…

Sear

Chorography

Chorography (from χῶρος khōros, "place"

and γράφειν graphein, "to write") is the art
of describing or mapping a region or
district,[1] and by extension such a
description or map.[2] This term derives
from the writings of the ancient
geographer Pomponius Mela and Ptolemy,
where it meant the geographical
description of regions. However, its
resonances of meaning have varied at
different times. Richard Helgerson states
that "chorography defines itself by
opposition to chronicle. It is the genre
devoted to place, and chronicle is the
genre devoted to time".[3] Darrell Rohl
prefers a broad definition of "the
representation of space or place".[4]
Ptolemy as imagined by a 16th-century artist

Ptolemy's definition
In his text of the Geographia (2nd century
CE), Ptolemy defined geography as the
study of the entire world, but chorography
as the study of its smaller parts—
provinces, regions, cities, or ports. Its goal
was "an impression of a part, as when one
makes an image of just an ear or an eye";
and it dealt with "the qualities rather than
the quantities of the things that it sets
down". Ptolemy implied that it was a
graphic technique, comprising the making
of views (not simply maps), since he
claimed that it required the skills of a
draftsman or landscape artist, rather than
the more technical skills of recording
"proportional placements". Ptolemy's most
recent English translators, however, render
the term as "regional cartography".[5]

Renaissance revival
Ptolemy's text was rediscovered in the
west at the beginning of the fifteenth
century, and the term "chorography" was
revived by humanist scholars.[6] An early
instance is a small-scale map of Britain in
an early fifteenth-century manuscript,
which is labelled a tabula chorographica.[7]
John Dee in 1570 regarded the practice as
"an underling, and a twig of Geographie", by
which the "plat" [plan or drawing] of a
particular place would be exhibited to the
eye.[8]

William Camden
The term also came to be used, however,
for written descriptions of regions. These
regions were extensively visited by the
writer, who then combined local
topographical description, summaries of
the historical sources, and local
knowledge and stories, into a text. The
most influential example (at least in
Britain) was probably William Camden's
Britannia (first edition 1586), which
described itself on its title page as a
Chorographica descriptio. William Harrison
in 1587 similarly described his own
"Description of Britaine" as an exercise in
chorography, distinguishing it from the
historical/chronological text of
Holinshed's Chronicles (to which the
"Description" formed an introductory
section).[9] Peter Heylin in 1652 defined
chorography as "the exact description of
some Kingdom, Countrey, or particular
Province of the same", and gave as
examples Pausanias's Description of
Greece (2nd century AD); Camden's
Britannia (1586); Lodovico Guicciardini's
Descrittione di tutti i Paesi Bassi (1567) (on
the Low Countries); and Leandro Alberti's
Descrizione d'Italia (1550).[10]

Camden's Britannia was predominantly

concerned with the history and antiquities
of Britain, and, probably as a result, the
term chorography in English came to be
particularly associated with antiquarian
texts. William Lambarde, John Stow, John
Hooker, Michael Drayton, Tristram Risdon,
John Aubrey and many others used it in
this way, arising from a gentlemanly
topophilia and a sense of service to one's
county or city, until it was eventually often
applied to the genre of county history. A
late example was William Grey's
Chorographia (1649), a survey of the
antiquities of the city of Newcastle upon
Tyne. Even before Camden's work
appeared, Andrew Melville in 1574 had
referred to chorography and chronology as
the "twa lights" [two lights] of history.[11]
Example of Christopher Saxton's cartography

However, the term also continued to be

used for maps and map-making,
particularly of sub-national or county
areas. William Camden praised the county
mapmakers Christopher Saxton and John
Norden as "most skilfull (sic)
Chorographers";[12] and Robert Plot in
1677[13] and Christopher Packe in 1743[14]
both referred to their county maps as
chorographies.

By the beginning of the eighteenth century

the term had largely fallen out of use in all
these contexts, being superseded for most
purposes by either "topography" or
"cartography". Samuel Johnson in his
Dictionary (1755) made a distinction
between geography, chorography and
topography, arguing that geography dealt
with large areas, topography with small
areas, but chorography with intermediary
areas, being "less in its object than
geography, and greater than
topography".[15] In practice, however, the
term is only rarely found in English by this
date.

Ferdinand von Richthofen

Modern usages
In more technical geographical literature,
the term had been abandoned as city
views and city maps became more and
more sophisticated and demanded a set
of skills that required not only skilled
draftsmanship but also some knowledge
of scientific surveying. However, its use
was revived for a second time in the late
nineteenth century by the geographer
Ferdinand von Richthofen. He regarded
chorography as a specialization within
geography, comprising the description
through field observation of the particular
traits of a given area.[16]

The term is also now widely used by

historians and literary scholars to refer to
the early modern genre of topographical
and antiquarian literature.[17]

See also
 Local history
Antiquarianism
Cartography
Khôra
Chorology
English county histories
Regional geography

References
1. Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911).
"Chorography"  . Encyclopædia
 Britannica. 6 (11th ed.). Cambridge
University Press. p. 270.
2. Merriam-Webster
3. Helgerson 1992, p. 132.
4. Rohl 2011, p. 1.
5. J.L. Berggren and Alexander Jones
(eds), Ptolemy's Geography (Princeton,
2000), pp. 57-9.
 . See Lucia Nuti, 'Mapping Places:
Chorography and Vision in the
Renaissance', in Denis Cosgrove (ed.),
Mappings (London, 1999), pp. 90-108.
7. British Library Harleian MS 1808, fol.
9v; reproduced in Catherine Delano-
Smith and R.J.P Kain, English Maps: a
History (London, 1999), p. 21.
. John Dee, 'Mathematicall Praeface', in
Euclid, The Elements of Geometrie,
trans. H. Billingsley (London, 1570),
sig. A4r.
 9. Harrison, William (1587). "An
Historicall Description of the Iland of
Britaine". In Holinshed, Raphael (ed.).
The First and Second Volumes of
Chronicles (2nd ed.). London. p. sig.
[A2]v.
10. Heylyn, Peter (1652). Cosmographie.
London. p. 27.
11. Kinloch, G. R., ed. (1829). The Diary of
Mr James Melvill, 1556–1601.
Edinburgh: Bannatyne Club. pp. 38–9.
12. Camden, William (1610). "The Author
to the Reader". Britain, or a
Chorographicall Description of the
most flourishing Kingdomes, England,
Scotland, and Ireland, and the Ilands
adjoyning, out of the depth of
Antiquitie . Translated by Holland,
Philemon. London. p. sig. [*5]v.
13. Plot, Robert (1677). The Natural
History of Oxford-shire . Oxford.
p. 299 .
14. Packe, Christopher (1743). A New
Philosophico-Chorographical Chart of
East-Kent. [Canterbury].
15. Johnson, Samuel (1755).
"chorography". A Dictionary of the
English Language . London. p. 373..
1 . GEO 466/566: The Profession of
Geography Archived 2012-02-11 at
the Wayback Machine.
17. Particularly influential in reviving the
term has been Helgerson 1992, esp.
pp. 105-47.
Bibliography
Brayshay, Mark, ed. (1996).
Topographical Writers in South-West
England. Exeter: University of Exeter
Press. ISBN 0-85989-424-X.
Broadway, Jan (2006). "No Historie So
Meete": gentry culture and the
development of local history in
Elizabethan and early Stuart England.
Manchester: Manchester University
Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-7294-9.
Currie, C. R. J.; Lewis, C. P., eds. (1994).
English County Histories: a guide. Stroud:
Alan Sutton. ISBN 0-7509-0289-2.
Helgerson, Richard (1992). Forms of
Nationhood: the Elizabethan Writing of
England. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press. ISBN 0-226-32633-0.
Mendyk, S. A. E. (1989). "Speculum
Britanniae": regional study,
antiquarianism and science in Britain to
1700. Toronto: University of Toronto
Press. ISBN 0-8020-5744-6.
Rohl, Darrell J. (2011). "The
Chorographic Tradition and
Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century
Scottish Antiquaries" (PDF). Journal of
Art Historiography. 5.
Shanks, Michael; Witmore, Christopher
(2010). "Echoes across the Past:
chorography and topography in
antiquarian engagements with place".
Performance Research. 15 (4): 97–106.
Retrieved from
"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
title=Chorography&oldid=925995861"

Last edited 3 months ago by InternetArchiveBot

Content is available under CC BY-SA 3.0 unless

otherwise noted.