Abstract

This article is a presentation of research project “Atlas of Intellectual Migrations in the Mediterranean of the 13th Century” (AIMM13), taking its inspiration for Franco Moretti’s geocriticism, which it would inflect in three ways at least. First, it would work on the hypothesis that the relationship between landscape and literature is a symbiotic coproduction: Geography generates the novel, as Moretti observed, but the reverse is also true, as literature generates and fashions our landscapes. Second, this is even more easily verifiable if the definition of literature is extended to include what Genette called diction, that is, nonfictional texts in the wider sense. Third, this investigation of how geographical and literary texts coproduce one another calls for the development of specific digital humanities tools or LGIS (Literary Geographical Information System) geoinformatics means, which will lead to the digital publication of dynamic maps along with the written results of research. A particularly promising study case for the development of such an innovative method is Southern Italy at the time of Emperor Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, considered as a node of civilizational evolution in the Mediterranean of the thirteenth century.