DOCSLIB.ORG

The Known World"

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Known World University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Undergraduate Humanities Forum 2009-2010: Penn Humanities Forum Undergraduate Connections Research Fellows 4-2010 Their Eyes Were God's: A Counter-Cartography of "The Known World" Jonathan Howard University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/uhf_2010 Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons Howard, Jonathan, "Their Eyes Were God's: A Counter-Cartography of "The Known World"" (2010). Undergraduate Humanities Forum 2009-2010: Connections. 10. https://repository.upenn.edu/uhf_2010/10 Suggested Citation: Howard, Jonathan. (2010). "Their Eyes Were God's: A Counter-Cartography of 'The Known World.'" 2009-2010 Penn Humanities Forum on Connections. This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/uhf_2010/10 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Their Eyes Were God's: A Counter-Cartography of "The Known World" Disciplines Arts and Humanities Comments Suggested Citation: Howard, Jonathan. (2010). "Their Eyes Were God's: A Counter-Cartography of 'The Known World.'" 2009-2010 Penn Humanities Forum on Connections. This other is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/uhf_2010/10 Their Eyes Were God’s: A Counter-Cartography of “The Known World” Jonathan Howard 2009–2010 Penn Humanities Forum Undergraduate Mellon Research Fellowship Their Eyes Were God’s: A Counter-Cartography of “The Known World” What makes a map so useful is its genius of omission. It is reality uncluttered, pared to its essence, stripped of all but the essentials. —Phillip C Muehrcke Cartography has a confession to make. After completing his world atlas in 1594, Cornelis D. Jode decided “Speculum Orbis Terrae” (Mirror of the World) was the title best suited for his cartographic masterpiece. And so this famous cartographer provided the initial strain for what has since become an ever-growing web of longitudinal and latitudinal lies. Naming his map thusly, Jode ironically blasphemes the very Earth of which he and his fellow cartographers are supposed disciples. His insistence upon cartography’s objectivity, that maps, in spite of all they must omit to arrive at their final image, totally, naturally and neutrally reflect the world as a mirror would, is a deception of tragic implications, particularly for the slaves of Manchester County. Perhaps it was with a guilty conscience, then, that cartographers contrived the confession contained in the title of that segment of a map that divulges the meaning of its symbols: the “legend.” Edward P. Jones, however, would have a more explicit confession of cartography’s erring claim to objectivity, even at the threatening point of his meticulous pen. Frustrated with the criminal omissions contained in maps, Jones writes The Known World, a novel of meticulous, if (in the opinion of some) exhausting, narration that strives to tell every story and omit nothing. In order to call attention to cartography’s mounting lies, Jones both literally and literarily arrests cartography’s canonical masterpiece, Hans Waldseemuller’s 1507 world atlas entitled “Universalis Cosmographia” (The Entire Cosmography) and popularly known as the “The Known World.” Hanging “The Known World” upon the wall of the Manchester County jail, Jones interrogates the first ever visual representation of America about its implication in the ideological foundations of American slavery.1 LEGEND There are several maps throughout The Known World, but none more peculiar and unconventional than William Robbins’ home, from which the structure of this paper is derived. Robbins is the most prominent slave owner in Manchester County and his daughter, Patience, executes the novel’s most unusual act of cartography. The downstairs of his mansion his daughter called the South and the upstairs she called the North. “Go to the East, Mama,” Patience, the daughter, would say years later on that day Dora came to the mansion. It was the day Patience thought William Robbins was near death. “Go to the East and I will seek you out there. Please Mama. Please sweetheart…” The two daughters had never seen each other before that day. (119-20) Families live in homes. When Robbins constructs his—a cartographic act in its own right to the extent that it is an organization of space—he makes a vital omission since he must leave in order to visit “a black woman and the two children he had with her.” (20) But Robbins’ omission of the rest of his family is not to be mistaken for their absence. They occupy that section of the house that Patience comes to call the “West.” Years later Patience shows her half-sister, Dora, to the room her omission had already been saving for her, revising her father’s cartography with her own counter-cartography. In the manner of Patience’s counter-cartography, then, this paper divides itself into the four orientations of the compass. Beginning in the East and proceeding clockwise, the East, where Patience sends her mother, will feature a close reading of Hans Waldseemuller’s “The Known World.” The atlas will be established as a site of the omission and distortion of black humanity, and its over-looked role in the formation of 1 “The Known World” was the first map to feature the word “America.” American slavery will also be explored. The South, that geographic address slavery, will detail precisely how the visual dehumanization of Africans contained in Waldseemuller’s atlas creates a world of slavery. For this purpose, it will consider the execution of democracy in the antebellum period as an extradiegetic parallel to Manchester County once it is transferred to the judicial supervision of the democratically inclined sheriff John Skiffington. The West, the site of Patience’s counter cartography, will perform a close reading of the map that concludes the novel as well as divulge the counter- cartographic method of its author, a fugitive slave named Alice Night. Finally, the essay will conclude in the North, the geographic address of liberty, where the end of slavery’s jurisdiction signals possibility for the recuperation of freedom. EAST There, on the wall of the Manchester County Jail, hangs history’s first cartographic illustration of America. Han Waldseemuller’s canonical masterpiece was printed in St. Die, France in 1507 on twelve individual sheets of woodblock that could be assembled into a wall map.2 Jones is precise in his rendering of the map in everything but the year he chooses to uncover it. After its printing in 1507, Waldseemuller’s revolutionary view of the world fell into obscurity. For more than 300 years, the only remaining copy lay dormant on the shelves of a German library until its re-discovery in 1901. Thus, the “The Known World” was ironically unknown in the antebellum age in which Jones chooses to resuscitate it. In this way, Jones manipulates history’s distribution of existence to render an actual historical map a piece of fiction, no more real in its time 2 Hessler, John W. The Naming of America: Martin Waldseemuller’s 1507 World map and the Cosmographiae Introductio. Library of Congress, 2008. than the fictional county over which it presides. A fictional truth claim, then, the map is ripe for the employment of postmodern deconstructionist methodologies.3 This conceptual leap—that a map can and should be interpreted as a piece of fiction—is easy to make when, as is the case with Waldseemuller’s map, we find literal text embedded in the map itself. (Image 1) Furthermore, a literary close reading of this map, in particular, is encouraged since its primary influences, by Waldseemuller’s own articulation, are literary: Few will deny that it is also profitable to learn from books the location of lands…Therefore to the best of my ability I have studied with the help of others the books of Ptolemy from a Greek manuscript and, having added the information from the four voyages of Amerigo Vespucci, I have drawn a map of the whole world…4 Here we learn that Waldseemuller’s map is complete with its own bibliography, one populated with unquestionably subjective sources that disavow his claim to the production of “true and precise geographic knowledge.”5 And as we begin to analyze the fictional elements of Waldseemuller’s atlas, we may situate his map within the literary traditions represented by the literatures mentioned above: Greek mythology and the travel narrative. Deconstruction encourages the postmodern reader to read in the margins of the text. Fittingly then, we begin our textual reading of “The Known World” from its margins. There, immediately evidencing the influences of Greek mythology, we see the Four Winds—Boreas, Eurus, Notus, and Zephyrus—teeming about the Olympian Clouds 3 Cartographer J.B. Harley should be credited with introducing the map as an object needing the attention of deconstruction. In “Deconstructing the Map,” he writes, “Deconstruction urges us to read between the lines of the map—‘in the margins of the text’—and through its tropes to discover the silences and contradictions that challenge the apparent honesty of the image. We begin to learn that cartographic facts are only facts within a specific cultural perspective. We start to understand how maps, like art, far from being ‘a transparent opening to the world,’ are but ‘a particular human way…of looking at the world.’ 4 Hessler, John W. (72) 5 Hessler, John W. (35) that constitute the map’s periphery. (Image 2) Centrally located and visually deified in the Olympian clouds, we also find the portraits of Amerigo Vespucci and Claudius Ptolemy, each depicted beside a sub-map of the New and Old World respectively. (Images 3-4) Thus, Waldseemuller credits Vespucci and Ptolemy with the discovery of the parts of the world that he so famously synthesizes in “The Known World.” Deified in this manner, Vespucci and Ptolemy occupy a seat of power otherwise reserved for Zeus in the context of Greek mythology.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • PHILIP ROTH and the STRUGGLE of MODERN FICTION by JACK
    PHILIP ROTH AND THE STRUGGLE OF MODERN FICTION by JACK FRANCIS KNOWLES A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (English) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) July 2020 © Jack Francis Knowles, 2020 The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, the dissertation entitled: Philip Roth and The Struggle of Modern Fiction in partial fulfillment of the requirements submitted by Jack Francis Knowles for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Examining Committee: Ira Nadel, Professor, English, UBC Supervisor Jeffrey Severs, Associate Professor, English, UBC Supervisory Committee Member Michael Zeitlin, Associate Professor, English, UBC Supervisory Committee Member Lisa Coulthard, Associate Professor, Film Studies, UBC University Examiner Adam Frank, Professor, English, UBC University Examiner ii ABSTRACT “Philip Roth and The Struggle of Modern Fiction” examines the work of Philip Roth in the context of postwar modernism, tracing evolutions in Roth’s shifting approach to literary form across the broad arc of his career. Scholarship on Roth has expanded in both range and complexity over recent years, propelled in large part by the critical esteem surrounding his major fiction of the 1990s. But comprehensive studies of Roth’s development rarely stray beyond certain prominent subjects, homing in on the author’s complicated meditations on Jewish identity, a perceived predilection for postmodern experimentation, and, more recently, his meditations on the powerful claims of the American nation. This study argues that a preoccupation with the efficacies of fiction—probing its epistemological purchase, questioning its autonomy, and examining the shaping force of its contexts of production and circulation— roots each of Roth’s major phases and drives various innovations in his approach.
    [Show full text]
  • 11 Th Grade American Literature Summer Assignment (2019­2020 School Y Ear)
    6/26/2019 American Lit Summer Reading 2019-20 - Google Docs 11 th Grade American Literature Summer Assignment (2019­2020 School Y ear) Welcome to American Literature! This summer assignment is meant to keep your reading and writing skills fresh. You should choose carefully —select books that will be interesting and enjoyable for you. Any assignments that do not follow directions exactly will not be accepted. This assignment is due Friday, August 16, 2019 to your American Literature Teacher. This will count as your first formative grade and be used as a diagnostic for your writing ability. Directions: For your summer assignment, please choose o ne of the following books to read. You can choose if your book is Fiction or Nonfiction. Fiction Choices Nonfiction Choices Catch 22 by Joseph Heller The satirical story of a WWII soldier who The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace by Jeff Hobbs. An account thinks everyone is trying to kill him and hatches plot after plot to keep of a young African‑American man who escaped Newark, NJ, to attend from having to fly planes again. Yale, but still faced the dangers of the streets when he returned is, Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison The story of an abusive “nuanced and shattering” ( People ) and “mesmeric” ( The New York Southern childhood. Times Book Review ) . The Known World by Edward P. Jones The story of a black, slave Outliers / Blink / The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell Fascinating owning family. statistical studies of everyday phenomena. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway A young American The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story by Richard Preston There is an anti‑fascist guerilla in the Spanish civil war falls in love with a complex outbreak of ebola virus in an American lab, and other stories of germs woman.
    [Show full text]
  • December-2016.Pdf
    the hollstein journal december 2016 It is my great pleasure to write these first few lines introducing our first e-newsletter. Via this medium, which we aim to publish at least twice a year, we will keep you informed about various Hollstein projects: more in depth information about some of our current projects, new research, publication schedules, as well as other activities connected to Dutch and Flemish and German prints before 1700. In this first issue you will be introduced by Ad Stijnman to Johannes Teyler and the à la poupée printing technique. These volumes to be published in our series The New Hollstein Dutch & Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, 1450-1700 will be the first ever to be in full colour. Some of our previous volumes on the oeuvres of Hendrick Goltzius and Frans Floris already included a few colour plates but Teyler’s substantial oeuvre covers every colour of the rainbow. Marjolein Leesberg will discuss Gerard and Cornelis de Jode. Her research on the De Jode dynasty resulted in such a wealth of new material that we decided to divide The New Hollstein Dutch & Flemish volumes into two separate publications. The first will cover Gerard and Cornelis de Jode and the second following comprises the subsequent family members Pieter de Jode I, Pieter de Jode II, and Arnold de Jode. With the end of the year quickly approaching, I, on behalf of the whole team, would like to take the opportunity to wish you a Merry Christmas and a prosperous 2017. Frits Garritsen Director johannes teyler and dutch colour printing 1685-1710 The group of prints compiled for the forthcoming The à la poupée process had been used since 1457,2 New Hollstein volumes concern what are known as usually inking copper plates but also woodblocks in ‘Teyler prints’.
    [Show full text]
  • English Department Suggested Summer Reading Choices
    English Department Suggested Summer Reading Choices For more information on any of the following titles, and additional book selections visit one of the following websites for book reviews: http://www.nytimes.com/pages/books/ http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/ http://www.barnesandnoble.com/bookstore.asp?r=1&popup=0 FICTION Allison, Dorothy Bastard Out of Carolina Allende, Isabel The House of Spirits Alvarez, Julia How the Garcia Girls Lost their Accents, In The Time of the Butterflies Anderson, Sherwood Winesburg, Ohio (Stories) Atwood, Margaret Cat’s Eye, The Handmaid’s Tale, Alias Grace Austen, Jane Emma, Mansfield Park, Persuasion, Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice Baldwin, James If Beale Street Could Talk Bellow, Saul Seize the Day, Henderson the Rain King Best American Short Stories from any year Borges, Jorge Luis Labyrinths Bronte, Charlotte Villette, Northanger Abbey, Bronte, Emily Wuthering Heights Buck, Pearl S. The Good Earth Camus, Albert The Stranger Capote, Truman, In Cold Blood, Breakfast at Tiffany’s Cather, Willa My Antonia, O Pioneers Cervantes, Miguel de Don Quixote Chabon, Michael, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, Wonder Boys Chevalier, Tracy Girl With A Pearl Earring Chopin, Kate The Awakening Cisneros, Sandra Woman Hollering Creek Crane, Stephen The Red Badge of Courage Cunningham, Michael At Home at the End of the World Defoe, Daniel Robinson Crusoe Dickens, Charles David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities Dostoevsky, Fyodor Crime and Punishment Dumas, Alexander The Count of Monte Cristo du Maurier, Daphne Rebecca Eggers, Dave What is the What Eliot, George The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner Ellison, Ralph Invisible Man Erdrich, Louise Love Medicine, The Beet Queen, Tracks, The Painted Drum, et.
    [Show full text]
  • On-The-Go Book Club Bags
    Resources for Book Clubs: On-the-Go Book Club Bags MARPLE LIBRARY 2599 Sproul Road Broomall, PA 19008 Our On-the-Go Book Club Bags can be checked out (610) 356-1510 for up to 8 weeks. www.marplelibrary.org Late fees are $3 per day. Each bag contains: Multiple copies of the book Large-print edition (when available) Audiobook (when available) A folder with discussion questions See a Librarian at the Reference Desk for more information or to reserve a bag. Updated April 2021 Bag 1: The Known World by Edward P. Jones When a plantation proprietor and former slave--now possessing slaves of his own--dies, his household falls apart in the wake of a slave rebellion and corrupt underpaid patrollers who enable free black people to be sold into slavery. Bag 2: In the Midst of Winter by Isabel Allende A minor traffic accident becomes the catalyst for an unexpected and moving love story between two peo- ple who thought they were deep into the winter of heir lives. Bag 3: March by Geraldine Brooks In a story inspired by the father character in "Little Women" and drawn from the journals and letters of The Marple Public Library Louisa May Alcott's father, a man leaves behind his family to serve in the Civil War and finds his beliefs challenged by his experiences. expresses its gratitude to the Bag 4: A Piece of the World by Christina Baker Kline Friends of the Library Imagines the life story of Christina Olson, the subject of Andrew Wyeth's painting "Christina's World," de- scribing the simple life she led on a remote Maine for the funds donated to farm, her complicated relationship with her family, and the illness that incapacitated her.
    [Show full text]
  • The Known World"
    Beata Zawadka Past into Present and Back : A (Mis)Use of the Southern History in Edward P. Jones’ "The Known World" Annales Neophilologiarum nr 3, 87-97 2009 ANNALES NEOPHILOLOGIARUM 3 Rok 2009 BEATA ZAWADKA* University of Szczecin PAST INTO PRESENT AND BACK: A (MIS)USE OF THE SOUTHERN HISTORY IN EDWARD P. JONES’S THE KNOWN WORLD “The conviction that there exist solid facts, objective and independent of historical interpretation is a common illusion, and a diffi cult one to eliminate” wrote E.H. Carr in his series of lectures entitled What is history1. Although the book, published as early as 1964, inspired other theoretical sources to clearly show the relationships which bind history to culture and how complicated they are2, there is still an emphasis on authenticity and accuracy as the keys to “true” history rather than on understanding that our only contemporary access to his- tory is through the stories we tell about it3. This is because discerning the “real” facts of history without fi ltering them through many past, present, even future * Beata Zawadka – literaturoznawca, amerykanistka, adiunkt w Katedrze Filologii Angielskiej Uniwersytetu Szczecińskiego. Tytuł doktora nauk humanistycznych uzyskała na Wydziale Filo- logicznym Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego (dysertacja doktorska na temat tożsamości kobiet-bohaterek utworów literackich Petera Taylora). Prowadzi zajęcia z literatury amerykańskiej, fi lmoznawst- wa i kultury popularnej. Autorka artykułów z zakresu literatury amerykańskiej, w szczególności współczesnego amerykańskiego Południa. Jej zawodowe zainteresowania koncentrują się na badaniu kultury „niskiej” na amerykańskim Południu w kontekście kampu (tytuł najnowszego projektu badawczego to CAMPus South. Southern Mythologies in the Service of Transcultur- ality).
    [Show full text]
  • Volume III . Questões De Limites: Guiana Francesa (1ª Memória)
    OBRAS DO BARÃO DO RIO BRANCO III QUESTÕES DE LIMITES GUIANA FRANCESA 1ª MEMÓRIA MINISTÉRIO DAS RELAÇÕES EXTERIORES Ministro de Estado Embaixador Antonio de Aguiar Patriota Secretário-Geral Embaixador Ruy Nunes Pinto Nogueira FUNDAÇÃO ALEXANDRE DE GUSMÃO Presidente Embaixador José Vicente de Sá Pimentel Instituto de Pesquisa de Relações Internacionais Diretor Centro de História e Documentação Diplomática Diretor Embaixador Maurício E. Cortes Costa A Fundação Alexandre de Gusmão , instituída em 1971, é uma fundação pública vinculada ao 0LQLVWpULRGDV5HODo}HV([WHULRUHVHWHPD¿QDOLGDGHGHOHYDUjVRFLHGDGHFLYLOLQIRUPDo}HV sobre a realidade internacional e sobre aspectos da pauta diplomática brasileira. Sua missão é promover a sensibilização da opinião pública nacional para os temas de relações internacionais e para a política externa brasileira. Ministério das Relações Exteriores Esplanada dos Ministérios, Bloco H Anexo II, Térreo, Sala 1 70170-900 Brasília, DF Telefones: (61) 2030-6033/6034/6847 Fax: (61) 2030-9125 Site: www.funag.gov.br Obras do Barão do Rio Branco III Questões de Limites Guiana Francesa 1a Memória Ministério das Relações Exteriores Fundação Alexandre de Gusmão Brasília, 2012 'LUHLWRVGHSXEOLFDomRUHVHUYDGRVj Fundação Alexandre de Gusmão Ministério das Relações Exteriores Esplanada dos Ministérios, Bloco H Anexo II, Térreo 70170-900 Brasília – DF Telefones: (61) 2030-6033/6034 Fax: (61) 2030-9125 Site: www.funag.gov.br E-mail: [email protected] Editor: Embaixador Manoel Antonio da Fonseca Couto Gomes Pereira Equipe Técnica: Eliane Miranda Paiva Vanusa dos Santos Silva André Luiz Ventura Ferreira Pablinne Stival Marques Gallert Revisão de: Mariana de Moura Coelho Programação Visual e Diagramação: *Ui¿FDH(GLWRUD,GHDO/WGD Impresso no Brasil 2012 Obras do Barão do Rio Branco III : questões de limites Guiana francesa primeira memória.
    [Show full text]
  • Addition to Summer Letter
    May 2020 Dear Student, You are enrolled in Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition for the coming school year. Bowling Green High School has offered this course since 1983. I thought that I would tell you a little bit about the course and what will be expected of you. Please share this letter with your parents or guardians. A.P. Literature and Composition is a year-long class that is taught on a college freshman level. This means that we will read college level texts—often from college anthologies—and we will deal with other materials generally taught in college. You should be advised that some of these texts are sophisticated and contain mature themes and/or advanced levels of difficulty. In this class we will concentrate on refining reading, writing, and critical analysis skills, as well as personal reactions to literature. A.P. Literature is not a survey course or a history of literature course so instead of studying English and world literature chronologically, we will be studying a mix of classic and contemporary pieces of fiction from all eras and from diverse cultures. This gives us an opportunity to develop more than a superficial understanding of literary works and their ideas. Writing is at the heart of this A.P. course, so you will write often in journals, in both personal and researched essays, and in creative responses. You will need to revise your writing. I have found that even good students—like you—need to refine, mature, and improve their writing skills. You will have to work diligently at revising major essays.
    [Show full text]
  • Read a Pulitzer Prize-Winning Book
    September 2020 Reading Challenge: Read a Pulitzer Prize-Winning Book Key for on which services the books are located: A = Axis 360 C = CloudLibrary H = Hoopla L = Libby O = Overdrive ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ P = Print LP = Large Print eAudio = AudioCD = CD ​ ​ ​ ​ March by Geraldine Brooks (fiction) P, LP ​ In a story inspired by the father character in "Little Women" and drawn from the journals and letters of Louisa May Alcott's father, a man leaves behind his family to serve in the Civil War and finds his beliefs challenged by his experiences. The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea by Jack E. Davis (non-fiction) P, C H ​ A comprehensive history of the Gulf of Mexico and its identity as a region marked by hurricanes, oil fields, and debates about population growth and the environment demonstrates how its picturesque ecosystems have inspired and reflected key historical events. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (fiction) P, LT, O, L, O L ​ Living with an old-world mother and rebellious sister, an urban New Jersey misfit dreams of becoming the next J. R. R. Tolkien and believes that a long-standing family curse is thwarting his efforts to find love and happiness. Late Wife by Claudia Emerson (poetry) P ​ In Late Wife, a woman explores her disappearance from one life and reappearance in another ​ ​ as she addresses her former husband, herself, and her new husband in a series of epistolary poems. Though not satisfied in her first marriage, she laments vanishing from the life she and her husband shared for years.
    [Show full text]
  • Barry Lawrence Ruderman Antique Maps Inc
    Barry Lawrence Ruderman Antique Maps Inc. 7407 La Jolla Boulevard www.raremaps.com (858) 551-8500 La Jolla, CA 92037 [email protected] Universi Orbis Seu Terreni Globi In Plano Effigies Cum privilegio Stock#: 40407ct Map Maker: de Jode Date: 1571 (1578) Place: Antwerp Color: Hand Colored Condition: VG+ Size: 20.5 x 13 inches Price: SOLD Description: Fine Original Color Example of De Jode's Rare Cordiform Map of the World Exceptional old color example of De Jode's scarce heart-shaped projection, etched by the van Doetecums and first published as a separately issued map in 1571. The central projection is surrounded by ten wind heads, cherubic faces blowing currents across the globe. In the lower left is a celestial sphere, while a terrestrial sphere, focused on the Atlantic and Africa, sits in the lower right corner. The etchers names, Joannes and Lucas Van Doetecum, are in the top left, near a wind head in the corner. The map provides a fine depiction of the newly separate North America, no longer shown attached to Asia. Japan, or Giapan as it is included here, is closely sandwiched between California and Asia. There is little speculation as to the far north of North America. South America is well-shaped, with its southernmost point separated from a large unknown continent by the Straits of Magellan. Tierra del Fuego is but one peninsula in the vast landmass to the south which, thanks to the cordiform projection, seems to hug half the world. The Pacific Ocean is peppered with early Spanish discoveries, while the East Indies includes the main islands already contacted for spice trade.
    [Show full text]
  • 432 1 Americæa Pars Borealis, Florida
    #432 Americæa Pars Borealis, Florida, Baccalaos, Canada, Corterealis Description: Cornelis de Jode’s map of North America is preceded only by the separately issued Forlani/Zaltieri map of 1565 (#391), and an extremely rare separately issued map. Together with a smaller western sheet, Quivirae, this was the first folio sized atlas map to focus on North America. The plates were purchased by J.B. Vrients who kept de Jode’s work out of publication in favor of Ortelius’ Theatrum. The French, like the British, resented the exclusive Iberian franchise on new lands dictated by the papal demarcation line, and tried to stake out claims of their own in what is now the United States. They targeted the region of northern Florida, officially in the Spanish sphere of influence. Although it had been abandoned by Spain as a region of serious exploration by a decree of Philip II in 1561, French presence there was nonetheless viewed as trespassing. The experience of France’s first attempt to colonize northern Florida, in 1562, is sadly parallel to what would happen to the British in Roanoke two decades later. Jean Ribault and Rene Goulaine de Laudonniere commanded the mission, which crossed the Atlantic directly from the French port of Havre de Grace to North America, rather than sailing the more common route through the Spanish Main and north. De Jode has written Laudnner hue. appulit and Ribaldus hue, at their landfall on the Florida peninsula. From there, they reconnoitered north, reaching a large river they named Mai because they found it on the first day of May.
    [Show full text]
  • Book Discussion Schedules 2007
    COLUMBIAN BOOK DISCUSSION! SCHEDULE 2006-2007! !July - The Kite Runner by Kahled Hosseini! !August - March by Geraldine Brooks! !September - Digging to America by Anne Tyler! !October - The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson! !November - Peace Like a River by Lefi Enger! !January 4 - The Known World by Edwar P. Jones! !January 25 - Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks! !March 1 - Life of Pi by Yann Martel! !March 25 - My Antonia by Willa Cather! !April - Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns! !May - Charming Billy by Alice McDermott! !June - The Atonement by Ian MEwan! ! COLUMBIAN BOOK DISCUSSION! SCHEDULE 2007-2008! !September - Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes! !October - A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khalid Hosseini! !November - Gilead Marilynne Robinson! !January - The Road by Cormac McCarthy! !February - East of Eden by John Steinbeck! !March - Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels! !April - Last Night at the Lobster by Steward O’Nan! !May The Inheritance of Loss by Diran Desai! June - His Illegal Self by Peter Carey! ! ! COLUMBIAN BOOK DISCUSSION! SCHEDULE 2008-2009! !September - Middlemarch by Gearge Eliot! !October - Day by A. L. Kennedy! !November - Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton! !January - The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver! !February - Home by Marilynne Robinson! !March - The Lemon Tree by Sandy Tolan! !April - The vision of Emma Blau by Ursula Hegi! !May - Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston! !June - Crow Lake by Mary Lawson! ! COLUMBIAN BOOK DISCUSSION! SCHEDULE 2009-2010! !September - A Tale of
    [Show full text]