Since one of the first representations of the Earth in “The Map Psalter”, marine maps from the Age of Discovery and the first literary atlases, maps have taken a special place in British culture. Since the map of Treasure Island, which is considered to be a pioneer of the kind, from Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel of the same name, the maps have always played a significant role in British children’s literature. Literary map, especially a map in children’s books, is an important paratextual element. Although the roles and functions of maps may vary greatly, the place of a map (most frequently it is endpapers or frontispiece) makes literary cartography the first visual element for a reader, which enables for a map to set a setting, genre, and particular audience expectations. The fact that it is not an obligatory element of a book makes the presence of a map in a book an essential part of author’s artistic vision and a key (para)textual element of a book. The five maps from the classical books written for younger readers between 1883 and 1926 may prove that maps perform multiple functions and plays a greater role than that of a beautiful drawing on a frontispiece. They are Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island” and its XVII century marine map of the imaginary island; the actual map of India from Rudyard Kipling’s “Kim”; the map of Kensington Gardens presumably drawn by a child from James M. Barrie’s “Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens”; the map of the Thames Valley inhibited by anthropomorphic animals from Kenneth Graham’s “The Wind in the Willows”. The analyses of these maps’ paratextual powers and textual-visual interactions leads to the conclusion that the five literary maps from the classical children’s books of the Golden Age period reveal the five potential ways of interaction between the textual and visual: map as a plot device, map as a document, map as narrator, map as a transcendent, and map as memory correspondingly. The conclusion poses the following questions: what happens to maps during the act of translation from English into Russian or any other language, and is it possible to translate cartography, how crucial is the omission of a map. These questions are yet to be discovered.
Translated title of the contributionLiterary cartography: map as a paratextual element in british children’s literature
Original languageRussian
Pages (from-to)28-42
Number of pages15
JournalΠΡΑΞΗΜΑ. Проблемы визуальной семиотики
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - 20 Apr 2021

    Research areas

  • cartography, map, paratext, illustration, children’s literature, visual culture, translation, Translation, Illustration, Literary map, Children's literature, Paratext, Visual culture

    Scopus subject areas

  • Literature and Literary Theory
  • Cultural Studies
  • Language and Linguistics
  • Linguistics and Language

ID: 75719439