I was interested in researching maps that form narratives. So that not only allow you to navigate for a journey, but also acts as a sort of documentation of a particular journey. This initially was to do with the maps at the beginning of fiction books, especially children’s books.
The first and most enduring of these for me, is that of the 100 acre wood in A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh
I especially like the illustrative style here, where the landscape appears flattened, distances shortened, and key elements disproportionately large so that we might recognise them when we later come across them. In a playful mode, spelling is intentionally mistaken, as though a child has written it, e.g. ‘piknicks’, and the naming conventions too are child-like and fantastical, e.g. ‘to north pole’, which is fitting for the intended audience.
Here key places, events, descriptions and characters that feature in the novel are highlighted. This is less to help us navigate the space of the 100 acre wood itself but is providing initial summary of the narrative that will unfold.
In consulting You Are Here: personal geographies and other maps of the imagination, Harmon, K., 2004 as referenced on our brief, I discovered in Hugh Brogan’s entry that Arthur Ransome (who wrote Swallows and Amazons) had a similar theory: “That pictures in a tale should be useful, not merely ornamental. They should tell the story, as fully and precisely as possible”
Here too Brogan detailed other authors who had included such maps, Tolkien, C.S.Lewis, Ursula le Guin, L. Frank Baum. It is reputed to have begun with Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. What all the works of these authors have in common is the fantasy genre, and the ‘letting loose’ of the imagination to truly transport the reader to the unfamiliar. Though many too root this within the familiar.
