Professor Harvey traces the development of western mapmaking from the early Middle Ages to the first printed maps of the late 15th century, discussing their traditions, artistic and technical aspects, and uses.

The sea monsters on medieval and Renaissance maps, whether swimming vigorously, gamboling amid the waves, attacking ships, or simply displaying themselves for our appreciation, are one of the most visually engaging elements on these maps, and yet they have never 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 of 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 highly-illustrated book the author analyzes the most important examples of sea monsters on medieval and Renaissance maps produced in Europe, beginning with the earliest mappaemundi on which they appear in the 10th century and continuing to the end of the 16th century.

This study centers on issues of marginality and monstrosity in medieval England. In the middle ages, geography was viewed as divinely ordered, so Britain's location at the periphery of the inhabitable world caused anxiety among its inhabitants. Far from the world's holy center, the geographic margins were considered monstrous. Medieval geography, for centuries scorned as crude, is now the subject of several careful studies. Monsters have likewise been the subject of recent attention in the growing field of monster studies, though few works situate these creatures firmly in their specific historical contexts. This book sits at the crossroads of these two discourses (geography and monstrosity), treated separately in the established scholarship but inseparable in the minds of medieval authors and artists.

The history of Islamic mapping is one of the new frontiers in the history of cartography. This book offers the first in-depth analysis of a distinct tradition of medieval Islamic maps known collectively as the Book of Roads and Kingdoms (Kitab al-Masalik wa al-Mamalik, or KMMS). Created from the mid-tenth through the nineteenth century, these maps offered Islamic rulers, scholars, and armchair explorers a view of the physical and human geography of the Arabian peninsula, the Persian Gulf, the Mediterranean, Spain and North Africa, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, the Iranian provinces, present-day Pakistan, and Transoxiana. Historian Karen C. Pinto examines around 100 examples of these maps retrieved from archives across the world from three points of view: iconography, context, and patronage. By unraveling their many symbols, she guides us through new ways of viewing the Muslim cartographic imagination.

Looks in detail at eight regional maps of Palestine that were drawn between the late 12th century and the mid-14th ; with their various versions and derivatives we know them through 23 surviving artifacts.

Until recently, medieval maps were often looked upon as quaint, amusing, and quite simply wrong. By comparison the best examples of modern cartography appear to offer a much more accurate record of the world. However, as Professor Edson makes clear in this stimulating book, when seeking the meaning and purpose of maps in the Middle Ages, one cannot assume that they were used for the same purposes or had the same meaning as they do today. In fact, the differences in structure and content give us an intriguing insight into how medieval mapmakers and readers saw their world. By a close study of the context in which the mapmakers produced their work, it can be shown that they were often striving to present -- and make sense of -- a world picture that naturally incorporated key 'events' from the past, at the same time showing a narrative of human spiritual development from the Creation to the Last Judgment. -- From publisher's description.

Filled with information and lore, mappae mundi present an encyclopaedic panorama of the conceptual 'landscape' of the middle ages. Previously objects of study for cartographers and geographers, the value of medieval maps to scholars in other fields is now recognised and this book, written from an art historical perspective, illuminates the medieval view of the world represented in a group of maps of c.1300. Thorough examination of literary, visual, oral and textual evidence places the Hereford mappa mundi and others like it (such as the Psalter Maps, the 'Sawley Map', and the Ebstorf Map) within the larger context of medieval art and intellectual history. The mappa mundi in Hereford cathedral is at the heart of this study: it has more than one thousand texts and images of geographical subjects, monuments, animals, plants, peoples, biblical sites and incidents, legendary material, historical information and much more; distinctions between 'real' and 'fantastic' are fluid; time and space are telescoped, presenting past, present, and future. Naomi Kline provides, for the first time, a full and detailed analysis of the images and texts of the Hereford map which, thus deciphered, allow comparison with related mappae mundi as well as with other texts and images.Contents: I. Hereford map as conceptual device: Cosmological wheel, Frame as time, Medieval audience II. Hereford map and worlds: Animals, Strange and monstrous races, Bible and crusades, Alexander III. Cartographic context.NAOMI REED KLINE is Professor of Art History at Plymouth State College.