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4 - Worldmaking and Early Modernity: Cartographic Poesis in Europe and South Asia

from Part I - Genealogies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 August 2021

By
Ayesha Ramachandran
Edited by
Debjani Ganguly
Debjani Ganguly
Affiliation:
University of Virginia
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Summary

This essay develops a literary history of the concept “world” in the early modern period, suggesting that particular literary strategies—speculation, scalar juxtaposition, allegory, philology, and lexical play—became integral to imagining, naming, and shaping a particular vision of “world” across a range of media. Through a comparative study of European and South Asian examples, it shows how worldmaking literature in the early modern period can be characterized by “cartographic poesis,” that is, an intent to shape and represent the idea “world,” to bring it into being as a coherent concept and category. It further explores words for “world” and their significations across a range of languages and cultural contexts, highlighting how literature may be a crucial resource for envisioning ideas of global totality.

Keywords

Worldmakingmapsearly modernEuropeSouth Asia
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of World Literature , pp. 109 - 131
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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