Maps and Voyages in John Donne’s Poetry

Abstract

What came first, the voyage or the map? For our age, a normal procedure is to do the research, make the trip, take the measurements, then record it all, complete with a grid to tell us how to measure the distances, calculate the directions. Maps in Donne's time offered some of this, but they also met other expectations, inherited from earlier assumptions about how the world should look. Maps based on speculation could inspire voyages of discovery. Voyages in turn could inspire the mapmakers and these excite their viewers.