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Concept
Geocriticism
Summary
Geocriticism is a method of literary analysis and literary theory that incorporates the study of geographic space. The term designates a number of different critical practices. In France, Bertrand Westphal has elaborated the concept of géocritique in several works. In the United States, Robert Tally has argued for a geocriticism as a critical practice suited to the analysis of what he has termed "literary cartography".
Some of the first expressly geocritical writings emerged from symposia organized by Westphal at the University of Limoges. Westphal's foundational essay, "Pour une approche géocritique des textes" constitutes a manifesto 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.
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) 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), or the story (as studied by narratology), 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.
Following the work of Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Henri Lefebvre and Mikhail Bakhtin, 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.
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