Mapping Medieval Geographies
Geographical Encounters in the Latin West and Beyond, 300–1600

This book explores how geographical ideas, traditions and knowledge were shaped, circulated and received in Europe during the Middle Ages.

Keith D. Lilley (Edited by)

9781107036918, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 9 January 2014

348 pages, 27 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.5 x 2.5 cm, 0.68 kg

'This collection will provide an invaluable gathering of current research, as well as a stimulating and demanding read for the broader range of scholars and students who wish to progress beyond the basic understandings of the 'spatial turn' to a broader understanding of medieval geographies.' Justin Colson, Reviews in History

Mapping Medieval Geographies explores the ways in which geographical knowledge, ideas and traditions were formed in Europe during the Middle Ages. Leading scholars reveal the connections between Islamic, Christian, Biblical and Classical geographical traditions from Antiquity to the later Middle Ages and Renaissance. The book is divided into two parts: Part I focuses on the notion of geographical tradition and charts the evolution of celestial and earthly geography in terms of its intellectual, visual and textual representations; whilst Part II explores geographical imaginations; that is to say, those 'imagined geographies' that came into being as a result of everyday spatial and spiritual experience. Bringing together approaches from art, literary studies, intellectual history and historical geography, this pioneering volume will be essential reading for scholars concerned with visual and textual modes of geographical representation and transmission, as well as the spaces and places of knowledge creation and consumption.

Introduction Keith D. Lilley
Part I. Geographical Traditions: 1. Chorography reconsidered: an alternative approach to the Ptolemaic definition Jesse Simon
2. Geography and memory in Isidore's Etymologies Andy Merrills
3. The uses of classical history and geography in medieval St Gall Natalia Lozovsky
4. The cosmographical imagination of Roger Bacon Amanda Power
5. Reflections in the Ebstorf map: cartography, theology and dilectio speculationis Marcia Kupfer
6. 'After poyetes and astronomyers': English geographical thought and early English print Meg Roland
7. Displacing Ptolemy? The textual geographies of Ramusio's Navigazioni e Viaggi Margaret Small
Part II. Geographical Imaginations: 8. Gaul undivided: cartography, geography, and identity in France at the time of the Hundred Years War Camille Serchuk
9. Passion and conflict: medieval Islamic views of the West Karen C. Pinto
10. Hereford maps, Hereford lives: biography and cartography in an English cathedral city Daniel Birkholz
11. Shifting geographies of anti-semitism: mapping Jew and Christian in Thomas of Monmouth's Life and Miracles of St William of Norwich Kathy Lavezzo
12. Gardens of Eden and ladders to Heaven: holy mountain geographies in Byzantium Veronica Della Dora
13. Journeying to the world's end? Imagining the Anglo-Irish frontier in Ramon de Perellós's Pilgrimage to St Patrick's Purgatory Sara V. Torres.

Subject Areas: Geography [RG], Medieval history [HBLC1], European history [HBJD]