New Approaches for Digital Literary Mapping : Chronotopic Cartography

Bushell, Sally and Hutcheon, Rebecca (2025) New Approaches for Digital Literary Mapping : Chronotopic Cartography. Cambridge Elements in Digital Literary Studies . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. ISBN 9781009353618

Abstract

This Element is centred on the use of digital tools to spatialise and map literary texts, particularly works of fiction and poetry, with varying levels of assumed correspondence to the geographic. In this short book we review different ways of addressing the problems raised by the mapping of literary place and space before putting forward our own alternative method. Chronotopic mapping (the mapping of literary time-space) sets relative mapping of internal meaning against absolute mapping of a text onto a map of a physical location. However, in the process of developing and applying the method we came to appreciate the value of a comparative approach and to recognise the need to use a range of maps and of computational techniques in relation to visualising fictional worlds. This is ultimately what we argue for here.