Where is the setting of literature?
It all begins with the question, "where is the setting of literature?" since each literary work takes place somewhere, along a scale of localisation that ranges from the completely imaginary to the realistically rendered, highly recognisable and easily placed.
The Specific Geography of Literature
A literary atlas – a map of comparative literary history – registers these settings in novels, novellas, tales, ballads, dramas.
In this way the specific geography of literature becomes visible: Where and when do which landscapes and cities emerge on the literary map of Europe, and when are they submerged again in meaninglessness, or when have they exhausted their literary potential? Are there geographic areas which are entirely undocumented in literature? How densely settled by fictional works is a particular space? How internationally is it occupied? Or is the space inscribed almost exclusively by native authors? Under which conditions (political-historical not least) does the (imagination-) space of literature contract, and under which does it expand?
Interactive Maps
In the interactive version of the atlas, the geography of a single author, a group of writers, or a particular literary-historical epoch can be called up, as well as the literary geography of a minority or of an entire nation.
One could ask: Are there epoch-specific settings? Is there a typical Sturm und Drang landscape, a landscape of Romanticism, is there a site of expressionism? Some questions could even be asked for the first time: are there works or types of works that are specifically set in imaginary places, and others that are better suited for referential settings?
Literary Metaspace
In all, what emerges is the European metaspace of literature, which has its own dimensions and functions according to its own laws, but which nevertheless corresponds with and stands in mutually dependant relation to really existing areas and places. In the process, not only are the literary riches of single regions illuminated, but also, fictionalised landscapes and cities in all of Europe can be examined comparatively, in the sense of a literary-geographical system.
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