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Dear All,
Apologies for cross-posting.
Linguistic Geographies: the Gough Map of Great Britain and its Making
The Gough Map is internationally-renowned as one of the earliest maps to
show Britain in a geographically-recognizable form. Yet to date,
questions remain of how the map was made, who made it, when and why.
Linguistic Geographies is an AHRC-funded research project that seeks to
address these key questions.
As the project proceeds during 2010, its website will develop with the
ultimate aim of providing online access to the Gough Map, and a
searchable database of the place-names that the map contains. Please
revisit the site, and add your comments about the map and the project
via our blog. The project will conclude with an exhibition and
colloquium at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, in June 2011, on the topic
of "The language of maps".
Despite its appearance in television programmes, book covers, learned
articles and so forth, the Gough Map's origins are uncertain, including
who made it, how, where and why? This project seeks to address these
questions by using an innovative approach to explore the map's
'linguistic geographies', that is the writing used on the map by the
(unknown) scribes who created it. This technique involves specialist
palaeographic and linguistic skills that are normally applied to text
manuscripts, but with this project they are being tried on a map
manuscript, somewhat experimentally, with the aim of not only finding
more about the Gough Map's making but also the transferability of
particular methods from linguistic to cartographic history.
The project involves a group of researchers from across three UK HEIs,
each bringing distinctive skills and expertise to bear. Each has an
interest in maps and mapping, though from differing disciplinary
perspectives, from geography, cartography and history. Their aim is to
learn more about the Gough Map, specifically, but more generally to
contribute to ongoing intellectual debates about how maps can be read
and interpreted; about how maps are created and disseminated across time
and space; and about technologies of collating and representing
geographical information in visual, cartographic form.
The project's focus on a map, as opposed to a conventional written text,
will also open up theoretical and conceptual issues about the
relationships between 'image' and 'text' - for maps comprise both - and
about maps as objects and artifacts with a complex and complicated
'language' of production and consumption. Far from being geared simply
to academic questions, however, the project team is keen to ensure that
their findings reach the widest possible audience, not least because
maps are enduringly popular objects and always capture the imagination;
medieval maps especially.
To this end one of the main project outcomes will be the web-resource
through which the Gough Map will be made more widely accessible (it
currently resides in the Bodleian Library), and through which the data
and findings of this project will be made freely available. This will
help others to develop the research, whether in academic or non-academic
sectors. As well as the web-resource, the project will provide the basis
for a public exhibition on the Gough Map, to be held at the Bodleian
Library, Oxford, at which a colloquium will provide a forum for
discussion on the language and linguistics of medieval maps and mapping.
The project website is at:
http://www.goughmap.org/
The project partners are:
Queen's University Belfast
Bodleian Library, University of Oxford
King's College London
The project is running for 15 months, commencing on 1 April 2010, and is
part of the Arts and Humanities Research Council's 'Beyond Text'
programme.
For more details, please contact the undersigned.
Nick Millea
_______________________________________________________
Nick Millea
Map Librarian, Bodleian Library, Broad Street, Oxford, OX1 3BG
Tel: 01865 287119
Fax: 01865 277139
Email: [email protected]
***PLEASE NOTE NEW EMAIL ADDRESS!***
Homepage: http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/guides/maps/
Temporary move of Special Collections:
More information at: www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/scmoves
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