local maps

Scribes of Space' posits that the conception of space—the everyday physical areas we perceive and through which we move—underwent critical transformations between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. The book examines how natural philosophers, theologians, poets, and other thinkers in late medieval Britain altered the ideas about geographical space they inherited from the ancient world. In tracing the causes and nature of these developments, and how geographical space was consequently understood, this study focuses on the intersection of medieval science, theology, and literature, bringing a wide range of writings—scientific works by Nicole Oresme, Jean Buridan, the Merton School of Oxford Calculators, and Thomas Bradwardine; spiritual, poetic, and travel writings by John Lydgate, Robert Henryson, Margery Kempe, the Mandeville author, and Geoffrey Chaucer—into conversation. This pairing of physics and literature uncovers how the understanding of spatial boundaries, locality, elevation, motion, and proximity shifted across time, signaling the emergence of a new spatial imagination during this era.

From the early days of the colonization of the Americas, the Spanish crown needed to ascertain and represent the new overseas territories for control and demarcation purposes. In the last third of the sixteenth century, the instrument that was designed to carry out the project of representation of the New World was that of surveys. This great project is known as Relaciones Geográficas de Indias (Geographical Relations of the Indies). Local authorities had to answer questions about geography, topography, toponymy, resources, etc. In addition, a map of the region was requested. In this corpus, a set of maps is found characterized by a distinctive style, in that they strive to imitate the style of the printed maps that were being made in Europe at the time. These maps followed an inverse trend to that observed in the first printed maps, which strove to imitate the style of hand-drawn maps. Following a search in the General Archive of the Indies in Seville (Spain) and in the Benson Latin American Collection at the University of Texas at Austin, in which a total of seven maps were located, a descriptive study of these maps was carried out.

Scribes of Space' posits that the conception of space—the everyday physical areas we perceive and through which we move—underwent critical transformations between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. The book examines how natural philosophers, theologians, poets, and other thinkers in late medieval Britain altered the ideas about geographical space they inherited from the ancient world. In tracing the causes and nature of these developments, and how geographical space was consequently understood, this study focuses on the intersection of medieval science, theology, and literature, bringing a wide range of writings—scientific works by Nicole Oresme, Jean Buridan, the Merton School of Oxford Calculators, and Thomas Bradwardine; spiritual, poetic, and travel writings by John Lydgate, Robert Henryson, Margery Kempe, the Mandeville author, and Geoffrey Chaucer—into conversation. This pairing of physics and literature uncovers how the understanding of spatial boundaries, locality, elevation, motion, and proximity shifted across time, signaling the emergence of a new spatial imagination during this era.