PROMPT: Using only course materials and citing your evidence with footnotes, write about one of the following topics. Note that you do not need to adopt a formal essay format for this assignment; instead, creativity is encouraged! But you should still adhere closely to the evidence in the readings, be attentive to historical context (that is, the circumstances that help to explain historical phenomena and change), and edit carefully for word choice, well-structured sentences, etc. Write a long essay on this consisting of specific details.
1) Let's imagine that a single fourteenth-century Japanese cartographer had drawn both the map of Hineno Village (fig. 12, "Maps Are Strange") and the map of Inoue Estate (fig. 13). Recreate a correspondence between this medieval cartographer and the early modern cartographer who drew the Nihonzu, or national map of Japan, from circa 1640 (fig. 16). You are welcome also to reference the other early modern maps: Kubikigu ezu (Map of Kubiki) from circa 1596 (fig. 14) and Echizen no kuni ezu (Map of Echizen Province, c. 1606) (fig. 15). What might the medieval and early modern cartographer say to one another about their differing views of political space?
READINGS:
- Carol Delaney, "Columbus's Ultimate Goal: Jerusalem," Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 48, No. 2 (Apr., 2006), 270.
- Christopher Columbus's Book of Prophecies (c. 1502), excerpt. [No page number because none provided]
- Michel de Montaigne, "That a Man Is Soberly to Judge of the Divine Ordinances," in Essays (1580).
- Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651), excerpts, 2.
- Mary Elizabeth Berry, "Maps Are Strange," in Japan in Print: Information and Nation in the Early Modern Period ( 2007), 54.
- Alexander Haskell, "Lecture: A Solution to the Global Crisis in Europe: Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan(1651)."