ABSTRACT
The rules and expectations of cartographic representation mathematical accuracy, spatial organization, visual precision, the fixity of space were open to their own form of subversion that allowed new kinds of imaginative manipulation as the scientific and technology discourse of cartography was effectively transformed into ordinary language. While William Cuningham's Cosmographical Glasse in 1559 introduced the broader concerns of cosmography to an English audience, an assortment of authors including Leonard Digges, Edward Worsop, and Radolph Agas brought an emphasis on precise measurement and the newest technologies to the field of surveying. He is arguing that you cannot derive from map immediate, social and experiential qualities of locale, 'the fashion and place as it is'. But to say that is not to argue that a map cannot provide an accurate ordering of space. The spread of the cartographic imagination changed not just the way people thought about reading the world but the way they thought about writing it.
