Literary Mathematics by Michael Gavin;

Author:Michael Gavin;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2022-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

Figure 3.13. Rome. Rome marks the longitudinal midpoint of the world but sits near the bottom of this graph because of its relatively small range, compared to other words at its longitude.

The conceptual region surrounding Rome is of much wider extent than the area surrounding England. It stretches from the 28th to the 40th degrees of longitude, where terms range between 100 and 500 miles less than typical. The word rome, itself, is among the outliers of the region, with an unusually narrow geographical application. (That’s because it was so often mentioned only in reference to itself, rather than in relation to other places.) Rome is bounded to the west by a language of religious disputation that separates rome from france and to the east by terms of religiosity that point toward israel. Like the region surrounding england, rome is surrounded by toponyms: pisa, basil, venice, italy, and germany. However, the political space near rome was construed very differently. Whereas political terms that cluster near england tend to be very specific, made up primarily by the names of individuals and local institutions, the language surrounding rome emphasizes a much more general discourse of political discussion, centered on Italy but extending over a wider range, where the language of the public sphere marked a boundary that separated the conceptual space of religious and political debate from the rest of the corpus. Many words related to the world of the book trade fall in this region: books, book, collection, letter, printed, published, author, reading, answer, and authors. From west to east this region reflects the geographical biases of religious argument. Back toward France and England, printed books were more likely to focus on the institutional and social forms of religion, while toward Israel they emphasized terms of symbolic, abstract religious authority. This distinction can be epitomized by the differing positions of treatise and doctrine on either side of rome.

This region in EEBO’s geosemantic space can therefore be understood to represent something like print culture—a conceptual space of information exchange where European history was known to unfold and where political values came under dispute. For example, notice how toponyms are situated among other words in this passage, taken from John Owen’s Some Considerations about Union among Protestants (1680), which typifies discourse in this geosemantic region:

The first Form of an Authoritative National Church-State amongst us, as in other places, was Papal: And the sole use of it here in England, was to embroyl, our Kings in their Government, to oppress the People in their Souls, Bodies, and Estates, and to sell us all, as branded slaves, unto Rome. These things have been sufficiently manifested. But in other places especially in Germany, whil’st otherwise they were all of one Religion, in Doctrine and Worship, all conform to the Church of Rome; yet in bloody contests meerly about this Authoritative Church State, many Emperours were ruined, and an hundred set Battels fought in the Field.

At the Reformation this Church State, was accommodated, (as was supposed) unto

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