Sea monsters on medieval and Renaissance maps / by Chet Van Duzer.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

From dragons and serpents to many-armed beasts that preyed on ships and sailors alike, sea monsters have terrified mariners across all ages and cultures and have become the subject of many tall tales from the sea. Accounts of these creatures have also inspired cartographers and mapmakers, many of whom began decorating their maps with them to indicate unexplored areas or areas about which little was known. Whether swimming vigorously, gamboling amid the waves, attacking ships, or simply displaying themselves for our appreciation, the sea monsters that appear on medieval and Renaissance maps are fascinating and visually engaging. Yet despite their appeal, these monsters have never received the scholarly attention that they deserve. In Sea Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps , Chet Van Duzer analyzes the most important examples of sea monsters on medieval and Renaissance maps produced in Europe. Van Duzer begins with the earliest mappaemundi on which these monsters appear in the tenth century and continues to the end of the sixteenth century and, along the way, sheds important light on the sources, influences, and methods of the cartographers who drew or painted them. A beautifully designed visual reference work, Sea Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps will be important not only in the history of cartography, art, and zoological illustration, but also in the history of the geography of the "marvelous" and of Western conceptions of the ocean.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Classical Antecedents
• The Earliest Medieval Maps with Sea Monsters: Beatus Mappaemundi
• "Let the Waters Bring Forth Abundantly": Sea Monsters in the Creation
• Sea Monsters in the Harbor of Brindisi
• An Imagined Mappamundi with Sea Monsters
• Sea Monsters on the Ceiling
• Giant Sea Monsters on Two Small Mappaemundi
• "A Vast Sea Where There is Nothing But the Abode of Monsters"
• Two Monumental Mappaemundi with Few Sea Monsters
• Three Sea Monsters Battling in the Atlantic
• Pictorial Excursus: The Dangers of Sea Monsters
• Sea Monsters on Nautical Charts: Giant Octopuses, Sirens, Sharks
• How to Buy a Sea Monster
• Whaling Between Myth and Reality
• A Nest of Sea Monsters at the Bottom of the World
• Whales as Big as Mountains
• Terrifying Monsters in the Indian Ocean
• A Skeptic about Sea Monsters: Fra Mauro
• Pictorial Excursus: Whimsical Sea Monsters
• Invented Sea Monsters in the Circumfluent Ocean
• The Manuscript with the Most Sea Monsters
• Sea Monsters in Printed Editions of Ptolemy
• The Sea Monsters of the Earliest Surviving Terrestrial Globe
• The Sea Monsters of Waldseemüller's Map of 1507 and Schöner's Globe of 1515
• Lighting a Fire on a Whale's Back
• Pictorial Excursus: The Cartographic Career of the Walrus
• The Debut of the Sea Monsters of the Renaissance
• Olaus Magnus and the Most Important Sea Monsters of the Sixteenth Century
• Mercator's Globe of 1541: The Influence of Olaus Magnus
• The Ulpius Globe: Sea Monsters Before Their Time
• The Monster that Stops Ships in Their Tracks
• Pictorial Excursus: More Whimsical Sea Monsters
• From Sea Dragons to a Sawfish: The Rylands Library Map of 1546
• Evidence of a Sea Monster Specialist
• The Curious Career of the Flying Turtle
• The Eclecticism of Giacomo Gastaldi
• The Sea Monsters of Gerard Mercator's Great Map of 1569
• Sea Monsters Cavorting Among the Mediterranean Isles
• The Sea Monsters Surrounding Iceland in the First Atlas
• A Haunting Sea Monster Reappears
• Whales Fantastic and Realistic at the End of the Sixteenth Century
• Two New World Sea Monsters
• Conclusion
• Endnotes
• Index
• Index of Manuscripts

Author notes provided by Syndetics