¹ Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis, ed. Selmer, Carl (University of Notre Dame Press, 1959).Google Scholar

² “I do not find, nor have ever found, any account by the Romans or Greeks, which fixes in a positive manner the site of the terrestrial paradise … Some pagans pretended to adduce arguments to establish that it was in the Fortunate Islands, now called Canaries, etc” (Third Voyage of Columbus, 136). Columbus, Christopher, Four Voyages to the New World: Letters and Selected Documents, trans, and ed. Major, R. H. (Gloucester, MA.: Corinth Books, 1978)Google Scholar. All further references to this edition are given in the text.

³ Quoted from Todorov, Tzvetan, Die Eroberung Amerikas: Das Problem des Anderen, trans. Böhringer, Wilfried (Frankfurt A.M.: Suhrkamp, 1985), 24Google Scholar; my translation. Columbus's third letter contains a similar reference to the earthly paradise in the East: “St. Isidor, Bede, Strabo, and the masters of scholastic history, with St. Ambrose, and Scotus, and all the learned theologians, agree that the earthly paradise is in the east, etc” (Third Voyage of Columbus, 136).

⁴ … the other islands of this region, too, are as fertile as they can be. This one is surrounded by harbors, numerous, very safe and broad, and not to be compared with any others that I have seen anywhere; many large wholesome rivers flow through this land;… All these islands are most beautiful and distinguished by various forms; one can travel through them, and they are full of trees of the greatest variety, which … never lose their foliage. At any rate, I found them as green and beautiful as they usually are in the month of May in Spain… Colombo, Christoforo, Epistola de Insulis Nuper Inventis, trans. Robbins, Frank E. (Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, INC., 1966), 9–10Google Scholar. All further references to this edition are given in the text. Vespucci introduces a similar topos of the “locus amoenus” to describe the fertility of these islands. “The climate, moreover, is temperate and the land fertile, full of immense forests and groves, which are always green, for the leaves never fall. The fruits are countless and entirely different from ours.” Vespucci, , First Voyage, in Cosmographiae Introductio by Martin Waldseemüller and the English Translation of Joseph Fischer and Franz von Wieser (1507) (Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, INC., 1966), 112Google Scholar. All further references to this edition are given in the text. The corresponding passage in the Odyssey describes similar conditions on the Isle of the Phaiacians: Therein grow trees, tall and luxuriant, pears and pomegranates and apple-trees with their bright fruit, and sweet figs, and luxuriant olives. Of these the fruit perishes not nor fails in winter or in summer, but lasts throughout the year; and ever does the west wind, as it blows, quicken to life some fruits, and ripen others: pear upon pear waxes ripe, apple upon apple, cluster upon cluster, and fig upon fig…. There again, by the last row of the vines, grow trim garden beds of every sort, blooming the year through, and therein are two springs…. Homer, , The Odyssey, trans. Murray, A. T., 2 vols. (1919; Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1960), VII, 114–132.Google Scholar

⁵ Colombo, 1966, 10.Google Scholar

⁶ Ovid in his description of the Golden Age stresses the fact that a virginal, female Earth provided everything without men's interference: “The earth too, unworked and untouched by the hoe,/and uninjured by any ploughs, gave everything of its own accord,/and, content with foods produced by no one's labour…. Spring was eternal, and gentle Zephyrs with warming breezes soothed the flowers that had sprung up unsown./Soon even the unploughed earth was bearing corn….” (Ovid, , Metam. 101–109)Google Scholar. Translation quoted from Ovid, , Metamorphoses, ed. and trans. Hill, D. E. (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1985).Google Scholar

⁷ For gender-conscious analyses of western science see Keller, Evelyn Fox, Reflections on Gender and Science (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1985)Google Scholar, Merchant, Carolyn, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980)Google Scholar; Tuana, Nancy, ed. Feminism & Science (Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1989).Google Scholar

⁸ A literary character who represents this organic world view in a social context is Shakespeare's Cordelia in King Lear. She appears like a Utopian paradigm of innocence and passive virtue in harmony with an equally benevolent Nature. This “organic” female reflects man's Utopian fantasies concerning Nature and the ideal woman in the early modern age. According to Danby, John, Shakespeare's Doctrine of Nature: A Study of King Lear (London: Faber and Faber, 1949)Google Scholar, Cordelia combines “passion and order, innocence and maturity, defencelessness and strength, daughter and mother, maid and wife,” (133) with no evidence of conflict among these characteristics.

⁹ Columbus was convinced that the islands he had discovered were either the earthly paradise, or very close to it. “I have no doubt, that if I could pass below the equinoctial line, after reaching the highest point of which I have spoken, I should find a milder temperature. … I am convinced that it is the spot of the earthly paradise” (Third Voyage of Columbus, 136)Google Scholar. The main reason Columbus believes he is so close to Paradise is the temperature, which he considers extraordinarily mild for this latitude, but also the enormous quantity of fresh water that flows into the sea. Both these facts, the absence of seasonal changes in climate and the massive rivers which he encounters on his third voyage, seem to conform to biblical and other ancient descriptions of paradise: The Holy Scriptures record, that our Lord made the earthly paradise, and planted the tree of life, and thence there springs a fountain from which the four principal rivers in the world take their source …. There are great indications of this being the terrestrial paradise, for its site coincides with the opinion of the holy and wise theologians whom I have mentioned; and moreover, the other evidences agree with the supposition, for I have never either read or heard of fresh water coming in so large a quantity … the idea is also corroborated by the blandness of the temperature (Third Voyage of Columbus, 155–137).Google Scholar

¹⁰ See illustration I, Amerigo Vespucci “discovers” America; late 16th century; Theodor Galle.

¹¹ See for example America; Meissen, 1745Google Scholar; in Honour, Hugh, The New Golden Land: European Images of America from the Discoveries to the Present Time (New York: Pantheon Books, 1975), 110.Google Scholar

¹² For medieval Utopian visions of all-women's communities see Klarer, Mario, “Topoi antiker und mittelalterlicher Utopievorstellungen im mittelenglischen The Isle of Ladies,” Germanisch-Romanische Monatsscbrift 42.2 (1992), 162–77.Google Scholar

¹³ Cross, Tom Peete and Harris, Clark, Ancient Irish Tales (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1969), 488–490.Google Scholar

¹⁴ See Dillon, Myles, Early Irish Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948), 128–29.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Selections from Ancient Irish Poetry, trans, and ed. Meyer, Kuno (London: Constable & Company, 1913), 6 and 8Google Scholar; both poems are inserted in the prose narration The Voyage of Bran son of Febal to the Land of Living, ed. Meyer, Kuno (London: D. Nutt, 1895), 4 and 16.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Mela, Pomponius, De Chorographia, ed. Frick, C. (Leipzig: Teubner, 1935), III, 6, 48; my translation.Google Scholar

¹⁷ von Monmouth, Geoffrey, Das Leben des Zauberers Merlin, ed. Vielhauer, Inge (Amsterdam: Castrvum Peregrini Presse, 1964), 908ffGoogle Scholar; my translation. Just like the virgins on the islands of Pomponius, who can change into animals, Morgan knows how to change her appearance (see Vita Merlini, 908ff).Google Scholar

¹⁸ The Voiage and Traveyle of Sir John Mandeville Knight, ed. Ashton, John (London: Pickering & Chatto, 1887), 117–118.Google Scholar

¹⁹ For a survey of these themes in ancient and modern Utopias see Klarer, Mario, “Frau und Utopie: Zur antiken Tradition moderner Frauen-Utopien,” Arcadia: Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft 26.2 (1991), 113–140.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁰ See Log-Book, 4 11 1492 and 9 01 1493.Google Scholar

²¹ Colombo, 1966, 16.Google Scholar

²² Cosmographiae Introductio by Martin Waldseemüller and the English Translation of Joseph Fischer and Franz von Wieser (1507) (Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, INC., 1966), 97. All further references to this edition are given in the text.Google Scholar

²³ Plato introduces a similar role model for women in his Republic: “Then, if women are to have the same duties as men, they must have the same nurture and education? Yes. The education assigned to the men was music and gymnastics. Yes. Then women must be taught music and gymnastics and also the art of war, which they must practice like the men? That is the inference, I suppose” (Plat. rep. 451e–452a). Plato, , The Republic and Other Works, trans. Jowett, B. (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1973). All further references to this edition will be given in the text.Google Scholar

²⁴ Plutarch's Lives, trans. Perrin, Bernadotte (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959).Google Scholar

²⁵ Sir John Mandeville, for example, stresses these particular customs in his description of the island of the Amazons. See Mandeville, 117–118.Google Scholar

²⁶ Interestingly enough, this passage is preceded by a report about four young men who were castrated by a hostile tribe. “In the canoe which they had abandoned, there were four youths, who did not belong to the same tribe, but had been captured in another land. The youths had recently had their virile parts removed, a fact which caused us no little astonishment” (Vespucci, , Second Voyage, 122).Google Scholar

²⁷ For a visual rendering of this particular passage see Illustration 2: Vespucci, , Quatuor Navigationes (Straßburg, 1509).Google Scholar

²⁸ See Illustration 3: America: (1581–1600); Philippe Galle.Google Scholar

²⁹ See Illustration I: Amerigo Vespucci “discovers” America; late 16th century; Theodor Galle.

³⁰ For further references to “female communism” see Hdt. 4, 180 and 172.

³¹ The geographer Strabo also writes of a tribe with similar customs. “They live in perfect harmony with one another and their laws, since they have everything in common: women, children and relatives” (Strabo. 7, 3).

³² Vespucci, Novus, Mundus in Firpo, Luigi, ed., Prime relazioni di navigatori italiani sulla scoperta dell' America (Turin: 1966), 88.Google Scholar

³³ Ibid., 88.