Imago et descriptio: Narrating Sicily in the modern period
-
Valeria Manfrè
Abstract
During the early modern age, the predominantly graphic language of manuscript atlases of the kingdom of Sicily was increasingly accompanied by the narrative language of chorographic description. This chapter looks at the chorographic descriptions that accompany the atlases of Tiburzio Spannocchi (1596), Camillo Camilliani (1584), Francesco Negro, Carlo Maria Ventimiglia Ruiz (1640) and Gabriele Merelli (1677), and the intricate relationship between city and island that is set up by highlighting the urbs against the background of the island, using regional and peninsular historiography (in particular, Tommaso Fazello’s work of 1558) to evoke and portray its history and monuments, and permeating the descriptions with the authors’ first-hand visual experience of the territory.
Abstract
During the early modern age, the predominantly graphic language of manuscript atlases of the kingdom of Sicily was increasingly accompanied by the narrative language of chorographic description. This chapter looks at the chorographic descriptions that accompany the atlases of Tiburzio Spannocchi (1596), Camillo Camilliani (1584), Francesco Negro, Carlo Maria Ventimiglia Ruiz (1640) and Gabriele Merelli (1677), and the intricate relationship between city and island that is set up by highlighting the urbs against the background of the island, using regional and peninsular historiography (in particular, Tommaso Fazello’s work of 1558) to evoke and portray its history and monuments, and permeating the descriptions with the authors’ first-hand visual experience of the territory.
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Preface and acknowledgements V
- Contents VII
- Introduction: Regionally specified knowledge compendia between encyclopedia and chorography 1
-
I Universal history, encyclopedia, and chorography: Early modern practices and forms of knowledge compilation
- The local, the regional, and the universal in knowledge compilations: Observations on the Codex Aldenburgensis 41
- Encyclopedia and dictionaries in premodern and early modern Japan: Chinese heritage and the local reordering of knowledge 95
- Imago et descriptio: Narrating Sicily in the modern period 147
-
II Creating and organizing New Spanish knowledge: Early colonial compendia and “cultural encyclopedias”
- Dreams and the sacred thresholds of P’urhépecha power in the Relación de Michoacán 175
- Constructing a native heritage in New Spain? Bernardino de Sahagún’s Florentine Codex (1577) as a “cultural encyclopedia” 209
- Order and organization of knowledge on the New World in José de Acosta’s Historia natural y moral de las Indias (1590) 323
- The problem solver: Colonial knowledge, authority, and the compilation of natural marvels in Juan de Cárdenas’s Problemas y secretos (1591) 339
-
III Writing history and depicting knowledge: Compendia and “cultural encyclopedias” from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries
- Mastering the chaos of cross-cultural encounter in Andrés Pérez de Ribas’s Historia de los triumphos de nuestra santa fee (1645) 363
- Jesuit historiography and the making of the Kingdom of Quito: Juan de Velasco’s Historia del Reino de Quito (1789) 399
- A mid-nineteenth-century ethnographic atlas of the Tibetan world: The British Library’s Wise Collection 423
- Notes on the contributors 445
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Preface and acknowledgements V
- Contents VII
- Introduction: Regionally specified knowledge compendia between encyclopedia and chorography 1
-
I Universal history, encyclopedia, and chorography: Early modern practices and forms of knowledge compilation
- The local, the regional, and the universal in knowledge compilations: Observations on the Codex Aldenburgensis 41
- Encyclopedia and dictionaries in premodern and early modern Japan: Chinese heritage and the local reordering of knowledge 95
- Imago et descriptio: Narrating Sicily in the modern period 147
-
II Creating and organizing New Spanish knowledge: Early colonial compendia and “cultural encyclopedias”
- Dreams and the sacred thresholds of P’urhépecha power in the Relación de Michoacán 175
- Constructing a native heritage in New Spain? Bernardino de Sahagún’s Florentine Codex (1577) as a “cultural encyclopedia” 209
- Order and organization of knowledge on the New World in José de Acosta’s Historia natural y moral de las Indias (1590) 323
- The problem solver: Colonial knowledge, authority, and the compilation of natural marvels in Juan de Cárdenas’s Problemas y secretos (1591) 339
-
III Writing history and depicting knowledge: Compendia and “cultural encyclopedias” from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries
- Mastering the chaos of cross-cultural encounter in Andrés Pérez de Ribas’s Historia de los triumphos de nuestra santa fee (1645) 363
- Jesuit historiography and the making of the Kingdom of Quito: Juan de Velasco’s Historia del Reino de Quito (1789) 399
- A mid-nineteenth-century ethnographic atlas of the Tibetan world: The British Library’s Wise Collection 423
- Notes on the contributors 445
