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Literary geography is a broad field. For what reasons do writers choose for their stories settings that have a "real-world counterpart"? Or why do they not simply invent settings, or disguise a familiar location with an imaginary toponym (or pseudonym)? Which functions do these spaces of the "real" or "imaginary" fill in the structure of a work?
Why do certain readers feel compelled to seek out literary settings in the "real" world? To what possible end is the endeavour to represent cartographically places and countries that exist only in fiction? Why does one look in an atlas in order to learn whether the place about which one has just read also exists in reality? Are there specifically "topographical" works and poets, and how might this quality be defined? What does it mean when, for a particular author, "errors" can be identified, inaccuracies or mistakes in the topography? Why are novels, especially in their first editions, furnished with maps of their settings?
These questions are examined for the three model regions: Lake Lucerne/Gotthard (Switzerland), Prague (Czech Republic), and North Friesland (Germany) are explored in the mode of epic and dramatic settings. Using these regions as a point of departure, the interplay between real or geographic space and the space created in texts – textual space – is more precisely delineated. In which ways do literary works react to a region, or what do they "make" of it? A further challenge is contained in the question of how, or whether at all, seemingly place-independent texts should be registered.
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