Matthew Boyd Goldie is Professor of English at Rider University, a founding member of MAPS: The Medieval Association of Place and Space, and author of The Idea of the Antipodes.

A wide, precise, and fascinating tour of ideas of space, motion, and measurement, interleaved with readings of literature (Chaucer, Margery Kempe, Mandeville, Lydgate, Henryson) considered in terms of these and other spatial ideas. The author shows how the 14th century combined traditional ideas of movement toward 'natural place' with the new idea of impetus; how new and old notions of horizon interacted; and how challenges to Aristotelean physics produced the first graphs charting variable velocity.... The readings of local maps offer good ways to approach any historical map, and the analysis of the portrait of Lydgate joining the Canterbury pilgrims, found in one medieval copy of Lydgate's 'addition' to The Canterbury Tales, is a model for analyzing art at the dawn of perspective.(Choice) An exceptionally spacious study... that focuses, with acute particularism, on premodern mentalities and material conditions in place, yielding insights into several literary landscapes.... Scribes of Space is a most welcome contribution to the study of medieval practices of space, articulating a cogent view of emplacement across various media and modalities. It is also a substantial and rewarding addition to the ongoing 'scientific turn' in medieval literary studies, expertly navigating medieval physics, geography, practical geometry, and poetry.(Studies in the Age of Chaucer) Scribes of Space does more than evince Goldie's erudition and wide-ranging interests; it evinces the need to understand the innovations of medieval scientific and mechanical knowledge as representative of an evolving understanding of the human mind.- Lynn Staley, Colgate University (SPECULUM) Goldie discerns a unique, if rarely encountered, sense of space in some medieval texts...An impressive volume that deserves to be carefully studied by those interested in literary history, early science, physics, and ancient history as it is grounded in the works of both Aristotle and Ptolemy.- Cliff Cunningham, University of Southern Queensland (Sun News Tucson) In just over two hundred pages, Goldie offers a richly capacious and wide-ranging account of late medieval ideas of space... Scribes of Space is a rich and fascinating study; if we have indeed returned to the "spatial turn," on the evidence of Goldie's excellent book, there is much that remain to be learned.(Journal of British Studies)

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Late Medieval Space1. Local Space, Edges, and Contents: Chorography and Late Medieval English Maps2. Local Literature: Vernacular Local Space and John Lydgate's Siege of Thebes3. Horizonal Space: Measuring Local Area with Astrolabes, Quadrants, and Topographia4. Horizonal and Abstracted Spaces: The Book of Margery Kempe and The Book of Sir John Mandeville5. The Science of Motion: New Ideas of Impetus and Measurement6. Motion in Literature: Place and Movement in The House of Fame7. Intense Proximate Affect: Nicole Oresme's Tractatus de configurationibus qualitatum et motuum8. Proximal Literature: Nearness and Distinction in the Legend of Good WomenAfterword: Ubiquitous Being in the Pardoner's Prologue and TaleNotesBibliographyIndex

Matthew Boyd Goldie is Professor of English at Rider University, a founding member of MAPS: The Medieval Association of Place and Space, and author of The Idea of the Antipodes.

A wide, precise, and fascinating tour of ideas of space, motion, and measurement, interleaved with readings of literature (Chaucer, Margery Kempe, Mandeville, Lydgate, Henryson) considered in terms of these and other spatial ideas. The author shows how the 14th century combined traditional ideas of movement toward 'natural place' with the new idea of impetus; how new and old notions of horizon interacted; and how challenges to Aristotelean physics produced the first graphs charting variable velocity.... The readings of local maps offer good ways to approach any historical map, and the analysis of the portrait of Lydgate joining the Canterbury pilgrims, found in one medieval copy of Lydgate's 'addition' to The Canterbury Tales, is a model for analyzing art at the dawn of perspective.(Choice) An exceptionally spacious study... that focuses, with acute particularism, on premodern mentalities and material conditions in place, yielding insights into several literary landscapes.... Scribes of Space is a most welcome contribution to the study of medieval practices of space, articulating a cogent view of emplacement across various media and modalities. It is also a substantial and rewarding addition to the ongoing 'scientific turn' in medieval literary studies, expertly navigating medieval physics, geography, practical geometry, and poetry.(Studies in the Age of Chaucer) Scribes of Space does more than evince Goldie's erudition and wide-ranging interests; it evinces the need to understand the innovations of medieval scientific and mechanical knowledge as representative of an evolving understanding of the human mind.- Lynn Staley, Colgate University (SPECULUM) Goldie discerns a unique, if rarely encountered, sense of space in some medieval texts...An impressive volume that deserves to be carefully studied by those interested in literary history, early science, physics, and ancient history as it is grounded in the works of both Aristotle and Ptolemy.- Cliff Cunningham, University of Southern Queensland (Sun News Tucson) In just over two hundred pages, Goldie offers a richly capacious and wide-ranging account of late medieval ideas of space... Scribes of Space is a rich and fascinating study; if we have indeed returned to the "spatial turn," on the evidence of Goldie's excellent book, there is much that remain to be learned.(Journal of British Studies)

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Late Medieval Space1. Local Space, Edges, and Contents: Chorography and Late Medieval English Maps2. Local Literature: Vernacular Local Space and John Lydgate's Siege of Thebes3. Horizonal Space: Measuring Local Area with Astrolabes, Quadrants, and Topographia4. Horizonal and Abstracted Spaces: The Book of Margery Kempe and The Book of Sir John Mandeville5. The Science of Motion: New Ideas of Impetus and Measurement6. Motion in Literature: Place and Movement in The House of Fame7. Intense Proximate Affect: Nicole Oresme's Tractatus de configurationibus qualitatum et motuum8. Proximal Literature: Nearness and Distinction in the Legend of Good WomenAfterword: Ubiquitous Being in the Pardoner's Prologue and TaleNotesBibliographyIndex