Nuovo mondo, mostri antichi: meraviglioso ed eredità antica e tardoantica nelle fonti ottomane sull'America (XVI sec.)

New World, ancient monsters : marvelous and ancient and late-ancient heritage in Ottoman sources on America (16th century) · There are very few known Ottoman works dealing with America and the great discoveries produced in the sixteenth century. However, notably, almost all of them feature similar monstrous wonders associated with the newly found lands. This article examines some of these works – maps, portolans, and chronicles – and explores how the origins of their marvelous and monstrous elements can be traced back to Islamic medieval cosmographical literature and, further, to antique and late-antique teratology. The recourse by Ottoman authors to century-old traditions, far from stemming from a onservative stance, appears to have been functional in integrating the information coming from the oceanic explorations and making sense of a world whose geographical limits were dramatically changing.