Description
Book SynopsisIn Apocalyptic Cartography: Thematic Maps and the End of the World in a Fifteenth-Century Manuscript, Chet Van Duzer and Ilya Dines analyse Huntington Library HM 83, an unstudied manuscript produced in Lübeck, Germany. The manuscript contains a rich collection of world maps produced by an anonymous but strikingly original cartographer. These include one of the earliest programs of thematic maps, and a remarkable series of maps that illustrate the transformations that the world was supposed to undergo during the Apocalypse. The authors supply detailed discussion of the maps and transcriptions and translations of the Latin texts that explain the maps. Copies of the maps in a fifteenth-century manuscript in Wolfenbüttel prove that this unusual work did circulate. A brief article about this book on the website of National Geographic can be found here.
Trade Review“meticulous and well informed … Van Duzer and Dines have brought to light a cartographical corpus worthy indeed of further scholarly investigation.” Alessandro Scafi, The Warburg Institute, University of London. In: Imago Mundi Vol. 69, No. 1 (2017), pp. 119-120. “The book is sturdily and beautifully produced. The authors present their findings with admirable thoroughness and clarity, and with an expansive bibliography. … An exemplary work of scholarship that brings to light engaging new knowledge.” Robert E. Lerner, Northwestern University. In: Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 70, No. 2 (Summer 2017), pp. 682-683.
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments List of Illustrations Introduction Chapter 1. Description of Huntington HM 83 Chapter 2. The Historical Context: Lübeck in the Fifteenth Century Chapter 3. The Author Chapter 4. The Geographical Sections Excerpts from the Geographical Section Excerpts from the Section on Astronomy and Geography Links with the Rudimentum novitiorum Early Thematic Mapping The Maps in the Geographical Sections Chapter 5. The Treatise on the Apocalypse Late Fifteenth-Century German Apocalypticism The Apocalyptic Maps and Texts Proof of Circulation: Wolfenbüttel, HAB, Cod. Guelf. 442 Helmst Other Attempts to Map the Apocalypse Conclusions Index
