Abstract
In this chapter, I address parallel processes of adaptation and cartography through an examination of literary maps: maps that aim to recreate and, in some cases, create the experience of a particular narrative landscape through visual, pictorial, and spatial representations of writers, characters, settings, and scenes from preexisting creative works. This chapter begins with an overview of the genre of literary maps and the manner in which they organize information, as well as their target uses. I then examine two sets of literary maps as representative of two types of cartographic adaptation: the “Map-of-A-Book” calendars issued by the Harris Company from 1953 to 1964 and the maps produced by the Aaron Blake Company in the 1980s. I distinguish the two sets of maps in terms of both their functionality and engagement with source material: one set of maps privileges the literary work and emphasizes appreciation over user interaction, whereas the other privileges the reader and posits interactivity as appreciation. I conclude the chapter with a brief look at contemporary digital literary mapping projects and consider their contribution to adaptation and adaptation networks.
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Notes
- 1.
The Harris Corp. has undergone several mergers and name changes in its years of operation. Founded in 1895 as the Harris Automatic Press Company, it merged in 1926 with the Seybold Machine Company and the Premier Potter Premium Press Company to become the Harris-Seybold-Potter Company, abbreviated in 1946 to Harris-Seybold. In 1957 the company merged with the Intertype Company, which resulted in another name change: Harris-Intertype. Thus some of the literary maps discussed in this chapter were published by Harris-Seybold and others by Harris-Intertype. In the 1970s the name again changed to the Harris Corporation and, in the 1990s, the company divided forming Harris Graphics. “Harris Corp.,” The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History,” February 27, 2007. http://ech.case.edu/cgi/article.pl?id=HC
- 2.
See, for example, “Chapter 4: ‘Ideas That Have Persisted,’” The Core Curriculum. Columbia.edu, 2013. https://www.college.columbia.edu/core/oasis/history4.php.
- 3.
The Harris Corporation was founded in the 1890s by Alfred and Charles Harris. The brothers invented an automatic sheet feeder that revolutionized printing equipment, first by eliminating the need for labor-intensive hand-feeders and, second, by being so technologically advanced that the brothers then had to invent a new press to handle it. The resulting high-speed press secured the company a prominent position in the manufacturing and printing industry. By mid-century, Harris-Seybold had enhanced their lithographic printing equipment and saw the calendar maps as a way to advertise its superior printing quality. “The Harris Story,” Harris.com., 2016, https://www.harris.com/about.
- 4.
Promotional calendars were utilized as early as the 1850s when The Ketterlinus Lithographic Producing Company of Philadelphia popularized the idea by distributing calendars containing advertisements, see John J. Robinson, “A Brief History of Advertising with Promotional Calendars,” EzineArticles.com, last modified 2010, http://EzineArticles.com/expert/John_J._Robinson/769470. Geiger Bros., the largest privately held company specializing in promotional materials also printed promotional calendars in the late 1870s, see “Geiger Bros. History,” Funding Universe, n.d., last accessed July 7, 2016, and Robinson. At the end of the nineteenth century, Thomas D. Murphy and Edward Burke Osborne, newspaper owners from Red Oak, Iowa, began to include artwork (as opposed to just advertisements) in their promotional calendars, thus increasing the likelihood that users would keep the calendars on display, see Robinson 2010 and “A Look Inside the History of the Promotional Products Industry,” PromotionalProductsWork.org 2016, Promotional Products Association International, last accessed July 7, 2016. This practice became popular in the decades to follow and established a precedent that the Harris Company followed.
- 5.
Paul Riba illustrated The Call of the Wild (1962) and Ken Riley illustrated The Last of the Mohicans (1963) and Robinson Crusoe (1964) (Hopkins 1999, p. 14).
- 6.
As Simone Murray examines in The Adaptation Industry: The Cultural Economy of Contemporary Literary Adaptation (New York: Routledge, 2012), literary works that are widely and positively reviewed and nominated for prizes and awards are likely to be adapted into film—a process that reinforces their cultural value.
- 7.
“The Preservation of Favoured Traces,” last accessed September 18, 2016. https://fathom.info/traces/.
- 8.
“The Digital Yoknapatawpha Project,” last accessed November 21, 2016. http://faulkner.drupal.shanti.virginia.edu/.
- 9.
“Walking Ulysses: Joyce’s Dublin Today,” last accessed November 21, 2016. http://ulysses.bc.edu/.
- 10.
Google Lit Trips, last modified June 26, 2016. http://www.googlelittrips.org/.
- 11.
“Sunnydale,”Buffy.wikia.com, last accessed September 18, 2016. http://buffy.wikia.com/wiki/Sunnydale.
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Newell, K. (2017). Literary Maps and the Creation of a Legend. In: Expanding Adaptation Networks. Palgrave Studies in Adaptation and Visual Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56712-3_4
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