Title Literary territories : cartographical thinking in late antiquity / Scott Fitzgerald Johnson

Published New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2016] ©2016

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Description 1 online resource (xiv, 195 pages) Series Online access with subscription: University Press scholarship online (Oxford scholarship online) Contents Introduction -- Pilgrimage and archive -- An aesthetic of accumulation -- Locus Amoenus / Loca Sancta -- Apostolic geography -- The westwardness of things -- Conclusion -- Appendix Summary Literary Territories introudces readers to a wide range of literature from 200-900 CE in which geography is a defining principle of literary art. From accounts of Holy Land pilgrimage to Roman mapmaking and the systematization of Ptolemy's scientific works, Literary Territories argues that forms of literature that were conceived and produced in very different environments and for different purposes in Late Antiquity nevertheless shared an aesthetic sensibility which treated the classical "inhabited world," the oikoumenē, as a literary metaphor for the collection and organization of knowledge. This type of "cartographical thinking" stresses the world of knowledge that is encapsulated in the literary archive. The archival aesthetic coincided with an explosion of late antique travel and Christian pilgrimage which in itself suggests important unifying themes between visual and textual conceptions of space. Indeed, by the end of Late Antiquity the geographical mode appears in nearly every type of writing in multiple Christian languages (Greek, Latin, Syriac, and others). The diffusion of cartographical thinking throughout the real-world oikoumenē, now the Christian Roman Empire, was a fundamental intellectual trajectory of Late Antiquity. -- from dust jacket Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes Online resource; title from PDF title page (EBSCO, viewed October 28, 2015) Subject Classical literature -- History and criticism Place (Philosophy) in literature. Geography and literature. LITERARY CRITICISM -- Ancient & Classical. Classical literature Geography and literature Place (Philosophy) in literature Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc. Form Electronic book ISBN 9780190221249 0190221240 9780190221256 0190221259

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