Literary Geography provides an introduction to work in the field, making the interdiscipline accessible and visible to students and academics working in literary studies and human geography, as well as related fields such as the geohumanities, place writing and geopoetics. Emphasising the long tradition of work with literary texts in human geography, this volume: provides an overview of literary geography as an interdiscipline, which combines aims and methods from human geography and literary studies explains how and why literary geography differs from spatially-oriented critical approaches in literary studies reviews geographical work with literary texts from the late 19th century to the present day includes a glossary of key terms and concepts employed in contemporary literary geography. Accessible and clear, this comprehensive overview is an essential guide for anyone interested in learning more about the history, current activity and future of work in the interdiscipline of literary geography.

This interdisciplinary collection of essays explores intersections between geography and American literary history, from the earliest geographic chronicles of the New World to the massive geopolitical transformation of the 1890s. Foregrounding the unsteady nature of geographical boundaries, the physical and imaginary migrations that coexisted with literary nationalisms, and changing attitudes toward geographical settings, these essays present alternatives to exceptionalist accounts of U.S. culture. The focus on literary and discursive settings addresses social and political developments such as imperialism, regionalism, and tourism. This book contributes to literary histories by emphasizing spatial over temporal frameworks as organizing principles or telling the story of American literature.

Combining literary analysis with a practical introduction to interdisciplinary literary geography, Literary Geograp hie s examines key elements of Colum McCann's 2009 novel, Let the Great World Spi n . Hones examines concepts such as narrative space, literary and academic collaboration, and the geographies of creation, production, and reception.

In this innovative approach to southern literary cultures, Thadious Davis analyzes how black southern writers use their spatial location to articulate the vexed connections between society and environment, particularly under segregation and its legacies.<

A train station becomes a police station; lands held sacred by Apaches and Mexicanos are turned into commercial and residential zones; freeway construction hollows out a community; a rancho becomes a retirement community—these are the kinds of spatial transformations that concern Mary Pat Brady in Extinct Lands, Temporal Geographies, a book bringing together Chicana feminism, cultural geography, and literary theory to analyze an unusual mix of Chicana texts through the concept of space. Beginning with nineteenth-century short stories and essays and concluding with contemporary fiction, this book reveals how Chicana literature offers a valuable theoretics of space. The history of the American Southwest in large part entails the transformation of lived, embodied space into zones of police surveillance, warehouse districts, highway interchanges, and shopping malls—a movement that Chicana writers have contested from its inception. Brady examines this long-standing engagement with space, first in the work of early newspaper essayists and fiction writers who opposed Anglo characterizations of Northern Sonora that were highly detrimental to Mexican Americans, and then in the work of authors who explore border crossing. Through the writing of Sandra Cisneros, Cherríe Moraga, Terri de la Peña, Norma Cantú, Monserrat Fontes, Gloria Anzaldúa, and others, Brady shows how categories such as race, gender, and sexuality are spatially enacted and created—and made to appear natural and unyielding. In a spatial critique of the war on drugs, she reveals how scale—the process by which space is divided, organized, and categorized—has become a crucial tool in the management and policing of the narcotics economy.

The Routledge Handbook of Literary Geographies provides a comprehensive overview of recent research and a range of innovative ways of thinking literature and geography together. It maps the history of literary geography and identifies key developments and debates in the field. Written by leading and emerging scholars from around the world, the 38 chapters are organised into six themed sections, which consider: differing critical methodologies; keywords and concepts; literary geography in the light of literary history; a variety of places, spaces, and landforms; the significance of literary forms and genres; and the role of literary geographies beyond the academy. Presenting the work of scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds, each section offers readers new angles from which to view the convergence of literary creativity and geographical thought. Collectively, the contributors also address some of the major issues of our time including the climate emergency, movement and migration, and the politics of place. Literary geography is a dynamic interdisciplinary field dedicated to exploring the complex relationships between geography and literature. This cutting-edge collection will be an essential resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students in both Geography and Literary Studies, and scholars interested in the evolving interface between the two disciplines.

In a period marked by the Spatial Turn, time is not the main category of analysis any longer. Space is. It is now considered as a central metaphor and topos in literature, and literary criticism has seized space as a new tool. Similarly, literature turns out to be an ideal field for geography. This book examines the cross-fertilization of geography and literature as disciplines, languages and methodologies. In the past two decades, several methods of analysis focusing on the relationship and interconnectedness between literature and geography have flourished. Literary cartography, literary geography and geocriticism (Westphal, 2007, and Tally, 2011) have their specificities, but they all agree upon the omnipresence of space, place and mapping at the core of analysis. Other approaches like ecocriticism (Buell, 2001, and Garrard, 2004), geopoetics (White, 1994), geography of literature (Moretti, 2000), studies of the inserted map (Ljunberg, 2012, and Pristnall and Cooper, 2011) and narrative cartography have likewise drawn attention to space. Literature and Geography: The Writing of Space Throughout History, following an international conference in Lyon bringing together literary academics, geographers, cartographers and architects in order to discuss literature and geography as two practices of space, shows that literature, along with geography, is perfectly valid to account for space. Suggestions are offered here from all disciplines on how to take into account representations and discourses since texts, including literary ones, have become increasingly present in the analysis of geographers.