This article discusses the dominant approaches to the map as a metaphor, practice and concept in the interdisciplinary area of contemporary theories. The focus is on relationship between map and territory. In the first part the author describes three possibilities: the map as the experiment with territory, the map as the simulation without territory, and the map as the active production of territory, space, nation and knowledge (from the point of view of critical cartography). In the second part the article concentrates on the role of map and literary cartography in literature and literary studies.