Worldmaking and Early Modernity: Cartographic <span class='italic'>Poesis</span> in Europe and South Asia

doi:10.1017/9781009064446.005

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

Ayesha Ramachandran

Edited by

Debjani Ganguly

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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

Worldmaking maps early modern Europe South Asia

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Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge History of World Literature , pp. 109 - 131

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009064446.005 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2021

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