Why map literature? Geospatial prototyping for literary studies and digital humanities

Abstract

By focusing on the process of building A Map of Paradise Lost-a geospatial humanities text-to-map project that visualizes the locatable places in John Milton's Paradise Lost- this paper addresses the question “why map literature?” and demonstrates how the process of research prototyping is in itself a form of knowledge production. Through a series of prototyping moments, we address how the different steps involved in building a geospatial humanities project can produce new knowledge about the fields it relates to: literary studies and digital humanities. The prototyping moments make arguments that advance our understanding of Milton's Paradise Lost, approaches to data visualization for cartographic comparison in and beyond DH, and models for interdisciplinary collaboration.