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

Blanks, Space, Print, and Void in English Renaissance Literature is an inquiry into the empty spaces encountered not just on the pages of printed books in c.1500-1700, but in Renaissance culture more generally. The book argues that print culture in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries helped to foster the modern idea of the 'gap' (where words, texts, images, and ideas are constructed as missing, lost, withheld, fragmented, or perhaps never devised in the first place). It re-imagines how early modern people reacted not just to printed books and documents of many different kinds, but also how the very idea of emptiness or absence began to be fashioned in a way which still surrounds us. Jonathan Sawday leads the reader through the entire landscape of early modern print culture, discussing topics such as: space and silence; the exploration of the vacuum; the ways in which race and racial identity in early modern England were constructed by the language and technology of print; blackness and whiteness, together with lightness, darkness, and sightlessness; cartography and emptiness; the effect of typography on reading practices; the social spaces of the page; gendered surfaces; hierarchies of information; books of memory; pages constructed as waste or vacant; the genesis of blank forms and early modern bureaucracy; the political and devotional spaces of printed books; the impact of censorship; and the problem posed by texts which lack endings or conclusions. The book itself ends by dwelling on blank or empty pages as a sign of human mortality. Sawday pays close attention to the writings of many of the familiar figures in English Renaissance literary culture - Sidney, Shakespeare, Donne, Jonson, and Milton, for example - as well as introducing readers to a host of lesser-known figures. The book also discusses the work of numerous women writers from the period, including Aphra Behn, Ann Bradstreet, Margaret Cavendish, Lady Jane Gray, Lucy Hutchinson, Æmelia Lanyer, Isabella Whitney, and Lady Mary Wroth.

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.

In this generously illustrated book, Jerry Brotton documents the dramatic changes in the nature of geographical representation which took place during the sixteenth century, explaining how much they convey about the transformation of European culture at the end of the early modern era. He examines the age's fascination with maps, charts, and globes as both texts and artifacts that provided their owners with a promise of gain, be it intellectual, political, or financial. From the Middle Ages through most of the sixteenth century, Brotton argues, mapmakers deliberately exploited the partial, often conflicting accounts of geographically distant territories to create imaginary worlds. As long as the lands remained inaccessible, these maps and globes were politically compelling. They bolstered the authority of the imperial patrons who employed the geographers and integrated their creations into ever more grandiose rhetorics of expansion. As the century progressed, however, geographers increasingly owed allegiance to the administrators of vast joint-stock companies that sought to exploit faraway lands and required the systematic mapping of commercially strategic territories. By the beginning of the seventeenth century, maps had begun to serve instead as scientific guides, defining objectively valid images of the world.

This book is a comparative study of the production and role of maps, charts, and atlases in early modern England and France with a particular focus on Paris and London.