Writing, Geometry and Space in Seventeenth-Century England and America: Circles in the Sand

The early modern map has come to mark the threshold of modernity, cutting through the layered customs of Medieval parochialism with its clean, expansive geometries. Re-thinking the role played by mathematics and cartography in the English seventeenth century, this book argues that the cultural currency of mathematics was as unstable in the period as that of England's controversial enclosures and plantations. Reviewing evidence from a wide range of literary and scientific; courtly and pragmatic texts, Edwards suggests that its unstable currency rendered mathematics necessarily rhetorical: subject to constant re-negotiation. Yet he also finds a powerful flexibility in this weakness. Mathematized texts from masques to maps negotiated a contemporary ambivalence between Calvinist asceticism and humanist engagement. Their authors promoted themselves as artful guides between virtue and profit; the study and the marketplace.

This multi-disciplinary work will be of interest to all disciplines affected by the recent 'spatial turn' in early modern cultural studies, and particularly to students and researchers in literature, history and geography.

The early modern map has come to mark the threshold of modernity. In its clean and expansive geometries we perceive the spirit of artists, rulers, merchants and landlords cutting through the layered customs of Medieval parochialism. And if we do not celebrate this cartographic mathematization of experience, then we mourn it as the dawn of a new age of capitalistic, panoptic discipline and imperialist surveillance. This book re-thinks the role played by mathematics and cartography in the English seventeenth century, arguing the currency of mathematics was as unstable in the seventeenth century as England's controversial enclosures and plantations.

"Writing, Geometry and Space in Seventeenth-Century England and America" traces the circulation of this unstable currency through literary and scientific texts, finding mathematics figured variously as the sign of man's immortal soul and the scar of his corruption. Jess Edwards suggests that this instability rendered mathematics necessarily rhetorical and subject to constant re-negotiation. Yet rather than seeing this instability as a weakness, Edwards argues that it may have offered power, and that mathematics functioned culturally more like Puritan communion silver than the sword and ploughshare of seventeenth-century reform. Mathematized texts from masques to maps are seen as having negotiated a contemporary ambivalence between Calvinist asceticism and humanist engagement, with their authors having promoted themselves as artful guides between virtue and profit, the study and the marketplace.