ABSTRACT
Joseph Hall’s dystopian satire, Mundus Alter et Idem, Latin for A New World, and Yet the Same, depicts the travels of Mercurius Britannicus, who journeys to the fictive lands of Crapulia, Viraginia, Moronia, and Lavernia, which serve as thinly veiled sites for Hall’s satirical invective directed at his contemporary London. The early editions of this text include foldout maps for these four imaginary locations in addition to a satirical mapus mundi, a world map with satirical Latinate labels and commentary. This essay examines these unstudied foldout maps through the perspectives of Foucault-informed geocritical theory to argue that Hall’s union of environmental commentary with geo-satirical textual presentation places the Mundus at an important moment in English literary history. Hall’s conscious denial of his own authorship of the text demonstrates precisely how dangerous this work was. The first text reflecting utopian subjectivity in Lacan’s Real, Hall’s Mundus goes further than merely depicting imaginary lands, as the lands he visits are figuratively and literally impossible and, therefore, reside in Lacan’s Real.
