Degree Name
MA (Master of Arts)
Program
History
Date of Award
5-2013
Committee Chair or Co-Chairs
Brian Jeffrey Maxson
Committee Members
William Douglas Burgess, Thomas Crofts, Daniel Newcomer
Abstract
In the middle decade of the thirteenth century, the Benedictine monk and historian Matthew Paris drew four regional maps of Britain. The monk's works stand as the earliest extant maps of the island and mark a distinct shift from the cartographic traditions of medieval Europe. Historians have long considered the version attached to the monk's Abbreviatio Chronicorum – the Claudius map – as the last and most thorough of Paris's images of Britain. However, scholars have focused on the document's limitations as an accurate geographic representation and have failed to consider critically Paris's representation of Britain with an eye towards its political implications. This thesis is an examination of the elements of the Claudius map, in context with the monk's historical writings, to argue that Paris's map of Britain should be studied as an aggressive cultural artifact through which the monk posited imperial English claims to suzerainty over the whole of the island.
Document Type
Thesis - unrestricted
Recommended Citation
Greenlee, John Wyatt, ""Queen of All Islands": The Imagined Cartography of Matthew Paris's Britain" (2013). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 1118. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/1118
Copyright
Copyright by the authors.