Creating a Chronotopic Ground for the Mapping of Literary Texts: Innovative Data Visualisation and Spatial Interpretation in the Digital Medium

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This project is about the visualising of literary place and space, using the digital medium in a way never before attempted to advance spatial understanding and interpretation of literary texts for a range of users. We view space and time in literature as a central element of the understanding and interpretation of texts, but one that is often overlooked. Literary mapping has the potential to bring it to the fore and allow it to be understood and appreciated in new ways. Conceptually the project is concerned with solving a deceptively simple problem that restricts spatial exploration of literature, particularly in digital space, the problem of how to generate the "base map". Where a text is set in a space that appears to correspond to the real world (e.g. London in a Dickens' novel) this appears unproblematic, but where a text creates a world with no direct correspondence this becomes a major problem since there is nothing on to which to map textual elements. Our ground-breaking project aims to solve this problem by creating the base map out of the text itself, using place-names and other toponymic elements to generate map representations. Structurally, we will establish five core spatial genres for Literary Studies and create models of interpretation at multiple levels for a range of texts within each genre. Our innovative approach will enable a major step forward in the understanding and analysis of the spatial and temporal (chronotopic) dimensions of a literary work, with the potential to be relevant and of interest to academics and the wider public. We will interpret texts and images by an iterative structure (returning upon itself) that connects visual and verbal representations and moves between them. So, a text is analyzed; maps are produced and the fictional world visualised; then there is a return to the text in the light of such spatialisation for in-depth analysis, enriched and deepened by the act of visualisation that mapping has given us. We are also interested in adapting gaming engines to the exploration of space and place in canonical literary forms, creating a range of maps and full 3D visualisations for different kinds of imaginative terrain and mapping at different scales. Our project will significantly enhance knowledge and understanding of digital tools for the spatial humanities, for literary mapping and for spatial approaches to the analysis and interpretation of literary works. A brief explanation of how the project might work may be helpful here, taking Treasure Island as an example. At a macro-level the novel will need to be mapped in terms of three distinct time-spaces: England (home); The Voyage/ The Ship (transition); The Island (the "other" space of conflict and death). The first of these maps onto "real-world" geography (Devon), the second reduces space to the extent of the ship in motion; the third is set in an entirely imaginary (though authorially-mapped) place. These space-times (or chronotopes) exist sequentially within the narrative but also overlap and bear upon each other (e.g. the boy narrator, Jim, projects an imagined version of the island forward from home that the actual island confounds entirely). If we focus purely on the first of these we can see how ordinary everyday life at The Admiral Benbow inn is interrupted by the intersection of this world with that of the pirates and how Jim is sucked out of one kind of timespace or chronotope (safe, secluded, the space of childhood) into another far more exciting, but also threatening, one. In the case of Treasure Island, an authorial map is also given alongside the text so that the map is both inside and outside the narrative, functioning like a chronotopic beacon -- an object of power calling out to be claimed and reclaimed and shaping the narrative around it by manipulating through desire. Full visualisation of different chronotopes will allow us to respond more deeply to the rich complexity of such a text.