IMC 2021: Sessions
Session 1109: 14th-Century England, II: New Light on the Date, Composition, and Purpose of the Gough Map
Wednesday 7 July 2021, 11.15-12.45
| Sponsor: | Society for 14th-Century Studies |
|---|---|
| Organiser: | Gwilym Dodd, Department of History, University of Nottingham |
| Moderator/Chair: | David Green, Centre for British Studies, Harlaxton College, University of Evansville |
| Paper 1109-a | Britain Writ Large: Where Did the Idea of a Gough Map of Britain Come From? (Language: English) Index terms: Geography and Settlement Studies, Learning (The Classical Inheritance), Manuscripts and Palaeography, Political Thought |
| Paper 1109-b | Red Routes and River Crossings (Language: English) Index terms: Geography and Settlement Studies, Manuscripts and Palaeography |
| Paper 1109-c | Guff on Gough?: Some Thoughts on Why the Gough Map Was Made (Language: English) Index terms: Administration, Geography and Settlement Studies, Manuscripts and Palaeography, Politics and Diplomacy |
| Abstract | As the earliest surviving map of the whole of Britain drawn on a large separate sheet and not on a folio in a codex or squeezed into a corner of a mappa mundi, the Gough Map (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Gough Gen. Top. 16) can reasonably be called 'unique'. This session shines new light on this most enigmatic of medieval documents. The first paper considers the map-making tradition, stretching back 1200 years, which the Gough Map drew upon. The second paper will focus on the network of red lines on the map, interpreting them as routes rather than roads; and will also discuss the evidence on the map for fords, ferries, and bridges. The third paper presents hypotheses to explain why the map was created. |