1st Edition
Intellectual and Imaginative Cartographies in Early Modern England
Taking as its focus an age of transformational development in cartographic history, namely the two centuries between Columbus’s arrival in the New World and the emergence of the Scientific Revolution, this study examines how maps were employed as physical and symbolic objects by thinkers, writers and artists. It surveys how early modern people used the map as an object, whether for enjoyment or political campaigning, colonial invasion or teaching in the classroom. Exploring a wide range of literature, from educational manifestoes to the plays of Marlowe and Shakespeare, it suggests that the early modern map was as diverse and various as the rich culture from which it emerged, and was imbued with a whole range of political, social, literary and personal impulses.
Intellectual and Imaginative Cartographies in Early Modern England, 1550-1700 will appeal to all those interested in the History of Cartography
Introduction: Weaving the Net
Chapter 1: ‘they say the world’s in one of them’: The World of the Map
Politics and Mapping in Early Modern Britain
Chapter 2: ‘Thou by thine arte dost so anatomize’: Embodying the Map in John Speed and Michael Drayton
Chapter 3: Judging the Plot of Ireland in Spenser’s A View of the Present State of Ireland
‘What is Cosmographie?’: Teaching the Science of World Describing
Chapter 4: ‘There is none so good lernynge’: Cartography and Cartographic Instruments in Early Modern English Educational Treatises
Chapter 5: Francis Bacon and Geographic Science
Maps on stage and page
Chapter 6: Plotting Marlovian Geographies
Chapter 7: Wenceslaus Hollar’s Cartographies
Conclusion: Mapping the Stars. And the Future
Bibliography
Biography
Patrick J. Murray, PhD, is a researcher specialising in early modern literature. His primary research and teaching interests focus on the interdisciplinary interfaces of cartography, literary representation and cultural fashioning in the period 1550-1750.
‘Patrick J. Murray’s new book is an important contribution to the literature pertaining to critical cartography and literary geography in early modern England. Brought out in the Routledge series, Studies in Renaissance and Early Modern Worlds of Knowledge, this volume explores the emerging geographic consciousness in early modern English intellectual culture with erudition’ - IMAGO MUNDI vol. 75/2 (2023).
