Describing and Depicting Water in Cosmographical and Geographical Texts

Abstract

This chapter investigates the relationship between water and the earth and the world’s landmasses and waterways described and depicted in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century cosmographical and geographical texts and their medieval predecessors. This chapter argues that many medieval authors claimed that there was more water than earth in the world and that this water was located especially in the southern hemisphere of the world, exposing the ecumene in the northern hemisphere. Sixteenthcentury authors of such texts argued for more land than water in the world and proposed different spatial relationships between waterways and landmasses than their predecessors had, but the maps that accompanied their texts show that they still tended to depict the southern hemisphere as especially water filled.