{"id":5315,"date":"2025-09-29T08:30:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-29T08:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/medievalstudies\/?p=5315"},"modified":"2025-09-19T21:24:59","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T21:24:59","slug":"a-joined-up-island-or-the-joy-of-a-geological-footnote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/medievalstudies\/2025\/09\/29\/a-joined-up-island-or-the-joy-of-a-geological-footnote\/","title":{"rendered":"A joined-up island, or the joy of a geological footnote"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/experts.exeter.ac.uk\/1247-elliot-kendall\">Elliot Kendall<\/a> is Associate Professor in Medieval and Early Modern Literature, and is particularly interested in how non-traditional approaches (such as anthropology) can help us to understand and interpret pre-modern literary material. As he explains in this week&#8217;s post, he also loves a good footnote &#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\" \/>\n\n\n\n<p>While burrowing into research, we sometimes uncover connections that are fascinating but remain a long way from our main business. If we\u2019re lucky, a footnote can salute the intrigue; can acknowledge a path untunnelled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I had this experience recently while writing about Thomas More\u2019s&nbsp;<em>Utopia<\/em>. When More\u2019s traveller Hythloday transports a selection of Greek and Latin texts to Utopia, a monkey rips up parts of Theophrastus on plants (presumably, based on early modern printings, a volume containing both Aristotle\u2019s contemporary\u2019s&nbsp;<em>Enquiry into Plants<\/em>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<em>Causes of Plants<\/em>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-default is-cropped wp-block-gallery-1 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"966\" height=\"667\" data-id=\"5327\" src=\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/medievalstudies\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/339\/2025\/08\/Capture-decran-2025-08-12-a-12.21.20.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-5327\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/medievalstudies\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/339\/2025\/08\/Capture-decran-2025-08-12-a-12.21.20.png 966w, https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/medievalstudies\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/339\/2025\/08\/Capture-decran-2025-08-12-a-12.21.20-300x207.png 300w, https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/medievalstudies\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/339\/2025\/08\/Capture-decran-2025-08-12-a-12.21.20-768x530.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 966px) 100vw, 966px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Map of Utopia and the &#8216;Utopian alphabet&#8217;, from a 1516 edition. Paris, Biblioth\u00e8que nationale de France, Arsenal, 4-J-109<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The monkey\u2019s disruptiveness sets Theophrastus up as a counterpoint to Utopia in ways that needn\u2019t detain us here, but one chapter in the&nbsp;<em>Enquiry Into Plants<\/em> snagged my attention. It discusses kings of Cyprus (who leave their island\u2019s trees undisturbed) and ends with some observations about Monte Circeo, a high promontory (headland) on the west coast of Italy about half way between Rome and Naples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Theophrastus notes that residents of Monte Circeo advertise it as the home of Circe and show off Elpenor\u2019s tomb:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>Further it is said that the district is a recent addition to the land, and that once this piece of land was an island, but now the sea has been silted up by certain streams and it has become united to the coast.<\/p>\n<cite>(<em>Enquiry<\/em>, tr. Arthur Hort, 5.8.3)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>The chapter caught my attention because of the curious way it mirrors events in&nbsp;<em>Utopia<\/em>: unlike the kings of Cyprus, the Utopians transplant a wood, rather than leaving it alone. Utopia itself used to be a promontory and is now an island, dug away from the mainland by its conqueror-founder, King Utopus. Tempted as I was to decide that More derived both Utopus\u2019s geoengineering and the Utopians\u2019 relocation of a wood from Theophrastus, I thought I should check whether the report of silting was anything more than an expedient way of reconciling fourth-century BCE geography with Homer\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Monte Circeo was, in fact, once an island, but not recently. The promontory comprises a Miocene thrust \u2014 a bulge of Jurassic rock raised by tectonic activity in the Apennine-Tyrrhenian basin \u2014 surrounded by <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1029\/2022TC007282\">Pliocene coastal sedimen<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1029\/2022TC007679\">ts<\/a>. \u2018Circe\u2019s\u2019 island had in fact become a promontory several million years before Theophrastus was born. On top of this, literally, a Bronze Age Somma-Vesuvius pumice eruption and massive sedimentary deposits in the millennium before Theophrastus\u2019s time had <a href=\"https:\/\/pure.rug.nl\/ws\/portalfiles\/portal\/791860867\/sevink-et-al-2023-the-pontine-marshes-an-integrated-study-of-the-origin-history-and-future-of-a-famous-coastal-wetland.pdf\">increased the land area of the Agro Pontino<\/a> north of Monte Circeo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is plausible, then, that Theophrastus in the <em>Enquiry<\/em> is reporting a centuries-old silting up that occurred on the Tyrrhenian coast, but mistakenly linking it to Monte Circeo itself. In any case, he is correct, but on a geological technicality: the sedimentary joining of the &#8216;island&#8217; to the &#8216;coast&#8217; had occurred long before our species evolved. Or were locals in antiquity just trying to explain the conspicuous difference between the Jurassic stone of their mountain and the rest of the promontory?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>None of this affects my reading of&nbsp;<em>Utopia<\/em>. It does, however, remind me that it is easy to dismiss all possibility of mythic or far-fetched narratives and tropes having factual underpinnings, even as geologists, archaeologists, anthropologists, and historical linguists increasingly present reasons not to do so. Thanks to the raw materials that they unearth, we can see that what seemed to be pure textual invention is textual transformation, or that their materials rhyme with textuality though the facts couldn\u2019t (fully) have been known. And that made for a pleasing footnote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-right has-small-font-size\"><em><strong>Header image: View from Monte Circeo today, looking north-west towards Sabaudia (Shutterstock).<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What links Thomas More, a monkey, and Italian geography? Elliot Kendall takes on a trip down a research rabbit-hole.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2687,"featured_media":5321,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>A joined-up island, or the joy of a geological footnote - Exeter Medieval Studies Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/medievalstudies\/2025\/09\/29\/a-joined-up-island-or-the-joy-of-a-geological-footnote\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A joined-up island, or the joy of a geological footnote - Exeter Medieval Studies Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"What links Thomas More, a monkey, and Italian geography? Elliot Kendall takes on a trip down a research rabbit-hole.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/medievalstudies\/2025\/09\/29\/a-joined-up-island-or-the-joy-of-a-geological-footnote\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Exeter Medieval Studies Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ExeterMedievalStudies\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-09-29T08:30:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-09-19T21:24:59+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/medievalstudies\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/339\/2025\/08\/20210302113425-circeo-shutterstock-1864997200-scaled.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"2560\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1235\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Elliot Kendall\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@exetermedieval\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@exetermedieval\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Elliot Kendall\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/medievalstudies\/2025\/09\/29\/a-joined-up-island-or-the-joy-of-a-geological-footnote\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/medievalstudies\/2025\/09\/29\/a-joined-up-island-or-the-joy-of-a-geological-footnote\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Elliot Kendall\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/medievalstudies\/#\/schema\/person\/6b479abb71a3bcb29d3b89607b4a1b63\"},\"headline\":\"A joined-up island, or the joy of a geological footnote\",\"datePublished\":\"2025-09-29T08:30:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2025-09-19T21:24:59+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/medievalstudies\/2025\/09\/29\/a-joined-up-island-or-the-joy-of-a-geological-footnote\/\"},\"wordCount\":677,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/medievalstudies\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/medievalstudies\/2025\/09\/29\/a-joined-up-island-or-the-joy-of-a-geological-footnote\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/medievalstudies\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/339\/2025\/08\/20210302113425-circeo-shutterstock-1864997200-scaled.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"Discussion\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/medievalstudies\/2025\/09\/29\/a-joined-up-island-or-the-joy-of-a-geological-footnote\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/medievalstudies\/2025\/09\/29\/a-joined-up-island-or-the-joy-of-a-geological-footnote\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/medievalstudies\/2025\/09\/29\/a-joined-up-island-or-the-joy-of-a-geological-footnote\/\",\"name\":\"A joined-up island, or the joy of a geological footnote - 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