Mapping Modernism’s Z-axis: A Model for Spatial Analysis in Modernist Studies

Abstract

This essay uses Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood and Jean Rhys’s Quartet as case studies to discuss the theoretical and interpretive findings of a mapping project that critiques modernist literature using modernism’s own geospatial techniques and aesthetics. The methodology, called z-axis research, combines machine reading with close reading practices to produce 3D maps that are warped according to the geospatial details of a given modernist novel. In the process, z-axis research affords critical inquiry into the ways in which modernist novels use space to both contest and reify contemporary social, political, and cartographical depictions of cities.