Liriskās ģeogrāfijas: literārās telpas kartēšana latviešu rakstnieču romānos un īsprozā
Lyrical Geographies: Mapping Literary Space in Novels and Short Stories by Latvian Women Writers

Summary/Abstract: The aim of the article is to explore the use of digital mapping tools in the study of history of women’s writing. Considering that space is never neutral and women are positioned in the world differently than men, women’s relationship to space also differs. Applying digital mapping tools (Google Maps, GIS) to the corpus of 110 prose texts (sketches, short stories, novels) by Latvian women writers, published between 1872 and 1940, we are particularly interested in the geography of women’s literary space and the relationship between women’s writing and social history, which are closely related. In the first part of the article, we look at the application of data visualization and digital mapping methods and tools in literary research, as well as the concepts of geocriticism and geo-parler femme for the interpretation of literary texts. Furthermore, using the results of literary digital mapping and combining distant and close reading approaches, we question the territory of women’s literary space and the representations of local and global geography in women’s writing, arriving at a conclusion that women writers’ biographical and literary maps often overlap. In the final part of the article we analyse Marta Grimma’s autobiographical and literary works as a case study of the practice of integrating biographical cartography into fiction, proposing that Grimma uses the geo-parler femme narrative strategy to inscribe bodily and emotional experiences in her literary works.

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