross Roads (1903), The Sands of Pleasure (1906), Christopher Columbus and the New World of His Discovery (in eight volumes) (1906), Venus and Cupid (1906), and When the Tide Turns (1908). "A man standing on the sea-shore is perhaps as ancient and as primitive a symbol of wonder as the mind can conceive. Beneath his feet are the stones and grasses of an element that is his own, natural to him, in some degree belonging to him, at any rate accepted by him. He has place and condition there. Above him arches a world of immense void, fleecy sailing clouds, infinite clear blueness, shapes that change and dissolve; his day comes out of it, his source of light and warmth marches across it, night falls from it; showers and dews also, and the quiet influence of stars. "
Columbus, Shakespeare, and the Interpretation of the New World explores a range of images and texts that shed light on the complexity of the European reception and interpretation of the New World. Jonathan Hart examines Columbus's first representation of the natives and the New World, the representation of him in subsequent ages, the portrayal of America in sexual terms, the cultural intricacies brought into play by a variety of translators and mediators, the tensions between the aesthetic and colonial in Shakespeare's The Tempest, and a discussion of cultural and voice appropriation that examines the colonial in the postcolonial. Synopsis: The hermeneutical interpretation of the "discovery" or "conquest" of the New World by the Europeans began the moment Columbus started writing his accounts of his travels and continued through the writing of Shakespeare's The Tempest and to the present day. Hart (Canadian studies and history, Princeton U.), focusing primarily on European narratives, explores how the colonial project was interpreted and contested, with areas of tension hinging on Columbus' representation of the encounter, the figure of Columbus himself, the gendering of America, and in written works of literature.
