I decided to explore the Mapping Decadence project, which serves to show how location influenced the collaborations between Decadent writers and their publishers at the end of the nineteenth century in Paris. There is a separate satellite map for each author in question – Joris-Karl Huysmans, Jean Lorrain, Rachilde, and Marcel Schwob – with color-coded pins indicating where the author lived and where the publisher was located (red). Each pin has a pop-up box indicating when they lived at a certain address, what books they published and with whom, where they were living or working at the time, and where their publishers were located.
Although this project appears to be straightforward in providing factual and objective information, there are several aspects that enforce Turnbull’s contention that maps are perspectival and subjective. The maps only indicate where the authors and publishers lived at certain times and the titles of what they published, but fails to give any other information on how these factors influenced the collaborations. Publishers are more associated with the final product of an author’s work rather than the process of writing it, and this map assumes that recognizing the publishers’ presence captures the heart of the Decadent movement. Other factors of environment and proximity that could have been acknowledged on the map are schools or churches, which may have had some level of influence over the symbolism and aestheticism that Decadence writers followed. For instance, one of the pins states that Lorrain “studies law and moves frequently” – this could be expanded on, such as if he still studied law in Paris, where he studied it, and if that correlated with his works.
Some background information about each author and publisher would be useful as well. Surely as figures in the Decadent Movement, the writers were familiar with one another or found inspiration from other writers/artists. This could be shown in more detail with additional pop-up boxes on the map, or even on the webpage itself on each author’s page as a sort of premise to the map. The map only shows connections (the lines) with authors and their publishers, but the close proximity amongst all the writers likely also fostered relationships. I believe that an alternate map could keep the satellite layout, but include a larger color-code key to include different writers/ other locations besides the publishers’, as well as more lines connecting pinpoints to show the effects of location.