Spatial Literary Studies Interdisciplinary Approaches to Space, Geography, and the Imagination

Following the spatial turn in the humanities and social sciences, Spatial Literary Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Space, Geography, and the Imagination offers a wide range of essays that reframe or transform contemporary criticism by focusing attention, in various ways, on the dynamic relations among space, place, and literature. These essays reflect upon the representation of space and place, whether in the real world, in imaginary universes, or in those hybrid zones where fiction meets reality. Working within or alongside related approaches, such as geocriticism, literary geography, and the spatial humanities, these essays examine the relationship between literary spatiality and different genres or media, such as film or television. The contributors to Spatial Literary Studies draw upon diverse critical and theoretical traditions in disclosing, analyzing, and exploring the significance of space, place, and mapping in literature and in the world, thus making new textual geographies and literary cartographies possible.

Introduction. Spaces of the Text: Literary Studies after the Spatial Turn Robert T. Tally Jr. Part I. Geocritical Theory and Practice 1. Geocriticism at a Crossroads: An Overview Mariya Shymchyshyn 2. How to Do Narratives with Maps: Cartography as a Performative Act in Gulliver’s Travels and Through the Looking Glass Emmanuelle Peraldo and Yann Calbérac, 3. Beyond Binaries and Metaphor: The Counterhegemonic Possibilities of Place Jessica Maucione Part II. Geographies of the Text 4. Mallarmé, Poet of the Earthly World: On Spatiality in L’Après midi d’une Faune Rogério de Melo Franco 5. Zola’s Spatial Explorations of Second Empire Paris Julia Kröger 6. "Dr. Livingstone, I Presume?": The Demonic Grounds of M. NourbeSe Philip’s Looking for Livingstone: An Odyssey of Silence Kate Siklosi 7. Rethinking the Beginning: Toni Morrison and the Dramatization of Liminality Michelle Dreiding 8. "You’ve been here before?": Space and Memory in Stephen Poliakoff’s Dramas Elizabeth Robertson Part III. Geography in the Text 9. Caves as Anti-Places: Robert Penn Warren’s The Cave and Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God Ralph Crane and Lisa Fletcher 10. A Geocritical Approach to the Role of the Desert in Penelope Lively’s Moon Tiger and Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient Sarah Ager 11. Isolated Spaces, Fragmented Places: Caryl Phillips’s Ghettoes in The Nature of Blood and The European Tribe I. Murat Öner 12. The Eternal Return and the Country/City Dynamic in Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being Adam McKee 13. Transgression, Boundaries, and Power: Rethinking the Space of Postcolonial Literature Dustin Crowley Part IV. The Problematics of Place 14. "Oh, man, I’m nowhere": Ralph Ellison and the Psychospatial Terrain of Mid-Century Harlem Walter Bosse 15. Covington is the Non-Place for Me: Walker Percy’s Topophilia in the Deserts of Theory and Consumption Chris Margrave 16. Alfred Hitchcock’s The Rear Window: Cold War, Spatiality, and the Paranoid Subject Beatrice Kohler 17. Locating the Clearing: Contested Boundaries in Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Song of Solomon Will Cunningham 18. Remapping the Present: Dave Eggers’s Spatial Virtuality and the Condition of Literature Nathan Frank Part V. Plus Ultra 19. Spatial Literary Studies versus Literary Geography?: Boundaries and Borders amidst Interdisciplinary Approaches to Space and Literature Robert T. Tally Jr.

Robert T. Tally Jr. is NEH Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Humanities and Professor of English at Texas State University, where he teaches American and world literature.