Episode 50
December 24, 2021
The Hereford Mappa Mundi
Hosted by Chris Piuma and Suzanne Conklin Akbari
In this territory are the Dog-headed people.
Here live the Griste, an extremely wicked people, for among other vile things they do, they make clothes for themselves and saddles for their horses out of the skins of their enemies.
The east-to-west extent of Europe, from the outlet of the Sea of Azov to the Strait of Gibraltar, in a straight line, is 3,427 miles....
Hungarians.
Slavs.
Ostrich: Head of a goose, body of a crane, feet of a calf. It eats iron.
The Hereford Mappa Mundi may or may not be a book. But this medieval map of the world combines geography, theology, zoology, and history into a text that’s fascinating to explore. Suzanne and Chris trace out a few itineraries along the map, pointing out what they find along the way and some of the narratives it traces, and they consider what it means to take this seriously as a text—and a text that might teach us something about how other texts are read.
![[Episode artwork]](/images/podcast/art/s/spouter.png)
Show Notes.
Virtual Mappa includes a detailed, if sadly not annotated version of the map.
S.D. Westrem’s The Hereford Map is a transcription and annotation of the map.
Hereford Cathedral’s site devoted to the map.
Wikipedia has a good overview of the types of medieval maps.
A reproduction from the late 19th century which is very clear (but not annotated, and missing some colour information).
Orosius: History against the Pagans.
Bartholomeus Anglicus: On the Properties of Things.
Our episode on The Metamorphoses.
Martin Delany: Blake, or The Huts of America.
Thomas Pynchon: Mason & Dixon.
John Crowley: The Solitudes, first book in the Ægypt series.
Robertson Davies: Murther and Walking Spirits.
Jordy Rosenberg: Confessions of the Fox (about “Honest Jack” Sheppard)
Graham Nelson: Jigsaw.
Brian Moriarty: Trinity.
Walter M. Miller Jr.: A Canticle for Leibowitz.
Leo Tolstoy: War and Peace.
Next episode: Lee Maracle: I Am Woman. [Bookshop.]
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