“The light of simple veritie”: Mapping out Spenser’s Cosmography in “The Ruines of Time”

Abstract

This essay argues that Edmund Spenser’s “The Ruines of Time” is, alongside its role as elegy and complaint, a cosmographic work that engages in what I call “spiritual mapping”—a cartographic process that combines anti-worldly discourse with a trans-historical representation of space. By considering Spenser’s poem alongside William Camden’s Britannia , this essay highlights the textual act of mapping present in both works in an attempt to reveal the influence of an international community of mapmakers, including the Familists, who provided a model for cosmographic work that highlighted spiritual and irenic interests alongside the technical practice of representing space.

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