Day 3: Reading Groups and Projects
I: Reading Group I: Lefebvre (1991) [Sheila Christie, Susan Guinn-Chipman, Kristina Luce, Matt Milner] 
II: Reading Group II: Johnson (1995) [James Brown, Will Cavert, Susan Cogan, Tim Reinke-Williams]
III: Meredith Donaldson: ‘Chorographies, Cartographies and the Experience of Motion’
My project is an investigation of the often overlooked, but nevertheless essential component of “peopling” any built environment: the experience of motion. In this paper I offer a reading of how intimations of motion through plotted spaces are written in and at other times left absent from a variety of published maps and chorographical descriptions of England, from William Lambarde’s Perambulation of Kent and Christopher Saxton’s Atlas in the late 1570s to John Ogilby’s Britannia in 1675. Adopting Bernhard Klein’s binary of the “plan” and the “itinerary” (139), or, as de Certeau labels them, the “map” and the “tour” (119), I focus on the representation of motion in the early modern texts across three different categories - rivers, roads, and processions - weighing the maps and descriptions of the nation as a whole against more localized descriptions of individual counties or main cities such as London. Such observations are then read against similar chorographic descriptions in Spenser’s The Ruines of Time. My paper concludes with some initial steps towards theorizing these various motions by showing how these works, poetical as well as cartographic, point to the rich concept of “monument” as defence against the ravages of time and the never-ending motion of mutability.
Some Suggested Reading
Cormack, Lesley B. “‘Good Fences Make Good Neighbors’: Geography as Self-Definition in Early Modern England.” Isis 82.4 (1991): 639-61.
Crone, G.R., M.J. Campbell, R.A. Skelton. “Landmarks in British Cartography.” The Geographical Journal 128.4 (Dec 1962): 406-26.
de Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.
Edwards, Jess. “How to Read an Early Modern Map: Between the Particular and the General, the Material and the Abstract, Words and Mathematics.” Early Modern Literary Studies 9.1 (May 2003): 1-58.
Fordham, Herbert George. The Road-Books and Itineraries of Great Britain, 1570-1850: A Catalogue with an Introduction and a Bibliography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1924.
Fowler, Alastair. Renaissance Realism: Narrative Images in Literature and Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Gombrich, E.H. “Moment and Movement in Art.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 27 (1964): 293-306.
Harley, J.B. “Silences and Secrecy: The Hidden Agenda of Cartography in Early Modern Europe.” Imago Mundi 40 (1988): 57-76.
Helgerson, Richard. Forms of Nationhood: The Elizabethan Writing of England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
Klein, Bernhard and Andrew Gordon, eds. Literature, Mapping, and the Politics of Space in Early Modern Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Lestringant, Frank. Mapping the Renaissance World: The Geographical Imagination in the Age of Discovery. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.
Manley, Lawrence. Literature and Culture in Early Modern London. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Marchitello, Howard. Narrative and Meaning in Early Modern England: Browne’s Skull and Other Histories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Mendyk, Stan. “Early British Chorography.” Sixteenth Century Journal 17.4 (Winter 1986): 459-81.
—. ‘Speculum Britanniae’: Regional Study, Antiquarianism, and Science in Britain to 1700. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989.
Merritt, J.F., ed. Imagining Early Modern London: Perceptions and Portrayals of the City from Stow to Strype, 1598-1720. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Smith, David L., Richard Strier and David Bevington. The Theatrical City: Culture, Theatre, and Politics in London, 1576-1649. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995.
Trench, Richard and Ellis Hillman. London Under London. London: Murray, 1984.
Tyacke, Sarah, ed. English Map-Making 1500-1650: Historical Essays. London: British Library, 1983.
Wallis, Helen, ed. Historian’s Guide to Early British Maps. London: Royal Historical Society, 1994.
IV: Marjorie Rubright: ‘The Theatre of Anglo-Dutch Exchange’
Taking London’s first Royal Exchange as its central site of inquiry, this paper explores the relation of architecture and immigration in early modern London. The Royal Exchange was a site riddled with Anglo-Dutch mercantile and political history. An architectural copy of Antwerp’s successful marketplace, London’s Exchange was built with materials imported from the Low Countries, crafted by Dutch artisans, and overseen by a Flemish architect. The Exchange was a space that figured and was figured by Anglo-Dutch commercial and social exchange. I trace the strategies of representation that transformed such a central place in London life into a symbolic space of contested representation. Three performances at or of the Exchange are explored for how they figure Anglo-Dutch relations within London: Queen Elizabeth’s visit to and re-naming of the Exchange in 1571, King James’ royal progress by the Exchange in 1604 and a curious appearance of a ship named the Royal Exchange which opened the 1605 mayoral pageant. I read these performances for the ways in which they reveal affiliations and tensions between the space of the Royal Exchange and early modern Dutch immigration. I argue that the material history of the Exchange as well as the representational contests played out in these performances reveal the ways in which the place of Dutch strangers in early modern London was imaginatively linked to the Royal Exchange.
Some Suggested Reading
On The Royal Exchange
Ann Saunders, Ed. The Royal Exchange. London 1997.
*This is a very fine collection of essays about the material history of the Royal Exchange as well as essays on the material culture (book trade, stone carving etc) sustained by the presence of the Exchange. It also offers biographical information on Thomas Gresham. It is the place to start if you are interested in learning more about the London Exchange.
John William Burgon. The Life and Times of Sir. Thomas Gresham…Founder of the Royal Exchange. Vol I &II. London 1839
Charles Welch. An Illustrated Account of the Royal Exchange and Pictures Therein. London 1913
Note: The Guardian of the Royal Exchange (GRE in bibliographic citations) and all materials relating to the Exchange, including Gresham’s daybook, are housed at the London Mercers Company. Ursula Carlyle is the person to speak with in order to gain access to the Royal Exchange materials. She is very helpful and, if you ask, she’ll take you on a tour of all the paintings and engravings at the Mercers Company relating to Gresham and his Burse.
On English Civic Pageantry
David Bergeron. English Civic Pageantry 1558-1642 (revised edition). Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies. Tempe, Arizona 2003
____. Practicing Renaissance scholarship : plays and pageants, patrons and politics. Pittsburgh 2000
____. “Stuart Civic Pageantry and Textual Performance” Renaissance Quarterly 51.1 (1998): 163-83
Tracey Hill. Anthony Munday and civic culture : theatre, history, and power in early modern London : 1580-1633. Manchester 2004.
Lawrence Manley. Literature and culture in early modern London. Cambridge 1995.
John Nichols. The progresses, processions, and magnificent festivities of King James the First, his royal consort, family, and court, collected from original manuscripts, scarce pamphlets, corporation records, parochial registers . . . 4 vols. New York 1964.
Primary material discussed in the talk can be found in:
Thomas Dekker. The magnificent entertainment giuen to King Iames, Queene Anne his wife, and Henry Frederick the Prince, vpon the day of his Maiesties tryumphant passage (from the Tower) through his honourable citie (and chamber) of London, being the 15. of March. 1603. As well by the English as by the strangers: vvith the speeches and songes, deliuered in the seuerall pageants. Bby T[homas] C[reede, Humphrey Lownes, Edward Allde and others] for Tho. Man the yonger, London. 1604 [available @ Early English Books On-line and in Fredson Bowers, Ed. The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker 1953-61]
David Bergeron, Pageants and entertainments of Anthony Munday : a critical edition. 1985.
More broadly-- theoretical writing on space & architecture
Stephen Cairns, Ed. Drifting: Architecture and Migrancy. London 2004
Micheal de Certeau “Spatial Stories” in The Practice of Everyday Life. 1984
Elizabeth Grosz. “Bodies—Cities” in Space, time, and perversion : essays on the politics of bodies. New York 1995
Neil Leach. Rethinking Architecture: a reader in cultural theory. London 1997.
This is a useful anthology of theoretical works from Modernism through Post structuralism. Because there are short introductions to each author’s works, it would make a good classroom text for a “Theories of Space” advanced undergraduate course.
Linda McDowell Gender, Identity and Place: Understanding Feminist Geographies. 1999