Manuscripts, Maps, and the Dynamics of Reading in the European Middle Ages

Abstract

This article examines the interaction on the page and in the book of the visual and textual representations of space. Its focus is on mappae mundi ‘world maps’ and the geographical extracts from the twelfth century encyclopedic text Imago mundi. Using the examples of map and text interaction in four manuscripts from the British Isles and the Netherlands, the article demonstrates that the juxtaposition of image and text can directly affect the reader’s potential physical experience of the book. The dynamics of reading demonstrated in the course of this analysis show a symbiotic relationship between the map and the geographical, historical, and theological material which it accompanies. An important implication of this finding discussed in the concluding section of the article is that the juxtaposition of map and text does not always correspond to our contemporary disciplinary definitions, and that it is worth questioning the assumption that these are the result of scientific evolution.