Periplum

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is orphaned as few or no other articles link to it. Please help introduce links in articles on related topics. (November 2006)

Periplum is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) as having come from the poetry of Ezra Pound, specifically in The Pisan Cantos, Cantos LXXIV to LXXXIV of a larger work known collectively as The Cantos.

A periplum is a map or drawing that that shows how land looks from a point at sea. That is to say that a cartographer often draws maps from a bird-eye view and not from the perspective as the land would actually appear from the crow's nest or deck of a ship. Therefore a periplum would, theoretically, be drawn as if the cartographer were out to sea so that sailors could know which land or port they were approaching.

Pound uses the periplum as a figure to describe the form of the Cantos: not history from a historian's or philosopher's elevated point of view, but rather from the poet's point of view where the poet is a voyager navigating history personally.

As appears in the Pisan Cantos,
Periplum, not as land looks on a map
But as sea bord seen by men sailing.
(E. Pound Cantos LII-LXXI lix. 83)