How can we map stories? A cybercartographic application for narrative cartography

Abstract

Narratives and places are deeply connected. Places often contribute to the shaping of a story, just as stories contribute to the production of spatial identities. Mapping narratives can thus have a double goal: to explore the geographic structure of a story, and to better understand the impact of stories on the production of places. While it may be easy to locate narratives as points on a map, this type of representation is rarely relevant in capturing and characterising the complex spatio-temporal dimensions of the narratives. In this paper, we present a cyber-cartographic application designed to address this issue and provide solutions to help properly map some of the many dimensions of narratives, including the places of the narration (geography), the connection between these places (geometry), as well as the temporal dimension inherent to storytelling. This application, originally developed to map contemporary Canadian cinematographic narratives (see examples here: http://scaquard.classone-tech.com/), opens new perspectives and raises a range of issues to mapping a multitude of stories, including fictional work, vernacular knowledge, personal experience and collective memories.