Transforming Europe in the Images of the World, 1110-1500

Fuzzy Geographies
Erscheinungsjahr 2025
ISBN: 978-90-485-6316-6
Verlag: Amsterdam University Press

Buch, Englisch, Band 14, 208 Seiten, Format (B × H): 158 mm x 238 mm, Gewicht: 517 g

Reihe: Knowledge Communities

This is the first book to examine the wide and important geographical tradition that arose from the description of the world in the Imago mundi – a medieval encyclopedic bestseller, almost unrivalled in popularity from its composition in the 1110s well into the age of print. The Imago mundi was translated into most European vernaculars and extracts from it were adapted into vernacular works ranging from encyclopedias to literary fiction, verse and prose. This is the first study to examine this tradition as a unified whole. It focuses in particular on the permutations undergone by the depiction of the region designated as ‘Europe’ in the original text and its later adaptations. The book demonstrates the incredible flexibility of the original text and how this enabled the transformation of this spatial description to suit the linguistic, political and cultural needs of vernacular adaptations.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Petrovskaia, Natalia

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Mentalitäts- und Sozialgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Table of Contents

List of Figures

List of Tables

Acknowledgments

List of Abbreviations

Introduction: Starting Out. ‘Europes’, Hippogriffs, and Mathematics

Part I: An Introduction to the Imago Mundi tradition

Chapter 1. Understanding the World. An Overview of the Imago mundi

Chapter 2. Translating Knowledge. An Introduction to the Imago Mundi Family

Part II. Modes of Reading Geography

Chapter 3. Time. Authority and Archaism

Chapter 4. Space. Geographical Regions as Fuzzy Sets

Chapter 5. Movement. The Hodoeporical Descriptive Technique

Conclusion: Looking Back and Looking Ahead

Appendices

Bibliography

Manuscripts

Primary Sources

Secondary Sources

Electronic Resources

Über Autor(innen)

Petrovskaia, Natalia
: Natalia I. Petrovskaia holds MA, MPhil and PhD degrees from the University of Cambridge. She is currently Assistant Professor in Celtic at Utrecht University. This book is the result of her recent NWO Veni Project, ‘Defining Europe in Medieval European Geographical Discourse’.