Transforming Europe in the Images of the World, 1110-1500: Fuzzy Geographies [Hardcover]

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.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.This book examines 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.Natalia I. Petrovskaia holds MA, MPhil and PhD degrees from the University of Cambridge. She is currently Assistant Professorlә