ARTICLE ANNOTATION--MAPS IN LITERATURE

Byrd, M. 2009. This is not a map. Wilson Quarterly, summer: 26-32.

In this essay about maps in literature, the author notes that “plot” carries two meanings: the plot of ground or space where the story happens and the plot or action of the story itself. He catalogs a long list of authors, from Hardy to LeGuin, and fictional works with attached maps, from Gulliver’s Travels to that of Pooh’s which shows “where the Woozle wasn’t.” Weaving the essay around Robert Louis Stevenson and Treasure Island, he says, “It may be a map of a real place or an imaginary one. What matters is that we cannot explain a map by a map. …[W]e transform its spaces into something human, and everything human has a story.”