The impetus for the project is simple:
Where is literature set and why?
For over a hundred years “literary criticism has been struggling with the question of how best to depict literary spaces on maps in an adequate and objectively accurate manner”
Combining the fields of literary geography and cartography researchers at the Institute of Cartography and Geoinformation in Zurich have been at work since 2006 compiling new interactive tools to assist researchers and others with an interest in literature and place.
Subjects like “fictionalization processes over time (of a region, a city); interactions between fiction and reality; and last but not least coherences between natural phenomena, historical or political events on the one side and the quality or quantity of fictional spaces on the other side”
Current projects include a look at Historical Novels Set in Prague, Berlin Novels and Urban Topography and Central Switzerland in Fiction.
Berlin Novels and Urban Topography
map from Historical Novels Set in Prague
The research is serious and technical but hopefully, at some point, it will trickle down to be a great tool for an interested student, reader or history buff.