LITESCAPE.PT - A PORTUGUESE LITERARY ATLAS

LITESCAPE.PT is an on-going interdisciplinary research project developed in the FCSH-UNL, by the initiative of IELT (Institute of Literary Studies and Tradition) with other partners, such as the IHC (Institute of Contemporary History) and the NOVA Laboratory for Computer Science and Informatics. It aims at studying literary landscapes from the Romanticism to the present within the geographical scope of mainland Portugal. Since narratives often take place somewhere in the geographical space, geographical references are commonly found in literature. Thus, literary works have been read carefully by team scholars, and literary excerpts of those works have been selected, classified according to a set of geographical and ecological descriptors, and registered in a database. What is proposed herein is an interactive web mapping tool that enables the visualisation and manipulation of the compiled literary information. Its user interface is able to adapt to both mobile and stationary platforms. The developed system includes, as one of the main functionalities, the searching of literary works available in the database. The search results can be filtered, for instance, by title or name of the author. Each literary work contemplates associated information which can be visualised in context. Moreover, literary excerpts are georeferenced and, thus, may also be visualised on a map. Additional searching options are available, like searching for authors with the retrieval of associated information, where possible. Searching for literary excerpts is also possible, based on theme, thematic descriptor, county, or region (NUTS III level). Location-based requests are contemplated, enabling the visualisation, on a map, of literary excerpts for a particular location. The application contemplates an administration environment which will provide the necessary tools for the association of multimedia information, such as images, videos, and audio, with literary excerpts. This environment is also meant to enable the creation of tours based on the geo-referenced literary excerpts available in the database. Consequently, the end user will have access to the information previously created by the system administrator through the user interface. Besides the traditional visualisation of markers over the map, other types of visualisations are under development, including choropleth maps. These maps can be used to represent, for instance, the literary geography of a certain theme, author, or literary work, based on available excerpts. The project's team expects that the envisioned system will enable visual thinking about geographic patterns and processes related to literary landscapes of mainland Portugal. Furthermore, this tool will convey both literary and geographic knowledge to the general public, as well as encourage the visiting of places which are important settings in important literary works.