The Known Unknown

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The Known Unknown is written by Mariah Carmen Briel and published by . It's available with International Standard Book Number or ISBN identification 043829064X (ISBN 10) and 9780438290648 (ISBN 13).

This thesis proposes that late sixteenth and seventeenth-century maps of the unknown continent known as Terra Incognita are the visual embodiment of ignorance, creating complex tensions between representations of knowledge and lack of knowledge through their borders, forms, and figures. Theories surrounding the possibility and physical form of the unknown and its inhabitants can be visually traced through Classical and medieval sources, culminating in the maps produced during the Renaissance and Age of Exploration, when the existence of, and visual space devoted to this continent began to shift dramatically. As an example of this phenomenon, my investigation looks closely at the depiction of the Terra Incognita on the 1608 world map of engraver Jodocus Hondius, printed in Amsterdam, which portrays the discrete and detailed borders of the explored and ‘known’ portions of the globe with an ‘unknown’ land with discrete borders, scientific data, portraits of explorers, and smaller world maps that delineate explorer’s routes. Hondius was well-versed in cartography and the images placed in the frame of the Terra Incognita were a calculated visual construction, made up of portraiture, Classical and medieval thought, scientific advancements, and conjecture, acting as both propaganda for knowledge and as a visual embodiment of ignorance. Using agnotology, or the study of culturally produced ignorance, I will examine the images contained within the Terra Incognita to explore the implications of that ignorance on Hondius, as well as Dutch exploration, and European expansion at large.