This report focuses on the growing interest in the relationship between maps, narratives and meta-narratives. Following a brief historical contextualization of these relationships, this report explores their current state in the Geoweb era. Using the distinction between story maps and grid maps as an analytical framework, I review emerging issues around the extensive use of technologies and online mapping services (i.e. Google maps) to convey stories and to produce new ones. Drawing on literature in film studies, literary studies, visual arts, computer science and communication I also emphasize the emergence of new forms of spatial expressions interested in providing different perspectives about places and about stories associated to places. In sum, I argue that mapping both vernacular knowledge and fiction is central understanding places in depth.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0309132511423796

Cartography I Mapping narrative cartography

This paper provides an overview of the multiple ways of envisioning the relationships between maps and narratives. This is approached from a map making perspective. Throughout the process of editing this special issue, we have identified two main types of relationships. Firstly, maps have been used to represent the spatio-temporal structures of stories and their relationships with places. Oral, written and audio-visual stories have been mapped extensively. They raise some common cartographic challenges, such as improving the spatial expression of time, emotions, ambiguity, connotation, as well as the mixing of personal and global scales, real and fictional places, dream and reality, joy and pain. Secondly, the potential of maps as narratives and the importance of connecting the map with the complete mapping process through narratives is addressed. Although the potential of maps to tell stories has already been widely acknowledged, we emphasize the increasing recognition of the importance of develo...

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1179/0008704114Z.000000000130

Narrative Cartography: From Mapping Stories to the Narrative of Maps and Mapping

Owing to the lack of concrete information provided by the narratives and the genreʼs unspecified setting, narrative space in fairy tales has been largely overlooked or dismissed as an inactive background for the action. Research which has considered this topic typically views it in terms of its symbolic potential, studying space in order to learn about other narrative elements (e.g. characters) or the implied meanings of the texts. This dissertation views narrative space as a concrete, material aspect of the narrative which is significant in itself. The main research question posed in the dissertation is: what do fairy tales tell us about narrative space and what does narrative space tell us about fairy tales? The main aim of the dissertation is therefore twofold: first, it examines how narrative space is structured in fairy tales and how the fairy tale conveys space-related information; second, it asks whether there is anything about the traits and structure of fairy-tale space that can be seen as genre-specific, i.e. that sets the fairy tale apart from other short prose narrative genres. The research is based on a textual analysis of the English translation of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimmʼs collection Kinder- und Hausmarchen (Childrenʼs and Household Tales, 1857). While its primary focus is on fairy tales, the dissertation also considers other genres included in the collection (animal tales, legends, religious tales, etc.). The research combines the knowledge produced within fairy-tale scholarship (folklore and literature studies) with the methodological tools of narratology. By considering narrative space and spatial transference, the dissertation aims to prompt a reconsideration of the fairy-tale genre and its definitions. One of its key findings is therefore a revised definition of the fairy tale as a genre which encompasses two domains – the magical and the non-magical – separated by a firm boundary, which must be crossed in the course of the story. What sets this interdomain boundary apart is the fact that it can be crossed from both sides, but only temporarily and only if certain conditions are met. The examination of genres through the prism of the domain has led to a reconsideration of our initial genre classification and prompted the conclusion that aetiological tales, Schwank tales, and didactic tales, which were initially listed as independent genres, are modes (subgenres) rather than genres. The thesis also shows that fairy-tale space is dynamic and relational, and that the lack of explicit spatial information should not be seen as an indication of the insignificance of space, but rather an expression of the genreʼs stylistic parsimony. Although the findings are based on the study of the Grimmsʼ fairy tales, the dissertation aims to provide an analytical framework that is applicable to other fairy-tale corpora.

/pdf/narrative-space-and-spatial-transference-in-jacob-and-207ns0g6ku.pdf

Narrative space and spatial transference in Jacob and Wilhelm Grimmʼs fairy tales

At present, nearly every media-related subject field appears to be “locative”, or with the prefix “geo” attached, be it the discussion on geoart, geosurveillance, or geocaching. Within this context, recent geographical and phenomenological studies on mobile media practices, in particular, reveal a trend toward a revaluation of place and placiality. While social sciences, media and cultural studies label this re-materialization of place “spatial turn,” a cultural, humanistic and media turn is acknowledged in geography. Currently, the two converging developments are still marked by differing conceptual formations: locative media and mediated localities. This paper as well as this issue are concerned with both sides—the spatial turn in media studies and the media turn in geographical studies—and provides a sketch of the subject area “geomedia” from a phenomenological perspective and the field of “media geography” from a dsciplinary perspective. As a theoretical framework for media geography in general and geomedia in particular, this article favors the actor-network theory for three reasons: a) The actornetwork theory tends to conceptualize places prior to the network of heterogeneous agents; b) it reveals itself to be a suitable heuristic for locative media as through the geotagging of objects instead of people, the actor-media theory permits a manifestation of what Bruno Latour means by the “Internet of Things” and, c) on the other hand, the actor-network theory puts us in a position whereby mediated localities can be described as if there is nothing more in the territory than what is in the map. Based on this argument, the conclusion can be drawn that media geography therefore also constitutes a new discipline for overcoming the very distinction between physical and human geography.

Locative Media and Mediated Localities: An Introduction to Media Geography

-Keep on trackin' [working title].- -The Space Between the (Post) and the (Modern): Considering GIS, History, and Geography.- -Using GIS to Explore the Nonlinear Dynamics of Historic Systems.- -A class from the past [working title].- -Beyond GIS: geo-spatial technologies and the future of history.- -Luddites in social science: the history of choropleth mapping in the Netherlands.- -Beyond the Narrative: Using H-GIS to Reveal Hidden Patterns and Processes of Daily Life in Nineteenth-Century Cities.- -The Role of Knowledge Spaces in the design of Historical GIS.- -Mapping early modern commerce and technology in urban mental landscapes.- -GIS for Native American history.- -GIS for environmental history.- -GIS in Medieval history to map religious apparitions.

History and GIS: Epistemologies, Considerations and Reflections

Modern cartography has the ability to map almost any phenomenon for which spatial relationships are of primary relevance. While existing cartographic products cover already an enormous variety of topics, the visualisation of ‘other’ geographies gains more and more attention. These other geographies may not accord to the ‘normal’ spaces usually mapped, hence cartography is both challenged and forced to find uncommon solutions. Literature and its fictional spaces might serve as a fi ne example (but one could also think of soundscapes or emotions). Doubtlessly, the realm of fiction is defined by different ‘rules’ to the geography that cartography customarily addresses. This paper deals with two main questions: Firstly, how to map narratives and their complex spatial structure? Secondly, what do we achieve by mapping literature? By searching for some (provisional) answers, the horizon of a promising interdisciplinary research field – a future literary geography – becomes visible.

Mapping Literature: Towards a Geography of Fiction

The interdisciplinary project ‘A Literary Atlas of Europe’ aims to develop an interactive atlas as a research tool for spatial analysis of literature. The central questions of where do stories take place and what interactions exist between literary spaces and the real space are answered by means of cartographical visualisation. This paper provides an overview of an extensive systematic evaluation of the literary space and proposes a practical implementation of literary spatial data into a database. In this process, specific properties of literary spaces are identified: the narrated spaces are fragmentary; they have vague boundaries and are often hard to localize, if at all. Furthermore, they can be transformed and remodelled by the author and can be linked to any time period. Considering these properties of fictional data, it becomes clear that visualisation of inherent uncertainty is necessary. The main challenge of this research is developing appropriate visualisation methods that visually satis...

Mapping Literature: Visualisation of Spatial Uncertainty in Fiction

Cartographic visualisation of the literary space is facing a major challenge resulting from different levels of detail within which the textual descriptions of settings are made by authors. Those range between very detailed descriptions within parts of a city to spatially spread events within a country, or long journeys across continents. Depending on the fictional texts, fictional action often concentrates on a few main places, resulting in high information density – in the form of various individual settings. As well, they are also embedded in a larger environment. When interactively analysing or choosing a section to print a literary map with individual spatial elements, the user has to choose a map scale, which will result in the output of either a detailed representation of a main place or the geographical overview of the fictional space having a small level of detail. However, it would be a great advantage to receive as much information as possible from one single map view. In order to achie...

Data-driven Expansion of Dense Regions – A Cartographic Approach in Literary Geography

Wo spielt Literatur? Wie nutzt, uberformt, verfremdet oder re-modelliert sie — uber mehrere Epochen — bestehende geographische Raume? Am Institut fur Kartografie der ETH Zurich werden in einem interdisziplinaren Projekt literaturgeographische Methoden und Visualisierungsmodelle konzipiert. Diese bilden die Basis fur eine neuartige, raumlich strukturierte, kartographisch unterstutzte Literaturgeschichte — fur einen literarischen Atlas Europas. Ein raumbezogenes, interaktives Informationssystem macht die vielfaltigen Wechselwirkungen zwischen realen und imaginaren Geographien sichtbar und bildet die Raume der Fiktion in adaquater Weise ab. Dank vielfaltiger Abfrage- und Darstellungsoptionen eroffnen sich dabei neue Fragehorizonte und Themenbereiche fur die Literaturwissenschaft.

Die Geographie der Fiktion — Das Projekt „Ein literarischer Atlas Europas“

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Anne-Kathrin Reuschel

Papers

Mapping Literature: Towards a Geography of Fiction

Mapping Literature: Visualisation of Spatial Uncertainty in Fiction

Data-driven Expansion of Dense Regions – A Cartographic Approach in Literary Geography

Die Geographie der Fiktion — Das Projekt „Ein literarischer Atlas Europas“

Workshop on cartography and narratives