A Critical Companion to the English Medieval Mappae Mundi of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries

Mappae mundi (maps of the world), beautiful objects in themselves, offer huge insights into how medieval scholars conceived the world and their place within it. They are a fusion of "real" geographical locations with fantastical, geographic, historical, legendary and theological material. Their production reached its height in England in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, with such well-known examples as the Hereford map, the maps of Matthew Paris, and the Vercelli map.
This volume provides a comprehensive Companion to the seven most significant English mappae mundi. It begins with a survey of the maps' materials, types, shapes, sources, contents, conventions,idiosyncrasies, commissioners and users, moving on to locate the maps' creation and use in the realms of medieval rhetoric, Victorine memory theory and clerical pedagogy. It also establishes the shared history of map and book making, and demonstrates how pre-and post-Conquest monastic libraries in Britain fostered and fed their complementary relationship. A chapter is then devoted to each individual map. An annotated bibliography of multilingual resourcescompletes the volume.

DAN TERKLA is Emeritus Professor of English at Illinois Wesleyan University; NICK MILLEA is Map Librarian, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.

Contributors: Nathalie Bouloux, Michelle Brown. Daniel Connolly, Helen Davies, Gregory Heyworth, Alfred Hiatt, Marcia Kupfer, Nick Millea, Asa Simon Mittman, Dan Terkla, Chet Van Duzer.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Where to fix Cadiz? - Daniel Terkla
Making Manuscripts and Mappae Mundi - Michelle Brown
Books and Maps: Anglo-Saxon Glastonbury and Geospatial Awareness - Daniel Terkla
Books and Maps: Anglo-Norman Durham and Geospatial Awareness - Daniel Terkla
The Munich Map (c. 1130): Description, Meanings and Uses - Nathalie Bouloux
The Sawley Map (c. 1190) - Alfred Hiatt
The Vercelli Map (c. 1217) - Asa Simon Mittman
In the Company of Matthew Paris: Mapping the World at St Albans Abbey - Daniel Connolly
The Psalter Map (c.1262) - Chet Van Duzer
The Duchy of Cornwall Map Fragment (c. 1286) - Daniel Terkla
The Hereford Map (c. 1300) - Marcia Kupfer
Digital Mapping, Spectral Imaging and Medieval Mappae Mundi - Helen Davies and Gregory Heyworth
Annotated Bibliography (1987-2018) - Nick Millea