"Informing the heart’s desire": European Perceptions of Early America

William O’Reilly

Knowledge of emerging New World settlements and opportunities was quick to diffuse from the western seaboard to central and eastern parts of the European continent. My paper contends that cultural knowledge and perceptions were ethnically filtered by Europeans desirous to include new knowledge in existing paradigms. Diverse aspects of New World society appealed to different European communities and news and information was consciously, often unconsciously, manipulated and re-presented, using stock clichés, to be made more palatable to the target community. Blanket verbal and pictorial representations of “America” and “Europe” synthetically emerged to feed the appetite for understanding the New World. It is further suggested that the transfer of cultural clichés from Turk to Native American highlights the complex origins of European perceptions of America. These images had substantial effects on the creation of early American society. [WP# 98033]