‘of meridians and parallels | Man hath weav’d out a net’: Imaginative and intellectual cartographies in Early Modern England

Murray, Patrick J. (2015) ‘of meridians and parallels | Man hath weav’d out a net’: Imaginative and intellectual cartographies in Early Modern England. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

Described by one historian as the ‘cartographic assemblage of the globe’, the two centuries of print revolution and colonial expansion between 1500 and 1700 witnessed an exponential increase in the sophistication, exactitude and proliferation of mapping in Europe. Such developments infiltrated a vast array of social, civic and political spheres. ‘[E]arly modern maps and mapping practices,’ writes Richard Helgerson, ‘had their part in national consolidation, overseas expansion, humanist and Reformation historicism, emerging agrarian capitalism, scientific revolution, and a general abstracting of time and space’. In the Atlantic archipelago in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the visibility of maps grew significantly. This thesis analyses a wide variety of different textual forms and genres to ask if a narrative of this profusion of cartography can be developed, with its own distinct themes and methodologies of representation. It pays particular attention to mapping moments in texts by major authors such as Francis Bacon, William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe. In addition, didactic manuals, mathematical treatises, engravings, pedagogical tracts, colonial narratives, and utopian fiction are all considered with a view to understanding how early modern English culture engaged with the map, its physicality and production.

• Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Keywords: early modern culture, cartography, Shakespeare, Spenser, Renaissance education, geography, early modern science
• Subjects: G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > G Geography (General); L Education > LA History of education; P Language and Literature > PR English literature
• Colleges/Schools: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Critical Studies ; College of Arts & Humanities > School of Critical Studies > English Literature
• Supervisor's Name: Maley, Professor Willy
• Date of Award: 2015
• Depositing User: Mr Patrick Murray
• Unique ID: glathesis:2015-6366
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 22 May 2015 16:04
• Last Modified: 25 May 2015 08:39
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/6366