The map is referred to as the Martellus map. It is named after its creator, the German cartographer Henricus Martellus, and is thought be have been produced in or around 1491. The only known surviving copy lives at the Beinecke Library at Yale. Being a large wall map, it is 4 by 6.5 feet, and having survived for over 500 years it is understandable that the map has seen better days. The map, which is usually on display by Beinecke’s service desk, has been relatively unexamined following a peak in interest after its acquisition in the 1960s because it is largely illegible. Now thanks to a new...
A 21st Century Literary Atlas of Europe
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...