0,49 €
Niedrigster Preis in 30 Tagen: 1,99 €
Niedrigster Preis in 30 Tagen: 1,99 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
In "1492," Mary Johnston constructs a vivid historical tapestry that intertwines personal narrative with the sweeping forces of exploration and conquest. Written in a stylized prose that reflects both the lyrical fashion of early 20th-century literature and the urgent realism of its era, Johnston captures the tumultuous spirit of Columbus's fateful journey. The novel not only chronicles the geographical dissemination of cultures and ideas but also delves into the psychological complexities faced by those who sailed into the unknown, offering readers a multifaceted exploration of ambition, discovery, and the moral ambiguities that accompany imperial expansion. Mary Johnston, an esteemed author and suffragist, drew on her own experiences and interests in history and social justice when crafting this narrative. Living during a time when women were fighting for their rights, Johnston's rich literary background informed her exploration of how discovery shapes identity and civilization. Her deep understanding of human nature and societal dynamics is evident in the nuanced characters who populate her work, representing both the ambition of explorers and the cultures they encounter. "1492" is an essential read for those interested in historical fiction that does not shy away from the complexities of its subject matter. It challenges readers to ponder the legacy of exploration, making it particularly relevant today. Johnston's eloquent prose, combined with her passionate storytelling, invites readers to embark on a journey that is both enlightening and thought-provoking, leaving them with a deeper understanding of the world's intricate past. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
Das E-Book können Sie in Legimi-Apps oder einer beliebigen App lesen, die das folgende Format unterstützen:
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
Ähnliche
1492
Table of Contents
Introduction
Ambition meets uncharted waters as a world on the cusp of change wagers its future on a westward dream, where the persistence of a navigator, the calculations of rulers, the anxieties of sailors, and the pull of profit and prophecy converge against blank maps, stubborn winds, and the perilous magnet of the unknown, raising questions about courage and conscience, faith and doubt, and the cost of turning a horizon into a boundary crossed in an age when old certainties buckled and new empires beckoned.
1492 by Mary Johnston is a work of historical fiction that returns to the late fifteenth century to imagine the pressures, hopes, and intrigues surrounding a voyage that would alter global awareness. Johnston, an American novelist known for richly rendered historical narratives, situates the story in the courts and harbors of Iberia and on the Atlantic itself. Published in the early twentieth century, the novel reflects its era’s interest in grand historical canvases while anchoring itself in the textures of an earlier world. Readers encounter a setting where religious authority, maritime craft, and dynastic ambition interlock to frame the possibility of sailing west.
The premise centers on the effort to secure backing for an audacious passage and the assembling of courage, capital, and crews necessary to test a westward route. Rather than racing through events, the novel dwells on the negotiations, doubts, and rituals that must precede a leap into uncertainty. The experience it offers is immersive and measured: a steady accretion of detail, shifting from council chambers to waterfronts, from calculations at tables to the creak and surge of a ship at sea. The mood mingles anticipation with unease, inviting readers to feel the weight of decision before the moment of departure.
Johnston’s style favors clear, deliberate scene-building and a dignified cadence that suits the period atmosphere. Her descriptive emphasis gives substance to authority and ceremony ashore while also rendering the physical fact of ocean travel—wind, current, and the stubbornness of distance—without technical opacity. The voice is poised rather than polemical, allowing characters’ aims and the era’s habits of mind to surface through action and setting. The result is a narrative that balances intimacy with scale: personal motives threaded through public stakes, and private apprehensions carried into a venture whose horizons remain, for much of the book, purposefully indistinct.
Key themes include the tension between vision and pragmatism, the uses and limits of patronage, and the complicated interplay of belief, calculation, and ambition that drives exploration. The novel lingers on thresholds—between medieval and early modern, faith and experiment, rumor and chart—showing how decisions are shaped as much by rhetoric and reputation as by instruments. It also examines how stories take form around risk: who frames uncertainty as destiny, who prices it as hazard, and who must live with the consequences. In tracing these pressures, the book maps the human dimensions behind a moment often flattened into dates and outcomes.
For contemporary readers, 1492 offers both a period portrait and a lens on how earlier generations told the story of first contact and expansion. It prompts reflection on leadership under uncertainty, the seduction of a simple solution to complex problems, and the power of narrative to mobilize resources and belief. Reading the novel today highlights continuities in the language of enterprise and discovery while signaling the historical distance between its early twentieth-century perspective and current debates. Its value lies in evoking the atmosphere of decision before consequences are known, encouraging a more attentive consideration of beginnings and their framing.
This is a book for readers who appreciate maritime atmosphere, courtly maneuver, and the slow turn of history as it gathers momentum. The pacing moves from deliberation to mounting tension, rewarding those who enjoy immersion in setting and the steady tightening of stakes. Without rushing to verdicts, it allows the uncertainties of voyage and the intricacies of persuasion to carry the narrative. In doing so, it offers a robust, contemplative entry point into a watershed year, presenting the hopes and hazards that drive a westward gamble while preserving the sense of anticipation that makes the first steps toward the ocean so resonant.
Synopsis
Mary Johnston’s 1492 opens on a Spain at a historical cusp, with the Reconquista nearing its end and the royal court navigating faith, politics, and ambition. Into this setting steps Christopher Columbus, a mariner convinced the Indies lie west across an ocean still largely unknown to Europeans. Johnston situates his vision amid courtly procedures, ecclesiastical influence, and maritime rumor, establishing both the intellectual climate and the practical obstacles. The narrative presents Columbus as seeking a hearing and a patron, while the kingdoms of Iberia balance immediate concerns with long-term strategy. The year itself becomes a frame, signaling change while preserving uncertainty about its full extent.
Columbus’s efforts begin with appeals to Portugal and then move to Spain, where councils weigh scripture, astronomy, and reports from sailors against the risks of an untried route. Johnston follows him through refusals, delays, and the temporary refuge of a monastery whose friars become crucial allies. Audiences with learned men and royal secretaries test his calculations and character. The narrative tracks the slow turn of fortune: as Granada’s campaign consumes attention, his proposal lingers. Intercessors advocate, the court revisits terms, and the possibility of royal support sharpens. Through these scenes the book shows how persistence, counsel, and circumstance converge to make a voyage conceivable.
With Granada subdued, negotiations crystallize. Johnston recounts the signing of agreements that name Columbus Admiral and grant privileges conditioned on success, signaling a contract between vision and crown. Preparations gather pace at Palos, where ships are provisioned and a mixed crew—sailors, craftsmen, and adventurers—is enlisted. The Pinzóns lend experience and local influence, easing resistance and quickening departure. The narrative observes the coastal town’s bustle, the tally of stores, and the quiet uncertainties of those about to sail beyond familiar routes. When the fleet weighs anchor, the book marks the moment as both culmination and starting point, the known world dropping astern with every league.
Johnston’s account of the Atlantic crossing emphasizes practical seamanship alongside inward resolve. Early progress alternates with calms and curious waters thick with floating weed, unsettling some and intriguing others. Compass anomalies spur debate, and daily reckonings keep watch on distance and direction. To sustain morale, the leadership manages expectations, interprets signs from sea and sky, and enforces a steady routine. The text notes birds, drifting branches, and changing currents as data points in a reasoned advance. The horizon remains empty, but the accumulation of indications builds a case for land ahead, even as unease rises with the lengthening track behind them.
As days extend, tension concentrates. Rumor and fatigue press toward open dissent, tested by night watches and competing reckonings of how far they have come. Johnston stages the crisis through speeches, vows, and careful compromises that keep the ships together. The narrative then pivots on a sequence of signs that resolve into certainty: a shore is sighted. Landfall brings ceremony and measured wonder, with banners raised and formal claims declared. The crew’s relief meets the practical need to anchor, chart, and observe. The moment stands as the book’s central turning point, affirmed by the immediate tasks of making sense of a new coast.
Exploration follows along neighboring islands and coasts, with soundings, entries in the log, and cautious encounters. Columbus interprets landscapes through the lens of Asian geography, while interpreters and gestures mediate exchanges with Indigenous communities. Johnston records trade, curiosity, and misunderstandings without overstatement, keeping focus on navigation, provisioning, and inference. The crews collect specimens and information, testing channels and reading shoals. Each day adds to a working map, but uncertainties persist—about distances, continental outlines, and the relation of one harbor to the next. The tone remains factual and procedural, marking progress by names entered on charts and bearings carefully taken.
Complications arise near unfamiliar shores when a flagship mishap forces improvisation and the redistribution of aims. Johnston depicts the decision to leave a small outpost, entrusted with watchfulness and the beginnings of settlement, while the remaining ship or ships prepare for home. The return is hard-fought: storms strain timbers, lots are drawn, and leadership weighs courage against prudence. An unplanned landfall in Portugal adds a diplomatic layer, with formal calls and courtesies observed despite prior rivalries. Throughout, the narrative centers on seamanship and protocol, maintaining the neutral register of a voyage report shaped by weather, chance, and the obligations of command.
Back in Spain, Columbus presents proofs of success—charts, narratives, and persons willing to testify to what has been seen. Johnston describes the formal reception with care: procession, audience, and a court attentive to opportunity. Titles and honors are confirmed in the context of future plans, and the administrative machinery turns toward logistics for a broader enterprise. The book notes how news spreads through ports and monasteries, quickening zeal and argument in equal measure. The immediate achievement stands clear while the scale of what follows remains to be defined, leaving the court to weigh resources against the magnitude of prospects newly opened.
1492 closes by emphasizing a hinge of history rather than a completed design. Johnston’s narrative presents a sequence in which private conviction meets public policy, seamanship meets uncertainty, and a measured ledger of miles yields a new theater of action. The book’s central message is procedural and documentary: exploration proceeds by contract, discipline, observation, and record. Without forecasting outcomes beyond its frame, it conveys the felt transition from conjecture to encounter and from petition to recognition. The final impression is of horizons expanded and commitments made, the next steps implied by the machinery already set in motion.
Historical Context
Set in the hinge year of 1492, the work moves between the courts and camps of late medieval Spain and the newly encountered islands of the Caribbean. Its European ground is the union of Castile and Aragon under Isabella I and Ferdinand II, the war-tent city of Santa Fe outside Granada, and the Atlantic ports of Palos de la Frontera, Huelva, Moguer, and Seville. Social life is stratified among nobles, clergy, conversos, and common sailors, under a monarchy intent on centralization and religious uniformity. Across the ocean lie the Lucayan and Taíno chiefdoms of the Bahamas, Cuba, and Hispaniola, whose sophisticated societies become the immediate stage of first contact.
A decisive backdrop is the completion of the Reconquista with the fall of Granada on 2 January 1492. After a ten-year campaign (1482–1492), the Nasrid Sultan Muhammad XII, known to Spaniards as Boabdil, surrendered the Alhambra to the Catholic Monarchs. The Capitulations of Granada promised protections to Muslims, even as Castile extended institutions into the conquered emirate. The book connects this victory to a pivot in royal strategy: once Granada fell, the monarchs could redirect resources toward oceanic ventures. By situating characters in and around the siege city of Santa Fe, the narrative mirrors the psychological turn from crusading war to maritime ambition.
The voyage of Christopher Columbus in 1492 is the work’s central historical axis. On 17 April 1492, the Capitulations of Santa Fe granted Columbus titles such as Admiral of the Ocean Sea and promised a share of profits. Financing came through the Crown of Castile, aided by court officials like Luis de Santángel, while a royal order of 30 April compelled Palos to furnish ships as penalty for earlier offenses. The small fleet comprised the nao Santa Maria, captained by Columbus, and the caravels Pinta under Martín Alonso Pinzón and Niña under Vicente Yáñez Pinzón. They sailed from Palos on 3 August, refitted in the Canary Islands at La Gomera, and departed westward on 6 September, riding the trade winds. After weeks of anxiety and debates over dead reckoning, land was sighted in the early hours of 12 October 1492; the island, known to its inhabitants as Guanahani, was renamed San Salvador. Subsequent landfalls included the Bahamas, the north coast of Cuba (Juana) on 28 October, and Hispaniola by early December. The wreck of the Santa Maria on 24–25 December led to the founding of La Navidad from its timbers, leaving thirty-nine men with the Taíno cacique Guacanagaríx. Columbus returned via the Azores and Lisbon, reaching Barcelona in the spring of 1493. The book elaborates this chain of decisions and contingencies—mutiny fears, navigational wagers, the role of the Pinzón brothers, and fraught first exchanges—as the lived texture of a gamble that reoriented European and Atlantic histories.
Another defining event is the Alhambra Decree, issued on 31 March 1492, ordering the expulsion of practicing Jews from Castile and Aragon by late July. Between tens of thousands and over one hundred thousand people departed toward Portugal, North Africa, and the Ottoman Empire, where Sultan Bayezid II welcomed many. The decree followed years of pressure on conversos and reflected a drive for religious uniformity. The book juxtaposes the triumphal language of discovery with the anguish of exile, noting the irony that a converso courtier such as Santángel helped finance the westward voyage even as Jewish communities were forced from Iberia.
The Spanish Inquisition, established in 1478 and led by Grand Inquisitor Tomás de Torquemada from 1483, frames the era’s climate of surveillance. Through tribunals and autos de fe, its apparatus targeted conversos and enforced orthodoxy, tightening its grip in the 1480s and 1490s. The institution’s reach intersected with municipal life in Seville, Córdoba, and beyond, influencing speech, association, and patronage. The book reflects how informers, censures, and fear shaped decisions in court and port alike, and how explorers, patrons, and marginalized groups navigated the perilous boundary between ambition and suspicion in a kingdom remade by faith and law.
Intense Iberian rivalry in Atlantic exploration provides essential context. Under Prince Henry the Navigator and King João II, Portugal advanced down Africa’s coast, culminating in Bartolomeu Dias rounding the Cape of Good Hope in 1488. The Treaty of Alcáçovas (1479) had already conceded to Portugal rights over Madeira, the Azores, and Guinea, while Castile retained the Canaries, channeling Spanish energies westward. After Columbus’s return, the papal bull Inter caetera (1493) and the Treaty of Tordesillas (7 June 1494) partitioned new discoveries along a meridian. The book invokes these successes and compacts to explain Spain’s urgency, diplomatic maneuvering, and the geopolitical stakes behind a risky westward bid.
Equally central are the societies first encountered in 1492. The Lucayan and Taíno polities of the Bahamas, Cuba, and Hispaniola featured caciques, stratified labor, extensive agriculture, and inter-island exchange networks. Early meetings involved gifts of beads, bells, and food, along with kidnappings and the search for gold in Hispaniola’s Cibao region. The outpost La Navidad, founded from the Santa Maria’s wreck, was destroyed before Columbus’s return in 1493, signaling swift escalation of conflict. By portraying initial hospitality, miscommunication, and nascent coercion, the book mirrors how first contact set patterns—conversion demands, resource extraction, and settlement—that would harden into conquest and colonization.
As social and political critique, the book exposes the costs of triumph and expansion. It portrays religious zeal forging unity while licensing expulsion, surveillance, and the breaking of promises to Granada’s Muslims. Courtly hierarchies and fiscal needs elevate daring navigators yet efface sailors, Indigenous peoples, and the expelled. The narrative underscores the state’s use of law and theology to sanctify risk and violence, and the paradox of a monarchy celebrating universal mission while narrowing belonging at home. By embedding discovery within expropriation and displacement, it questions the moral calculus of empire at its inception and scrutinizes the unequal bargains that underwrote 1492.
