The worldmakers : global imagining in early modern Europe / Ayesha Ramachandran.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ramachandran, Ayesha, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Geographical perception.

Human geography.

Historical geography.

Cosmography.

Philosophy and science--Europe--History.

Philosophy and science.

Europe--History.

Europe.

Europe--Civilization--16th century.

Europe--Civilization--17th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (299 p.)

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [2015]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In this beautifully conceived book, Ayesha Ramachandran reconstructs the imaginative struggles of early modern artists, philosophers, and writers to make sense of something that we take for granted: the world, imagined as a whole. Once a new, exciting, and frightening concept, "the world" was transformed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But how could one envision something that no one had ever seen in its totality? The Worldmakers moves beyond histories of globalization to explore how "the world" itself-variously understood as an object of inquiry, a comprehensive category, and a system of order-was self-consciously shaped by human agents. Gathering an international cast of characters, from Dutch cartographers and French philosophers to Portuguese and English poets, Ramachandran describes a history of firsts: the first world atlas, the first global epic, the first modern attempt to develop a systematic natural philosophy-all part of an effort by early modern thinkers to capture "the world" on the page.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Figures

Introduction: Worldmaking and the Project of Modernity

Chapter One. Mapping the Body, Mapping the World: Mercator's Atlas

Chapter Two. On Cosmographic Autobiography: Montaigne's Essais

Chapter Three. Cosmic Politics: The Worldly Epics of Camões and Spenser

Chapter Four. Cartesian Romance: Universal Origins and Le Monde

Chapter Five. "This Pendant World": Creating Miltonic Modernity

Epilogue: From Cosmography to Cosmopolitanism

Acknowledgments

Notes

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9780226288826

022628882X

OCLC:

924717986