Description

I presented my first digital humanities project, “Mapping Mary Wroth’s Urania” at a one day symposium hosted by the UCSB Early Modern Center.

Abstract

Mary Wroth's Urania is a notoriously difficult text. In addition to several dozen characters, Wroth mentions over 160 places, some of which easily correspond to locations known by the modern reader, some of which seem hopelessly indistinct. To assist in my own navigation of the text, I have begun mapping the locations mentioned in the Urania using GIS software. My maps currently have 164 entries, each of which includes latitude and longitude, associated royalty, and the number of times that each place was mentioned (sorted into three separate categories: part one, part two, and the two parts combined). Along with a discussion of the making of my maps, I will explore how mapping the Urania returns Wroth's text to its geographical bearings, acknowledging what is lost (and gained) when the space of a literary text is transported to another medium.