What is our place in the world, and how do we inhabit, understand, and represent this place to others? Topophrenia gathers essays by Robert Tally that explore the relationship between space, place, and mapping, on the one hand, and literary criticism, history, and theory on the other. The book provides an introduction to spatial literary studies, exploring in detail the theory and practice of geocriticism, literary cartography, and the spatial humanities more generally. The spatial anxiety of disorientation and the need to know one's location, even if only subconsciously, is a deeply felt and shared human experience. Building on Yi Fu Tuan's "topophilia" (or love of place), Tally instead considers the notion of "topophrenia" as a simultaneous sense of place-consciousness coupled with a feeling of disorder, anxiety, and "dis-ease." He argues that no effective geography could be complete without also incorporating an awareness of the lonely, loathsome, or frightening spaces that condition our understanding of that space. Tally considers the tension between the objective ordering of a space and the subjective ways in which narrative worlds are constructed. Narrative maps present a way of understanding that seems realistic but is completely figurative. So how can these maps be used to not only understand the real world but also to put up an alternative vision of what that world might otherwise be? From Tolkien to Cervantes, Borges to More, Topophrenia provides a clear and compelling explanation of how geocriticism, the spatial humanities, and literary cartography help us to narrate, represent, and understand our place in a constantly changing world.

What is our place in the world, and how do we inhabit, understand, and represent this place to others? Topophrenia gathers essays by Robert Tally that explore the relationship between space, place, and mapping, on the one hand, and literary criticism, history, and theory on the other. The book provides an introduction to spatial literary studies, exploring in detail the theory and practice of geocriticism, literary cartography, and the spatial humanities more generally. The spatial anxiety of disorientation and the need to know one's location, even if only subconsciously, is a deeply felt and shared human experience. Building on Yi Fu Tuan's "topophilia" (or love of place), Tally instead considers the notion of "topophrenia" as a simultaneous sense of place-consciousness coupled with a feeling of disorder, anxiety, and "dis-ease." He argues that no effective geography could be complete without also incorporating an awareness of the lonely, loathsome, or frightening spaces that condition our understanding of that space. Tally considers the tension between the objective ordering of a space and the subjective ways in which narrative worlds are constructed. Narrative maps present a way of understanding that seems realistic but is completely figurative. So how can these maps be used to not only understand the real world but also to put up an alternative vision of what that world might otherwise be? From Tolkien to Cervantes, Borges to More, Topophrenia provides a clear and compelling explanation of how geocriticism, the spatial humanities, and literary cartography help us to narrate, represent, and understand our place in a constantly changing world.

"John Steinbeck's Salinas Valley. Richard Wright's Chicago. Leslie Marmon Silko's New Mexico. Readers often have strong connections with literary places like these. And some works of literature can even change our understanding of the world we live in. But can place also change our view of literature? Site-Reading advances a place-based approach to literature, reading classic texts through the twin lenses of geographical awareness and environmental thought. This book highlights recent developments in ecocriticism and geocriticism to argue for a theory of "ecospatiality" with nature, space, and story as the three elements of place. Site-Reading reconsiders well-known works of twentieth-century American prose and shows how social and environmental issues always overlap. Travel writer William Least Heat-Moon, whose work embodies the ecospatial perspective, portrays his experiences with place on the local, regional, and continental scales. Classic novels by Silko, Willa Cather, and Ana Castillo-usually discussed in isolation-converge in a way that maps diverse cultural perspectives and environmental threats onto the shared geography of Central New Mexico. A reading of Steinbeck's Salinas Valley Watershed texts investigates the impacts of literary tourism in "Steinbeck Country" before drilling down into Steinbeck's portrayals of spatial development and environmental history. And an innovative analysis of Native Son shows how Richard Wright uses cartographic details to decry the spatial/racial politics of South Side Chicago in the 1930s. In this book, Lowell Wyse shows how place provides the grounds for both human experience and critical practice. By bringing together concepts like literary cartography, deep mapping, and bioregionalism in an "ecospatial" approach, Site-Reading not only maps new terrain between ecocriticism and geocriticism, but also shows why place matters-in the world and in the text"--

In various ways, Chinese diasporic communities seek to connect and re-connect with their “homelands” in literature, film, and visual culture. The essays in Affective Geographies and Narratives of Chinese Diaspora examine how diasporic bodies and emotions interact with space and place, as well as how theories of affect change our thinking of diaspora. Questions of borders and border-crossing, not to mention the public and private spheres, in diaspora literature and film raise further questions about mapping and spatial representation and the affective and geographical significance of the push-and-pull movement in diasporic communities. The unique experience is represented differently by different authors across texts and media. In an age of globalization, in “the Chinese Century,” the spatial representation and cultural experiences of mobility, displacement, settlement, and hybridity become all the more urgent. The essays in this volume respond to this urgency, and they help to frame the study of Chinese diaspora and culture today.

Post-Apartheid Gothic: White South African Writers and Space analyzes the representation of space in recent works by South African writers. By combining analytical tools borrowed from Gothic studies with geocritical and postcolonial approaches, Mélanie Joseph-Vilain assesses the literary mechanisms utilized by Damon Galgut, Henrietta Rose-Innes, Lauren Beukes, Justin Carwright, and Lynn Freed to negotiate the complexities of post-apartheid identities in their fiction. Joseph-Vilain argues that the literary representations of emblematic places, real or imagined (the home, the farm, the city or the “non-places” of dystopia), express and reveal anxieties linked to the sharing of space in post-apartheid South Africa. The text successively (re-)visits the places that have been shaping South African white writing since Olive Schreiner’s African Farm—in other words, its topoi, both in the etymological sense of “place” and in the literary sense of recurring themes or arguments. Joseph-Vilain argues that these Gothicized topoi have provided writers with tools to explore the deep anxieties generated by the redefinition of South African society as the Rainbow Nation. While focusing specifically on the South African avatars of the Gothic and their interaction with local forms and genres like the plaasroman, the text also discusses the impact of globalization on South African literary, cultural, social, and political identities.

The most exhaustive mapping of contemporary literary theory to date, this book offers a comprehensive overview of the current state of the field of contemporary literary theory. Examining 75 key topics across 15 chapters, it provides an approachable and encyclopedic introduction to the most important areas of contemporary theory today. Proceeding broadly chronologically from early theory all the way through to postcritique, Di Leo masterfully unpacks established topics such as psychoanalysis, structuralism and Marxism, as well as newer topics such as trans* theory, animal studies, disability studies, blue humanities, speculative realism and many more. Featuring accessible discussion of the work of foundational theorists such as Lacan, Derrida and Freud as well as contemporary theorists such as Haraway, Braidotti and Hayles, it offers a magisterial examination of an enormously rich and varied body of work.

This book provides a comprehensive reading of a space/place-based experience from the birth of the American horror genre (nineteenth century American Romanticism) to its rise and evolution in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Exploring a series of narratives, this study focuses on the role of space and place as key elements for successful articulation of horror. The analysis, therefore, employs different theoretical premises and concepts belonging to human geography, which, while being part of the larger discipline of geography, predominantly directs its attention towards the presence and activities of humans. By connecting such theoretical readings with the continuously evolving American horror genre, this book offers a unique insight into the academically unexplored trans-disciplinary spatially based reading of the genre.