Abstract
Building on our earlier computational analysis of 237 digitized maps of the Great Lakes, we use maps and accounts of Lake Huron, bookended by those of Samuel de Champlain (1616) and Henry Bayfield (1828), to explore the concept of “somageography”: how first-hand experiences with natural environments are filtered and reconfigured by map-makers, rendering maps as irreducibly complex representations of particular human and environmental conditions. While maps of Lake Huron, in particular, may appear to become more accurate by the 1820s, Bayfield's detailed charts are simply epistemologically frozen moments when the individual map was sketched, which were then months or years later reproduced as though they were an unproblematic, even ontological, representation of an environmentally dynamic and climatologically unstable region. Our computational approach paradoxically reinforces our sense that the methods for mapping the natural world during the long eighteenth century cannot be understood apart from observational and biophysical experience-somageography-in a dynamic landscape.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 169-194 |
| Number of pages | 26 |
| Journal | Eighteenth-Century Fiction |
| Volume | 32 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jan 1 2019 |
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ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Literature and Literary Theory
Cite this
Mapping the Great Lakes : The somageography of water and land, 1615-1828. / Simeone, Michael; Morris, Christopher; McHenry, Kenton; Markley, Robert.
In: Eighteenth-Century Fiction, Vol. 32, No. 1, 01.01.2019, p. 169-194.Research output: Contribution to journal › Review article
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - Mapping the Great Lakes
T2 - The somageography of water and land, 1615-1828
AU - Simeone, Michael
AU - Morris, Christopher
AU - McHenry, Kenton
AU - Markley, Robert
PY - 2019/1/1
Y1 - 2019/1/1
N2 - Building on our earlier computational analysis of 237 digitized maps of the Great Lakes, we use maps and accounts of Lake Huron, bookended by those of Samuel de Champlain (1616) and Henry Bayfield (1828), to explore the concept of “somageography”: how first-hand experiences with natural environments are filtered and reconfigured by map-makers, rendering maps as irreducibly complex representations of particular human and environmental conditions. While maps of Lake Huron, in particular, may appear to become more accurate by the 1820s, Bayfield's detailed charts are simply epistemologically frozen moments when the individual map was sketched, which were then months or years later reproduced as though they were an unproblematic, even ontological, representation of an environmentally dynamic and climatologically unstable region. Our computational approach paradoxically reinforces our sense that the methods for mapping the natural world during the long eighteenth century cannot be understood apart from observational and biophysical experience-somageography-in a dynamic landscape.
AB - Building on our earlier computational analysis of 237 digitized maps of the Great Lakes, we use maps and accounts of Lake Huron, bookended by those of Samuel de Champlain (1616) and Henry Bayfield (1828), to explore the concept of “somageography”: how first-hand experiences with natural environments are filtered and reconfigured by map-makers, rendering maps as irreducibly complex representations of particular human and environmental conditions. While maps of Lake Huron, in particular, may appear to become more accurate by the 1820s, Bayfield's detailed charts are simply epistemologically frozen moments when the individual map was sketched, which were then months or years later reproduced as though they were an unproblematic, even ontological, representation of an environmentally dynamic and climatologically unstable region. Our computational approach paradoxically reinforces our sense that the methods for mapping the natural world during the long eighteenth century cannot be understood apart from observational and biophysical experience-somageography-in a dynamic landscape.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85074113812&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85074113812&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3138/ecf.32.1.169
DO - 10.3138/ecf.32.1.169
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:85074113812
VL - 32
SP - 169
EP - 194
JO - Eighteenth-Century Fiction
JF - Eighteenth-Century Fiction
SN - 0840-6286
IS - 1
ER -