Early European descriptions of the New World fused observation with classical idealization

Evidence

However, the line between description and idealization is almost impossible to draw. In describing Cuba, for example, Columbus refers to “trees of a thousand kinds … so tall they seem to touch the sky,” sierras and high mountains “most beautiful and of a thousand shapes,” nightingales and other birds, marvelous pine groves, fertile plains, and varieties of fruit (quoted in Honour 1976, 5). … The inhabitants live in that Golden World of which old writers speak so much, wherein men lived simply and innocently, without enforcement of laws, without quarrelling, judges and libels, content only to satisfy Nature… [There are] naked girls so beautiful that one might think he [sic] beheld those splendid naiads and nymphs of the fountains so much celebrated by the ancients” (quoted in Honour 1978, 6). — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 609

Categorization

• DEFINE: The Golden World/Earthly Paradise trope: observation is always already filtered through classical European literary topoi, making description and idealization inseparable.
• XREF: The ‘impossible to draw the line between description and idealization’ point connects to the Orientalist claim that the ‘East’ is always already represented, never simply seen.