Cartographic Monsters and the Rise of Empiricism
Résumé
This paper studies the impact of empiricism on seventeenth-century cartographic monsters through the analysis of three maps: Jodocus Hondius’s 1598 map of the land described by Walter Ralegh in The discouerie of the large, rich, and bevvtiful empire of Guiana (1596), Thomas Edge’s map of Spitsbergen (1625), and John Speed’s map of China, published in 1631 in the cartographer’s A prospect of the most famous parts of the vvorld. These three maps indeed highlight the fate of cartographic monsters as empiricism progressively became the prevailing mode of investigation of the natural world. Whereas monstrous creatures can still appear on the eve of the seventeenth century thanks to the first-hand testimonies provided to attest to their existence, they appear to be condemned to two destinies afterwards. They seem either to disappear and give way to representations of the actual fauna of the region depicted, or to be conjured up to be used only as ornaments.