Sea Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps

Chet A. Van Duzer

ISBN 10: 0712358900 / ISBN 13: 9780712358903

Published by British Library, 2013

About this Item

Sea Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps The sea monsters on medieval and Renaissance maps are one of their most visually engaging elements, and yet they have never before been carefully studied. The subject is important not only in the history of cartography, art, and zoological illustration, but also in the history of the geography of the marvelous and Western conceptions of the ocean. Moreover, the sea monsters depicted on maps can supply important insights into the sources, influences, and methods of the cartographers who drew or painted them. In this wonderfully illustrated book the book author analyses the more important examples of sea monsters on maps produced in Europe, beginning with the earliest mappaemundi on which they appear in the tenth century and continuing to the end of the sixteenth century. The book will be the standard work on the subject for years to come.

Seller Inventory # f60a2112-4eee-4084-bbfa-252346067946

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Sea Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps
• Publisher: British Library
• Publication Date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0712358900
• ISBN 13: 9780712358903
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: As New
• Seller catalogs:
  • Maps & Travel

About this title

Synopsis

Lavish. . . . The sea monsters depicted throughout Van Duzer's beautifully illustrated British Library volume strike absolute wonder in the reader today, and the author provides valuable insight into what medieval and Renaissance viewers must have made of these sinewy, silly, horned, fanged, and fearsome creatures. . . . Van Duzer reminds scholars that it sometimes helps to let the eye wander to the margins, to get a different historical perspective of medieval perspectives of their surrounding seas. This critical analysis of a hitherto ignored cartographic trope adds much-needed depth to our understanding of medieval and later perceptions of the sea and its mysterious creatures.--Vicki Ellen Szabo, Western Carolina University "Nautical Research Journal "

About the Author

Chet Van Duzer is an Invited Research Scholar at the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University in Providence, RI.