Drawn for the Mind's Eye: Map Metaphors in Early Modern English Literature

Abstract

ABSTRACTCuriosity about imaginary thematic maps described in The Consolidator, Daniel Defoe’s 1705 satirical fantasy about a trip to the Moon, inspired research into the early modern English public's knowledge of maps. The Early English Books Online (EEBO) and Eighteenth Century Books Online (ECCO) databases of digitized early modern literature were employed. A full-text EEBO search of 1600–1700 found the word ‘map’ and its variants in 3382 records. A similar search in ECCO of 1701–1710 yielded results in 1425 records. About half of the results are printed map illustrations and mentions of actual maps, while the remainder are map metaphors in sermons, poems, plays, etc. The metaphors can be classified using Oxford English Dictionary definitions of ‘map’. This literary use of map metaphors arguably prepared the public to accept maps as tools for the visualization of invisible or intangible physical and cultural phenomena, when thematic maps began to develop in the mid-eighteenth century.