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<p style="margin-bottom: 0in" align="LEFT"><font size="4"><span
style="font-style: normal"><span style="text-decoration: none"><span
style="font-weight: normal">Whittington,
Karl (2014). </span></span></span></font><font size="4"><span
style="font-style: normal"><u><span style="font-weight:
normal">Body-Worlds:
Opicinus de Canistris and the Medieval Cartographic
Imagination</span></u></span></font><font size="4"><span
style="font-style: normal"><span style="text-decoration: none"><span
style="font-weight: normal">.
Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 212
pp., ill.
ISBN: 9780888441867. $85. </span></span></span></font>
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</style><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.pims.ca/publications/books/st186.html">http://www.pims.ca/publications/books/st186.html</a><br>
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From the online description:<br>
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"On the last day of March in 1334, an Italian priest named Opicinus
de Canistris fell ill. His body slowly became paralyzed, and he
temporarily lost his ability to speak. But during this illness, he
had a divine vision, and his "interior eyes were opened to discern
the images of the earth and the sea." These "images," visions of
continents and oceans transformed into human figures, resulted in
drawings that combined highly accurate maps of the pan-Mediterranean
world with striking and often highly sexualized images of human
bodies, forms that Karl Whittington calls "body-worlds."<br>
<br>
Creating allegories of natural and spiritual worlds, these drawings
defy classification. While they relate closely to contemporary maps
and seacharts, religious iconography, medical illustration, and
cosmological diagrams, Opicinus's drawings cannot be assimilated to
any of these categories. In seeking to visualize the possibilities
raised by an entire new way of looking at the world they remain sui
generis and a formidable challenge to interpretation. In their
beautiful strangeness they complicate many of our most fundamental
assumptions about medieval visual culture, even as they help us
grasp some of its most basic operations. "<br>
<br>
Some added preliminary details are accessible online:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.pims.ca/pdf/st186.pdf">http://www.pims.ca/pdf/st186.pdf</a> .<br>
<br>
Joel Kovarsky<br>
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