Geography’s medieval history

Abstract

This paper examines the marginal place of 'medieval geography' in contemporary geographical scholarship. Over the past two decades, geographers' studies of the subject's historiography have tended to focus mainly on 'modern' and 'early-modern' rather than medieval geographies. This contrasts with the early 20th century when 'medieval geography' was seen by geographers to be part of the discipline's long history. Set within the context of current discussion on writing geography's histories, the paper examines how geographers, and latterly historians, have sought to characterize and represent medieval geographies. This reveals that the subject of geography in the Middle Ages shared in the same fluidities and ambivalences that characterize geography today. The paper thus helps to challenge orthodox views of geography's history, and argues that the connections and continuities that have shaped geography for over two millennia cautions us against taking a compartmentalized approach to historiographies of geography.

Wandering Minds: Tracing Inner Worlds Through a Historical-Geographical Art Installation

“…How might working with texts from the Middle Ages, as well as from modernity, expand and complicate a historical geography of the moving mind, and offer new conceptual resources for those from all disciplines interested in understanding how the mind interacts with both inner and outer worlds? We might draw an analogy here with Lilley’s (2011) effort to “challenge orthodox views of geography’s history” through his reconsideration of what medieval geography might do to and for our current accounts of historical geography, and through his interrogations of how “medieval geography” has been represented in histories of geography.…”

Is geography the eye of (pre-modern) history? Looking back at and looking through medieval geographies

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This commentary responds to Lilley's (2011) provocative suggestion to move away from periodizing geography and think instead in terms of spatial perceptions and representations across and within certain spatial and temporal contexts. In particular, it problematizes equations between medieval geographies and western or pre-modern geographies.

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Nostalgia, neglect and the necessity of a historicized geography

“…The present author is probably the 'fellow traveller' of the respondents, being a student of early-modern geography rather than a medievalist of any stripe, but one who, by his own profession of faith, is likely to resonate sympathetically with the chord struck by Keith Lilley's (2011) eloquent plea for a historically informed vision for the contemporary practice of human geographic inquiry. Carrying this positionality forward, my thoughts on Keith Lilley's thought-provoking argument can be unravelled around three key terms (with apologies for the author's obsessive yen for alliteration): nostalgia, neglect (Lilley's own key term) and necessity.…”