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“The light of simple veritie”: Mapping out Spenser’s Cosmography in “The Ruines of Time”

This essay argues that Edmund Spenser’s “The Ruines of Time” is, alongside its role as elegy and complaint, a cosmographic work that engages in what I call “spiritual mapping”—a cartographic process that combines anti-worldly discourse with a trans-historical representation of space. By considering Spenser’s poem alongside William Camden’s Britannia, this essay highlights the textual act of mapping present in both works in an attempt to reveal the influence of an international community of mapmakers, including the Familists, who provided a model for cosmographic work that highlighted spiritual and irenic interests alongside the technical practice of representing space.