Maps and the Writing of Space in Early Modern England and Ireland, 2001
The cartographic description of Britain, product of the combined effort of scholar and field work... more The cartographic description of Britain, product of the combined effort of scholar and field worker, should not be discussed merely as a reflection of the growing accuracy of geographical knowledge or the increasing efficiency of modern surveying techniques. Cartography is not evidence of ‘a mechanical correspondence between map and landscape’1 and the early modern map of Britain is centrally implicated in the construction of a spatial paradigm fit to accommodate a national perspective. From the beginning it was also a matter of immediate political relevance. One of the earliest general maps of Britain that resulted directly from the state’s increasing demand for maps as administrative tools was Laurence Nowell’s General Description of England and Ireland (1564/5, Plate 5), ‘arguably the first map that cannot be regarded as essentially a derivation from the mid-fourteenth century “Gough” map of the British Isles’.2 Christopher Saxton’s shadow lies heavily on Nowell’s efforts whose map has received much less attention than it deserves. Testifying to its political importance, the small pocket map survives in the single manuscript copy formerly owned by William Cecil, Elizabeth’s geographically minded principal secretary, whose extensive annotations, spread profusely over the verso, trace various itineraries to the northern English counties and beyond to Scotland.3
On the whole, the English contribution to the cosmographical project was negligible. The first in... more On the whole, the English contribution to the cosmographical project was negligible. The first independently authored book on the topic, though hardly an original contribution, appeared as late as 1559 when William Cuningham summarized standard continental knowledge in his Cosmographical Glasse, a mathematical treatise written in dialogue form.1 Only fragments from Munster were ever translated,2 an English edition of Ortelius’ atlas did not reach print before 1606, and the first English version of Mercator was still many years off.3 Maps, of course, hardly needed much translation, and atlases printed on the continent (in Latin and other languages) regularly flooded into England. Though English map-making was slow to gather momentum, the value of geometry as a generative force, as a universally applicable descriptive code, was readily acknowledged by English mathematicians. In 1588, London’s newly elected mathematical lecturer Thomas Hood declared in his inaugural address: Let Geogra...
Descriptive accounts of Ireland written parallel to the English choro-graphical project are rarel... more Descriptive accounts of Ireland written parallel to the English choro-graphical project are rarely seen as being inspired by the same kind of antiquarian and patriotic impulse that sparked off the projects of Camden and his successors. Of the numerous Irish tracts written in late Tudor and early Stuart times, few if any conceive of Ireland as a national or regional entity with the same claim to spatial and political integrity as Britain or any of its individual counties. Generally, a contemporary ‘description’, ‘view’ or ‘survey’ of Ireland tends to be a pragmatic reform tract, containing a range of practical suggestions on how to pacify what was considered a rebellious and barbaric island.1 The single exception to this rule is perhaps a rarely noted manuscript by John Norden, entitled simply A Description of Ireland, which Norden prepared for the earl of Salisbury, then Lord Treasurer, in 1610:2 as if intended as a late addition to his Speculum, a map of Ireland (based on Boazio) i...
Maps and the Writing of Space in Early Modern England and Ireland, 2001
Compared with the popularity of early modern maps of England; the cartographic shaping of Ireland... more Compared with the popularity of early modern maps of England; the cartographic shaping of Ireland seems to have developed at a much slower pace. Although a good governor in Elizabeth’s administration, as Robert Beale advised in 1592, needed to sharpen his geographical knowledge with ‘the booke of Ortelius’ Mapps, a booke of the Mappes of England... and also a good descripcion of the Realm of Irelande’,1 no description of Britain’s neighbouring isle existed in print that could even remotely rival the visual impact of Ortelius’ or Saxton’s atlas. It was not until 1685, more than a century after Saxton’s maps had started coming off the presses in England, that William Petty published his Hiberniae Delineatio, the first complete Irish regional atlas. Petty had fully surveyed the country almost 30 years earlier, in the wake of the Cromwellian reconquest of Ireland, but even 1659 — the year he finished the Down Survey 2 — seems remarkably late when contrasted with the advanced state of English regional cartography. This delay has attracted a range of rather unconvincing explanations — such as the difficulties and dangers of travelling, bad weather conditions from which Irish field-workers were more likely to suffer than their colleagues in England, or the occurrence of, in J. H. Andrews’ euphemism, ‘expressions of antagonism by the local population’.3
The East India Company’s third voyage, 1607-10, has long claimed the attention of critics – not, ... more The East India Company’s third voyage, 1607-10, has long claimed the attention of critics – not, however, for its historic status as the first English sea voyage to reach India, but for the possibility that its crewmen made the first stagings of Shakespeare outside Europe. References to three shipboard performances of Shakespeare plays in west and east African waters – twice of Hamlet, once of Richard II – appeared in the 19th century in two separate locations, each time offered as verbatim extracts from the long lost logbook of the expedition’s flagship, the Dragon. This unusual conjunction of theatre, travel and maritime initiative has sparked critical debates over the authenticity of the 19th-century references and over the status of these stagings in relation to London’s theatres and Britain’s early imperial endeavours. Both debates have been sharply revived in two recent critical interventions on these stagings. First, Gary Taylor’s 2001 article in Travel Knowledge (ed. Singh a...
The description of the world is a traditional intellectual pursuit, and the changing representati... more The description of the world is a traditional intellectual pursuit, and the changing representations of the human sphere depend as much on moral and cultural frameworks imposed on the act of global description as on the extent of geographical knowledge accumulated by specific societies. It could also be an inherently dangerous act, bound to be viewed with suspicion by the powerful and mighty. The fate of Metius Pomposien, reported by the Byzantine historian Jean Xiphilin, well illustrates the political significance attached to the map of the world in ancient times. The Roman emperor Domitian, fearing a rival claim to the throne, had Metius put to death in 91 AD although, as Xiphilin writes, ‘he was not accused of any other crime than having kept in his cabinet a map of the terrestrial globe.’1 Keeping the globe a secret may seem an inadequate, or even impossible, way of ensuring political control, yet it continues to have an irresistible attraction for military strategists: though l...
By the time Shakespeare and Wilkins’s Pericles (1608) was written, English trading into the Levan... more By the time Shakespeare and Wilkins’s Pericles (1608) was written, English trading into the Levant had grown to significant volumes, and a permanent English consul had been based for nearly 20 years in Aleppo, with a remit that included Tripoli, Aleppo, Damascus, Jerusalem, Amman, and all other port cities in Syria and Palestine, among them Tharsus, Antioch and Tyre. This essay explores the ways in which the contemporary aspirations of English merchants and diplomats in the Levant are subtly registered in a play that has its main character voyaging across the sea, dealing in grain, and acquiring kingdoms by diplomacy or marriage. The main focus is on the meaning of the sea as a geopolitical space and itself a dramatic agent in the play.
‘‘The chronotopes of the sea,’’ Margaret Cohen writes, ‘‘are a poetic link in the genealogy of gl... more ‘‘The chronotopes of the sea,’’ Margaret Cohen writes, ‘‘are a poetic link in the genealogy of globalization.’’ Discussion of the sea—whether as setting, experience, or chronotope—has been curiously absent from recent critical work on what is perhaps the earliest European seafaring narrative with truly globalizing aspirations, Luı́s de Camões’s 1572 maritime epic Os Lusı́adas (The Lusiads). Given that the imperial vision of The Lusiads, which has received much attention, is poetically projected onto the vast ‘‘blue water’’ expanse of the Indian Ocean, without which the narrative would lose much of its rhetorical power, that critical neglect is all the more remarkable. Of course, the sea in The Lusiads is not only a poetic but also a historical and social space; the epic testifies to what one critic has recently called ‘‘the poet’s historico-imaginative engagement with the ocean.’’ Certainly no approach that discounts the poem’s sense of itself as a version of historical ‘‘truth’’ will get to the core of its maritime imaginary.
In recent years, the critical projects of cultural studies and postcolonial studies have initiate... more In recent years, the critical projects of cultural studies and postcolonial studies have initiated some of the most exciting debates within the wider field of British literature and culture. The theoretical tools and approaches characteristic of both areas of study suggest a common critical agenda but there has in fact been very little exchange, discussion or cooperation between practitioners in the two fields. This volume brings together fifteen scholars from both camps to explore whether they might not share more common analytical ground than this situation implies. Contributions vary from theoretically oriented interventions to particular case studies; all are united in asking where the conceptual and thematic crossovers of their critical practice might be located, what strengths postcolonial and cultural studies share, what their common weaknesses are. The analytical richness of the essays collected here makes this joining of critical forces a timely foray into the future of Eng...
These are the page proofs. The final version is published in Ina Habermann and Michelle Witen (ed... more These are the page proofs. The final version is published in Ina Habermann and Michelle Witen (eds), Shakespeare and Space. Theatrical Explorations of the Spatial Paradigm (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2016), 121-40.
Maps and the Writing of Space in Early Modern England and Ireland, 2001
The cartographic description of Britain, product of the combined effort of scholar and field work... more The cartographic description of Britain, product of the combined effort of scholar and field worker, should not be discussed merely as a reflection of the growing accuracy of geographical knowledge or the increasing efficiency of modern surveying techniques. Cartography is not evidence of ‘a mechanical correspondence between map and landscape’1 and the early modern map of Britain is centrally implicated in the construction of a spatial paradigm fit to accommodate a national perspective. From the beginning it was also a matter of immediate political relevance. One of the earliest general maps of Britain that resulted directly from the state’s increasing demand for maps as administrative tools was Laurence Nowell’s General Description of England and Ireland (1564/5, Plate 5), ‘arguably the first map that cannot be regarded as essentially a derivation from the mid-fourteenth century “Gough” map of the British Isles’.2 Christopher Saxton’s shadow lies heavily on Nowell’s efforts whose map has received much less attention than it deserves. Testifying to its political importance, the small pocket map survives in the single manuscript copy formerly owned by William Cecil, Elizabeth’s geographically minded principal secretary, whose extensive annotations, spread profusely over the verso, trace various itineraries to the northern English counties and beyond to Scotland.3
On the whole, the English contribution to the cosmographical project was negligible. The first in... more On the whole, the English contribution to the cosmographical project was negligible. The first independently authored book on the topic, though hardly an original contribution, appeared as late as 1559 when William Cuningham summarized standard continental knowledge in his Cosmographical Glasse, a mathematical treatise written in dialogue form.1 Only fragments from Munster were ever translated,2 an English edition of Ortelius’ atlas did not reach print before 1606, and the first English version of Mercator was still many years off.3 Maps, of course, hardly needed much translation, and atlases printed on the continent (in Latin and other languages) regularly flooded into England. Though English map-making was slow to gather momentum, the value of geometry as a generative force, as a universally applicable descriptive code, was readily acknowledged by English mathematicians. In 1588, London’s newly elected mathematical lecturer Thomas Hood declared in his inaugural address: Let Geogra...
Descriptive accounts of Ireland written parallel to the English choro-graphical project are rarel... more Descriptive accounts of Ireland written parallel to the English choro-graphical project are rarely seen as being inspired by the same kind of antiquarian and patriotic impulse that sparked off the projects of Camden and his successors. Of the numerous Irish tracts written in late Tudor and early Stuart times, few if any conceive of Ireland as a national or regional entity with the same claim to spatial and political integrity as Britain or any of its individual counties. Generally, a contemporary ‘description’, ‘view’ or ‘survey’ of Ireland tends to be a pragmatic reform tract, containing a range of practical suggestions on how to pacify what was considered a rebellious and barbaric island.1 The single exception to this rule is perhaps a rarely noted manuscript by John Norden, entitled simply A Description of Ireland, which Norden prepared for the earl of Salisbury, then Lord Treasurer, in 1610:2 as if intended as a late addition to his Speculum, a map of Ireland (based on Boazio) i...
Maps and the Writing of Space in Early Modern England and Ireland, 2001
Compared with the popularity of early modern maps of England; the cartographic shaping of Ireland... more Compared with the popularity of early modern maps of England; the cartographic shaping of Ireland seems to have developed at a much slower pace. Although a good governor in Elizabeth’s administration, as Robert Beale advised in 1592, needed to sharpen his geographical knowledge with ‘the booke of Ortelius’ Mapps, a booke of the Mappes of England... and also a good descripcion of the Realm of Irelande’,1 no description of Britain’s neighbouring isle existed in print that could even remotely rival the visual impact of Ortelius’ or Saxton’s atlas. It was not until 1685, more than a century after Saxton’s maps had started coming off the presses in England, that William Petty published his Hiberniae Delineatio, the first complete Irish regional atlas. Petty had fully surveyed the country almost 30 years earlier, in the wake of the Cromwellian reconquest of Ireland, but even 1659 — the year he finished the Down Survey 2 — seems remarkably late when contrasted with the advanced state of English regional cartography. This delay has attracted a range of rather unconvincing explanations — such as the difficulties and dangers of travelling, bad weather conditions from which Irish field-workers were more likely to suffer than their colleagues in England, or the occurrence of, in J. H. Andrews’ euphemism, ‘expressions of antagonism by the local population’.3
The East India Company’s third voyage, 1607-10, has long claimed the attention of critics – not, ... more The East India Company’s third voyage, 1607-10, has long claimed the attention of critics – not, however, for its historic status as the first English sea voyage to reach India, but for the possibility that its crewmen made the first stagings of Shakespeare outside Europe. References to three shipboard performances of Shakespeare plays in west and east African waters – twice of Hamlet, once of Richard II – appeared in the 19th century in two separate locations, each time offered as verbatim extracts from the long lost logbook of the expedition’s flagship, the Dragon. This unusual conjunction of theatre, travel and maritime initiative has sparked critical debates over the authenticity of the 19th-century references and over the status of these stagings in relation to London’s theatres and Britain’s early imperial endeavours. Both debates have been sharply revived in two recent critical interventions on these stagings. First, Gary Taylor’s 2001 article in Travel Knowledge (ed. Singh a...
The description of the world is a traditional intellectual pursuit, and the changing representati... more The description of the world is a traditional intellectual pursuit, and the changing representations of the human sphere depend as much on moral and cultural frameworks imposed on the act of global description as on the extent of geographical knowledge accumulated by specific societies. It could also be an inherently dangerous act, bound to be viewed with suspicion by the powerful and mighty. The fate of Metius Pomposien, reported by the Byzantine historian Jean Xiphilin, well illustrates the political significance attached to the map of the world in ancient times. The Roman emperor Domitian, fearing a rival claim to the throne, had Metius put to death in 91 AD although, as Xiphilin writes, ‘he was not accused of any other crime than having kept in his cabinet a map of the terrestrial globe.’1 Keeping the globe a secret may seem an inadequate, or even impossible, way of ensuring political control, yet it continues to have an irresistible attraction for military strategists: though l...
By the time Shakespeare and Wilkins’s Pericles (1608) was written, English trading into the Levan... more By the time Shakespeare and Wilkins’s Pericles (1608) was written, English trading into the Levant had grown to significant volumes, and a permanent English consul had been based for nearly 20 years in Aleppo, with a remit that included Tripoli, Aleppo, Damascus, Jerusalem, Amman, and all other port cities in Syria and Palestine, among them Tharsus, Antioch and Tyre. This essay explores the ways in which the contemporary aspirations of English merchants and diplomats in the Levant are subtly registered in a play that has its main character voyaging across the sea, dealing in grain, and acquiring kingdoms by diplomacy or marriage. The main focus is on the meaning of the sea as a geopolitical space and itself a dramatic agent in the play.
‘‘The chronotopes of the sea,’’ Margaret Cohen writes, ‘‘are a poetic link in the genealogy of gl... more ‘‘The chronotopes of the sea,’’ Margaret Cohen writes, ‘‘are a poetic link in the genealogy of globalization.’’ Discussion of the sea—whether as setting, experience, or chronotope—has been curiously absent from recent critical work on what is perhaps the earliest European seafaring narrative with truly globalizing aspirations, Luı́s de Camões’s 1572 maritime epic Os Lusı́adas (The Lusiads). Given that the imperial vision of The Lusiads, which has received much attention, is poetically projected onto the vast ‘‘blue water’’ expanse of the Indian Ocean, without which the narrative would lose much of its rhetorical power, that critical neglect is all the more remarkable. Of course, the sea in The Lusiads is not only a poetic but also a historical and social space; the epic testifies to what one critic has recently called ‘‘the poet’s historico-imaginative engagement with the ocean.’’ Certainly no approach that discounts the poem’s sense of itself as a version of historical ‘‘truth’’ will get to the core of its maritime imaginary.
In recent years, the critical projects of cultural studies and postcolonial studies have initiate... more In recent years, the critical projects of cultural studies and postcolonial studies have initiated some of the most exciting debates within the wider field of British literature and culture. The theoretical tools and approaches characteristic of both areas of study suggest a common critical agenda but there has in fact been very little exchange, discussion or cooperation between practitioners in the two fields. This volume brings together fifteen scholars from both camps to explore whether they might not share more common analytical ground than this situation implies. Contributions vary from theoretically oriented interventions to particular case studies; all are united in asking where the conceptual and thematic crossovers of their critical practice might be located, what strengths postcolonial and cultural studies share, what their common weaknesses are. The analytical richness of the essays collected here makes this joining of critical forces a timely foray into the future of Eng...
These are the page proofs. The final version is published in Ina Habermann and Michelle Witen (ed... more These are the page proofs. The final version is published in Ina Habermann and Michelle Witen (eds), Shakespeare and Space. Theatrical Explorations of the Spatial Paradigm (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2016), 121-40.
The conference marks the 400th anniversary of the death of Richard Hakluyt (1552–1616), England's... more The conference marks the 400th anniversary of the death of Richard Hakluyt (1552–1616), England's pioneering promoter of overseas exploration, commerce, and expansion
... As Margaret Creighton and Lisa Nor-ling observe in the introduction to their groundbreaking c... more ... As Margaret Creighton and Lisa Nor-ling observe in the introduction to their groundbreaking collection Iron Men, Wooden Women, "gender is a ... One recent au-thor of sea fiction, Fred D'Aguiar, for instance, opens his novel about the notorious case of the slaver Zong ...
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