Literary Geographies
https://www.literarygeographies.net/index.php/LitGeogs
<p><em>Literary Geographies</em> is a peer-reviewed open-access e-journal that provides a forum for new research and collaboration in the field of literary/geographical studies.</p> <p>As its inclusively plural title is intended to suggest, <em>Literary Geographies</em> welcomes a broad range of submissions in the area of literary/geographical studies. The journal is fully refereed, and <a href="https://www.literarygeographies.net/index.php/LitGeogs/about/submissions#onlineSubmissions">welcomes submissions</a> (in English) from scholars at all career stages, and from all parts of the world.</p> <p><em>Literary Geographies</em> is now accepting <a href="https://www.literarygeographies.net/index.php/LitGeogs/about/submissions#onlineSubmissions">online submissions</a>.</p> <p> </p>en-USLiterary Geographies2397-1797Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:<ol start="1"><li>Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution License</a> that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.</li></ol><ol start="2"><li>Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.</li></ol><ol start="3"><li>Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See <a href="http://opcit.eprints.org/oacitation-biblio.html">The Effect of Open Access</a>).</li></ol>The Spatial Hinge: An Introduction
https://www.literarygeographies.net/index.php/LitGeogs/article/view/402
---James Thurgill
Copyright (c) 2023 James Thurgill
2023-08-282023-08-2892234236Following the Detective: Investigating Detective Fiction-Induced Literary Tourism by Italian Readers
https://www.literarygeographies.net/index.php/LitGeogs/article/view/367
<p class="LGssectionhead">Geographers have long acknowledged the contribution of fiction to the increase in popularity of some localities as tourism destinations. However, while detective novels are one of the most successful literary genres in the book market, detective fiction-induced literary tourism is still a relatively unexplored phenomenon. This research aims to determine whether and to what extent detective fiction can promote tourism and affect readers’ attitudes and behaviours towards narrated localities. To fulfil this aim, we have carried out empirical research based on a quantitative method, through the analysis of the answers to a questionnaire shared in Facebook groups. Questions aimed to identify the readers, their motivations for reading different types of detective fiction and their interests and expectations, as well as the push and pull factors behind potential detective fiction-induced tourism. We have examined a <em>corpus</em> of 330 answers from Italian readers. The survey has pointed to the existence of various types of reader-tourists, whose choices depend on the settings of the novels they read, which the detective’s gaze is able to mediate. Despite what previous literature has claimed, the analysis of the questionnaire shows that dark and uncanny atmospheres are not major pull factors. Instead, readers of this particular genre declare that they are more interested in visiting the actual places that have inspired fictional ones, and in immersing themselves in the local societies represented. In conclusion, it appears that the preferences of detective fiction readers not only affect their destination choices but also their approaches to those destinations.</p>Carolien FornasariNicola Gabellieri
Copyright (c) 2023 Nicola Gabellieri, Carolien Fornasari
2023-08-282023-08-2892285308Lily’s Route: Cognitive Mapping, Strategic Unmappability, and Disability Studies in Ann-Marie MacDonald’s Fall on Your Knees
https://www.literarygeographies.net/index.php/LitGeogs/article/view/387
<p>Guided by Sara Ahmed’s conception of orientation as ‘taking points of view as given’ (2006: 14), this article considers literary mapping as a methodological reorientation for literary critics, exploring a doubled literary mapping of Lily Piper’s route from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia to Manhattan, New York, as narrated in Book Eight of Ann-Marie MacDonald’s 1996 novel, <em>Fall on Your Knees</em>. Beginning with an overview of the extant critical neglect of these scenes and a discussion of Lily’s characterization within a disability studies framework, literary mapping is posited as useful methodology for analysis of her journey, especially in its reorienting capacity to make visible a disabled character’s complex embodiment while evading the logic of narrative prosthesis. Focusing on mapping practice as a problem-solving activity, Lily’s route is first explored from the perspective of her own wayfinding techniques, which depend on the contingent acceptance of help and use of relational cues; second, by way of a reader-generated digital mapping of location and temporal data, various interruptions to a straightforward, plausible mapping of Lily’s route are described and then explored in relation to conceptual and affective readerly anchor-points; to the effects of what I refer to as strategic unmappability; and to the way literary mapping coheres with the principle of complex embodiment in disability studies. The conclusion revisits the idea of the literary critic’s methodological turn, cautioning against the repetition of old or constitution of new exclusions. </p>Neta Gordon
Copyright (c) 2023 Neta Gordon
2023-08-282023-08-2892309324“Immersed in Beauty and Barred from Seeing It”: San Francisco, Gentrification, and Incarceration in Rachel Kushner’s The Mars Room
https://www.literarygeographies.net/index.php/LitGeogs/article/view/365
<p>This paper analyzes Rachel Kushner’s 2018 novel, <em>The Mars Room, </em>in relation to the work of critical geographers including Neil Smith and Ruth Wilson Gilmore in order to trace a connection between processes of urban gentrification and mass incarceration in an American context. Kushner’s novel follows Romy, a former exotic dancer and sex worker who is serving a life sentence after murdering an abusive client. The novel cycles between two distinct timeframes and details Romy’s experience in–and eventual temporary escape from–the fictional Stanville Women’s Correctional Facility, as well as the events leading up to her incarceration. Kushner dedicates particular focus in these flashback scenes to the rapid gentrification of San Francisco beginning in the early 1990s and the resultant precarity of Romy’s life in the increasingly expensive city. By drawing a distinct relationship between the hostile socio-economic conditions of San Francisco and Romy’s decision to begin taking clients, Kushner equally gestures towards the interrelation between the processes of gentrification and incarceration which is exacerbated by the retrenchment of the social welfare state. This paper seeks to demonstrate how <em>The Mars Room </em>accurately depicts the real-life gentrification of San Francisco at the time in which the novel is set, and in the process will refer to a range of scholarship which establishes that such processes correspond to a higher rate of arrests in effected areas. Given that Kushner is a committed advocate for the abolition of the prison system as it currently exists, it will ultimately be argued that works of socially-engaged fiction like <em>The Mars Room</em>can be instrumental in the imaging of alternatives to the current carceral order. </p>Aaron Obedkoff
Copyright (c) 2023 Aaron Obedkoff
2023-08-282023-08-2892325339Nice Ice: An Eco-postmodern Exploration of Tanya Tagaq’s Split Tooth
https://www.literarygeographies.net/index.php/LitGeogs/article/view/381
In this paper, I approach Tanya Tagaq’s Arctic novel Split Tooth (2018) from the perspectives of postmodern ecocriticism. I study how the novel provides readers with an opportunity to ponder on the constantly shifting and mutating ecosystems of the Arctic, while exposing human centeredness and sovereignty to decide over nature. Through a close reading of the novel, I explore a number of metanarratives, including age-old imaginations of the Arctic, and examine the ways that Tagaq employs to raise incredulity toward such established mediated assumptions of the circumpolar world. I also show how the text informs readers of indigenous peoples’ mininarratives with its revisionist accounts and challenges the monolithic conceptualization of Arctic identity. Moreover, I examine the peripheral positions of nonhuman species living in the Arctic and show how the novelist makes her text a space of alliance between human and other-than-human.Mehdi Ghasemi
Copyright (c) 2023 Mehdi Ghasemi
2023-08-282023-08-2892340351The Construction of Space in English and German Literature 1790–1848: Geoparsing the Corvey Collection
https://www.literarygeographies.net/index.php/LitGeogs/article/view/370
<p class="LGssectionhead">In this article, I analyse named entity linking as a new method to study the construction of space in the English and German texts of <em>European Literature, 1790–1840: The Corvey Collection</em>. The Corvey Collection is among the most comprehensive datasets to have survived from the Romantic Era of literature. However, German-language documents in particular suffer from poor OCR scanning. To avoid noise caused by incorrectly digitized characters, I have re-OCRed the collection. In contrast to named entity recognition, named entity linking is able to disambiguate toponyms and find coordinates for them from linked open data sources such as DBpedia. I have then imported the geocoded places to geographic information systems, which enables comparing spaces imagined in British and German literature from the 1790s to the 1840s. To link spatial information to the semantic content of texts, I have applied topic modeling to find common themes shared by the works. Studying the spatial imagination of the popular texts published in the Romantic era discloses an alternative view to our present notion of Romanticism based on the close reading of a few canonized authors. The comparison of English and German corpora shows the way in which the spatial imagination reflected the asymmetrical relationship of center and periphery: the core of British literature was located in London, whereas no single center appears in the German-language data.</p>Asko Nivala
Copyright (c) 2023 Asko Nivala
2023-08-282023-08-2892352376Texts (Un)hinged and Unfolded: Fantastical Narratives and Unrelated Spaces
https://www.literarygeographies.net/index.php/LitGeogs/article/view/391
---Evgenia Amey
Copyright (c) 2023 Evgenia Amey
2023-08-282023-08-2892237241Empty Rides and Freezing Cold: Finding Ligotti in Coney Island
https://www.literarygeographies.net/index.php/LitGeogs/article/view/397
This short think piece analyses the concept of the spatial hinge (Thurgill 2021) through the author's winter visit of Coney Island, which unexpectedly triggered an experience of the intra-textual worlds of Thomas Ligotti's short stories. The article describes the effects of the spatial hinge and then proceeds to analyse how this geographical concept can be of use for the author's research projects in literary studies, and in her understanding of Thomas Ligotti's works.Deborah Bridle
Copyright (c) 2023 Deborah Bridle
2023-08-282023-08-2892242247Urban Walking and The Spatial Hinge
https://www.literarygeographies.net/index.php/LitGeogs/article/view/395
<p>This piece reframes the spatial hinge concept and incorporates it within an urban walking tour. The aim is to explore the value of walking practice for literary geographers and, through an engagement with emerging theory in this interdisciplinary approach, show how a literary text representing one place can be used to guide the mobile exploration of a different location. This case presents a public event experienced by nearly 40 people. In a collaboration with a performance artist, we explore The Hill of Dream by Arthur Machen.</p>Aled Singleton
Copyright (c) 2023 Aled Singleton
2023-08-282023-08-2892248252A Manual of Hinges and a Musing on Gruffalo
https://www.literarygeographies.net/index.php/LitGeogs/article/view/384
<p>A hinge is a hinge, so I thought, until I began to open and close a few. There are, it turns out, many different types of hinge. The most common is a butt hinge. Look at most doors and this is what you will see: two matching leaves, one on the door and one on the door jamb. This though, is only the start. For there are corner hinges, lift-off hinges, continuous hinges, off-set hinges, strap hinges, concealed hinges (to name but a few) and then there are those designed for the interior, the exterior, for fine furniture, for heavy-duty work and those for everyday use. Irrespective of design, in essence all hinges work in the same way and have the same purpose. They are moveable joints, connecting two objects, and are intended to allow limited rotation between these two objects. In so doing, they connect and they separate; they hold something close and something at a distance. We have to push (or pull) on the door, to work the hinge and reveal the world hidden behind it. </p>Angharad Saunders
Copyright (c) 2023 Angharad Saunders
2023-08-282023-08-2892253256Hinge Exercises
https://www.literarygeographies.net/index.php/LitGeogs/article/view/398
-- --Sheila Hones
Copyright (c) 2023 Sheila Hones
2023-08-282023-08-2892257260The Spatial Hinge: Reframed
https://www.literarygeographies.net/index.php/LitGeogs/article/view/401
<span>First introduced in Thurgill and Lovell’s (2019) examination of place and collaboration in the text-as-spatial event (Hones 2008, 2014), the spatial hinge describes the ways in which, given the right circumstances, actual-world geographies might be experienced by readers as extensions of otheriwse unassociated literary worlds. </span>This <span>short ‘Thinking Space’ article reframes the spatial hinge to look at the way in which characters internal to literary narratives, as well as readers, experience textual geographies as a coming togoether or 'hinging' of and between intra- and extra-literary space.</span>James Thurgill
Copyright (c) 2023 James Thurgill
2023-08-282023-08-2892261265The Spatial Hinge, Literary Geography and Political Science
https://www.literarygeographies.net/index.php/LitGeogs/article/view/403
<span>This themed section on the 'Spatial Hinge' analyzes the speeches of UK prime ministers to show how politicians try to forge connections to places where they have no observable geographical connections. The analysis reveals that, over time, the security-related implications of the word ‘Pacific’ have become stronger in the British political context, and thus there is a shift in the spatial reach of the Pacific region toward the West. The study highlights how the ‘Spatial Hinge’ can usefully describe the way the imagined extraterritoriality of a certain geographic concept is reinforced by people’s spatial experience outside the text/speech that conveys it.</span>Mon Madomitsu
Copyright (c) 2023 Mon Madomitsu
2023-08-282023-08-2892266273Geospatial Semantics: A Textual Perspective
https://www.literarygeographies.net/index.php/LitGeogs/article/view/396
<p>The peculiar dynamics that literary geographers find between actual places and their fictional representations are dynamics inherent to all texts and all places. What James Thurgill has called “the spatial hinge” is a point of connection – a suture or touch between textuality and actuality – with widespread implications for mapping the semantics of place throughout textual corpora. Computational approaches to language and place reveal innumerable points of connection that help describe the very fabric of human society in all its textual and geographical complexity.</p>Michael GavinEric Gidal
Copyright (c) 2023 Michael Gavin, Eric Gidal
2023-08-282023-08-2892274278The Unhinged Hinge: Pegged Out, Pinned Down, and Folded Away
https://www.literarygeographies.net/index.php/LitGeogs/article/view/394
The concept of spatial hinge has been strung out before us in two particularly striking ways, once with quotation marks clipped to the word hinge (spatial ‘hinge’), and again with quotation marks pegged to both the words spatial and hinge (‘spatial hinge’). The concept hangs on a difference in spacing. It hinges on how it is spaced out with pins and pegs (‘ ’). Suspended from inverted commas, mounted <em>mise en abyme</em>, and unhinged from its intra-textual, inter-textual, and extra-textual scaffolding, the concept of spatial hinge – if indeed it is <em>a</em> concept – eludes being pinned, pegged, or penned down, and in so doing opens itself up to the <em>folding away</em> of space and spacing. For what is truly unnerving about the spatial hinge is not so much that it is a joint that disjoins, but that it <em>bends</em> itself around two warped off-cuts: <em>space</em>, <em>spacing</em>.Marcus Doel
Copyright (c) 2023 Marcus Andrew Doel
2023-08-282023-08-2892279284