Refracted Input

I am fascinated by various kinds of literary and artistic maps. This article in The Guardian talks about some notable literary maps:

Robert Macfarlane, Frances Hardinge and Miraphora Mina, Wizards, Moomins and pirates: the magic and mystery of literary maps, The Guardian, 22 Sep 2018

From Moominland to the Marauder’s Map, writers Robert Macfarlane, Frances Hardinge and Harry Potter cartographer Miraphora Mina unfold their favourite maps

Broadly speaking, we might say there are two types of map: the grid map and the story map. A grid map places an abstract geometric meshwork upon a space, a meshwork within which any item or individual can be coordinated. The power of such maps is that they make it possible for any individual or object to be located within an abstract totality of space. Their danger is that they so reduce the world to data that they record space independent of being.

Story maps, by contrast, represent a place as it is perceived by an individual or by a culture moving through it. They are records of specific journeys, rather than describing a space within which journeys might take place. They are organised around the passage of the traveller, and their perimeters are the perimeters of the sight or experience of that traveller.