Introduction: Mapping as Process

Authors

  • Rebecca Hutcheon

Keywords:

literary mapping, topology, chronotope, space, time, text, Woolf, Wells.

Abstract

This Special Issue originates from the ‘Mapping Space, Mapping Time, Mapping Text’ conference held online at Lancaster University, and in collaboration with the British Library, as part of the AHRC-funded Chronotopic Cartographies project. The nine articles in this edition of Literary Geographies ask: how might unquantifiable space and place be mapped and how might narrative, with its temporal and mobile nature, best be visualised? This introductory article draws on the work of Chronotopic Cartographies to examine digital literary mapping as process. The project’s primary aim was to address the problems inherent in superimposing the fictional onto pre-existing maps of the real. Our solution was to use topological graphs which allow for mapping truer to literature itself: relative rather than absolute, multiple rather than definitive, and endorsing interpretive subjectivity. Our method puts as much emphasis on the process of the mapping as it does on the map itself. The first part of this article introduces the concept of the activity of mapping itself via an articulation of the core methods from the project, outlining the stages of the progression from text to map: textual mark-up, graph generation and visualisation analysis. This is illustrated in relation to H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds and Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. The second part shifts attention to the articles in this special issue which share this leitmotif of mapping and, together, cluster under the contention that there is neither one map, nor one method. Mapping, here, is seen as an iterative process.

References

Bakhtin, M. (1981) Michael Holquist (ed) Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (trans). The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Bakhtin, M. (1986) ‘The Problem of the Text in Linguistics, Philology and the Human Sciences.’ In Emerson, C. and Holquist, M. (eds) McGee, V. (trans) Speech Genres and Other Essays. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

Banfield, A. (2000) ‘Tragic Time: The Problem of the Future in Cambridge Philosophy and To the Lighthouse.’ Modernism/modernity, 7(1), pp. 43-75.

Booth, C. (2019) [1889] Maps Descriptive of London Poverty. In Sinclair, I. (ed) Charles Booth’s London Poverty Maps. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd.

De Certeau, M. (2011) The Practice of Everyday Life. 3rd Edn. Rendall, S. (trans.). Berkeley: University of California Press.

Dickens, C. (1994) [1836] Preface. Sketches by Boz. The Dent Uniform Edition of Dickens’ Journalism: Sketches by Boz and Other Early Papers, 1833-39. Slater, M. (ed), Cruikshank, G. (illus). London: J. M. Dent.

Forster, E. M. (2000) [1910] Howards End. London: Penguin.

Frank, J. (1968) The Widening Gyre: Crisis and Mastery in Modern Literature. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Gabler, H. W. (2014) ‘From Memory to Fiction: An Essay in Genetic Criticism.’ In A. Pease (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to To the Lighthouse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 146-157.

Gissing, G. (1992) [1889] The Nether World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Harley, J.B. (2001) The New Nature of Maps: Essays in the History of Cartography. Luxton, P. (ed). Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Heine, S. (2019) ‘Forces of Unworking in Virginia Woolf’s “Time Passes”.’ Textual Cultures, 12(1), pp. 120-136.

Levenson, M. (2005) ‘The time–mind of the twenties.’ In Marcus, L. and Nicholls, P. (eds) The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century English Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 197-217.

Massey, D. (2005) For Space. London: Sage.

Mayhew, H. (1852) ‘“In the Clouds,” or, Some Account of a Balloon Trip with Mr. Green.’ The Illustrated London News.

Morson, C. and Emerson, C. (1990) Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Shields, R. (1991) Places on the Margin: Alternative Geographies of Modernity. London: Routledge.

Thacker, A. (2005) ‘The Idea of a Critical Literary Geography.’ New Formations, 57, pp. 56-73.

Wells, H.G. (2017) [1897] The War of the Worlds. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

West, R. (1998) [1918] The Return of the Soldier. London: Penguin.

Woolf, V. (2008) [1927] To the Lighthouse. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Woolf, V. (1982) To the Lighthouse: Original Holograph Draft. Dick, S. (ed). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Woolf, V. To the Lighthouse. Holograph MS. Berg Collection. New York Public Library. Woolf Online. Pamela L. Caughie, Nick Hayward, Mark Hussey, Peter Shillingsburg, and George K. Thiruvathukal. (eds). Web. [Online] [Accessed 23 June 2021] http://www.woolfonline.com

Downloads

Published

2023-03-31

Issue

Section

Special Issue Introduction