My thoughts have not been one-tracked given the scattered nature of this week. I am often a single-minded person, I stubbornly adhere to one thing and refuse to stray from it even if it hinders me. That does not mean that I cannot think in a multi-layered way, but it often becomes a vertical process. This week has not been like that in any way. My mind has moved horizontally and vertically and diagonally. No day has kept my following the same process. I feel a bit like a cat pawing at different strings, but not quite grasping any of them. I am certain that as the semester continues on I will be able to draw my perspective in a little more tightly. For now, I am unashamed to admit my scatteredness.
So, this post will probably represent that. I apologize in advance.
First and foremost, I have decided to change my research topic! Surprise! While Jim Akerman presented to us a few maps and atlases on Thursday morning, I was introduced to the notion of the historical atlas. Now, I guess, this is not the most shocking thing. Textbooks contain maps of old civilizations. In class, we looked at a progression of history through the two maps of Africa. The idea of a map drawn in with old borders does not, perhaps, seem so shocking with these examples. However, this particular historical atlas from the Civitates orbis terrarum, a world atlas created in 1573, represents the beginning of this process. The concept of having a history, one worthy of map-creation, is beginning to rise in this period of humanism. While accounts of the past certainly have their forms--perhaps the Bible being one of the most popular--the creation of a map is something completely different. It is not a landscape of words, but a physical laying out of that world as described.
One of my first thoughts was a connection to the Ancient Greeks and Romans. Writers like Homer were not drawing upon current events for the content of their stories. These stories took place hundreds of years separate from Homer--it was his (their? Traveling bard theory!) reflection on events of the Bronze Age that shape the Iliad and the Odyssey. While these stories may not be fact, may not be history, the act of self-conscious imagining back to a distant time is reminiscent of the work of a historian. Not to mention that a few hundred years after Homer, Herodotus comes forward with his Histories, an actual attempt at creating history, though a contemporaneous one. A work very concerned with geography, the Histories lays out the landscape and the social identity of the "barbarian" groups surrounding the Greeks. In the time of Rome, the historian Livy also writes on the founding of Rome. The idea of writing history is not a foreign one, obviously, but the act of mapping it is.
The act of mapping something out and labeling it as a historical atlas assimilates (appropriates?) that land and the history attached to it into the order of the mapper. During the 16th century, Neoclassicism had one of its many heydays with the Renaissance. While perhaps more recognized through sculpture than much else, the Classics were accepted into the life of the elite and educated. Claiming Classics as their history, one could then draw authority from that place. If anyone is wondering who the 'they' are, well--I don't know. Yet. Probably Italians/Italic states. That is what research is for, right?
I am 99% sure that during the Middle Ages there came to be maps of the cosmological world, particularly of the heavens. If these maps were actual maps or just a written rendition, I am not sure. We know that Dante creates such a map in his Paradisio--as well as Inferno. In fact, the written description of the Inferno admits of a Classical influence. Dante's guide through hell is none other than our very familiar Virgil. The rivers of hell are Classical references, as well as those at the end of Purgatorio. It is not a stretch to say that these references have power. Though one can argue of their lesser importance, as placing them in hell subordinates them to the higher authority of Christianity. But, yes, this is still a written account and an account of an entirely imaginary landscape. While it reveals the importance of the Classics, it still is not quite what I am looking for.
So, what kind of difference in meaning emerges between written accounts and those of mapping? As I have not yet narrowed my research topic beyond a very excited historical atlases (!), this question may become more or less important as I move forward.
So, what kind of difference in meaning emerges between written accounts and those of mapping? As I have not yet narrowed my research topic beyond a very excited historical atlases (!), this question may become more or less important as I move forward.
This is a beautiful description of a fascinating topic. It’s also not been done to death, though you must look at Jeremy Black’s 2008 book (citation below). The coolest statement you make is this one: “The act of mapping something out and labeling it as a historical atlas assimilates (appropriates?) that land and the history attached to it into the order of the mapper.” You already begin to unpack this a bit, but I’ll be asking for more! I think that in addition to looking at the parergia themselves, you should begin to hunt for passages in which writers actively imagine the history of a landscape or city they are currently present in (does this make sense?).
ReplyDeleteOne random note: of Homer, you say “these stories may not be fact, may not be history.” True, but it’s amazing how many details of Homer have been revealed by modern archaeology to be historically accurate. That is the strongest evidence that the bardic traditions that gave us the current iteration of the homeric stories managed to conserve historical knowledge in suprisingly effective ways — right through the dark ages between Bronze-Age Troy and the emergence of Linear B!
Black, Jeremy. *Maps and History: Constructing Images of the Past*. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000.