Maps and Travel in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period: Knowledge, Imagination, and Visual Culture

Ingrid Baumgärtner (Curatore)

Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby (Curatore)

De Gruyter, 2019

The volume discusses the world as it was known in the Medieval and Early Modern periods, focusing on projects concerned with mapping as a conceptual and artistic practice, with visual representations of space, and with destinations of real and fictive travel. Maps were often taken as straightforward, objective configurations. However, they expose deeply subjective frameworks with social, political, and economic significance. Travel narratives, whether illustrated or not, can address similar frameworks. Whereas travelled space is often adventurous, and speaking of hardship, strange encounters and danger, city portraits tell a tale of civilized life and civic pride. The book seeks to address the multiple ways in which maps and travel literature conceive of the world, communicate a 'Weltbild', depict space, and/or define knowledge. The volume challenges academic boundaries in the study of cartography by exploring the links between mapmaking and artistic practices. The contributions discuss individual mapmakers, authors of travelogues, mapmaking as an artistic practice, the relationship between travel literature and mapmaking, illustration in travel literature, and imagination in depictions of newly explored worlds.

• Curatore: Ingrid Baumgärtner, Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby
• Editore: De Gruyter
• Collana: Das Mittelalter. Perspektiven mediävistischer Forschung. Beihefte
• Anno: 2019
• Rilegatura: Hardback
• Pagine: 421 p.
• Dimensioni: 240 x 170 mm
• Peso: 1104 gr.
• EAN: 9783110587333

Testo in English