Monday, February 13, 2006 ANGELS ON THE EDGE OF THE WORLD:
Geography, Literature, and English Community, 1000–1534 by Kathy
Lavezzo, University of Iowa From the Cornell University Press
website: In a view that sweeps from the tenth century to the
mid-sixteenth century, Kathy Lavezzo shows how the English
people’s concern with their island’s relative isolation on the
global map contributed to the emergence of a distinctive English
national consciousness in which marginality came to be seen as a
virtue. Lavezzo examines the many world maps and textual
geographies produced by the English during these years. In a
beautifully illustrated book, she argues that the English looked
to the globe only to emphasize and, in time, to exalt their own
exceptional geographic status. The author charts this process by
examining a series of wondrous maps and canonical texts.
Demonstrating how medieval geographic notions conditioned
English attitudes toward Rome, clarifying the complicated
religious history leading up to Henry th