David J. Collins
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195329537
- eISBN:
- 9780199870134
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195329537.003.0004
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
A common kind of revision humanists made to older narratives, regardless of the type of saint being portrayed, was to the geographical and cultural setting. Often they inserted excurses of ...
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A common kind of revision humanists made to older narratives, regardless of the type of saint being portrayed, was to the geographical and cultural setting. Often they inserted excurses of descriptive geography and historical chronicle not before associated with the given saints. Chapter three investigates how and why humanist authors amended the lives in these novel and sometimes tendentious ways. The chapter associates such chorographical changes with the Germania illustrata project, a wider movement among German humanists to investigate, construct, and glorify an ancient and medieval past that was truly German.Less
A common kind of revision humanists made to older narratives, regardless of the type of saint being portrayed, was to the geographical and cultural setting. Often they inserted excurses of descriptive geography and historical chronicle not before associated with the given saints. Chapter three investigates how and why humanist authors amended the lives in these novel and sometimes tendentious ways. The chapter associates such chorographical changes with the Germania illustrata project, a wider movement among German humanists to investigate, construct, and glorify an ancient and medieval past that was truly German.
Hugh Clout
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197262863
- eISBN:
- 9780191734076
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197262863.003.0008
- Subject:
- Sociology, Population and Demography
The uncertain relationship between studying regions (or places) and focusing on themes (or systematic processes) has characterised geography since the ancient Greeks, with ‘chorography’ being the ...
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The uncertain relationship between studying regions (or places) and focusing on themes (or systematic processes) has characterised geography since the ancient Greeks, with ‘chorography’ being the term employed to define the art of ‘describing the parts of the Earth’. Geography had been taught in British universities since at least the sixteenth century, when students at the University of Oxford were instructed about maps, globes and discoveries. This chapter examines the manifestation of regional studies in British geography during the twentieth century, paying attention to the institutional structures and some of the individuals involved, as well as the publications that appeared. In particular, the chapter discusses place description, regional geography and area studies.Less
The uncertain relationship between studying regions (or places) and focusing on themes (or systematic processes) has characterised geography since the ancient Greeks, with ‘chorography’ being the term employed to define the art of ‘describing the parts of the Earth’. Geography had been taught in British universities since at least the sixteenth century, when students at the University of Oxford were instructed about maps, globes and discoveries. This chapter examines the manifestation of regional studies in British geography during the twentieth century, paying attention to the institutional structures and some of the individuals involved, as well as the publications that appeared. In particular, the chapter discusses place description, regional geography and area studies.
Bart van Es
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199249701
- eISBN:
- 9780191719332
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199249701.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This book describes six modes through which Early Modern England addressed the past: chronicle, chorography, antiquarian discourse, euhemerism, typology, and prophecy. By setting this material ...
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This book describes six modes through which Early Modern England addressed the past: chronicle, chorography, antiquarian discourse, euhemerism, typology, and prophecy. By setting this material alongside the works of Edmund Spenser, the book explores allusive strategies ranging in effect from eulogy to polemic. Key Spenserian texts, including The Faerie Queene, The Shepeardes Calendar, and A View of the Present State of Ireland, are read against Elizabethan cultural documents extending from popular print to restricted manuscripts. Over the course of six chapters, each focusing on a single ‘form’, the book shows Spenser to have been an exceptional historical thinker. Drawing on recent studies of nationhood, the study not only offers a new picture of the English ‘Poet Historical’, but also makes an innovative contribution to current debates concerning the relationship between literature and history.Less
This book describes six modes through which Early Modern England addressed the past: chronicle, chorography, antiquarian discourse, euhemerism, typology, and prophecy. By setting this material alongside the works of Edmund Spenser, the book explores allusive strategies ranging in effect from eulogy to polemic. Key Spenserian texts, including The Faerie Queene, The Shepeardes Calendar, and A View of the Present State of Ireland, are read against Elizabethan cultural documents extending from popular print to restricted manuscripts. Over the course of six chapters, each focusing on a single ‘form’, the book shows Spenser to have been an exceptional historical thinker. Drawing on recent studies of nationhood, the study not only offers a new picture of the English ‘Poet Historical’, but also makes an innovative contribution to current debates concerning the relationship between literature and history.
Bart van Es
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199249701
- eISBN:
- 9780191719332
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199249701.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This chapter examines a possible solution to the problems presented by the first chapter. It shows the importance of chorography for both historiographic and political debate. Following an analysis ...
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This chapter examines a possible solution to the problems presented by the first chapter. It shows the importance of chorography for both historiographic and political debate. Following an analysis of various chorographic texts, it demonstrates how the same structures appear in Books III and IV of The Faerie Queene as well as in Colin Clouts Come Home Againe and Prothalamion. It explains that these structures have an unusual capacity for absorbing rival voices. It discusses that through the combination of land and history they gave Spenser freedoms not to be found within the confines of chronicle. It shows that readings of Spenser's river passages expose an alliance between historical and political narratives. It adds that particularly, the poet can be revealed to have used rivers with exceptional subtlety to connect ancient history with current colonial endeavor.Less
This chapter examines a possible solution to the problems presented by the first chapter. It shows the importance of chorography for both historiographic and political debate. Following an analysis of various chorographic texts, it demonstrates how the same structures appear in Books III and IV of The Faerie Queene as well as in Colin Clouts Come Home Againe and Prothalamion. It explains that these structures have an unusual capacity for absorbing rival voices. It discusses that through the combination of land and history they gave Spenser freedoms not to be found within the confines of chronicle. It shows that readings of Spenser's river passages expose an alliance between historical and political narratives. It adds that particularly, the poet can be revealed to have used rivers with exceptional subtlety to connect ancient history with current colonial endeavor.
Richard Hingley
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199641413
- eISBN:
- 9780191745720
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199641413.003.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Archaeology: Classical
Hadrian's Wall was constructed in the AD 120s and maintained for almost three centuries before ceasing to operate as a Roman frontier during the fifth century. Its scale and complexity means that it ...
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Hadrian's Wall was constructed in the AD 120s and maintained for almost three centuries before ceasing to operate as a Roman frontier during the fifth century. Its scale and complexity means that it is one of the most important ancient monuments in the British Isles and one the most complex and well-preserved frontier works that once defined the boundaries of the Roman empire. In order to address the continuing life of the Wall, this chapter considers the significance of certain places along its line through an approach to its chorography. The aim of this book is to demonstrate that the Wall's Roman identity has been fundamental to its continuing vitality throughout the centuries, including its role and significance in the region, nation, and world today. At the same time, the monument has acquired a range of broader associations as a result of its long and complex sequence of use. It is a composite Wall, but with a Roman identity at the core of its living spirit.Less
Hadrian's Wall was constructed in the AD 120s and maintained for almost three centuries before ceasing to operate as a Roman frontier during the fifth century. Its scale and complexity means that it is one of the most important ancient monuments in the British Isles and one the most complex and well-preserved frontier works that once defined the boundaries of the Roman empire. In order to address the continuing life of the Wall, this chapter considers the significance of certain places along its line through an approach to its chorography. The aim of this book is to demonstrate that the Wall's Roman identity has been fundamental to its continuing vitality throughout the centuries, including its role and significance in the region, nation, and world today. At the same time, the monument has acquired a range of broader associations as a result of its long and complex sequence of use. It is a composite Wall, but with a Roman identity at the core of its living spirit.
Jessica Maier
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226127637
- eISBN:
- 9780226127774
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226127774.003.0001
- Subject:
- Earth Sciences and Geography, Cartography
The city portrait, like portraits of human beings, arose in the fifteenth century as a commemorative form combining likeness with symbolism. It came to be associated with a category that the ancient ...
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The city portrait, like portraits of human beings, arose in the fifteenth century as a commemorative form combining likeness with symbolism. It came to be associated with a category that the ancient geographer Ptolemy had termed chorography—small-scale terrestrial representation that conveyed outward resemblance along with intangible qualities. Renaissance city portraits like Francesco Rosselli’s “View with a Chain” of Florence or Jacopo de’ Barbari’s view of Venice were simultaneously faithful simulations and creative interpretations of their subjects. To convey their messages, city portraits assumed a range of graphic forms, from maps to pictorial views and ingenious hybrids. While they appeared in a variety of media, the most innovative works were prints that were geared toward the open market. Rome was one of the most frequently represented of all cities, and a place where all the challenges of urban representation crystallized. The Eternal City was a palimpsest of past and present glory, never just a neutral physical reality, and its complicated identity resisted any straightforward visual record.Less
The city portrait, like portraits of human beings, arose in the fifteenth century as a commemorative form combining likeness with symbolism. It came to be associated with a category that the ancient geographer Ptolemy had termed chorography—small-scale terrestrial representation that conveyed outward resemblance along with intangible qualities. Renaissance city portraits like Francesco Rosselli’s “View with a Chain” of Florence or Jacopo de’ Barbari’s view of Venice were simultaneously faithful simulations and creative interpretations of their subjects. To convey their messages, city portraits assumed a range of graphic forms, from maps to pictorial views and ingenious hybrids. While they appeared in a variety of media, the most innovative works were prints that were geared toward the open market. Rome was one of the most frequently represented of all cities, and a place where all the challenges of urban representation crystallized. The Eternal City was a palimpsest of past and present glory, never just a neutral physical reality, and its complicated identity resisted any straightforward visual record.
Erin Maglaque
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781501721656
- eISBN:
- 9781501721663
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9781501721656.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, European Early Modern History
Chapter 6, we turn to examine Coppo’s Del Sito de Listria, his regional description of his adopted homeland. In this text, we can see the relationship between Coppo’s experience of family and ...
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Chapter 6, we turn to examine Coppo’s Del Sito de Listria, his regional description of his adopted homeland. In this text, we can see the relationship between Coppo’s experience of family and political life in Isola, and his humanist scholarship. His geographical writing and homemade woodcut maps began to reflect his new perspective onto the empire from his study in Isola. Through classical literature, contemporary humanist writing, and most importantly, through his own witnessing of Istrian Roman material culture, Coppo wove an alternative history for Istria than that imposed by the Venetian empire.Less
Chapter 6, we turn to examine Coppo’s Del Sito de Listria, his regional description of his adopted homeland. In this text, we can see the relationship between Coppo’s experience of family and political life in Isola, and his humanist scholarship. His geographical writing and homemade woodcut maps began to reflect his new perspective onto the empire from his study in Isola. Through classical literature, contemporary humanist writing, and most importantly, through his own witnessing of Istrian Roman material culture, Coppo wove an alternative history for Istria than that imposed by the Venetian empire.
Andrew Bozio
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- March 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198846567
- eISBN:
- 9780191881763
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198846567.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
Taking its cue from William Sly’s performance of a disoriented playgoer in the Induction to John Marston’s The Malcontent, this chapter puts theatrical performance in dialogue with two other modes of ...
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Taking its cue from William Sly’s performance of a disoriented playgoer in the Induction to John Marston’s The Malcontent, this chapter puts theatrical performance in dialogue with two other modes of thinking through place in the early modern period: first, what Mary Carruthers has termed the “architectural” model of the arts of memory, and, second, chorography, or the practice of describing a region in terms of its topographical features and history. It argues that these modes resemble one another in depicting place as a kind of phenomenological assemblage, one that comes into being as the disparate features of an ambient environment are perceived and organized within embodied thought. This resemblance reveals the intimate relationship between environment and embodied thought within the early modern English playhouse, and it thereby suggests that theatrical performance was less a form of spatial abstraction than a means of transforming the way that playgoers perceived, experienced, and navigated their surroundings.Less
Taking its cue from William Sly’s performance of a disoriented playgoer in the Induction to John Marston’s The Malcontent, this chapter puts theatrical performance in dialogue with two other modes of thinking through place in the early modern period: first, what Mary Carruthers has termed the “architectural” model of the arts of memory, and, second, chorography, or the practice of describing a region in terms of its topographical features and history. It argues that these modes resemble one another in depicting place as a kind of phenomenological assemblage, one that comes into being as the disparate features of an ambient environment are perceived and organized within embodied thought. This resemblance reveals the intimate relationship between environment and embodied thought within the early modern English playhouse, and it thereby suggests that theatrical performance was less a form of spatial abstraction than a means of transforming the way that playgoers perceived, experienced, and navigated their surroundings.
Paul Slack
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- October 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199645916
- eISBN:
- 9780191757754
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199645916.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History, Cultural History
This chapter describes the rediscovery of England between the reign of Elizabeth and the end of the seventeenth century which came with new knowledge about the condition and history of England and ...
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This chapter describes the rediscovery of England between the reign of Elizabeth and the end of the seventeenth century which came with new knowledge about the condition and history of England and other countries. The literature of English chorography, travel, and overseas exploration emphasized differences between localities and countries, while new maps illustrated and measured connections between them. The chapter concludes by examining how new information was being used, as early as 1600, to answer questions posed by reason of state about England’s population and economy. Close examination of the present state of England stimulated speculation about its prospects in the future.Less
This chapter describes the rediscovery of England between the reign of Elizabeth and the end of the seventeenth century which came with new knowledge about the condition and history of England and other countries. The literature of English chorography, travel, and overseas exploration emphasized differences between localities and countries, while new maps illustrated and measured connections between them. The chapter concludes by examining how new information was being used, as early as 1600, to answer questions posed by reason of state about England’s population and economy. Close examination of the present state of England stimulated speculation about its prospects in the future.
Nancy P. Appelbaum
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781469627441
- eISBN:
- 9781469627465
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469627441.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, Latin American History
The second chapter examines chorography, as defined and adapted by Codazzi and his collaborators. The chapter considers both local conditions and international scientific currents that shaped their ...
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The second chapter examines chorography, as defined and adapted by Codazzi and his collaborators. The chapter considers both local conditions and international scientific currents that shaped their geographic practice, which built on and drew legitimacy from the holistic biogeography of Prussian naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, who emphasized the physiognomy of landscapes and regions. They were also influenced by Adriano Balbi’s quite different method, based on descriptive statistics. An examination of Codazzi’s first chorographic enterprise, the Venezuelan Chorographic Commission, provides insights into the New Granada commission’s unfinished work. The chapter concludes with a discussion of an example of the commission’s early cartography, a chorographic map of the Andean province of Socorro.Less
The second chapter examines chorography, as defined and adapted by Codazzi and his collaborators. The chapter considers both local conditions and international scientific currents that shaped their geographic practice, which built on and drew legitimacy from the holistic biogeography of Prussian naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, who emphasized the physiognomy of landscapes and regions. They were also influenced by Adriano Balbi’s quite different method, based on descriptive statistics. An examination of Codazzi’s first chorographic enterprise, the Venezuelan Chorographic Commission, provides insights into the New Granada commission’s unfinished work. The chapter concludes with a discussion of an example of the commission’s early cartography, a chorographic map of the Andean province of Socorro.
Chris Barrett
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- March 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198816874
- eISBN:
- 9780191858567
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198816874.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
Relying on sustained, relentless personification, Drayton’s chorographical epic Poly-Olbion retains the ethical work of The Faerie Queene’s allegory in restoring to the national narrative the ...
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Relying on sustained, relentless personification, Drayton’s chorographical epic Poly-Olbion retains the ethical work of The Faerie Queene’s allegory in restoring to the national narrative the embodied immanence of the people within it; but Drayton’s poem takes personification as its dominant representation mode. The poem explores and exploits the paradoxical nature of personification, a device that is simultaneously evocative and anti-mimetic. The case of personification demonstrates the ways description distances itself from its subject, and Poly-Olbion uses its personified topography to interrogate the very possibility of representing space—in cartographic image or topographical text—by troubling the temporal assumptions underlying the cartographic and problematizing the relationship between description and detail. In doing so, the poem generates a mode of descriptive writing reliant on the generative distortion of its subject, ultimately positing an anti-mimetic program—one that lays bare the limitations and fictions of the cartographic—for the representation of space.Less
Relying on sustained, relentless personification, Drayton’s chorographical epic Poly-Olbion retains the ethical work of The Faerie Queene’s allegory in restoring to the national narrative the embodied immanence of the people within it; but Drayton’s poem takes personification as its dominant representation mode. The poem explores and exploits the paradoxical nature of personification, a device that is simultaneously evocative and anti-mimetic. The case of personification demonstrates the ways description distances itself from its subject, and Poly-Olbion uses its personified topography to interrogate the very possibility of representing space—in cartographic image or topographical text—by troubling the temporal assumptions underlying the cartographic and problematizing the relationship between description and detail. In doing so, the poem generates a mode of descriptive writing reliant on the generative distortion of its subject, ultimately positing an anti-mimetic program—one that lays bare the limitations and fictions of the cartographic—for the representation of space.
Kelsey Jackson Williams
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- April 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198809692
- eISBN:
- 9780191846960
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198809692.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
This chapter explores national and local geographies, challenging older views of this period as a geographically impoverished caesura between the monumental achievements of the 1662 Atlas Maior and ...
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This chapter explores national and local geographies, challenging older views of this period as a geographically impoverished caesura between the monumental achievements of the 1662 Atlas Maior and the 1791 First Statistical Account. Instead, it argues, geographical scholarship was very much alive during the Early Enlightenment, but was undergoing rapid and unpredictable change as scholars brought new methodologies and new mentalities to bear on a traditional, humanist discipline. It identifies Sir Robert Sibbald as a key figure in early Enlightenment geographical thought while also recovering the works of the forgotten geographers and antiquaries Alexander Keith and Thomas Orem.Less
This chapter explores national and local geographies, challenging older views of this period as a geographically impoverished caesura between the monumental achievements of the 1662 Atlas Maior and the 1791 First Statistical Account. Instead, it argues, geographical scholarship was very much alive during the Early Enlightenment, but was undergoing rapid and unpredictable change as scholars brought new methodologies and new mentalities to bear on a traditional, humanist discipline. It identifies Sir Robert Sibbald as a key figure in early Enlightenment geographical thought while also recovering the works of the forgotten geographers and antiquaries Alexander Keith and Thomas Orem.
Angus Vine
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780198809708
- eISBN:
- 9780191847134
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198809708.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
This chapter examines the miscellany’s links with antiquarian compilation and chorography (the branch of geography concerned with the particulars of a specific region or place). Its primary interest ...
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This chapter examines the miscellany’s links with antiquarian compilation and chorography (the branch of geography concerned with the particulars of a specific region or place). Its primary interest is with textual production in the two fields, and with the practices of annotation and organization that allowed antiquaries and chorographers to turn their heterogeneous notes into orderly narratives. The manuscript miscellany, it argues, was essential to the kind of assemblage scholars carried out here. Compilers discussed in the chapter include William Lambarde, Edmund Tilney, George Owen of Henllys, Abraham Ortelius, and most extensively William Camden. The chapter shows that this kind of antiquarian assemblage was most commonly conceived as a kind of stitching or tailoring, in keeping with one of the more frequent early modern metaphors for textual and miscellaneous production.Less
This chapter examines the miscellany’s links with antiquarian compilation and chorography (the branch of geography concerned with the particulars of a specific region or place). Its primary interest is with textual production in the two fields, and with the practices of annotation and organization that allowed antiquaries and chorographers to turn their heterogeneous notes into orderly narratives. The manuscript miscellany, it argues, was essential to the kind of assemblage scholars carried out here. Compilers discussed in the chapter include William Lambarde, Edmund Tilney, George Owen of Henllys, Abraham Ortelius, and most extensively William Camden. The chapter shows that this kind of antiquarian assemblage was most commonly conceived as a kind of stitching or tailoring, in keeping with one of the more frequent early modern metaphors for textual and miscellaneous production.