Criticism
Historians have noted Irving's "active imagination" and called some aspects of his work "fanciful and sentimental." One glaring weakness is Irving's enduring story that it was only the voyages of Columbus that finally convinced Europeans of his time that the Earth is not flat. In truth, no educated or influential member of medieval society believed the Earth to be flat. The idea of a spherical Earth had long been espoused in the classical tradition and was inherited by medieval academics. That people believed otherwise was listed in 1945 by the Historical Association (of Britain) as the second of 20 in a pamphlet on common errors in history.
Read more about this topic: A History Of The Life And Voyages Of Christopher Columbus
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but a spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world—though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst—the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“Like speaks to like only; labor to labor, philosophy to philosophy, criticism to criticism, poetry to poetry. Literature speaks how much still to the past, how little to the future, how much to the East, how little to the West.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)