Abstract: Narrative maps have become a booming branch of contemporary cartography. However, there lacks of convincing conceptualization of basic issues such as “what is a narrative map” and “whether or not a map can narrate”, which not only raises a challenge to the theoretical legitimacy but also leads to an open question regarding “how do narrative maps tell stories”. Aiming to address these gaps, this paper first demonstrated the theoretical rationality of narrative maps, through unearthing the skeleton of narratology and cartography and their continuous interactions; from the perspective of semiotics, then, conceptualized narrative maps and distinguished their essential characteristics after demonstrating the narrative capability of map 'texts’; following, unraveled the narrative systems and proposed a working model for the representation mechanism of narrative maps using a (post-) structuralist approach; and finally made prospects on the key issues of narrative maps in the near future. This paper is believed to open the window for theoretical innovations of contemporary cartography.

Key words: narrative map, contemporary cartography, visual narrative, theoretical foundation of cartography, representation mechanism, working model of narrative maps