Literary Geography – or How Cartographers Open up a New Dimension for Literary Studies

Mapping spaces in fiction seems like a simple idea. But in fact, it turns out to be a major interdisciplinary challenge at the crossroads of literary theory and cartographic concepts for more than one hundred years. Introduced and contextualised is the emerging field of a literary geography along with one of its core methods: literary cartography. After facing a certain period of stagnation, where no more convincing solutions could be found, this research area currently prospers, inspired and supported by means of an advanced digital, interactive, animated and database-related cartography. While the paper gives evidence that only such a powerful cartography provides adequate means to map literary settings in a meaningful and sensible way, occurring problems, limits as well as the potential of these methods are briefly sketched. The ongoing research project “A Literary Atlas of Europe”, Institute of Cartography, ETH Zurich, serves as an