Printed America: European Views of a New World
Printed America: European Views of a New World
A journey through the image and knowledge of the American world via printed books
On December 2nd at 6:00 p.m., the lecture An Absent America: Popular Perception of the Discovery in Barcelona will be given by Professor Jesús Gascón, from the Faculty of Information and Audiovisual Media at the University of Barcelona and curator of the exhibition. The lecture will take place in the manuscript room of the CRAI Library of Rare Books.
Following the lecture, a guided tour of the exhibition will be offered. A second guided tour is planned for a date yet to be determined.
The exhibition is presented in a physical format and will later be published on the CRAI website in a virtual format.
December 1–30, 2025
Location: Display cases at the CRAI Library of Letters and CRAI Rare Book Library
Organized by: Research project Cultural Interferences: Editorial Policies and Book Circulation in the Hispanic Atlantic (1492–1834) (InterCultural), ID2023-148288NB-I00, funded by MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/ and FEDER/UE. Jesús Gascón and Lluís Agustí CRAI Library of Letters and CRAI Rare Book Library (Neus Verger)
The arrival of the Spanish/Europeans on the American continent meant the discovery of a world completely different from the territories and peoples known until then. This clash of cultures and civilizations was so significant that it marked the end of the European Middle Ages and the beginning of the Modern Age.
Conquerors, adventurers, and missionaries encountered lush nature, unknown peoples and languages, spiritualities and cultures incomprehensible to a European Christian world that positioned itself as the standard and reference.
The exhibition explores how the image of America was constructed through a selection of printed books preserved in the CRAI Library’s Rare Book Collection. It examines the knowledge that was disseminated and how the European gaze interpreted and represented that new world: cartography, botany and zoology, anthropology, linguistics, religiosity, history, and literature. A journey through the various ways in which books represented and spread the encounter with otherness.
