Kartographie als Übersetzung. Kartenproduktionen französischer 'Lehnstuhlgeographen' des 18. Jahrhunderts

01/10/2018 to 31/03/2022

The project deals with the French geographers Guillaume Delisle (1675-1726), Philippe Buache (1700-1773) and Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d’Anville (1697-1782). As so called armchair geographers these 18th century scholars didn’t travel and survey the regions they mapped themselves. Their cartographic works were based exclusively on extensive collections of all kinds of sources. Within the project we study the complex intersemiotic translation processes that took place in the course of knowledge transfers between different sources like maps, letters, travelogues or historical works. Furthermore, we analyse translation processes in the transfer of local knowledge (e.g. knowledge coming from missionary contexts).