Material Metaphors for Literary Form: Robert Burton's ‘Perused’ Copy of Theatrum Urbium Italicarum (1599)

AbstractThis article gives a detailed description and analysis of Robert Burton's copy of Theatrum urbium italicarum, a Venetian ‘city‐atlas’ produced in 1599 by the engraver and publisher Pietro Bertelli. Burton's copy of the book is especially noteworthy because it has had a number of the maps removed. The article uses the Theatrum in order to add fresh emphasis to Burton's understanding of cartography, and to suggest new ways in which early modern maps can be related to literary works. I begin with a survey of the renaissance ‘city‐atlas’, proceeding to locate the Theatrum within a distinctly Venetian milieu of map‐production, and showing the surprisingly various contexts in which the Venetian maps could appear. I then detail the bibliographical oddities of Burton's copy, suggesting possible reasons for the removal of the maps. I conclude by suggesting that the form and construction of the Theatrum – hastily assembled, gathered from a range of sources – can be related in productive fashions to Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. I situate the Theatrum and similar works among a recent critical trend of ‘material metaphors for literary form’, considering the ways in which early modern authors thought of the structures of their works as analogous to various material objects.