Literary Territories: Cartographical Thinking in Late Antiquity by Scott Fitzgerald Johnson (review)

• Autores: Michael Motia
• Localización: Journal of early Christian studies: Journal of the North American Patristic Society, ISSN 1067-6341, Nº. 3, 2017, págs. 495-496
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Johnson sets geographical literature within a larger literary trend in late antiquity: the "organization of knowledge," often through biblical or theological texts, coupled with "the related phenomenon of the sacralizing of specific holy places" (28).Pilgrimage narratives, letters, encyclopedic topography, cartography, pedagogy, and cosmology are all united by three constitutive elements: "1. the accumulation and organization of complete knowledge, or 'encyclopedism'; 2. creative two-dimensionality, with distortion; and 3. burdens placed on the viewer or reader, in terms of making use of the genre for practical purposes" (59).In addition to its comprehensive bibliography and index, the book contains an appendix chronicling "astrological, astronomical, cosmographical, geographical, and topographical texts in Greek, Latin, and Syriac from 1 to 700 CE" (139), making the book a wonderful resource for those interested specifically in cartographical thinking, encyclopedic aesthetics, or late antiquity more generally.