The Digital Poetics of Place-Names in Digitised Literary Edinburgh

Abstract

First paragraph: SHEPHERD. … Just suppose yoursel speakin to some stranger or ither frae England, come to see Embro' – and astonish the weak native. NORTH. Stranger! wilt thou take us for thy guide … thou shalt have the history of many an ancient edifice — tradition after tradition, delightful or disastrous — unforgotten tales of tears and blood, wept and shed of old by lungs and princes and nobles of the land ? … Or threading our way through the gloom of lanes and alleys shall we touch your soul with trivial fond records of humbler life, its lowliest joys and obscurest griefs? [sic] (Wilson 246) In this invitation, Christopher North – the literary persona of the nineteenth-century writer and critic, John Wilson – conjures up some of the possible encounters with the Edinburgh into which visitors could find themselves drawn. North's invitation is echoed, to some extent, by the ambition of Palimpsest – a digital literary mapping project. Palimpsest seeks to model Edinburgh’s literary cityscape on a much larger scale than has hitherto been accomplished, including both its 'unforgotten tales' and its 'lowliest joys and obscurest griefs'. In doing so, the project aims to make an innovative contribution to the geocritical exploration of the mutual implication of space, place, and literature.