Flat Earth - Cultural References

Cultural References

The notion of a flat Earth continues to be referred to in a wide range of contexts. Indirect references to the theory include the widely used idiom "the four corners of the earth". The term "flat-Earther" is often used in a derogatory sense to mean anyone who holds views so antiquated as to be ridiculous.

An early mention in literature was Ludvig Holberg's comedy Erasmus Montanus (1723). Erasmus Montanus meets considerable opposition when he claims the Earth is round, since all the peasants hold it to be flat. He is not allowed to marry his fiancée until he cries "The earth is flat as a pancake". In Rudyard Kipling's The Village that Voted the Earth was Flat, the protagonists spread the rumor that a Parish Council meeting had voted in favor of a flat Earth. The 1980 film The Gods Must Be Crazy concerns a Bushman of the Kalahari who decides to travel to "the edge of the world" to dispose of a Coca-Cola bottle that he thinks has evil powers.

Fantasy fiction is particularly rich in references to flat worlds. In C. S. Lewis' The Voyage of the Dawn Treader the fictional world of Narnia is "round like a table" (i.e. flat), not "round like a ball", and the characters sail toward the edge of this world (although, in Lewis' subsequent Narnian novel The Silver Chair, the Earth itself is accepted and written as being spherical, with Narnian king Caspian X being amazed by this fact). Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels (1983 onwards) are set on a flat, disc-shaped world that rests on the backs of four huge elephants that stand on the back of an enormous turtle. Many explorers died falling off the edge trying to prove that it's not so.