An Early English Rutter: The Sea and Spatial Hermeneutics in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries

Abstract

The earliest English rutter, a maritime navigational treatise from the mid-fifteenth century, is among the oldest of its kind to survive in Europe. Its three manuscripts, one with vivid illuminations, and a sixteenth-century print edition address the landmasses, coastal seas, and shores around England, Ireland, northern France, Spain, and Portugal. From the rutter we can gain an intimate sense of how the ecotones—the coastal areas—were perceived. Given the relatively large quantity of available information about early owners, we also can begin to ask what this group of people might have found attractive about a navigational text. The answers to these inquiries, I will demonstrate, cast light on the geographical topic of the sea, on the nature of anthology manuscripts, and on late-medieval understandings of space more generally.

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