In this interview with authors from the Society for Renaissance Studies book series, we talk to Patrick Murray about his recent book Intellectual and Imaginative Cartographies in Early Modern England, 1550-1700, the benefits of writing in small bursts and the breadth of cartographic thought in the early modern period.
1. What drew you towards Renaissance and Early Modern studies?
I find the Renaissance a fascinating era in history when many of the foundational notions of modernity – selfhood, interiority, nationhood – were up for rigorous debate and disputation across Europe and beyond. The period lends itself to interdisciplinarity as the idea of a set subject or discipline of scholarship or vocation was yet to really emerge, institutionally at least. Mathematicians read maps, astronomers attempted alchemy, playwrights were spies. Furthermore, my background is mainly in literary studies, so the opportunity to read and study writers as linguistically rich as Shakespeare and Milton is always rewarding.
2. Apart from your own, what book would you recommend for people to read to learn more about your field of study?
A good starter for those interested in the development of cartography in the early modern period is J.B. Harley’s collection of essays The New Nature of Maps: Essays in the History of Cartography (2001) which provides an insightful analysis of the many narratives attendant upon the process of map-making. It has been massively influential in terms of moving cartographic historiography beyond the remit of antiquarian studies and into fields such as sociology, ethnography and cultural archaeology.
3. What were the key arguments in your book?
My book essentially argues that Renaissance writers were alert to the rich potentialities of the map. Educational theorists propagated its pedagogical function; dramatists understood its ability to stage visions of nationhood; poets saw it as a catalyst for the imagination, an instrument facilitating emergent notions of mind travel; while political tracts exploited it as an apparatus of political power. In doing so, the culture constantly reminds us of the capabilities of the map.
4. How has your work on this topic developed since the book was published? Have any of your thoughts radically changed?
I have found the emergence of eco-critical studies in the past decade or so a really exciting field of early modern studies. On reflection, I have not done justice to the complexity of travel narratives such as Michael Drayton’s Poly Olbion (1612) in terms of how they represent habitation in and engagement with the natural environment.
5. What were the most fruitful sources you found in your research?
Maps are obviously first and foremost physical objects, so viewing the extensive cartographic collections at the British Library and the Bodleian at Oxford was always an exciting experience. Furthermore, the digitisation of early modern archives is growing exponentially, with resources such as Early English Books Online expanding all the time. This has also materialised in some excellent early modern mapping digital resources including Trinity College Dublin’s “The Down Survey of Ireland” and the National Library of Scotland’s map website. Such projects are a goldmine of information for scholars.
6. What was the biggest obstacle to conducting your research?
Developing the confidence and time to reflect as deadlines approached was probably the biggest challenge.
7. If you could go back and start the book over again, is there anything you would change, either about the structure of the book itself or about your sources / methodology?
I would like to have dedicated more time to the cartographies of Wenceslaus Hollar, an Anglo-Dutch engraver. As well as being a highly proficient artist, Hollar seems to me to grasp more than anyone the capacious form of the map as a means of description.
8. What are you working on now?
I am currently working on a range of different projects focused in particular on pedagogical theory including teaching Shakespeare in the secondary school classroom. I have also just completed an article on the gangster film The Long Good Friday (1980) which I hope will be published soon.
9. Do you have a favourite discovery or favourite fact from your research for this book or from what you are currently working on?
My favourite discovery was just how many people in the early modern period studied and wrote about cartography. Poets, philosophers, playwrights, polemicists, politicians – almost every type of intellectual thought about mapping technologies in interesting and insightful ways.
10. If you were not an early modernist, is there any other period or history or historical field you would like to work on?
I have always been a keen reader of late-Victorian fin-de-siecle literature and found its representation of abnormality (behavioural, social, bodily) fascinating. If I do write another book, it may be on Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde, a story I find something new in every time I read or teach it.
11. Is it necessary to be able to read and understand Latin to work in Renaissance / early modern studies?
No. I am very much of a mind that texts are fluid and unstable things even in the process of their production, so accessing a manuscript or book in its “original” Latin form doesn’t necessarily mean you have especial insight to a profound truth which would otherwise be obscured by translation. The important thing I think is to say something thoughtful about the material you have read, whatever form it is in.
12. If you could instantly acquire one skill or ability to help your research, what would it be?
I have always been pretty hopeless at reading manuscript handwriting when researching early modern documents, so I guess I would like to improve that. It would also allow me to explore a wider range of archives.
13. Is there any advice you would give to PhD students or early career researchers for finding their feet or developing their work in your field.
My advice to anyone attempting a research project is do a little at a time but do it often. It can be a frustrating process as you try out new ideas and test hypotheses and often you can find yourself working for weeks on a particular area that might be a dead end. But don’t be discouraged and where possible keep everything you write as it could be adapted and reused elsewhere. Furthermore, don’t be afraid to use the experience and guidance of others to help – my mentor Willy Maley was a real boon through the project, providing invaluable advice at crucial moments of its composition.
Patrick J. Murray is a researcher specialising in early modern literature. His primary research and teaching interests focus on the interdisciplinary interfaces of cartography, literary representation and cultural fashioning in the period 1550-1750.
His book Intellectual and Imaginative Cartographies in Early Modern England was published in May 2024: https://www.routledge.com/Intellectual-and-Imaginative-Cartographies-in-Early-Modern-England/Murray/p/book/9781032060262