As the landscape of northern France flies dizzyingly past the train window, I am struck by the thought that somehow I got myself here, against a lot of odds.
In the past four years, my part-time faculty position became full time, I attended a course on Maps and Mapping at the London Rare Book School, and was selected for two short-term fellowships. I wrote and rewrote and rewrote my fellowship applications and asked kind mentors to write letters of support. I had a cancer scare, a hysterectomy, and a divorce. Time to take a breath and let the French countryside fly by in a blur.
Just a few days ago, I presented a paper at Oxford University for a conference called the Language of Maps, an interdisciplinary symposium on maps, literature, and historical geography organized by Dr. Keith Lilley and Nick Millea at the historic Bodleian Library, a bibliophile heaven. From here, my fellowship and month of relative freedom start.
The seeds of this journey go back to my graduate studies: I wrote my dissertation on the Roman War account in Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur (written c. 1465 and printed by William Caxton in 1485). Malory altered the placenames and route from his source and then Caxton made additional changes in his print edition. Which made me wonder, naively: what was going on in terms of maps in the fifteenth century. Turns out: a lot. It was the beginning of world maps based on mathematical coordinates and the work of the first-century cosmographer Claudius Ptolemy of Alexandria. Think: north at the top (minus America).
Love maps? Good, there will be some geeking out about maps here. Check out the beautiful edition of Ptolemy’s Geography printed in Ulm, German in 1482, below.
Source: Newberry Library
Three years ago, my research took me to a map seminar at the London Rare Book School, then to the triennial conference of the International Arthurian Society in Renne, France (in Brittany). I hadn’t planned yet how I would get from London to Rennes, but I vaguely thought I would take a train and bus.
While in London on a free weekend from the seminar, I decided to take a train to the small city of Winchester. In addition to its famed cathedral, the manuscript of Malory’s story of King Arthur was improbably discovered at a boys’ school there in 1934 (prior to that only the early print edition was known)!
While crossing London’s busy Waterloo Train station, I passed through a shaft of sunlight slanting across the station platform, filled with tiny motes of sparking dust. Standing there, a thought occurred to me: Winchester is also the starting point of Malory’s Roman War tale. Amid my own personal uncertainty, came sheer happiness—I was Winchester bound.
Next weekend, I thought, I could go to York, which is the rather surprising second location in the tale. From there the story takes Arthur to the town of Sandwich in southeast England, over the channel, and, well, to Brittany—exactly where I am headed. In that moment, the idea coalesced: I’d follow the first part of the Roman War itinerary—from Winchester to York to London to Sandwich to Normandy to Brittany to Paris.
I was pretty much going that way anyway.
Next, a quick back story on the Roman War and itinerary. Then on to Winchester.
Books of Interest:
Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur (there are various editions; a modern language edition, edited by Dorsey Armstrong, or a retelling by Peter Ackyroyd, are the easiest to read).
Keith Lilley, City and Cosmos: The Medieval World in Urban Form
Keith Lilley, Mapping Medieval Geographies
Nick Millea, The Gough Map: The Earliest Road Map of Great Britain
A Passionate Geography: Romancing King Arthur’s Roman War 