Chorography

Chorography (from χῶρος khōros; "place" + γράφειν graphein, "writing") is a term deriving from the writings of the ancient geographer Ptolemy, meaning the geographical description of regions. However, its resonances have varied with time and place.

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".^[1]

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.^[2] An early instance is a small-scale map of Britain in an early fifteenth-century manuscript, which is labelled a tabula chorographica.^[3] 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.^[4]

William Camden

The term also came to be used, however, for written descriptions of regions. 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).^[5] Peter Heylyn 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).^[6]

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, and it was 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.^[7]

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 Chorographers";^[8] and Robert Plot in 1677^[9] and Christopher Packe in 1743^[10] 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 medium-sized areas, being "less in its object than geography, and greater than topography".^[11] In practice, however, the term is only rarely found in English by this date.

Ferdinand von Richhofen

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.^[12]

The term is also now widely used by historians and literary scholars to refer to the early modern genre of topographical and antiquarian literature.^[13]

See also

• Antiquarianism
• Cartography
• Chorology
• English county histories
• Regional geography

References

1. ^ J.L. Berggren and Alexander Jones (eds), Ptolemy's Geography (Princeton, 2000), pp. 57-9.
2. ^ See Lucia Nuti, 'Mapping Places: Chorography and Vision in the Renaissance', in Denis Cosgrove (ed.), Mappings (London, 1999), pp. 90-108.
3. ^ 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.
4. ^ John Dee, 'Mathematicall Praeface', in Euclid, The Elements of Geometrie, trans. H. Billingsley (London, 1570), sig. A4r.
5. ^ William Harrison, "An Historicall Description of the Iland of Britaine", in Raphael Holinshed, The First and Second Volumes of Chronicles (2nd edn, London, 1587), sig. [A2]v.[1]
6. ^ Peter Heylyn, Cosmographie (London, 1652), p. 27.
7. ^ [G.R. Kinloch (ed.)], The Diary of Mr James Melvill, 1556-1601, Bannatyne Club (Edinburgh, 1829), pp. 38-9.
8. ^ William Camden, Britain, trans Philemon Holland (London, 1610), sig. [*5]v.
9. ^ Robert Plot, The Natural History of Oxford-shire (Oxford, 1677), p. 299.
10. ^ Christopher Packe, A New Philosophico-Chorographical Chart of East-Kent ([Canterbury], 1743).
11. ^ Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (London 1755), s.v. 'chorography'; cf. [2].
12. ^ GEO 466/566: The Profession of Geography.
13. ^ Particularly influential in reviving the term has been Richard Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood: the Elizabethan Writing of England (Chicago, 1992), esp. pp. 105-47.

Bibliography

• Brayshay (ed.), Mark (1996). Topographical Writers in South-West England. Exeter: University of Exeter Press. ISBN 085989424X. 
• 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 9780719072949. 
• Currie (ed.), C.R.J.; Lewis (ed.), C.P. (1994). English County Histories: a guide. Stroud: Alan Sutton. ISBN 0750902892. 
• Helgerson, Richard (1992). Forms of Nationhood: the Elizabethan Writing of England. Chicago: Chicago University Press. ISBN 0226326330. 
• Mendyk, S.A.E. (1989). "Speculum Britanniae": regional study, antiquarianism and science in Britain to 1700. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 0802057446.