Geocriticism is a method of
literary analysis
Literary criticism (or literary studies) is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of literature's goals and methods. Th ...
and
literary theory
Literary theory is the systematic study of the nature of literature and of the methods for literary analysis. Culler 1997, p.1 Since the 19th century, literary scholarship includes literary theory and considerations of intellectual history, mo ...
that incorporates the study of geographic space. The term designates a number of different critical practices. In France,
Bertrand Westphal
Bertrand Westphal (born May 10, 1962, in Strasbourg, France), is a French scholar and essayist.
Career
Westphal, a professor of comparative literature and literary theory, has been teaching at the University of Limoges since 1998. He has been di ...
has elaborated the concept of ''géocritique'' in several works. In the United States,
Robert Tally
Robert T. Tally Jr. is a professor of English at Texas State University. His research and teaching focuses on the relations among space, narrative, and representation, particularly in U.S. and comparative literature, and he is active in the emerg ...
has argued for a geocriticism as a critical practice suited to the analysis of what he has termed "literary cartography".
Origins
Some of the first expressly ''geocritical'' writings emerged from symposia organized by Westphal at the
University of Limoges
The University of Limoges (''Université de Limoges'') is a French public university, based in Limoges. Its chancellor is the rector of the Academy of Limoges (an administrative district in France for education and research). It counts more than ...
. Westphal's foundational essay, "Pour une approche géocritique des textes" constitutes a
manifesto
A manifesto is a published declaration of the intentions, motives, or views of the issuer, be it an individual, group, political party or government. A manifesto usually accepts a previously published opinion or public consensus or promotes a ...
for geocriticism. Westphal's theory is elaborated in greater detail in his ''Geocriticism: Real and Fictional Spaces'', translated by Tally, who also provides a brief introduction. But there are also many works addressing similar themes and using similar methods that might be considered geocritical, even if the term "geocriticism" is not used.
Theory
In Westphal's theory, geocriticism is based on three theoretical concepts: spatio-temporality, transgressivity, and referentiality.
The idea that space and time form a continuum (
space-time
In physics, spacetime is a mathematical model that combines the three-dimensional space, three dimensions of space and one dimension of time into a single four-dimensional manifold. Minkowski diagram, Spacetime diagrams can be used to visualize S ...
) is a tenet of modern physics. In the field of literary theory, geocriticism is an interdisciplinary method of literary analysis that focuses not only on such temporal data as relations between the life and times of the author (as in biographical criticism), the history of the text (as in
textual criticism
Textual criticism is a branch of textual scholarship, philology, and of literary criticism that is concerned with the identification of textual variants, or different versions, of either manuscripts or of printed books. Such texts may range in ...
), or the story (as studied by
narratology
Narratology is the study of narrative and narrative structure and the ways that these affect human perception. It is an anglicisation of French ''narratologie'', coined by Tzvetan Todorov (''Grammaire du Décaméron'', 1969). Its theoretical li ...
), but also on spatial data. Geocriticism therefore has affinities with geography, architecture, urban studies, and so on; it also correlates to philosophical concepts such as
deterritorialization
In critical theory, deterritorialization is the process by which a social relation, called a ''territory'', has its current organization and context altered, mutated or destroyed. The components then constitute a new territory, which is the proces ...
.
Following the work of
Michel Foucault
Paul-Michel Foucault (, ; ; 15 October 192625 June 1984) was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic. Foucault's theories primarily address the relationship between power and knowledge, and how ...
,
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Louis René Deleuze ( , ; 18 January 1925 – 4 November 1995) was a French philosopher who, from the early 1950s until his death in 1995, wrote on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volu ...
,
Henri Lefebvre
Henri Lefebvre ( , ; 16 June 1901 – 29 June 1991) was a French Marxist philosopher and sociologist, best known for pioneering the critique of everyday life, for introducing the concepts of the right to the city and the production of so ...
and
Mikhail Bakhtin
Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin ( ; rus, Михаи́л Миха́йлович Бахти́н, , mʲɪxɐˈil mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪdʑ bɐxˈtʲin; – 7 March 1975) was a Russian philosopher, literary critic and scholar who worked on literary theor ...
, among others, a geocritical approach to literature recognizes that representations of space are often transgressive, crossing the boundaries of established norms while also reestablishing new relations among people, places, and things. Cartography is no longer seen as the exclusive province of the state or the government; rather, various agents or groups may be responsible for representing the geographic spaces at the same time and with different effects. In practice, therefore, geocriticism is multifocal, examining a variety of topics at once, thus differentiating itself from practices that focus on the singular point of view of the traveller or protagonist.
Geocriticism also assumes a literary referentiality between world and text, or, in other words, between the referent and its representation. By questioning the relations between a given space's nature and its actually existing condition, the geocritical approach allows for a study of fiction that points also to the theory of possible worlds, such as may be seen in the work on third space by the American geographer
Edward Soja
Edward William Soja (; 1940–2015) was a self-described urbanist, a noted postmodern political geographer and urban theorist on the planning faculty at UCLA, where he was Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning, and the London School of Ec ...
(''Thirdspace''). Tally's book ''Spatiality'', an introduction to spatiality studies in literature and critical theory, includes a chapter on geocriticism.
Critical practices
Geocriticism frequently involves the study of places described in the literature by various authors, but it can also study the effects of literary representations of a given space. An example of the range of geocritical practices can be found in Tally's collection ''Geocritical Explorations: Space, Place, and Mapping in Literary and Cultural Studies''.
Geocriticism derives some of its practices from precursors whose theoretical work helped establish space as a valid topic for literary analysis. For example, in ''The Poetics of Space'' and elsewhere, Gaston Bachelard studied literary works to develop a typology of places according to their connotations. Maurice Blanchot's writings have legitimized the idea of literary space, an imaginary place for the creation of the work of literature. One might also look at the developments of cultural studies and especially postcolonial studies, such as
Raymond Williams
Raymond Henry Williams (31 August 1921 – 26 January 1988) was a Welsh socialist writer, academic, novelist and critic influential within the New Left and in wider culture. His writings on politics, culture, the media and literature contribu ...
's ''The Country and the City'' or
Edward Said
Edward Wadie Said (; , ; 1 November 1935 – 24 September 2003) was a Palestinian-American professor of literature at Columbia University, a public intellectual, and a founder of the academic field of postcolonial studies.Robert Young, ''White ...
's ''Culture and Imperialism'', which employ what Said has called a "geographical inquiry into historical experience."
Fredric Jameson
Fredric Jameson (born April 14, 1934) is an American literary critic, philosopher and Marxist political theorist. He is best known for his analysis of contemporary cultural trends, particularly his analysis of postmodernity and capitalism. James ...
's concept of cognitive mapping and his theoretical engagement with the postmodern condition also highlight the importance of spatial representation and aesthetic productions, including literature, film, architecture, and design. In ''The Atlas of European Novel, 1800-1900'',
Franco Moretti Franco Moretti (born 1950 in Sondrio) is an Italian literary historian and theorist. He graduated in Modern Literatures from the University of Rome in 1972. He has taught at the universities of Salerno (1979–1983) and Verona (1983–1990); in the ...
has examined the diffusion of literary spaces in Europe, focusing on the complex relationship between the text and space. Moretti has also promulgated a theory of literary history, or literary geography, that would use maps to bring to light new connections between the texts studied and their social spaces. And, in his study of Herman Melville's literary cartography, Robert Tally has offered a geocritical approach to certain texts.
[See Tally, ''Melville, Mapping and Globalization''.]
Geocriticism has intellectual and methodological affiliations with such fields as Literature and the Environment or
ecocriticism
Ecocriticism is the study of literature and ecology from an interdisciplinary point of view, where literature scholars analyze texts that illustrate environmental concerns and examine the various ways literature treats the subject of nature. It wa ...
, regional literature, urban studies, sociological and philosophical approaches to literature, and utopian studies.
References
Notes
Further reading
* Bachelard, Gaston. ''The Poetics of Space''. Trans. Maria Jolas. Boston: Beacon Press, 1969.
* Blanchot, Maurice. ''The Space of Literature''. Trans. Ann Smock. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1989.
* Foucault, Michel
"Of Other Spaces"
* Harvey, David. ''The Condition of Postmodernity''. Oxford: Blackwell, 1989.
* Jameson, Fredric. ''Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism''. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 1991.
* Jameson, Fredric. ''The Geopolitical Aesthetic: Cinema and Space in the World System''. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1992.
* Moretti, Franco. ''An Atlas of the European Novel, 1800-1900''. London: Verso, 1998.
* Moretti, Franco. ''Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for a Literary History''. London: Verso, 2005.
* Said, Edward. ''Culture and Imperialism''. New York: Knopf, 1993.
* Soja, Edward. ''Postmodern Geographies''. London: Verso, 1989.
* Soja, Edward. ''Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places''. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996.
* Tally, Robert T. (ed.) ''Geocritical Explorations: Space, Place, and Mapping in Literary and Cultural Studies''. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
* Tally, Robert T
"Geocriticism and Classic American Literature."* Tally, Robert T. ''Melville, Mapping and Globalization: Literary Cartography in the American Baroque Writer''. London: Continuum Books, 2009.
* Tally, Robert T. ''Spatiality''. The New Critical Idiom. London and New York: Routledge, 2013
* Tally, Robert T. ''Utopia in the Age of Globalization: Space, Representation, and the World System''. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013
* Wells-Lynn, Amy. "The Intertextual, Sexually-Coded Rue Jacob: A Geocritical Approach to Djuna Barnes, Natalie Barney, and Radclyffe Hall." ''South Central Review'' 22.3 (Fall 2005) 78-112.
* Westphal, Bertrand. ''Le Monde plausible, Espace, Lieu, Carte'', Paris, Éditions de Minuit, 2011.
* Westphal, Bertrand. Flabbi, Lorenzo. ''Espaces, tourismes, esthétiques'', Limoges, Pulim, 2010.
* Westphal, Bertrand. ''Geocriticism: Real and Fictional Spaces'', trans. Robert T. Tally Jr. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
* Westphal, Bertrand. ''La Géocritique, Réel, Fiction, Espace'', Paris, Éditions de Minuit, 2007.
* Westphal, Bertrand. Bertrand Westphal
Vox Poetica, 2005.
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