Prof. Violaine Giacomotto-Charra, Professor of French Renaissance Language and Literature at Bordeaux Montaigne University, will give a talk at 2:00 pm entitled "Quand la Terre (n') était (pas) plate: l'image de la Terre au Moyen Age et à la Renaissance".
Then, from 3.30pm to 7pm, a milonga with a DJ will take place inside the Museum. Free admission and hats off to the DJ!
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When the earth was (not) flat: the image of the earth in the Middle Ages and Renaissance
Lecture by Violaine Giacomotto-Charra, professor of French Renaissance language and literature at Bordeaux Montaigne University.
The idea that the Middle Ages were a period of scientific obscurantism, during which the Earth was believed to be flat or dissection was forbidden in the name of religious beliefs, is now widespread in public opinion, despite the work of historians who have been fighting this view for decades. It's not uncommon to hear that it was 15th-century navigators or Galileo who "discovered" or defended the idea of a spherical earth, against academic and religious authorities. However, the "platism" attributed to the Western Middle Ages is a myth: sailors were not afraid of falling when they reached the edge or the end of the world.
We have a wealth of documents that tell us what the image of the world was like during the medieval and Renaissance periods, and to what extent this knowledge was or was not disseminated outside schools and universities.
This lecture will explore the texts and iconographic representations of the Earth from the early Middle Ages to the end of the Renaissance, placing them in their scientific and broader cultural context: what was known about the shape of the Earth and how was the cosmos represented? What could be known about these questions outside the world of scholars? If we knew the earth was round, what questions did we ask ourselves about it? These are just some of the questions we'll be tackling, with illustrations to support the discussion.
Violaine Giacomotto-Charra is Professor of French Renaissance Language and Literature at Bordeaux Montaigne University, where she also teaches the history of scientific books. A specialist in scientific poetry and Renaissance science texts, she has co-authored, with Sylvie Nony, "La Terre plate. Genealogie d'une idée fausse" (Les Belles Lettres, 2021 and Folio, 2023).