Cartographies of engagement and geographic imagination in the creation of Pars Quinta: Guillaume Le Testu’s Terra Australis (sixteenth century)

Abstract

Throughout the sixteenth century, the political and economic ambitions surrounding the discovery of a supposedly existent Southern Land led to the production of specific cartographic works. Maps, charts, and atlases suggested the existence of a Fifth Part (Pars Quinta), shaping the appearance and location of this unknown land across various visual media. An analysis of the twelve folio maps that Guillaume Le Testu dedicated to Terra Australis in his 1556 Cosmographie reveals that the geographical imagination underpinning the creation of Pars Quinta transformed it into a driving force for overseas expansion in the early modern period.