Table of Contents

List of illustrations 1 Changing representations of pagan Indians in Italian culture c.1300 to c.1600 2 Preconceptions of the Indians c.1300 3 Transformations of medieval Indian tradition in Marco Polo’s Il milione 4 A fourteenth-century religious view of the Indians: Odorico’s relatio and its re-presentation by Mandeville 5 Gymnosophists, gods and the Greeks: India among the humanists from Petrarch to Alberti 6 Novelty and humanity in Poggio Bracciolini’s representation of the Indians 7 India ‘recognita’? The fifteenth-century reception of Poggio’s portrayal of the Indians 8 Following Da Gama’s wake: Italian visions of ‘Portuguese’ India (c.1500-c.1514) 9 A new Ulysses’ Indians: the Itinerario of Ludovico de Varthema 10 A polyphony of modern voices: Ramusio’s contribution to understandings of Indians 11 Popularized Jesuit views 12 Late-sixteenth-century merchant perspectives Conclusion Index

About the Author

Meera Juncu received her doctorate in Italian Renaissance studies from the University of Cambridge.