Geography

Abstract

Geography in the early modern period is part of cosmography. Geography is defined as a graphical representation of the whole known world, a description of the Earth. In the context of Renaissance, the knowledge about the Earth spreads essentially through cosmographic treaties or cosmographies, maps, and travel accounts. These three genres dialogue, influence each other, and have specific forms of combining different traditions then existing in order to obtain and describe the knowledge about the Earth surface. Three main sources of knowledge are identified: the classical heritage; the Christian tradition; and the information brought by new discoveries. The different ways of understanding and describing the Earth, either from a physical, cosmological, astronomical, and mathematical point of view or as an inhabited world, are articulated throughout the sixteenth century and the result is that the Earth becomes a homogeneous body and a specific object to Geography.