How far is the Wicked Witch of the West’s castle from the heart of Emerald City? Or the Shire to Mordor? Luckily, a display at Harvard’s Pusey Library takes the guesswork out of planning your next fantastical trip through Middle Earth.
“From Academieland to Zelda,” on view in the library’s first-floor corridor through Nov. 3, features fictional maps that chart everything from TV, film, and literary locales to video game worlds, and even abstract concepts.
Calling the exhibition “kind of a mishmash,” curator Bonnie Burns, head of geospatial resources at the Harvard Map Collection, said that “within the exhibit you have maps that are kind of theoretical, like nursery rhymes and Fairyland maps. And then there’s a big chunk of maps of literature — Middle Earth to Narnia.”