Terra incognita: mapping the Antipodes before 1600

Abstract

Until the entire world was mapped, terra incognita was not a metaphor. It existed and was acknowledged to exist. Yet the very acknowledgement of terra incognita raises a problem in the words themselves: without knowledge of it, how can land be represented? This study examines how unknown lands were represented from late Antiquity to 1600 - on maps, and in a variety of written texts, including poetry, treatises, political tracts and travel narratives. What this book does for the first time is to offer a comprehensive analysis of European traditions of representing unknown land from classical antiquity through to the end of the sixteenth century. This includes examination of a largly neglected aspect of medieval and early modern cartography - zonal or Macrobian maps - but it also includes integration of maps with literary texts and the broader culture in which they were embedded.

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