Worldmakers

Global Imagining in Early Modern Europe

Ramachandran Ayesha

In this beautifully conceived book, Ayesha Ramachandran reconstructs the imaginative struggles of early modern artists, philosophers, and writers to make sense of something that we take for granted: the world, imagined as a whole. Once a new, exciting, and frightening concept, "the world" was transformed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But how could one envision something that no one had ever seen in its totality? "The Worldmakers" moves beyond histories of globalization to explore how "the world" itself – variously understood as an object of inquiry, a comprehensive category, and a system of order – was self-consciously shaped by human agents. Gathering an international cast of characters, from Dutch cartographers and French philosophers to Portuguese and English poets, Ramachandran describes a history of firsts: the first world atlas, the first global epic, the first modern attempt to develop a systematic natural philosophy – all part of an effort by early modern thinkers to capture "the world" on the page.

About the Author

Ayesha Ramachandran is assistant professor of comparative literature at Yale University.

Reviews

"'The Worldmakers' makes a powerful intervention into the early modern literary study of epic poetry and essayistic and philosophical prose; into conceptions of 'world' within those genres as well as in the Western history of ideas; into conceptions of modernity governing Western science, philosophy, literature, and ethics; and, not least, into the postcolonial project of decentering European culture through a globalized view of the world. Among recent books on these topics, it joins the fine company of such works as Roland Greene's 'Five Words' and Timothy Hampton's 'Fictions of Embassy'. Ramachandran approaches the task from her own distinctive perspective, based in fine-grained literary analysis with a firm grasp of cultural and intellectual history and the theoretical consequences that follow from juxtaposing texts against the history" – William J. Kennedy, Cornell University

"'The Worldmakers' is an impressive, wide-ranging, beautifully researched book with a skillfully articulated argument about a momentous shift in 'global imaginings' in early modern thought and literature. The topic is one that could easily become vague and elusive, but Ramachandran succeeds time and time again in giving it clear focus and definition. In the process, she also makes genuinely fresh, compelling critical statements about some major, much-studied texts and authors" – Gordon Braden, University of Virginia

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