Lilly Library Exhibition Will Capture Your Imagination

June 12 to September 2, 2006
Lilly Library Main Gallery

Make-believe worlds, islands, and realms capture our collective imagination--places that, by name alone, conjure up an immediate sense of familiarity for many.

Materials displayed at the Lilly Library allow us to examine how these locations have been depicted by authors and artists and how they have been re-imagined over the years.

The exhibition ranges from fantastical lands, such as Oz and Middle Earth, to disguises based on real locations (Yoknapatawpha County and Winesburg, Ohio). Some originated in stories told simply to amuse children (Toad Hall from The Wind in the Willows) or in works addressing contemporary social issues such as Samuel Butler's Erewhon.

While some have been "mapped" --as one would expect Treasure Island to be --others exist on purely abstract levels, such as Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities. Travel narratives, of course, offer a wonderful assortment of distant lands for readers to explore-from Gulliver's Lilliput to Sindbad's Valley of Diamonds.

A supplemental exhibition on imaginary and constructed languages will be on display in the Lilly Library's Lincoln Room  This exhibition explores scholarly attempts to seek out purer forms of language and literary endeavors to create languages suited for the fictional realms. Topics cover languages "discovered" on fantastic voyages, philosophical attempts at universal language, and languages created for the world of science fiction.