The use of GIS to draw literary maps of Compostela. Applications in the educational field

Abstract

For three years now, a research group at the University of Santiago de Compostela has been working on the creation of literary maps of Compostela.1 In this application of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to literature, with the focus on a city of remarkable symbolic relevance, problems emerged, mainly concerning the mappeability of uncertainty and the codification of recurrence and emotions. The point of departure was a very precise group of texts belonging to the subgenre of the ‘estudiantina’ that depict the life of Santiago University students at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. In this paper, we intend to present the results, showing the achievements, the limits and the new challenges that emerged. Literary cartographies have proved useful for the study of symbolic production and for tourism. Less attention has been paid to its applicability to education, and yet, the tools used so far for creating literary cartographies can be applied to the study of literary texts produced by students, so that the resulting maps and graphics cast important information for the analysis of how students understand and deal with places, how they relate to the cities they live in and, thereby, reveal the constitution of their mental maps. In this paper, we will compare literary maps of Santiago obtained on the one hand from the database created with the ‘Estudiantina’ and, on the other, from the database of 40 texts written by current students. Taking the maps as a point of departure, we will reflect on the historical changes in the imaginary of the city and the way it is perceived, inhabited and lived by current students