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Apocalypse, monsters, time, space and the greatest surviving medieval world

7 Aug 2015
Apocalypse, monsters, time, space

Apocalypse, monsters, time, space and the greatest surviving medieval world-map were among the topics of an intensive workshop at the School of History, UCC on Wednesday 4th August. 

 ‘Conversations on the Hereford World-Map’ was organised by Dr Diarmuid Scully and led by Dr Asa Mittman, California State University, Chico – one of the foremost scholars of medieval approaches to the monstrous and the marvellous, author of Maps and Monsters in Medieval England (2006) and co-author with Susan Kim of Inconceivable Beasts: The Wonders of the East in the Beowulf Manuscript (2013). Made in England c. 1300, the Hereford Map is a visual universal library of the medieval imagination, teeming with images of the known world and its real and imagined peoples and places. Dr Mittman and Dr Scully, pictured here against the backdrop of the Psalter World-Map, interacted with the workshop audience to compare the Hereford Map with other medieval visualisations of the world and its history, and explore the Hereford Map’s multiple narratives. Dr Mittman’s reading of the Map’s approach to Jewish identity in the Age of Crusade was particularly exciting and resonant. For students interested in medieval ideas about maps, monsters and the ends of the earth, Dr Scully offers a Second Year module, HI 2017 Geography and Imagination in the Middle Ages. The Hereford Map is the key primary source used in that module.

School of History

Scoil na Staire

Tyrconnell,Off College Road,Cork,Ireland.

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