Explore the histories of early Scottish maps and texts in this seminar.
This seminar brings together researchers working on the medieval and early modern histories of Scottish cartography, chorography, landscape, history, and literature.
Through a series of presentations, the seminar will discuss the following questions.
- What are the roles of the respective disciplines in the understanding of place and space in Scotland?
- What is the relationship between the premodern maps and texts?
- What is the relationship between the historical lived experience of Scottish landscapes and their representations?
- What impact did the literary imagination have on the emerging sciences of mapping and chorography, and vice versa?
There will be plenty of time for discussion. Those attending in person will have an opportunity to view a small selection of collection items in the Maps Reading Room.
There is no charge for the seminar, but you will need to book a place to attend. Tickets to attend in-person are now fully booked but you can still book to join us online.
Location
The seminar takes place in our Causewayside Building in Edinburgh, and online.
Programme
- 10:00 Coffee
- 10:30 Start and welcome
- 10:40 Fiona Watson: 'The Farmer and the Cowman: Still not Friends in Medieval Scotland' (25 mins)
- 11:05 Alfred Hiatt: 'John Hardyng's maps of Scotland in context' (25 mins)
- 11:30 Roger Mason: 'Mapping with words: Descriptions of Scotland from Bower to Buchanan – and beyond' (25 mins)
- 11:55 Questions and discussion (30 mins)
- 12:30 Lunch and viewing of collections
- 13:30 Sebastiaan Verweij: ''In wildirness & wilsum way': Mapping Wilderness in Premodern Scotland' (25 mins)
- 13:55 Charles Withers: ''Poets make the best topographers'? Chorography, Poetry, and Map Making in Early Modern Scotland' (25 mins)
- 14:25 (soft) Launch of Place and Poetry 'Collaborative Project'
- 14:40 Questions, discussion and summing up (30 mins)
- 15:10 CLOSE
About the project
This seminar forms part of a wider research project relating to Place and Poetry in Premodern Scotland. This project also involves the creation of a new online resource, mapping a small selection of early modern poems relating to Scotland. We will unveil these on the day, inviting comment and review to help to finalise them by the summer.