Map of Early Modern London

Shakespeare and his contemporaries traversed London on foot. Early modern plays, pamphlets, histories, and poems assume intimate knowledge of the streets, alleys, and topography of the city. At Map of Early Modern London (MoEML), our ongoing project is to map the spatial imaginary of Shakespeare’s city; we ask how London’s spaces and places were named, traversed, used, repurposed, and contested by various practitioners (Michel de Certeau’s term), writers, and civic officials. MoEML’s maps allow us to plot people, historical documents, literary works, and recent critical research onto topography and the built environment. At the same time, we experiment with new digital modes of answering GeoHumanities questions. An early contributor to the spatial turn and literary geographic information systems (GIS), MoEML provides a virtual space for exploring the meaning and representation of cultural space in the London of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. We also experiment with new ways of working collaboratively as teams and across institutions and disciplines.