The Virtual Reality of the Anglo-Saxon Mappamundi
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12880525 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Martin Foys (Hood College, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2004 |
| Volume | 1 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | **-** |
| Publication date | 2004-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Literature Compass (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1741-4113 • E-ISSN: 1741-4113 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2004.00016.x |
| OpenAlex | W2086460404 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 16 |
Reading the eleventh-century Anglo-Saxon mappamundi– the oldest such English map surviving – as a form of a virtual world more analogous to the digital environment of virtual reality than physical geography can reveal much about this famous map's cultural mechanics and meaning. As more than simply a measurement of the world known to Anglo-Saxon England, the Cotton Map charts a number of struggles between the twin realities of England's marginal locus in the historical record of the known physical world, and of the Anglo-Saxons’ impulse to recentre the world on their own island. In light of this tension, this article studies the formal and textual elements of the Cotton Map in relation to Christian theographic traditions of medieval mappaemundi, classical representations of early Britain, the formation of Anglo-Saxon identity, and the geopolitical context of eleventh-century England. Applying recent theories on the function of digital virtuality in the representation and construction of reality to this study shows in turn how this map virtually fashions a particular form of Anglo-Saxon reality – one driven by a geographic desire for a future not spent on the edge of the world
Anglo saxon · Art · Human–computer interaction · Virtual reality · Classics · Computer Science · Historical Studies of British Isles · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Psychology · Scottish History and National Identity
Oxford Classical Texts
Defining the Earth's Center in a Medieval “Multi-Text”
Nations and Nationalism
Pomponius Méla, Chorographie
Virtual Realism
Digital Sensations
Narrative as Virtual Reality 2
Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
The Making of Angelcynn
Mapping Reality
The Emerging Geographies of Virtual Worlds
The Emerging Geographies of Virtual Worlds
Sacred Directions, Orientation, and the Top of the Map
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |