Vol. 16 No. 1 (2025)
Special Issue: Spatial Humanities and Contemporary Geographical Approaches

Reconsidering the Origins of Smellscapes: Insights from Late Medieval and Early Modern Travel Narratives (Mandeville, Moryson, and Hakluyt)

PDF
Olena Morenets
University of Zürich, Switzerland
DOI: https://doi.org/10.48088/ejg.si.spat.hum.o.mor.101.113
Categories

Published 2025-03-13

Keywords

  • Smellscape,
  • Olfactory Landscape,
  • Sensuous Geographies,
  • Olfactory Studies,
  • History of Smell,
  • Osmology,
  • Travel Narratives
    • ...More
    Less

How to Cite

Morenets, Olena. 2025. “Reconsidering the Origins of Smellscapes: Insights from Late Medieval and Early Modern Travel Narratives (Mandeville, Moryson, and Hakluyt)”. European Journal of Geography 16 (1):s111-s113. https://doi.org/10.48088/ejg.si.spat.hum.o.mor.101.113.

Copyright (c) 2025 Olena Morenets

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Received 2024-10-07
Accepted 2025-03-09
Published 2025-03-13

Abstract

The notion of smellscapes is gaining prominence in olfactory studies and fields such as physical, human, and cultural geography. This paper traces the evolution of the smellscape concept, showing that its origins predate studies of indigenous peoples and 20th-century urban planning. Instead of an empirical analysis, this study explores smellscapes theoretically and historically through travel writing, a genre fusing fact and fiction and generating epistemological discussions. While descriptions of smell in travel texts may stem from real sensory experiences, they are examined here as textual constructs independent of factual accuracy. Consequently, three key travel narratives were chosen: The Travels of Sir John Mandeville (1357–1371), which contains more than 40 references to smells; An Itinerary Written by Fynes Moryson Gent (Vol. 1–4) (1617), with more than 60 references; 12-volume The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation, compiled and edited by Richard Hakluyt, with approximately 200 smell references. Selected examples from these works illustrate smellscape’s transformation from a symbolically and culturally rich concept to one reflecting practical and socio-economic realities. They also examine smell incorporation into narratives to shape perceptions of place. Based on the discussed theoretical frameworks and literary texts, smellscape is defined as the unity of a smell’s location, individual interpretation, and interactions with surrounding smells. The complexity of smellscapes reveals them as dynamic and heterogeneous “palimpsests.” This study chronologically traces the smellscape’s development and potential theoretical applications by extending contemporary ideas of the concept to the medieval period and the Enlightenment

Highlights:

  • Smellscapes, introduced in 1984 by Gade, were described by travellers as early as the 14th century.
  • Smellscapes blend material, environmental, and personal factors, forming an olfactory palimpsest.
  • Whether real or metaphorical, smellscapes shape and influence a person’s geographical movements.
  • A smellscape of one century may be rejected by the next, reflecting changing norms.



PDF

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.
Crossref
Scopus
Google Scholar
Europe PMC

References

  1. Adams, M., & Guy, S. (2007). Editorial: Senses and the City. The Senses and Society, 2(2), 133–136. https://doi.org/10.2752/174589307X203047
  2. Barbara, A., & Perliss, A. (2006). Invisible architecture: Experiencing places through the sense of smell (1. ed). Skira.
  3. Bull, M., Gilroy, P., Howes, D., & Kahn, D. (2006). Introducing Sensory Studies. The Senses and Society, 1(1), 5–7. https://doi.org/10.2752/174589206778055655
  4. Cheng, T., Deroy, O., & Spence, C. (Eds.). (2019). Spatial Senses: Philosophy of Perception in an Age of Science (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315146935
  5. Clark, W. B. (2006). A medieval book of beasts: The second-family bestiary : commentary, art, text and translation. Boydell.
  6. Classen, C., Howes, D., & Synnott, A. (1994). Aroma: The cultural history of smell (Transferred to digital print). Routledge.
  7. Cockayne, E. (2021). Hubbub: Filth, Noise, & Stench in England, 1600-1770 (New edition). Yale University Press.
  8. Corbin, A. (1986). The foul and the fragrant: Odor and the French social imagination. Harvard University Press.
  9. Cowan, A. F., & Steward, J. (2007). The city and the senses: Urban culture since 1500. Ashgate.
  10. White, H. (2019). The Fictions of Factual Representation. In D. Preziosi & C. Farago (Eds.), Grasping the World (pp. 22–34). Routledge.
  11. de Mandeville, J. (2002). Libro de las Maravillas del mundo y del viage de la Tierra Santa de Hierusalem y de todas las provincias y hombres mon-struosos que hay en las Indias ( loan Navarro, Trans.).
  12. Diaconu, M. (2011). Senses and the City: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Urban Sensescapes. Lit. https://books.google.de/books?id=Lfp0fh7yzZQC
  13. Drobnick, J. (Ed.). (2020). The smell culture reader. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
  14. Edwards, E., Gosden, C., & Phillips, R. B. (Eds.). (2020). Sensible objects: Colonialism, museums, and material culture. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
  15. Endreß, S. (2023). Multisensory Landscapes—Smellscapes (pp. 171–185). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-40414-7_9
  16. Engen, T. (1982). The perception of odors. Academic Press.
  17. Engen, T. (1991). Odor Sensation and Memory. Bloomsbury Publishing USA.
  18. Feld, S. (2005). Places Sensed, Senses Placed Toward a Sensuous Epistemology of Environments. In Empire of the Senses: The Sensual Culture Reader (pp. 179–191). Berg.
  19. Fynes Moryson (1566-1630), An Itinerary (1617). (n.d.). Written Camposanto: The Pisan Cemetery through the Eyes of Chroniclers, Artists and Travelers. Retrieved 20 September 2024, from https://dlf.uzh.ch/sites/camposanto/moryson/
  20. Gade, D. (1984). Redolence and Land Use on Nosy Be, Madagascar. Journal of Cultural Geography, 4(2), 29–40. https://doi.org/10.1080/08873638409478572
  21. Gold, D. L. (2002). English Nouns and Verbs Ending in -scape. Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses, 15, 79–94.
  22. Hakluyt, R. (2014a). The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation. Volume 3 (1–12). Cambridge University Press.
  23. Hakluyt, R. (2014b). The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation. Volume 8 (1–12). Cambridge University Press.
  24. Henshaw, V. (2014). Urban smellscapes: Understanding and designing city smell environments (1st ed). Routledge.
  25. Henshaw, V. (Ed.). (2018). Designing with smell: Practices, techniques and challenges. Routledge.
  26. Histoire de la Société royale de médecine année 1776-1789 : Avec les Mémoires de médecine et de physique médicale. (1–10). (1789). Paris: Didot Le Jeune.
  27. Hoover, K. (2009). The Geography of Smell. Cartographica, 44, 237–239. https://doi.org/10.3138/carto.44.4.237
  28. Howes, D. (Ed.). (2005). Empire of the Senses: The Sensual Culture Reader. Berg.
  29. Kenny, N., Morat, D., & Walraven, M. (2017). Introduction. The Senses and Society, 12(2), 127–131. https://doi.org/10.1080/17458927.2017.1310452
  30. Kitson, J., Leiva, M., Christman, Z., & Dalton, P. (2019). Evaluating Urban Odor with Field Olfactometry in Camden, NJ. Urban Science, 3(3), 93. https://doi.org/10.3390/urbansci3030093
  31. La Berge, A. E. F. (1992). Mission and method: The early nineteenth-century French public health movement. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511529245
  32. Macnaghten, P., & Urry, J. (1999). Contested Natures. SAGE Publications Ltd. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446217337
  33. Mancall, P. C. (2008). Hakluyt’s Promise: An Elizabethan’s Obsession for an English America. Yale University Press. https://doi.org/10.12987/9780300135275
  34. McLean, K. (2020). Temporalities of the Smellscape: Creative Mapping as Visual Representation. In D. Edler, C. Jenal, & O. Kühne (Eds.), Modern Approaches to the Visualisation of Landscapes (pp. 217–245). Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-30956-5_12
  35. McRae, A. (2012). Tree-Felling in Early Modern England: Micael Drayton’s Environmentalism. The Review of English Studies, 63(260), 410–430.
  36. Menini, S., Paccosi, T., Tonelli, S., Van Erp, M., Leemans, I., Lisena, P., Troncy, R., Tullett, W., Hürriyetoğlu, A., Dijkstra, G., Gordijn, F., Jürgens, E., Koopman, J., Ouwerkerk, A., Steen, S., Novalija, I., Brank, J., Mladenic, D., & Zidar, A. (2022). A Multilingual Benchmark to Capture Olfactory Situations over Time. Proceedings of the 3rd Workshop on Computational Approaches to Historical Language Change, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2022.lchange-1.1
  37. Morrison, E. & J. Paul Getty Museum (Eds.). (2019). Book of beasts: The bestiary in the medieval world. The J. Paul Getty Museum.
  38. Moryson, F. (1617). An itinerary vvritten by Fynes Moryson Gent. First in the Latine tongue, and then translated by him into English: Containing his ten yeeres trauell through the tvvelue dominions of Germany, Bohmerland, Sweitzerland, Netherland, Denmarke, Poland, Jtaly, Turky, France, England, Scotland, and Ireland. Diuided into III parts. The I. part. Containeth a iournall through all the said twelue dominions: Shewing particu-larly the number of miles, the soyle of the country, the situation of cities, the descriptions of them, with all monuments in each place worth the seeing, as also the rates of hiring coaches or horses from place to place, with each daies expences for diet, horse-meate, and the like. The II. part. Containeth the rebellion of Hugh, Earle of Tyrone, and the appeasing thereof: Written also in forme of a iournall. The III. part. Containeth a dis-course vpon seuerall heads, through all the said seuerall dominions. Iohn Beale, dwelling in Aldersgate street. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/A07834.0001.001
  39. Oxford English Dictionary. (2023). Scape, v.1. Oxford University Press; Oxford English Dictionary. https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/7728558688
  40. Pollard, A. W. (Ed.). (1900). The Travels of Sir John Mandeville. The version of the Cotton Manuscript in modern spelling. With three narratives, in illustration of it, from Hakluyt’s ‘Navigations, Voyages & Discoveries’ (1915th ed.). Macmillan and Co.
  41. Porteous, J. D. (1985). Smellscape. Progress in Physical Geography: Earth and Environment, 9(3), 356–378. https://doi.org/10.1177/030913338500900303
  42. Ramšak, M. (2024). The anthropology of smell. Springer.
  43. Reinarz, J. (2014). Past scents: Historical perspectives on smell. University of Illinois Press.
  44. Rodaway, P. (2002). Sensuous Geographies Body, Sense and Place (1st ed.). Taylor and Francis.
  45. Sennett, R. (1994). Flesh and stone: The body and the city in Western civilisation (1st ed). W.W. Norton.
  46. Sensory urbanism proceedings 2008: [Conference held] January 8th & 9th, 2008, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow (with Lucas, R., & Mair, G.). (2008). The Flaneur Press.
  47. Serres, M. (2008). The Five Senses: A Philosophy of Mingled Bodies (M. Sankey & P. Cowley, Trans.). Bloomsbury Publishing.
  48. Simpson, J. A. (Ed.). (1989). The Oxford English dictionary (2nd ed., Vol. 14). Clarendon Pr.
  49. Statutes of the Realm: Vol. III (Reprinted 1963). (n.d.).
  50. Streets, A. (2022). 52 ways to walk: The surprising science of walking for wellness and joy, one week at a time. G.P. Putnam’s Sons.
  51. Tuan, Y. (1990). Topophilia: A study of environmental perception, attitudes, and values (Morningside edition). Columbia University Press.
  52. Tuan, Y. (1995). Passing strange and wonderful: Aesthetics, nature, and culture. Kodansha International.
  53. Thompson, C. E. (2011). Travel writing. Routledge.
  54. Tuin, I. van der, & Verhoeff, N. (2022). Critical concepts for the creative humanities. Rowman & Littlefield.
  55. Tullett, W., Leemans, I., Hsu, H., Weismann, S., Bembibre, C., Kiechle, M. A., Jethro, D., Chen, A., Huang, X., Otero-Pailos, J., & Bradley, M. (2022). Smell, History, and Heritage. The American Historical Review, 127(1), 261–309. https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhac147
  56. Urry, J. (2012). Sociology Beyond Societies: Mobilities for the Twenty-First Century (0 ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203021613
  57. Wankhede, K., Deshmukh, A., Wahurwagh, A., Patil, A., & Varma, M. (2023). An insight into the urban smellscape: The transformation of tradi-tional to contemporary urban place experience. Journal of Asian Architecture and Building Engineering, 22(6), 3818–3831. https://doi.org/10.1080/13467581.2023.2208204
  58. Xiao, J., Aletta, F., Radicchi, A., McLean, K., Shiner, L. E., & Verbeek, C. (2021). Recent Advances in Smellscape Research for the Built Environ-ment. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 700514. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.700514
  59. Xiao, J., Tait, M., & Kang, J. (2018). A perceptual model of smellscape pleasantness. Cities, 76, 105–115. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2018.01.013
  60. Young, B. D. (2020). Perceiving Smellscapes. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 101(2), 203–223. https://doi.org/10.1111/papq.12309
  61. Youngs, T. (2013). The Cambridge introduction to travel writing. Cambridge Univ. Press.
  62. Zardini, M., Schivelbusch, W., & Canadian Centre for Architecture (Eds.). (2005). Sense of the city: An alternate approach to urbanism. Exhibition Sense of the City, Montréal. Canadian Centre for Architecture.