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IMC 2023: Sessions

Session 523: Mappings, I: Monstrous Races on the Margins

Tuesday 4 July 2023, 09.00-10.30

Organisers:Felicitas Schmieder, Historisches Institut, FernUniversität Hagen
Dan Terkla, Department of English, Illinois Wesleyan University
Moderator/Chair:Felicitas Schmieder, Historisches Institut, FernUniversität Hagen
Paper 523-aFoot Upside Down: How Sciapods Came to Inhabit the Antipodes
(Language: English)
Kaila Yankelevich, Instituto de Filología y Literaturas Hispánicas 'Dr Amado Alonso', Universidad de Buenos Aires
Index terms: Anthropology, Geography and Settlement Studies
Paper 523-bMapping Gog and Magog in the Medieval World: New Approaches to Ethnic, Religious, and Political Discourses in Apocalyptic Thought
(Language: English)
Veronika Wieser, Institut für Mittelalterforschung, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien
Index terms: Biblical Studies, Geography and Settlement Studies, Learning (The Classical Inheritance)
Paper 523-cA Macrobian Map Model?: Looking at 13th-Century Mappaemundi Through the Lens of 'Monstrous Men'
(Language: English)
Catherine Megan Crossley, Independent Scholar, Menai Bridge
Index terms: Anthropology, Geography and Settlement Studies
Abstract

The so-called Monstrous Races - Antipodean Sciapods, apocalyptic Gog and Magog, Himantopodes, Blemmyes, and many others - were depicted on world maps and identified in writing throughout the history of Latin Europe. Usually, they are found on the geographical margins, however these are defined. This session's speakers explore reasons for the races' geographical placement, their role in medieval mental maps and ways in which apocalyptic attributes were projected onto them, and their interrelationships in a group of English mappaemundi.