The Atlas of Legendary Lands

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"The Atlas of Legendary Lands" captures a period when the world still held room enough for wonders to exist, and presents for today's reader the alternative earth imagined by our not-too-distant ancestors, a world of imaginary lands with mindbogglingly improbable inhabitants; a world sought (and sometimes found) by explorers as notable as Columbus. Highly illustrated, it reprod...(展開全部) "The Atlas of Legendary Lands" captures a period when the world still held room enough for wonders to exist, and presents for today's reader the alternative earth imagined by our not-too-distant ancestors, a world of imaginary lands with mindbogglingly improbable inhabitants; a world sought (and sometimes found) by explorers as notable as Columbus. Highly illustrated, it reproduces many of the historical maps discussed in the text, maps filled with bizarre inaccuracies and imaginings. Chapters include: 'Inventing the Earth' (a survey of ancient mapmaking); 'Mythical Places' (e.g. the land of Prester John, Gog and Magog, Ultima Thule); 'Very Much Real...But Somehow Very Much Wrong' (e.g. California as an island; Newfoundland believed to be Asia); 'Paradise on Earth' (e.g. the Garden of Eden in Mesopotamia/the West Indies/the North Pole; Jerusalem as the centre of the world); and, 'Allegorical Lands' (fictional inventions to prove a moral or political point, e.g. utopias).

The Atlas of Legendary Lands

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