Katharina N. Piechocki
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780226641188
- eISBN:
- 9780226641218
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226641218.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
The rise of print culture in tandem with a resurgent interest in Ptolemy’s Geography prompted a radical transformation of the imagining of Europe’s continental boundaries. Geoffroy Tory, France’s ...
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The rise of print culture in tandem with a resurgent interest in Ptolemy’s Geography prompted a radical transformation of the imagining of Europe’s continental boundaries. Geoffroy Tory, France’s first royal printer and typographer and the first editor of Enea Silvio Piccolomini’s De Europa, powerfully seized these new tools to conceptualize Europe’s borders with Asia. His groundbreaking Champ fleury (1529) links diverse spatial imageries to the question of the origin and transformation of European and non-European languages. It investigates Europe’s shifting image from a landmass intimately connected with the oikoumene to an isolated entity detached from its shared heritage with Asia in the context of the formation and circulation of alphabets. The Champ fleury constitutes an astounding cartographic surface, a vibrant map upon which letters, as graphic, somatic, and numeric signs, form a new cartographic language in constant transformation and translation. In Tory’s hand, the “flowery field” of its title becomes a platform for the generation of complex cartographic signs that this chapter, following Ján Pravda, calls “cartographemes.”Less
The rise of print culture in tandem with a resurgent interest in Ptolemy’s Geography prompted a radical transformation of the imagining of Europe’s continental boundaries. Geoffroy Tory, France’s first royal printer and typographer and the first editor of Enea Silvio Piccolomini’s De Europa, powerfully seized these new tools to conceptualize Europe’s borders with Asia. His groundbreaking Champ fleury (1529) links diverse spatial imageries to the question of the origin and transformation of European and non-European languages. It investigates Europe’s shifting image from a landmass intimately connected with the oikoumene to an isolated entity detached from its shared heritage with Asia in the context of the formation and circulation of alphabets. The Champ fleury constitutes an astounding cartographic surface, a vibrant map upon which letters, as graphic, somatic, and numeric signs, form a new cartographic language in constant transformation and translation. In Tory’s hand, the “flowery field” of its title becomes a platform for the generation of complex cartographic signs that this chapter, following Ján Pravda, calls “cartographemes.”
Tom Conley
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816669646
- eISBN:
- 9781452946573
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816669646.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter discusses the Itinerarium provinciarum by Antonini Augusti and its 1512 issue edited by Geoffroy Tory, a map emblematic of the relationship of topography and cosmography in the early ...
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This chapter discusses the Itinerarium provinciarum by Antonini Augusti and its 1512 issue edited by Geoffroy Tory, a map emblematic of the relationship of topography and cosmography in the early years of the French Renaissance. An image of the world prior to the Columbian discoveries, the map contains land and water within a broad arc. The map serves as fitting epigraph for reflection on topography in the early work of French writer and humanist François Rabelais, particularly on his novels Pantagruel and Gargantua. Studies of his geography have shown that an uncanny awareness of the changing form of the world influences the ever-changing proportions of the author’s gentle giants in the worlds they inhabit. The chapter argues that the concepts of Rabelais would fit in Geoffroy Tory’s scheme because they belong to local places and aspire to a more animated and changing view of the world.Less
This chapter discusses the Itinerarium provinciarum by Antonini Augusti and its 1512 issue edited by Geoffroy Tory, a map emblematic of the relationship of topography and cosmography in the early years of the French Renaissance. An image of the world prior to the Columbian discoveries, the map contains land and water within a broad arc. The map serves as fitting epigraph for reflection on topography in the early work of French writer and humanist François Rabelais, particularly on his novels Pantagruel and Gargantua. Studies of his geography have shown that an uncanny awareness of the changing form of the world influences the ever-changing proportions of the author’s gentle giants in the worlds they inhabit. The chapter argues that the concepts of Rabelais would fit in Geoffroy Tory’s scheme because they belong to local places and aspire to a more animated and changing view of the world.
Katharina N. Piechocki
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780226641188
- eISBN:
- 9780226641218
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226641218.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
What is “Europe,” and when did it come to be? While in the Renaissance the term “Europe” circulated widely, the continent itself was only in the making in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. ...
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What is “Europe,” and when did it come to be? While in the Renaissance the term “Europe” circulated widely, the continent itself was only in the making in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Cartographic Humanism sheds new light on how humanists negotiated and defined Europe’s boundaries at a momentous shift in the continent’s formation: when a new imagining of Europe was driven by the rise of cartography. This tool of geography, philosophy, and philology was used not only to represent but, more importantly, also to shape and promote an image of Europe quite unparalleled in previous centuries. Engaging with poets, historians, and mapmakers, this study resists an easy categorization of the continent, scrutinizing Europe as an unexamined category that demands a much more careful and nuanced investigation than scholars of early modernity have hitherto undertaken. Cartographic Humanism charts new itineraries across Europe from the perspective of comparative literature. It aims for a wide geographic scope, bringing France, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Portugal into a lively, interdisciplinary dialogue.Less
What is “Europe,” and when did it come to be? While in the Renaissance the term “Europe” circulated widely, the continent itself was only in the making in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Cartographic Humanism sheds new light on how humanists negotiated and defined Europe’s boundaries at a momentous shift in the continent’s formation: when a new imagining of Europe was driven by the rise of cartography. This tool of geography, philosophy, and philology was used not only to represent but, more importantly, also to shape and promote an image of Europe quite unparalleled in previous centuries. Engaging with poets, historians, and mapmakers, this study resists an easy categorization of the continent, scrutinizing Europe as an unexamined category that demands a much more careful and nuanced investigation than scholars of early modernity have hitherto undertaken. Cartographic Humanism charts new itineraries across Europe from the perspective of comparative literature. It aims for a wide geographic scope, bringing France, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Portugal into a lively, interdisciplinary dialogue.
