The Hobbit, The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings have accustomed us to the fact that in fictional stories we can see maps of the places they describe. But did readers of the 16th to 18th centuries have such an opportunity? Roger Chartier’s book is dedicated to the development of literary cartography.

This entertaining journey begins on the dusty roads of Spain (Cervantes); then, following the English pioneers, the reader sets off to distant new lands (More, Hall, Defoe and Swift), and then, with the French pilgrims, to seek the way to the Land of Tenderness, the Kingdom of Love or Coquetry, to the land of Jansen (Scuderi, Tristan L’Hermite, the Abbé d’Aubignac and Lisieux). After a short pilgrimage to Mount Carmel (Juan de la Cruz), he returns with the Italian paladins to a recognizable geographical space, albeit one under the power of magical forces (Ariosto).

Finally, the reader finds himself in Provence, in the vicinity of Avignon (Petrarch). The route traced passes through 4 literary traditions and 5 languages, with its starting and ending points having very real geographical coordinates, and the middle lying in the realm of pure fantasy. Paving the way from one work to another, the author offers a new approach to the problem of the mobility of artistic texts and their interpretations.