Mapping enchanted landscapes in Philip Weller’s The Dartmoor of The Hound of the Baskervilles

Abstract

Literary mapping has developed in fascinating ways in recent years, both as a field of study and as a practical tool to pursue those studies. However, one area of literary mapping as a subject remains under explored – the use and production of literary mappings by lay readers. Recent research into non-scholarly use and production of literary mappings has suggested that they are expressive, creative and affective practices. In the hands of lay readers, literary mappings have affective agency, they can tell stories, they can be catalysts of personal and worldly change. In this article I will show how we might see and feel these expressive, creative properties of literary mapping in action; to offer these affective properties as an answer to the question ‘what can literary mappings do?’. I explore this question here through a reading of a literary mapping of Dartmoor produced by Sherlockian fan Philip Weller, made within the context of the Sherlockian ‘Game’ to align actual and fictional times and places. By framing my reading through the lens of enchantment, I will focus on the role of Weller’s mapping as both a catalyst for, and a representation of, Thurgill and Lovell’s (2016) theory of the ‘spatial hinge’, that affective, creative moment when fictional and actual worlds bleed into each other. I suggest we can see Weller’s experience of the ‘spatial hinge’ and feel his mappings role in inciting his affective encounters with landscape and story, in action.