Footprints in Spatial Narratives : Wearable Technology, Active Reading, and a New Digital Literary Mapping of Dorothy Wordsworth’s Scafell Pike

Taylor, Joanna and Donaldson, Christopher (2021) Footprints in Spatial Narratives : Wearable Technology, Active Reading, and a New Digital Literary Mapping of Dorothy Wordsworth’s Scafell Pike. In: Digital Narrative Spaces : An Interdisciplinary Examination. Routledge, London. ISBN 9780367514433

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Abstract

Maps might be good at representing a landscape’s facts, but they often fail to capture the human stories – historical and personal – that imbue a place with meaning. These limitations are exaggerated by digital maps which, like their analogue precursors, cannot comprehend an embodied sense of place. This chapter demonstrates how a literary spatial narrative affords new ways of rectifying this limitation. It demonstrates how incorporating embodied data – including heart-rate monitoring and GPS tracks – alongside a literary text can transform how we understand the role of embodiment in historical and contemporary place-making.