Steve Mentz

THE BOOKFISH

THALASSOLOGY, SHAKESPEARE, AND SWIMMING

  • Home
  • Steve Mentz
  • Humanities Commons
  • Public Writing
  • The sea! the sea!
  • The Bookfish
  • St. Johns

What Can You Do With a Maritime Atlas?

April 21, 2011 by Steve Mentz Leave a Comment

A map from Dudley's Arcano

I was wondering until the last minute if we’d have enough students to justify this “undergraduate seminar” featuring the JCB’s collection of maritime atlases, but it turns out I should not have worried.  We pulled in about 10 eager Brown students, mostly from Jean Feerick’s Shakespeare class, and one intrepid voyager from U Conn Avery Point, who came with his professor, Mary K Bercaw-Edwards.  We also drew in a few other Oceaners who had arrived early, the JCB’s rare books curator, and all in all the room was pretty full.  Atlases are big!

Susan Danforth, the brilliant and deeply knowledgable maps curator, led a tour that started with a hand-colored 1480s Ptolomy, then quickly showed the shock of discovery in a gorgeous 1511 Italian Portolan chart, that showed how old Mediterranean cartographic habits struggled to make sense out of the strange new vistas of Africa and the West Indies. 

This is not the portolan we saw

A few of my favorites were on display — Dudley’s Arcano del Mare, which some call the most beautiful of all 17c atlases, and the less opulent Altas Maritimus & Commercialis, which was purportedly ghost-written by Daniel Defoe and about which I built a web-interactive site for the Folger show last summer.

A map from the Altas Maritime & Commercialis, 1728

These huge, ungainly books show the technical challenge posed by the maritime: the ocean and its coastlines are simply too big and complex to represent simply.  I take these atlases to diplay on a very literal level the shock of the transoceanic turn, and the effort of early modern cartographers, sailors, and others to transform watery disorder into something legible, usuable, and even marketable. 

A good way to start!

Filed Under: Blue Humanities, Hungry Ocean

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

About Steve

Steve Mentz
Professor of English
St. John’s University
Read Bio

Twitter Feed

Steve MentzFollow

Steve Mentz
stevermentzSteve Mentz@stevermentz·
25 Jan

Walks in the winter woods in early 2021 have taken me through two big climate books that have a funhouse mirror reflective quality. First I devoured KSR's latest doorstopper, a hopeful vision of global eco-response.

https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/kim-stanley-robinson/the-ministry-for-the-future/9780316300162/

Reply on Twitter 1353825082460811266Retweet on Twitter 13538250824608112661Like on Twitter 13538250824608112664Twitter 1353825082460811266
stevermentzSteve Mentz@stevermentz·
25 Jan

Fascinating article about Drexciya & the need to memorialize remember the transoceanic slave trade #bluehumanities

Reply on Twitter 1353752897570418688Retweet on Twitter 1353752897570418688Like on Twitter 13537528975704186882Twitter 1353752897570418688
Load More...

Pages

  • OCEAN Publicity
  • #SAA 2020: Watery Thinking
  • Creating Nature: May 2019 at the Folger
  • Audio and Video Recordings
  • Oceanic New York
  • Public Writing
  • Published Work
  • #pluralizetheanthropocene

Recent Posts

  • Blue Humanities
  • Bookfish in 2020
  • Writing in 2020
  • Reads of 2020
  • Vineland Reread by Peter Coviello

Copyright © 2021 · News Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in