Scribes of Space: Place in Middle English Literature and Late Medieval Science

by Matthew Boyd Goldie

Overview

Scribes of Space posits that the conception of space—the everyday physical areas we perceive and through which we move—underwent critical transformations between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. Matthew Boyd Goldie examines how natural philosophers, theologians, poets, and other thinkers in late medieval Britain altered the ideas about geographical space they inherited from the ancient world.

In tracing the causes and nature of these developments, and how geographical space was consequently understood, Goldie focuses on the intersection of medieval science, theology, and literature, deftly bringing a wide range of writings—scientific works by Nicole Oresme, Jean Buridan, the Merton School of Oxford Calculators, and Thomas Bradwardine; spiritual, poetic, and travel writings by John Lydgate, Robert Henryson, Margery Kempe, the Mandeville author, and Geoffrey Chaucer—into conversation. This pairing of physics and literature uncovers how the understanding of spatial boundaries, locality, elevation, motion, and proximity shifted across time, signaling the emergence of a new spatial imagination during this era.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501734045
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	03/15/2019
Pages:	312
Sales rank:	845,991
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.06(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Matthew Boyd Goldie is Professor of English at Rider University, a founding member of MAPS: The Medieval Association of Place and Space, and author of The Idea of the Antipodes.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Late Medieval Space
1. Local Space, Edges, and Contents: Chorography and Late Medieval English Maps
2. Local Literature: Vernacular Local Space and John Lydgate's Siege of Thebes
3. Horizonal Space: Measuring Local Area with Astrolabes, Quadrants, and Topographia
4. Horizonal and Abstracted Spaces: The Book of Margery Kempe and The Book of Sir John Mandeville
5. The Science of Motion: New Ideas of Impetus and Measurement
6. Motion in Literature: Place and Movement in The House of Fame
7. Intense Proximate Affect: Nicole Oresme's Tractatus de configurationibus qualitatum et motuum
8. Proximal Literature: Nearness and Distinction in the Legend of Good Women
Afterword: Ubiquitous Being in the Pardoner's Prologue and Tale
Notes
Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

William F. Woods

I do not remember any one book that brings together as many medieval scientific ideas, or explains them as thoroughly as Scribes of Space. The breadth of Matthew Boyd Goldie's research and his determination to learn from ancient texts are rare virtues.

Editorial Reviews

In just over two hundred pages, Goldie offers a richly capacious and wide-ranging account of late medieval ideas of space... Scribes of Space is a rich and fascinating study; if we have indeed returned to the "spatial turn," on the evidence of Goldie's excellent book, there is much that remain to be learned.

Journal of British Studies

Goldie discerns a unique, if rarely encountered, sense of space in some medieval texts...An impressive volume that deserves to be carefully studied by those interested in literary history, early science, physics, and ancient history as it is grounded in the works of both Aristotle and Ptolemy.

Sun News Tucson - Cliff Cunningham

A wide, precise, and fascinating tour of ideas of space, motion, and measurement, interleaved with readings of literature (Chaucer, Margery Kempe, Mandeville, Lydgate, Henryson) considered in terms of these and other spatial ideas. The author shows how the 14th century combined traditional ideas of movement toward 'natural place' with the new idea of impetus; how new and old notions of horizon interacted; and how challenges to Aristotelean physics produced the first graphs charting variable velocity.... The readings of local maps offer good ways to approach any historical map, and the analysis of the portrait of Lydgate joining the Canterbury pilgrims, found in one medieval copy of Lydgate's 'addition' to The Canterbury Tales, is a model for analyzing art at the dawn of perspective.

Choice

An exceptionally spacious study... that focuses, with acute particularism, on premodern mentalities and material conditions in place, yielding insights into several literary landscapes.... Scribes of Space is a most welcome contribution to the study of medieval practices of space, articulating a cogent view of emplacement across various media and modalities. It is also a substantial and rewarding addition to the ongoing 'scientific turn' in medieval literary studies, expertly navigating medieval physics, geography, practical geometry, and poetry.

Studies in the Age of Chaucer

Scribes of Space does more than evince Goldie's erudition and wide-ranging interests; it evinces the need to understand the innovations of medieval scientific and mechanical knowledge as representative of an evolving understanding of the human mind.

SPECULUM - Lynn Staley

"I do not remember any one book that brings together as many medieval scientific ideas,or explains them as thoroughly as Scribes of Space. The breadth of Matthew Boyd Goldie's researchand his determination to learn from ancient texts are rare virtues."

William F. Woods