Cartography as Translation

The Map Productions of 18^th Century French ‘Armchair Geographers’

The project deals with the French geographers Guillaume Delisle (1675-1726), Philippe Buache (1700-1773) and Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d’Anville (1697-1782). As so called armchair geographers, these 18^th century scholars didn’t travel and survey the regions they mapped

themselves. Their cartographic works were based exclusively on extensive collections of all kinds of sources. Within the project we study the complex intersemiotic translation processes that took place in the course of knowledge transfers between different sources like maps, letters, travelogues or historical works. Furthermore, we analyse translation processes in the transfer of local knowledge (e.g. knowledge coming from missionary contexts).

The project is located at the university of Tuebingen. It is led by Prof Dr Renate Duerr and carried out by Irina Saladin as research fellow.

Publications (project-related):

• Prof Dr Renate Dürr
• Dr Irina Saladin