{"id":1478,"date":"2017-04-18T13:42:24","date_gmt":"2017-04-18T17:42:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/houghton75.org\/?p=1478"},"modified":"2017-04-18T13:42:24","modified_gmt":"2017-04-18T17:42:24","slug":"tom-conley-a-kinder-gentler-map","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/houghton75.org\/?p=1478","title":{"rendered":"Tom Conley: A Kinder, Gentler Map"},"content":{"rendered":"<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"100%\" height=\"166\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F318315120&#038;auto_play=false&#038;hide_related=false&#038;visual=false&#038;show_comments=true&#038;show_user=true&#038;show_reposts=false&#038;color=ff5500\"><\/iframe>\n<p>In this episode of Houghton75 we speak with Tom Conley, Abbott Lawrence Lowell Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies and Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures, about the work of Oronce Fin\u00e9, and the surprising things we can learn from maps.<br \/>\nFind out more about the exhibition and Houghton Library\u2019s 75th anniversary celebrations at <a href=\"http:\/\/houghton75.org\/hist-75h\">http:\/\/houghton75.org\/hist-75h<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Music<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">15th century French instrumental music performed by La Chapelle des Ducs de Savoie<br \/>\n<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ducs.ch\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">http:\/\/www.ducs.ch\/<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cBelle, bonne, sage, plaisant\u201d performed Martin Near, Charles Weaver, and Scott Metcalfe of Blue Heron.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.blueheron.org\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">http:\/\/www.blueheron.org\/<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Podcast Transcript<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>[Title sequence background music: Fireworks, Igor Stravinsky, performed by the <a href=\"https:\/\/hro.squarespace.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra<\/a>]<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Alex Csiszar: Houghton is just this amazing place.<br \/>\nDeidre Lynch: It\u2019s fascinating.<br \/>\nStephen Greenblatt: It\u2019s yours for the asking, and that is incredible!<br \/>\nStephanie Sandler: Plus it\u2019s cool.<\/p>\n<p>James Capobianco (JC): Welcome to Houghton75. I\u2019m James Capobianco.<\/p>\n<p>Hannah Ferello (HF): And I\u2019m Hannah Ferello.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[end music]<\/strong><br \/>\nJC: Houghton Library opened its doors at Harvard in 1942. Throughout 2017, we\u2019re celebrating the library\u2019s world-class collections, and support of research and teaching over the last 75 years.<\/p>\n<p>HF: This podcast is only one of the ways to participate in our year-long program of events that promises a unique glimpse of some of Houghton\u2019s most treasured holdings and the way they inspire scholars and students. Visit <a href=\"http:\/\/houghton75.org\">houghton75.org<\/a> for more information.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[background music: Le mois de mai tres gracieus, by Anonymous (Cyprus c. 1430). Performed by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ducs.ch\/\" target=\"_blank\">La Chapelle des Ducs de Savoie<\/a>, Vincent Arlettaz, director. Track 4 on their CD Les Musiques de la Cour de Savoie]<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>JC: Maps come in all shapes and sizes, but have you ever seen a map that was shaped like a heart? Antarctica spreads up both sides, while the North Pole is pressed down towards the center.<\/p>\n<p>HF: It sounds a little bizarre today, but one of the first map projections that displayed the full globe in a single image was shaped just like this!<\/p>\n<p>JC: This heart-shaped map projection is referred to as a cordiform map. One of the masters of this form was a French cartographer named Oronce Fin\u00e9.<\/p>\n<p>HF: Tom Conley, Abbott Lawrence Lowell Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies and Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures, joined us to discuss Fin\u00e9\u2019s work and the surprising things we can learn from maps.<\/p>\n<p>JC: It turns out that they contain much more than place names and geographic discoveries!<\/p>\n<p><strong>[end music]<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Tom Conley (TC): This is a remake of a map that Oronce Fin\u00e9 did in 1534, at least published in 1534. The problem with the map was that of the relation of the place names to the curvature of the world, because this is one of the first great maps where you\u2019re able to see the entirety of the world in one blink, in one view. In Oronce\u2019s first version he had to put type into the areas where we see the place names, and so there\u2019s a slight difference between the curvature that\u2019s represented there and then the way that the type is set in squarely. When Cimerlino redraws this, he was able to put the place names into the work such that they, in effect, marry the curvature of the globe. And so you don\u2019t have this clunkiness that is due to the relation of the woodcut image to the type that had had to be put in and be absolutely flush. So you have this sense of curvature that\u2019s in fact enhanced by the new technology.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[background music: Tres joli mois de mai, by Anonymous (Cyprus c. 1430). Performed by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ducs.ch\/\" target=\"_blank\">La Chapelle des Ducs de Savoie<\/a>, Vincent Arlettaz, director. Track 1 on their CD Les Musiques de la Cour de Savoie]<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>JC: Each new technological advance impacts many aspects of research and production. I hadn\u2019t thought about how odd it would look for a map to be covered in text that didn\u2019t match the curvature of the projection, but it must have been very jarring to the eye.<\/p>\n<p>HF: Professor Conley also explained other advances that led to and eventually replaced the cordiform map.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[end music]<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>TC: I think that the first cordiform map was done, I think it was in the 1520s, by Peter Apian who was a model and a master who was close in time to Oronce. The longer history of that is that the cordiform map has a very, very short timespan. After 1580, gone. No more. It\u2019s done, in favor of planform spheres and more scientific representations. It becomes completely obsolete, and then it disappears, and then I find it coming back to life in, I think it was about 1993 or -4, in a 29 cent postage stamp that shows the world as a heart (laughs). I bought every stamp I could. I still have some for very motivated letters. I will put on a 29 cent and then add up the rest in order to have that heart shape.<\/p>\n<p>JC: I totally remember that stamp! It was marketed as an original design &#8211; a special edition. Turns out, the design was over 450 years old!<\/p>\n<p>HF: But why the heart shape? It seems like an odd shape for a map. Was it just the best method at the time for presenting the full globe, or did the shape have meaning beyond its practical purpose?<\/p>\n<p>TC: He uses the heart form both scientifically and allegorically. Scientifically in that he can just take the pole and then push it down in order to bring the two hemispheres up so they can be seen. That affords him to give this heart shape. But at the same time, the heart shape, when Oronce was working in we\u2019ll call it 1530 or so, you had the new ideologies of the Gallican world that was promoted of a kinder, more gentle world whose culture is based on the Pauline letters and Pauline scripture. So, in fact, this is a map that seeks to be generous. And what it\u2019s doing at the same time is generating this force. It\u2019s almost as if the north pole becomes the site of a fountain out of which space is emerging. So it has a wonderful mobile effect.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[musical interlude: Tres joli mois de mai, by Anonymous (Cyprus c. 1430). Performed by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ducs.ch\/\" target=\"_blank\">La Chapelle des Ducs de Savoie<\/a>, Vincent Arlettaz, director. Track 1 on their CD Les Musiques de la Cour de Savoie]<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>TC: What enhances it further is the decoration in the spandrels. You have these two figures that are clearly of bellifontain, of fontainebleau style, but then these two putti who are blinded by what they see. So when we look at it, it\u2019s too much to see! So we have to blind our eyes to this. But at the same time, there\u2019s this wonderful relation of their derri\u00e8res that are sitting on the plinths of these ruins and in effect are miming the shape upside-down of the map itself. So there\u2019s a wonderful sense of humor in the map as well.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[background music: Tres joli mois de mai, by Anonymous (Cyprus c. 1430). Performed by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ducs.ch\/\" target=\"_blank\">La Chapelle des Ducs de Savoie<\/a>, Vincent Arlettaz, director. Track 1 on their CD Les Musiques de la Cour de Savoie]<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>HF: An interesting thing about historic maps is how they illustrate what was known about the world at a specific point in time.<\/p>\n<p>JC: This map is no different, and shows several discoveries and hypotheses about the globe.<\/p>\n<p>HF: Some of those details that we now consider inaccurate have their roots in trade and other sailing ventures.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[end music]<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>TC: It\u2019s an early map, one of the first maps that disengages Greenland as an island. And then it\u2019s one of the first maps that gives us the earliest naming of Canada, which is Baccalear, which is \u201ccodfish.\u201d And that\u2019s because ever since the fifteenth century, the French fishermen really went off to the Great Bank. In the fifteenth century. Before the Columbian discoveries. And they caught lots of fish, and then they brought them back. And they knew that Canada was there. They were interested in fish, not land. And so, yeah it was there, but they didn\u2019t care about it. And so the presence of the history of the French fishing trade is given by the way that Canada\/Baccalear just pushes very, very close to France. It\u2019s just a skip and a jump to go from Brittany or Normandy over to the Great Bank.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[musical interlude: Or ay je perdu, by Anonymous (Chansonnier Cordiforme c. 1470). Performed by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ducs.ch\/\" target=\"_blank\">La Chapelle des Ducs de Savoie<\/a>, Vincent Arlettaz, director. Track 12 on their CD Les Musiques de la Cour de Savoie]<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>TC: The accuracy of Africa that\u2019s given [is] clearly from information culled from all the Portuguese mariners. A pretty good sense of the eastern coastline of South America and the presence here with Terra Florida, that\u2019s clearly from Verrazzano\u2019s travels because he was hired by Francis I to explore the New World. So all of that information is there, and it\u2019s just filled with everything that\u2019s known about the world up to this date.<\/p>\n<p>HF: But maps not only reveal what has been discovered. They also show what is yet to be explored.<\/p>\n<p>JC: It isn\u2019t only what is on the map that\u2019s important. You can also learn a great deal from what\u2019s missing.<\/p>\n<p>TC: Here you also see this wonderful, uneven development of place names. Europe is just blackened with place names, and then the new world is terra incognita. It shows that that unknown is part of the mystery of the world. And I\u2019m not buying into the fact that the unknown has to be conquered there, but I think the unknown, in the way that this map has its allegorical and almost spiritual sense, that the unknown is its metaphysics or almost its theology. It puts its faith in the unknown. Not the unknown of which it is afraid or which it has to conquer, but in effect is just given in the design itself.<\/p>\n<p>So, you can be a psychoanalyst and then invoke the so-called \u201crelation of the unknown,\u201d which is in effect the basis of all human life. It\u2019s \u201cwe don\u2019t know,\u201d and that\u2019s what makes us go. And I think it\u2019s given here just marvelously.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[background music: Or ay je perdu, by Anonymous (Chansonnier Cordiforme c. 1470). Performed by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ducs.ch\/\" target=\"_blank\">La Chapelle des Ducs de Savoie<\/a>, Vincent Arlettaz, director. Track 12 on their CD Les Musiques de la Cour de Savoie]<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>HF: Part of teaching is working with students\u2019 desire to discover what they don\u2019t yet know. But venturing into the unknown can be slow, difficult progress.<\/p>\n<p>JC: Professor Conley attempts to ease his students\u2019 passage through the use of maps and other visual tools. He claims literature and maps are related spatial devices, and the study of one will support the study of the other.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[end music]<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>TC: Here I\u2019m in literature and in visual studies, and in teaching Renaissance French literature it almost goes without saying that the language is really difficult. It\u2019s slow going, and you have to get some Latin and then the French is very Latinate. It tends to be copious, and more is more. It\u2019s not less is more, more is more. And you have to work through this material. And so I have found that maps became aids for the comprehension of this work, but then as I went along I discovered that both the literature and cartographic matter are almost of the same piece because they are works that produce space. They are spatial inventions. So the creation of a sense of local, and world, and cosmic space comes from the relation that these works have with one another. And so that language in effect has a spatial phenomenon. You see it distributed all over the map, and then the same happens in poetry or in texts where in effect the cardinal positioning of words is crucial to the force of their form. So you have poems that in effect have vanishing points in them, or you have poems that work on the cardinal edges. So then these works become maps unto themselves because they are charted and plotted. So more and more I\u2019m starting to see the one as a function of the other, and I do this now more and more in my teaching and in my research.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[background music: \u201cBelle, bonne, sage, plaisant,\u201d by Baude Cordier. Performed by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.blueheron.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Blue Heron<\/a>, on the CD accompanying the book <a href=\"http:\/\/books.wwnorton.com\/books\/Capturing-Music\/\" target=\"_blank\">Capturing the Music<\/a> by Thomas Forrest Kelly (W.W. Norton, 2014), track 17. Scott Metcalfe, director.]<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>JC: Our thanks go to Professor Tom Conley for joining us and sharing his passion for this unique map.<\/p>\n<p>HF: The music today, though you may not have been able to tell just from listening, was all heart related, to go along with the cordiform map.<\/p>\n<p>JC: The song was \u201cBelle, Bonne, Sage,\u201d by Baude Cordier. The 15th century music was actually written in a heart shape by the composer. The performance of that piece was by Blue Heron, who can be found at blueheron.org. Thanks so much to them.<\/p>\n<p>HF: The instrumental music, also from the 15th century, can be found in a heart shaped manuscript in the Bibliotheque Nationale in France. Thanks to La Chapelle des ducs de Savoie for their performance of these wonderful pieces.<\/p>\n<p>JC: If you are in the Boston area, be sure to come by Harvard Yard and visit us here at Houghton Library where you can see Oronce Fin\u00e9\u2019s cordiform map as well as many other fascinating selections in our current exhibition HIST75H: A Masterclass on Houghton Library, open and freely available to the public until April 22.<\/p>\n<p>HF: It\u2019s also available on the Web at <a href=\"http:\/\/houghton75.org\">houghton75.org<\/a>. Just click on the Exhibitions tab.<\/p>\n<p>JC: Transcripts and detailed musical notes can also be found on our website at <a href=\"http:\/\/houghton75.org\/podcast\">houghton75.org\/podcast<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>HF: Until next time, thank you for joining us for this week\u2019s episode of Houghton75.<\/p>\n<p><strong>[music continues to end]<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"100%\" height=\"166\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F318315120&#038;auto_play=false&#038;hide_related=false&#038;visual=false&#038;show_comments=true&#038;show_user=true&#038;show_reposts=false&#038;color=ff5500\"><\/iframe>\n<p>In this episode of Houghton75 we speak with Tom Conley, Abbott Lawrence Lowell Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies and Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures, about the work of Oronce Fin\u00e9, and the surprising things we can learn from maps.<br \/>\nFind out more about the exhibition and Houghton Library\u2019s 75th anniversary celebrations at http:\/\/houghton75.org\/hist-75h<\/p>\n<p>Music<\/p>\n<p>15th century French instrumental music performed by La Chapelle des Ducs de Savoie<br \/>\nhttp:\/\/www.ducs.ch\/<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBelle, bonne, sage, plaisant\u201d performed Martin Near, Charles Weaver, and Scott Metcalfe of Blue Heron.<br \/>\nhttp:\/\/www.blueheron.org\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[123],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-podcast"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7SlKy-nQ","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/houghton75.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/houghton75.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/houghton75.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/houghton75.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/houghton75.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1478"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/houghton75.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1478\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1489,"href":"http:\/\/houghton75.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1478\/revisions\/1489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/houghton75.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/houghton75.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/houghton75.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}