-
Europe's confused transmutation: the realignment of moral cartography in Juan de la Cosa's Mappa Mundi (1500)
- Author(s):
- James Smith (see profile)
- Date:
- 2014
- Group(s):
- History, Medieval Studies, Religious Studies
- Subject(s):
- Sixteenth century, Seventeenth century, Intellectual life, History, Middle Ages
- Item Type:
- Article
- Tag(s):
- America, early modern Europe, european history, identity, intellectual history, 16th century, Early Modern, Intellectual history, Mapping, Medieval
- Permanent URL:
- http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M60J3S
- Abstract:
- Following the voyages of Christopher Columbus, John Cabot, Alonso de Ojeda and Amerigo Vespucci in the last decade of the fifteenth century, the New World of the Americas entered the cartographic and moral consciousness of Europe. In the 1500 mappa mundi of Juan de la Cosa, navigator and map-maker, we see Europe as a hybrid moral entity, a transitional blend of the medieval and the modern at the crossroads between two mappings of Europe. This paper argues that the Juan De la Cosa map represents a blurred transition between map-making traditions and a mixed moral rhetoric of European identity. The De la Cosa map operates across two sets of imagined axes: held horizontally, the map is set to a Ptolemaic grid with Europe straddling the Prime Meridian, and yet when held vertically it presents a medieval moral continuum in which the Americas occupy an ascendant position, a verdant new Jerusalem in contrast to the Babylon of the Old World. Europe is both drawn to the centre of a new world order, and also pushed to the moral margins in an echo of the medieval mappa mundi still imperfectly resolved.
- Metadata:
- xml
- Published as:
- Journal article
- Status:
- Published
- Last Updated:
- 6 years ago
- License:
- All-Rights-Granted
Downloads
Item Name: 
europe_s_confused_transmutation_the_real.pdfDownload View in browser Activity: Downloads: 550
