THE LANGUAGE OF MAPS
Communicating through cartography during the middle ages and renaissance
A colloquium and exhibition at the Bodleian Library,
University of Oxford
Thursday June 23 to Saturday June 25 2011
Introduction and synopsis
Historic maps have broad appeal in contemporary cultures around the
world. One reason for this – it might be thought – is because the
‘language of maps’ is universal and straightforward, but is it? How do
maps communicate to us? How do they work?
This Colloquium seeks to explore these important questions by bringing
together scholars whose interest lies in the visual and textual
‘languages’ of manuscript and printed maps from the medieval and
Renaissance periods of European history. With the theme of
‘communicating through cartography’, the Colloquium will further our
understanding and appreciation of the complexity of medieval and
Renaissance maps and map-making, examining theoretical, empirical and
methodological issues. The Colloquium is intentionally
multidisciplinary, so contributions represent perspectives from art,
linguistic and literary history, historical geography and archaeology,
as well as cartography and the history of cartography. Our papers cover
artistic, linguistic and palaeographical aspects of historic maps, and
examine processes of cartographic production and consumption in medieval
and Renaissance Europe. Through them, we shall be able to draw
connections between cartographic representations of all kinds, whether
manuscript or printed maps, including those of regions, countries or
local landscapes. The technologies of map-production – including
surveying and draughting – will be under scrutiny too, for the
scientific and artistic expertise involved in making maps in the past
was integral to communicating through cartography, as indeed it still is
today.
The Colloquium marks the ending of the AHRC-funded “Linguistic
Geographies” research project on the Bodleian’s world-renowned ‘Gough
Map of Great Britain’. To celebrate the project’s conclusion, the
Bodleian Library will be holding an exhibition displaying the Gough Map
at the same time as the Colloquium presents the findings of the research
and sees the launch of the project’s online resource, a searchable
digital version of the Gough Map. There will also be two evening keynote
lectures, one given by Jeremy Smith, Professor of English Philology at
the University of Glasgow, and a second by Peter Barber, curator of the
British Library map collection.
As places at the Colloquium are limited, advanced registration and
enrollment is essential. To book a place and to pay for registration
(and the optional dinner and field-trip) please use our dedicated online
booking service “Historic Venues” at
https://www.oxforduniversitystores.co.uk/browse/product.asp?catid=1062&modid=1&compid=1
- see below for further details.
COLLOQUIUM PROGRAMME
Please note, all the colloquium lectures will take place in Convocation
House at the Bodleian Library.
Drinks receptions will be held in the Divinity School adjacent.
Thursday June 23, 12:00-20:00
12:00-13:45 Registration and orientation (Convocation House foyer)
13:45-14:00 Welcome and introduction: Keith Lilley and Nick Millea
Session 1 – Dialogues (Chair: Keith Lilley)
14:00-14:40 Rose Mitchell and Bill Shannon (The National Archives,
London), Maps, dialogue and truth
14:40-15:20 Paul Fermon (E.P.H.E. Paris), Making maps for lawyers:
Nicolas Dipre, a painter at work circa 1500.
15:20-15:40 Tea
15:40-16:20 Richard Unger (University of British Columbia), The rhetoric
of sea power and the decoration of Renaissance maps
16:20-17:00 Mark Rosen (University of Texas at Dallas), Interpretive
projections: sixteenth-century Italian painted maps and their printed
sources
17:00-17:40 Paul Harvey (Durham), Medieval maps of the Holy Land: aims,
communication and impact
17:40-18:00 Discussion
18:00-18:45 Reception
18:45-20:00 Keynote Lecture I: Jeremy Smith (Glasgow), The Gough map and
the history of English
20:00 Colloquium Dinner (optional, to be booked in advance)
Friday June 24, 09:00-20:00
Session 2 – Narratives (Chair: Nick Millea)
09:00-09:40 Pnina Arad (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem), Narrative
and meta-narrative in the map of the Holy Land (Oxford, Bodl. Ms. Douce 389)
09:40-10:20 Meagan Loftin (University of Washington), “Prepare also the
mappa mundi”: mapping on the stage in the Chester Mystery Cycle
10:20-10:40 Coffee
10:40-11:20 Elizabeth Solopova (Oxford) Linguistic geographies: three
centuries of language, script and cartography in the Gough map of Great
Britain
11:20-12:00 Meg Roland (Marylhurst University), The Behaim Globe: a
literary map of late medieval and early modern geographic thought
12:00-12:40 Camille Serchuk (Southern Connecticut State University), The
polyglot map: a sixteenth-century French forest map and its graphic
language(s
12:40-13:00 Discussion
13:00-14:00 Lunch (not provided)
Session 3 – Readings (Chair: Elizabeth Solopova)
14:00-14:40 Galia Halpern (New York University), Mapping surface and
structure beyond the sea
14:40-15:20 Margaret Small (Birmingham), A Catholic concordance? Olaus
Magnus and the Biblical citations on the Carta Marina
15:20-15:40 Tea
15:40-16:20 Angelo Cattaneo (Universidade Nova de Lisboa), Fra Mauro’s
Mappa mundi within the fifteenth-century ‘Question of Language’ in
Venice. The role of the Camaldolese Order
16:20-17:00 Dan Terkla (Illinois Wesleyan University), Furnishing the
soul: mappaemundi and church tabulae
17:00-17:40 Asa Mittman (California State University, Chico), The
Jewish-Muslim-Polytheistic idol on the altar: the Hereford Map and the
construction of the Other
17:40-18:00 Discussion
18:00-18:45 Reception
18:45-20:00 Keynote Lecture II: Peter Barber (The British Library,
London), Manipulating Gough in the service of Henry VIII: Maurice
Griffith and the Angliae Figura
20:00 Speakers’ Colloquium Dinner
Saturday June 25, 09:00-13:00
Session 4 – Scripting (Chair: Paul Vetch)
09:00-09:40 Catherine Delano Smith (QMW, London), Medieval
map-mindedness—Renaissance ‘map consciousness’
09:40-10:20 Jesse Simon (University College, Oxford), Abstract shapes,
physical spaces: the use of theoretical geometry in Byzantine surveyor’s
maps
10:20-10:40 Coffee
10:40-11:20 Martin Foys (Drew University), Rectifying the real: digital
bias and early historical maps
11:20-12:00 Keith Lilley, Chris Lloyd and Catherine Porter (Queen’s
University Belfast), Quantifying revolution: mapping lineages in British
cartography
12:00-12:40 “Linguistic Geographies” web-resource launch
12:40-13:00 Discussion and Conclusion
13:00-13:30 Lunch (not provided)
Optional Field-Trip to Hereford Cathedral Library Mappa Mundi
Exhibition: Saturday June 24 (pm)
As part of the Colloquium we are pleased to offer participants the
opportunity to see another of Britain’s truly great medieval maps, the
celebrated mappamundi at Hereford cathedral. To make this possible a
road coach has been booked to take us from Oxford to Hereford, but
please note that places are limited and so it is essential that bookings
are made in advance, and that the payment is received at the same time
as you enrol – see payment instructions below for details.
Itinerary (times subject to change):
13:30 Depart Oxford, Broad Street entrance to Bodleian Library
15.30 Arrive Hereford cathedral
15:30-17:30 Visit to Hereford Cathedral “Mappa mundi” exhibition
18:00-20:00 Dinner (not provided)
20:00 Depart Hereford cathedral
22:00 Arrive Oxford, Broad Street entrance to Bodleian Library
ACCOMMODATION AND MEALS
All participants will need to make their own arrangements for local
accommodation and also meals for the duration of the Colloquium. For all
delegates, there is an optional Colloquium Dinner on the evening of
Thursday June 23 – details below.
Details on accommodation options are to be found at
http://www.visitoxfordandoxfordshire.com/
For particular deals on accommodation, try also laterooms.com and
tripadvisor.co.uk
PROJECT EXHIBITION
Linguistic geographies:
Three centuries of language, script and cartography in the Gough map of
Great Britain
14 May – 16 June 2011
A public exhibition in the Proscholium, Bodleian Library, Oxford
One of Britain’s truly outstanding medieval maps is on public display in
the Proscholium, Bodleian Library. The ‘Gough map’ is a remarkable
English depiction of Great Britain, created sometime during the later
fourteenth century and subsequently amended during the fifteenth century.
The precise origins of the Gough map have long been uncertain despite
much scholarly interest. Only recently has the map received careful
palaeographical study, and this has yielded a great deal more insight
into the map’s making and its use. The map was donated to the Bodleian
Library in 1809 by the great antiquarian, Richard Gough, in whose volume
on British Topography the map gained its first modern study. This
exhibition includes both the Gough map – a unique manuscript – as well
as Gough’s Topography, as two key documents of English cartographic
history, providing viewers with a rare opportunity to see close-up the
fine details of the map, and in particular the writing that appears on
it. The map’s script is a key to understanding its making and use, and
the exhibition offers new interpretations based upon an on-going
research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
The exhibition is organised by the Linguistic Geographies project team,
with particular inputs from Nick Millea and Elizabeth Solopova. The team
wish to thank the Bodleian Library for its support of this exhibition,
as well as the Arts and Humanities Research Council. For more
information on the project please visit www.goughmap.org
Further details on the exhibition at:
http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/bodley/about/exhibitions
* Opening Hours
Mon-Fri 9am – 10pm (Vacation 9am-7pm)
Sat 9am – 4.30pm (Vacation 9am-5pm)
Sun: 11am – 5pm
Admission Free
COLLOQUIUM REGISTRATION AND PAYMENT OPTIONS
Registration for attending the colloquium is £50. For speakers on the
programme and for students there is a reduced fee of £25.
Please note that enrolment will close on Friday June 10 (or earlier if
our maximum capacity is reached sooner and no more places are available).
From 08.00 on Monday 18 April, the facility to make an online payment
by credit card will be available using the service of ‘Historic Venues’
at:
https://www.oxforduniversitystores.co.uk/browse/product.asp?catid=1062&modid=1&compid=1
Alternatively, if you prefer to pay by cheque (sterling only, payable to
“Bodleian Library”), please send this completed form to:
Nick Millea,
The Language of Maps,
Bodleian Library, Broad Street, Oxford, OX1 3BG. UK
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The Language of Maps colloquium registration form
Name/title
_______________________________________________________________________
Address
_________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
Phone number/email address
_______________________________________________________
- FULL registration fee:
£50.00
- SPEAKER’S registration fee:
£25.00
- STUDENT registration fee (full or part time):
£25.00
- Optional Colloquium dinner (circle if required):
£25.00
- Optional Hereford tour (circle if required):
£25.00
Total:
£____
I enclose a cheque, payable to ‘Bodleian Library’, for £______
I require a receipt (Yes/No).
_______________________________________________________
Nick Millea
Map Librarian, Bodleian Library, Broad Street, Oxford, OX1 3BG
Tel: 01865 287119
Fax: 01865 277139
Email: [log in to unmask]
Homepage: http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/guides/maps/
Temporary move of Special Collections:
More information at: www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/scmoves
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