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Scholarly Works (2 results)

  • Thesis
  • Peer Reviewed
UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations (2013)

By its very nature as a "book of the world"--a product simultaneously artistic and intellectual--the world atlas of the seventeenth century promoted a totalizing global view designed to inform, educate, and delight readers by describing the entire world through science and imagination, mathematics and wonder. Yet early modern atlas makers faced two important challenges to commercial success. First, there were many similar products available from competitors at home and abroad. Secondly, they faced consumer skepticism about the authority of any work claiming to describe the entire world, in the period before standards of publishing credibility were established, and before the transition from trust in premodern geographic authorities to trust in modern authorities was complete. This study argues that commercial world atlas compilers of London and Paris strove to meet these challenges through marketing strategies of authorial self-presentation designed to promote their authority to create a trustworthy world atlas. It identifies and examines several key personas that, deployed through atlas texts and portraits, together formed a self-presentation asserting the atlas producer's cultural authority. As an inquiry into how successful world atlases reveal the changing values of the cultures in which they were produced, sold, and consumed, this study analyzes the self-presentations of four atlas makers of London (Herman Moll, Robert Morden, John Senex, and John Speed) and four Parisian atlas makers (Jean Boisseau, Nicolas de Fer, Alexis-Hubert Jaillot, and Allain Manesson Mallet). Examining atlases published between 1627 and 1721, I demonstrate how atlas compilers created personas advertising not only their geographic knowledge, but also other desirable characteristics and affiliations. After reviewing the intellectual origins of the early modern world atlas, I offer thematic analyses of the three most common personas: the patron's servant, the artisanal geographic expert, and the scholarly geographic expert. These are followed by a case study of the vivid and layered self-presentation created by Robert Morden. The Conclusions consider the cross-cultural contexts influencing the choices atlas makers faced when presenting themselves to readers.

    Cover page: Redeeming the Truth: Robert Morden and the Marketing of Authority in Early World Atlases
    • Article
    Library Prize for Undergraduate Research (2020)
    The early modern period in England (c. 1500-1800) is often best remembered for dramatic developments that transformed the political, religious and economic life of the country. Henry VIII’s rejection of the papacy in the 1530s severed the English church and its worshippers from the wider Catholic community. In 1649, the execution of Charles I at the end of the Civil War marked the beginning of a transformation in the relationship between king and people. That relationship continued to evolve and in 1689, it was recast in the Bill of Rights, which subordinated the Crown to the people. The economy thrived through much of the period and by the eighteenth century England was both a leader in European and in the overseas colonies for which so many nations vied. This exhibit seeks to explore the lives of ordinary people who lived through these dramatic events. While such developments were important, they did not always gure in the everyday lives of those who were not members of the political nation. For them, concerns about their work, families, education and spiritual lives loomed larger than the activities and debates taking place at Westminster. The objects here reveal the concerns, desires and fears of some of the English people during the early modern era and how they sought to manage them--not always successfully.
      Cover page: Bringing Early Modern England to Life
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