This paper is centred on the work of the core Chronotopic
Cartographies Team at Lancaster University: Sally Bushell (PI), James
Butler, Duncan Hay, Rebecca Hutcheon.
For the last three years, this AHRC-funded project has been
exploring new ways of visualising and analysing time-space within literary
works, centred on solving the problem of how to map a text with no grounded
reference points in the real world.
The paper is in three parts. The first part explains the
technical approach: the underlying spatial schema; what is mapped and how the
maps are generated. The middle section identifies and analyses the resulting
topological forms that emerge in the visualisations and considers their
significance in relation to literary space and place in relation to key texts
(Gawain and the Green Knight; Jekyll and Hyde; Frankenstein). The final part of
the paper begins to articulate a new visual-verbal method – a new way of mapping
the text in the digital environment – that emerges from this. Such a method
values subjectivity in map-making; considers the process of map-generation as
integral to interpretation and celebrates multiple and comparative analysis of
maps.
Chaired by James Loxley, School of Literatures, Languages,
and Cultures
First broadcast on Wednesday 27 January, 2021