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Humans have always left traces of our beliefs, feelings, aspirations and worldviews embodied in objects.
Not only in art, music, architecture and literature, they reflect our inner world, but also technological, scientific and everyday artefacts.
Even maps, those two-dimensional graphical representations generally considered useful tools that serve as guides, betray us.
The ancient maps of the stars bear witness to an infinite curiosity; Those who have long shown the limits of the known world by marking them with the phrase “here are dragons”, have expressed terrors, and the changes of frontiers over the centuries, manifest ambitions, dreams, victories and disappointments. ..
And what about sentimental mapping!
Allegorical maps have been around for centuries, and the genre came of age at the end of the Renaissance.
Using the visual vocabulary of classic maps to interpret facets of the human psyche, cartographers began to map more ambiguous land maps, representing ideas as places and the machinations of the mind and heart as journeys.
The phenomenon reached its peak in the 18th and 19th centuries, with wonderful maps of the ups and downs of love, courtship and marriage.
One of the most splendid examples is the Tendre card o Tenderness card, by the writer Madeleine de Scudéry, drawn a little earlier, in 1654, and shows the summits and valleys of the amorous pursuit, from the Rivière de la Predisposition to the Lac de l’Indifférence, offering multiple routes to tenderness .
Among the first “marriage cards” is that of Thomas Sayer, from 1748, entitled “A map or a map of the path of love and the port of marriage”.
North of the Way of Love, and the Islands of Desire, Money and Virtue, is the Land of the Wicked, and north of the Land of Desire, is the Cuckold Sanctuary, off the coast of the coast where the double danger is. The rocks of jealousy and the whirlwind of adultery.
Johann Gottlob Immanuel Breitkopf, for his part, with his The kingdom of love or The Empire of Love (1777), takes you through the lands of youth, rest, lust, obsession, mourning and happy love, as well as the land of singles.
But there’s a 19th century map that stands out among them to represent the landscape of love of how this feeling is associated.
Maybe that’s why he was – and still is – so popular.
His heart
It bears the title of “A map of the country opened from the heart of a woman”, specifies that sets out “its internal communications and the facilities and dangers for travelers” and is signed by “a lady”.
Although it is not dated, since its lithographer was DW Kellogg & Co. in Hartford, Connecticut, it is known to have been created between 1833-1842.
At that time, the media in the United States was promoting the “cult of true femininity,” and this company used a large part of its income to promote these values.
In this idealized version, “Real women” had four cardinal virtues: piety, purity, domesticity and submission. The idea revolved around the woman being the center of the family; he was considered “the light of the house”.
Love, as the map showed, was an “open country” with many options, but only one good one.
Several canals, rivers, highways, and a railroad link the country of eligibility to the city and district of love, but make it clear that flirtation, whim and selfishness lead to the land of oblivion.
There are dangerous regions such as Sentimentality – with the Plain of Susceptibility, its rivers of Romantic Reading, Reflections and Thought – and that of Selfishness – with its Ego Mountains and the River of Indulgence.
These contrast with the region of Sentiment, which is dominated by Platonic affection, friendship, hope, enthusiasm, common sense and prudence. It is home to the Canal de la Paciencia and the Rio de la Esteem and, more importantly, the Quartier de l’Amour.
Thus, the card describes the woman as a sentimental, selfish and superficial being driven by vanity, but puts love at the center of her heart.
His lesser-known twin
And what did a man’s heart look like?
Much less open, certainly. In fact, the name of the card is “The Fortified Country of the Heart of Man”.
However, based on the map, its landscape looks easier to navigate.
It has large territories: Land of Economy, Land of Love of To be able to, Land of Love at Money (the oldest) and Terre d’Amour in Facilitate.
Some are smaller, like the Citadel of Self-Love – practically impenetrable – and the Land of Love in ArrivingJust as the zones of Silence and Resolve are separated from the outside world by a Wall of Terror in a woman’s tongue.
He is almost entirely surrounded by a wall of marital terror, the only breach of which is in front of the Land of Romance.
It is a curious territory because it is bathed by rivers of daytime dreams – which was probably not good -; reading novels – an activity not recommended for women – and a fantastic forest.
It was the heart that the “real woman” of early 19th century America had to conquer … of course. only after mastering all the evil they had in theirs.
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