Maps

The historical map used in the visualization is John Arrowsmith's The World, on Mercators Projection (London: J. Arrowsmith, 1844). While the original map centres on the Pacific region, it is Western/Northern-centric in other ways, not least with regard to its place of manufacture and its Mercartor projection. For geo-referencing purposes the map has been aligned with the Web Mercator projection, the de facto standard for maps on the web.

Poets are shown at their place of birth, unless it is unknown or the poet is generally associated with a country other than their birth country, in which case they are shown at the country's geographical centre. Images of the poets have been sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

Mapping global Romantic-period poetry

While little more than a visual access point at the moment, our aim is to use maps and mapping as an analytical tool that facilitates multi-perspectival approaches, mitigates ambiguity and uncertainty, helps to consider and appreciate the evolution of national literatures and literary spaces alongside the world literary space portrayed on the world canvas, and benefits from the participatory nature of RPPA to arrive at more useful representations.

Over time, as the networks of contextuality on the world canvas become more apparent, we envision the emergence of dynamic maps at a higher levels of detail. We expect these to reveal more contexts and the inner- as well as extra-literary structures that underpin and facilitate the construction of global texts and will allow for a more detailed representation and analysis of their components and evolution.

As we map out, literally and figuratively spoken, the poetry of the global Romantic period, we address not only its temporal challenges, but also embrace the geographic, linguistic, and cultural diversity of the various stages of a global artistic phenomenon. We hope that by virtue of the project's historical focus on the Romantic period, its comparative focus on contextuality and the building of global texts, and its collaborative and participatory nature, the map can be useful as an emerging historical canvas for the poetry of the global Romantic period.

Known issues

Despite every effort to include the most relevant figures of the Romantic period, a disclaimer needs to be issued regarding the inclusion or omission of poets. While "Romantic" itself is a notoriously "elastic" label (Michael Ferber's term) that includes "pre"-, "early"-, "proto"-, "high"-, "late"-, and "post"-Romantic incarnations, the scholarship that underlies much of the selection process is largely Western/Northern-centric and may have been superseeded within national contexts. In such cases, the editor would be grateful for any corrections and suggestions for additions and improvements.

Also, regretfully, for navigational purposes, country names and borders used in the map navigation correspond to present-day denominations and historical reality. We apologize for the resulting distortion and historical inaccuracy, and hope to improve this over time with the help of projects like OpenHistoricalMap as they evolve and mature.

Further reading

Contact

Get in touch

This is an open invitation to academics, research projects, digital archives and repositories, and anyone with an interest in the literature of the Romantic period in any discipline to collaborate on RPPA. The project looks forward to welcoming partners at any stage to discuss collaboration or other forms of participation. Please do not hesitate to reach out:

Romantic Period Poetry Archive (RPPA)
Alexander Huber, Editor