IMC 2026: Sessions
Session 238: Mappings, II: Explorations and Timeless Maps
Monday 6 July 2026, 14:15-15:45
| Organisers: | Felicitas Schmieder, Historisches Institut, FernUniversität in Hagen Dan Terkla, Department of English, Illinois Wesleyan University |
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| Moderator/Chair: | Felicitas Schmieder, Historisches Institut, FernUniversität in Hagen |
| Paper 238-a | Maps and Changes in Geographical Representation: Temporalities in the Age of Exploration (Language: English) Index terms: Geography and Settlement Studies, Learning (The Classical Inheritance) |
| Paper 238-b | Rivers of Paradise: Rivers of Communication (Language: English) Index terms: Biblical Studies, Geography and Settlement Studies, Religious Life |
| Abstract | Medieval to 16th-century maps were well prepared to represent well-known and newly found parts of the world, as the so-called Ages of Exploration brought, in dense sequence, new information about regions never seen or described by Latin European travellers or cartographers. Taking different viewpoints, two speakers in this session take close looks at these cartographical contexts. At roughly the same time, the more the epoch we used to call modernity developed, the more medieval and early maps were despised as traces of darker times. Our third speaker looks to Alexander von Humboldt (1679-1859), a paragon of modernity, who appreciated the knowledge revealed by maps from Age of Exploration. In contrast, and at roughly the same time, the Hereford Map (c.1300) had been abused and largely forgotten in the cathedral for which it was made, until Canon Francis Tebbs Havergal (1829-90) realized its carto-historical value. |