The Cartographic Imagination: Art, Literature and Mapping in Postwar America

This interdisciplinary issue on “The Cartographic Imagination: Art, Literature and Mapping in the United States” starts from two intellectual premises: the first one consists in acknowledging the relevance of cartography and mapping as modes of aesthetic representation and critical thinking in postwar America, and the second consists in asserting the fruitful insights that can be gained by discussing postwar American literature and art together from the point of view of their common interest in cartography. This issue thus presents an interdisciplinary dialogue between American art and literature thanks to the choice of a third term, “mapping,” which provides a clear thematic orientation and also a theoretical and critical framework to the various articles. The articles published here reflect on how American space is constructed, reconfigured, displaced in writing and artistic form, and on the role played by strategies and metaphors of mapping in these constructions, reconfigurations and displacements.