SGK-Herbsttagung Kunst und Kartografie Cartographic Strategies in Fiction. Christina Ljungberg

Transcription

1 SGK-Herbsttagung 2014 Kunst und Kartografie Cartographic Strategies in Fiction Christina Ljungberg

2 Macrobius map after Crete of Mallos Earth globe, 425 AD Commentary on the Dreams of Scipio (Africanus)

3 The Shape of the Promised Land Ireland 750 AD Irish monks trying to make sense of The Book of Joshua in order to disambiguate the Bible s textual inconsistencies about how Israel was divided among its 12 tribes

4 Why is the use of maps in fiction so effective? because of the intermedial tension generated by the interplay between the two sign systems, cartography and writing with the nature of maps as mediated, extended seeing with the way maps relate to their objects, that is, to the known, unknown or merely imaginary world

5 Historical maps Avoiding censorship Documentation Mirror the narrative organization Question concepts like authenticity and exactitude and discuss them Map emotions

6 Sir Thomas More, Utopia (1518)

7 Jonathan Swift, Gulliver s Travels (1726)

8 So geographers, in Afric maps With savage pictures fill their gaps And o er uninhabitable downs; Place elephants for want of towns! Jonathan Swift, On Poetry, A Rhapsody (1733/1983, 526)

9 World map in Daniel Defoe s Robinson Crusoe (1719)

10 La Carte du Tendre in Mlle de Scudéry s Clélie (1654)

11 Modernist maps ca s Quest narratives Source of motivation Depiction of a detailed fictional world Visualization of the itinerary on which the plot hinges Interactive device for reader involvement

12 R. L. Stevenson The Treasure Island map (1881)

13 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1903-4)

14 Arthur Conan Doyle The Lost World (1912)

15 Arthur Conan Doyle The Lost World (1912)

16 Thomas Hardy s Wessex as a reorganization of actual space into a fictive geography

17 J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings ( )

18 Postmodern maps ca 1980 Discussing metaphysical problems of writing and being Disclosing social planning or ideological inventions Visualizing diagrammatic features of the text Woman as map / colonized nature

19 Paul Auster, City of Glass (1988)

20 Professor Stillman s walked maps in Paul Auster s City of Glass (1988)

21 Aritha van Herk, Places Far From Ellesmere (1990)

22 Postcolonial maps ca 1970 show the consequences of mapping question the unreliability of official records problematize mythical mapping discuss the postcolonial body as (colonised) landscape expose maps and mapping as ideological processes

23 Rudy Wiebe, front map of The Temptations of Big Bear (1973)

24 Rudy Wiebe, epilogue map of The Temptations of Big Bear (1973) in which the Indians have been boxed in in the newly created Indian reserves

25 Kamila Shamsie, Kartography (2002)

26 Kamila Shamsie, Kartography (2002)

27 Michael Ondaatje, Running in the Family (1982)

28 Peter Carey, True History of the Kelly Gang (2000)

29 Jamyang Norbu, The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes (1999)

30 Jamyang Norbu, The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes (1999)

31 Using cartographic strategies in fiction that is, thinking cartographically requires an understanding of how the map functions as a medium why a map is different from an image or other hybrid media its usefulness as a narrative prop why a map is never a mere illustration but generally functions as a convenient metaphor to compare the fictional world with our physical real world how the map engages the reader in the production of meaning

32 References: Barber, Peter The Map Book. London: Walker. Carey, Peter The True Story of the Kelly Gang. London: Faber Conan Doyle, Arthur The Return of Sherlock Holmes. Harlow: Longman Lost World. London: Wordsworth Classics. Defoe, Daniel Robinson Crusoe. M. Shinagel (ed). New York: Norton. Hardy, Thomas. 1878/1974. The Return of the Native. London: Macmillan. Ljungberg, Christina Creative Dynamics Diagrammatic strategies in fiction. Amsterdam: Benjamins. More, Sir Thomas. 1518/1991. Utopia. Trans. R.M Adams. New York: Norton. Norbu, Jamyang The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes. New Delhi: HarperCollins. Ondatje, Michael Running in the Family. New York: Vintage. Scudéry, de, Madeleine Clélie. Histoire Romaine. Paris: A. Combe. Shamsie, Kamila Kartography. London: Bloomsbury. Stevenson, Robert Louis. 1881/1924. Treasure Island. London: Heinemann Swift, Johnathan. 1726/1968. Gulliver s Travels. London: Longman. van Herk, Aritha Places far from Ellesmere. Red Deer: Red Deer College Press. Wiebe, Rudy The Temptation of Big Bear. Athens OH: Swallow Press.