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Following the spatial turn in the humanities and social sciences,
Spatial Literary Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Space,
Geography, and the Imagination offers a wide range of essays that
reframe or transform contemporary criticism by focusing attention,
in various ways, on the dynamic relations among space, place, and
literature. These essays reflect upon the representation of space
and place, whether in the real world, in imaginary universes, or in
those hybrid zones where fiction meets reality. Working within or
alongside related approaches, such as geocriticism, literary
geography, and the spatial humanities, these essays examine the
relationship between literary spatiality and different genres or
media, such as film or television. The contributors to Spatial
Literary Studies draw upon diverse critical and theoretical
traditions in disclosing, analyzing, and exploring the significance
of space, place, and mapping in literature and in the world, thus
making new textual geographies and literary cartographies possible.
For a Ruthless Critique of All that Exists takes as its point of
departure two profound and interrelated phenomena. The first is the
pervasive sense of what Mark Fisher had called "capitalist
realism", in which (to cite the famous expression variously
attributed to Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Zizek) it is easier to
imagine the end of the world than then end of capitalism. As
Jameson in particular has noted, "perhaps this is due to some
weakness in our imaginations," and the attenuation of the
imaginative function in cultural criticism has far-reaching
implications for the organization and reformation of institutions
more generally. This manifests itself as a waning of speculative or
theoretical energy, which in turn leads to a general capitulation
to the tyranny of "what is," the actually existing state of
affairs, and the preemptive disavowal of alternative possibilities.
Connected to this is the second phenomenon: the prevalent tendency
in literary and cultural criticism over the past 30 or more years
to eschew critical theory and even critique itself, while
championing approaches to cultural study that emphasize surface
reading, thin description, ordinary language philosophy,
object-oriented ontology, and post-critique. Together these forms
of anticritical and antitheoretical criticism have constituted a
tendency that has in its various incarnations come to dominate the
humanities and other areas of higher education in recent years. The
latter has served to reinforce the former, and the result has been
to align literary and cultural criticism with the broad-based
forces of neoliberalism whose influence has so deleteriously
transformed not only higher education but the whole of society at
large. Robert T. Tally Jr. argues that, in order to counter these
trends and empower the imagination, the time is ripe for "a
ruthless critique of all that exists," to borrow a phrase from the
young Marx. This book is intended as a provocation, at once a
polemic and a call to action for cultural critics.
Exploring narrative mapping in a wide range of literary works,
ranging from medieval romance to postmodern science fiction, this
volume argues for the significance of spatiality in comparative
literary studies. Contributors demonstrate how a variety of
narratives represent the changing social spaces of their world.
Although treated as two distinct schools of thought, ecocriticism
and geocriticism have both placed emphasis on the lived
environment, whether through social or natural spaces. For the
first time, this interdisciplinary collection of essays addresses
the complementary and contested aspects of these approaches to
literature, culture, and society.
Although treated as two distinct schools of thought, ecocriticism
and geocriticism have both placed emphasis on the lived
environment, whether through social or natural spaces. For the
first time, this interdisciplinary collection of essays addresses
the complementary and contested aspects of these approaches to
literature, culture, and society.
Edward W. Said is considered one of the most influential literary
and postcolonial theorists in the world. Affirming Said's
multifaceted and enormous critical impact, this collection features
essays that highlight the significance of Said's work for
contemporary spatial criticism, comparative literary studies, and
the humanities in general.
At the dawn of the 20th century, a wide-ranging utopianism
dominated popular and intellectual cultures throughout Europe and
America. However, within just a few years, dystopia would overtake
utopia in the public imagination. In the aftermath of the World
Wars, with such canonical examples as Brave New World and
Nineteen-Eighty-Four, dystopia appeared to have become a dominant
genre, in literature and in social thought more generally. The
continuing presence and eventual dominance of dystopian themes in
popular culture – e.g., dismal authoritarian future states,
sinister global conspiracies, post-apocalyptic landscapes, a
proliferation of horrific monsters, and end-of-the-world fantasies
– have confirmed the degree to which the 21st is also a dystopian
century. Drawing on literature such as varied as H.G. Wells’s The
Time Machine, Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, and Suzanne Collins's
The Hunger Games, and on TV and film such as The Walking Dead,
Black Mirror, and The Last of Us, Robert T. Tally Jr. explores the
landscape of angst created by the monstrous accumulation of
dystopian material. The Fiction of Dread provides an innovative
reading of the present cultural climate and offers an alternative
vision for critical theory and practice in a moment in which, as
has been famously observed, it is easier to imagine the end of the
world than the end of capitalism.
Edward W. Said is considered one of the most influential literary
and postcolonial theorists in the world. Affirming Said's
multifaceted and enormous critical impact, this collection features
essays that highlight the significance of Said's work for
contemporary spatial criticism, comparative literary studies, and
the humanities in general.
Literary Cartographies: Spatiality, Representation, and Narrative
addresses key aspects of narrative mapping while arguing for the
significance of spatiality in comparative literary studies.
Literary Cartographies surveys a broad expanse of literary
historical territories, including romance and realism, modernism
and imperialism, and the postmodern play of spaces in the era of
globalization. As such, this collection also provides a
representative sample of work being done in this area by spatially
oriented critics across a range of periods, languages, and
literatures. Drawing upon the resources of spatiality studies and
comparative literature, this collection of essays explores the ways
authors use both strictly mimetic and more fantastic means to
figure forth the 'real-and-imagined' spaces of their respective
worlds. Examining diverse texts and spaces, the contributors to
Literary Cartographies demonstrate how a variety of romantic,
realist, modernist, and postmodernist narratives represent the
changing social spaces of their world, and of our own world system
today.
Although normally associated with modernity or modernism, utopia
has made a comeback in the age of globalization. Just as the
discoveries of the New World and the social upheavals of early
modern Europe inspired Thomas More's Utopia and its many
descendants, the bewildering technological shifts and economic
uncertainties of the present era call for new approaches. The
explosion of utopian studies since the 1960s, particularly in the
work of such theorists as Herbert Marcuse and Fredric Jameson,
suggests that utopia may find its true vocation as both a critical
practice and anticipatory desire in this postmodern moment of
global capitalism. In Utopia in the Age of Globalization, Robert T.
Tally Jr. draws upon recent utopian theory to argue that utopia is
best understood today, not as an ideal society or a future state,
but as a mode of literary cartography. The utopian project is an
attempt to map the present world system in its totality.
In recent years the spatial turn in literary and cultural
studies has opened up new ways of looking at the interactions among
writers, readers, texts, and places. Geocriticism offers a timely
new approach, and "Geocritical Explorations "presents an array of
concrete examples and readings, which also reveal the broad range
of geocritical practices. Representing various areas of literary
and cultural studies, as well as different parts of the globe and
multiple types of space, "Geocritical Explorations" provides a
succinct overview of geocriticism and a point of departure for
further exploration.
Spatial Literary Studies in China explores the range of vibrant and
innovative research being done in China today. Chinese scholars
have been exploring spatially oriented literary criticism in two
different and mutually reinforcing directions: the first has
focused on the study of Western literature, especially U.S. and
European texts and theory, and the second has examined Chinese
cultures, texts, and spaces. This collection of essays demonstrates
Chinese scholars' insightful interpretation, evaluation, and
innovative application of international spatial analyses, theories,
and methodologies, as well as their inspiring exploration and
reconstruction of distinctively Chinese critical and theoretical
discourses. For the first time in English, the essays in this
volume demonstrate the vitality of literary geography,
geocriticism, and the spatial humanities in China in the
twenty-first century.
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.
This book is a critical introduction to J.R.R. Tolkien's The
Hobbit, but it also advances an argument about the novel in the
context of Tolkien's larger literary and philosophical project.
Notwithstanding its canonical place in the fantasy genre, The
Hobbit is ultimately a historical novel. It does not refer directly
to any "real" historical events, but it both enacts and
conceptualizes history in a way that makes it real. Drawing on
Marxist literary criticism and narrative theory, this book examines
the form and content of Tolkien's work, demonstrating how the
heroic romance is simultaneously employed and subverted by Tolkien
in his tale of an unlikely hero, "quite a little fellow in a wide
world," who nonetheless makes history. First-time readers of
Tolkien, as well as established scholars and fans, will enjoy this
engaging and accessible study of The Hobbit.
In recent years the spatial turn in literary and cultural studies
has opened up new ways of looking at the interactions among
writers, readers, texts, and places. Geocriticism offers a timely
new approach, and this book presents an array of concrete examples
or readings, which also reveal the broad range of geocritical
practices.
Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2014 In Poe and the Subversion of
American Literature, Robert T. Tally Jr. argues that Edgar Allan
Poe is best understood, not merely as a talented artist or canny
magazinist, but primarily as a practical joker who employs satire
and fantasy to poke fun at an emergent nationalist discourse
circulating in the United States. Poe's satirical and fantastic
mode, on display even in his apparently serious short stories and
literary criticism, undermines the earnest attempts to establish a
distinctively national literature in the nineteenth century. In
retrospect, Poe's work also subtly subverts the tenets of an
institutionalized American Studies in the twentieth century. Tally
interprets Poe's life and works in light of his own social milieu
and in relation to the disciplinary field of American literary
studies, finding Poe to be neither the poete maudit of popular
mythology nor the representative American writer revealed by recent
scholarship. Rather, Poe is an untimely figure whose work
ultimately makes a mockery of those who would seek to contain it.
Drawing upon Gilles Deleuze's distinction between nomad thought and
state philosophy, Tally argues that Poe's varied literary and
critical writings represent an alternative to American literature.
Through his satirical critique of U.S. national culture and his
otherworldly projection of a postnational space of the imagination,
Poe establishes a subterranean, nomadic, and altogether worldly
literary practice.
Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2014 In Poe and the Subversion of
American Literature, Robert T. Tally Jr. argues that Edgar Allan
Poe is best understood, not merely as a talented artist or canny
magazinist, but primarily as a practical joker who employs satire
and fantasy to poke fun at an emergent nationalist discourse
circulating in the United States. Poe's satirical and fantastic
mode, on display even in his apparently serious short stories and
literary criticism, undermines the earnest attempts to establish a
distinctively national literature in the nineteenth century. In
retrospect, Poe's work also subtly subverts the tenets of an
institutionalized American Studies in the twentieth century. Tally
interprets Poe's life and works in light of his own social milieu
and in relation to the disciplinary field of American literary
studies, finding Poe to be neither the poete maudit of popular
mythology nor the representative American writer revealed by recent
scholarship. Rather, Poe is an untimely figure whose work
ultimately makes a mockery of those who would seek to contain it.
Drawing upon Gilles Deleuze's distinction between nomad thought and
state philosophy, Tally argues that Poe's varied literary and
critical writings represent an alternative to American literature.
Through his satirical critique of U.S. national culture and his
otherworldly projection of a postnational space of the imagination,
Poe establishes a subterranean, nomadic, and altogether worldly
literary practice.
The novels of Kurt Vonnegut depict a profoundly absurd and
distinctly postmodern world. But in this critical study, Robert
Tally argues that Vonnegut himself is actually a modernist, who is
less interested in indulging in the free play of signifiers than in
attempting to construct a model that could encompass the American
experience at the end of the twentieth century. As a modernist
wrestling with a postmodern condition, Vonnegut makes use of
diverse and sometimes eccentric narrative techniques (such as
metafiction, collage, and temporal slippages) to project a
comprehensive vision of life in the United States. Vonnegut's
novels thus become experiments in making sense of the radical
transformations of self and society during that curious, unstable
period called, perhaps ironically, the 'American Century.' An
untimely figure, Vonnegut develops a postmodern iconography of
American civilization while simultaneously acknowledging the
impossibility of a truly comprehensive representation.
In Melville, Mapping and Globalization, Robert Tally argues that
Melville does not belong in the tradition of the American
Renaissance, but rather creates a baroque literary cartography,
artistically engaging with spaces beyond the national model. At a
time of intense national consolidation and cultural centralization,
Melville discovered the postnational forces of an emerging world
system, a system that has become our own in the era of
globalization. Drawing on the work of a range of literary and
social critics (including Deleuze, Foucault, Jameson, and Moretti),
Tally argues that Melville's distinct literary form enabled his
critique of the dominant national narrative of his own time and
proleptically undermined the national literary tradition of
American Studies a century later. Melville's hypercanonical status
in the United States makes his work all the more crucial for
understanding the role of literature in a post-American epoch.
Offering bold new interpretations and theoretical juxtapositions,
Tally presents a postnational Melville, well suited to establishing
new approaches to American and world literature in the twenty-first
century.
At the dawn of the 20th century, a wide-ranging utopianism
dominated popular and intellectual cultures throughout Europe and
America. However, within just a few years, dystopia would overtake
utopia in the public imagination. In the aftermath of the World
Wars, with such canonical examples as Brave New World and
Nineteen-Eighty-Four, dystopia appeared to have become a dominant
genre, in literature and in social thought more generally. The
continuing presence and eventual dominance of dystopian themes in
popular culture – e.g., dismal authoritarian future states,
sinister global conspiracies, post-apocalyptic landscapes, a
proliferation of horrific monsters, and end-of-the-world fantasies
– have confirmed the degree to which the 21st is also a dystopian
century. Drawing on literature such as varied as H.G. Wells’s The
Time Machine, Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, and Suzanne Collins's
The Hunger Games, and on TV and film such as The Walking Dead,
Black Mirror, and The Last of Us, Robert T. Tally Jr. explores the
landscape of angst created by the monstrous accumulation of
dystopian material. The Fiction of Dread provides an innovative
reading of the present cultural climate and offers an alternative
vision for critical theory and practice in a moment in which, as
has been famously observed, it is easier to imagine the end of the
world than the end of capitalism.
The novels of Kurt Vonnegut depict a profoundly absurd and
distinctly postmodern world. But in this critical study, Robert
Tally argues that Vonnegut himself is actually a modernist, who is
less interested in indulging in the free play of signifiers than in
attempting to construct a model that could encompass the American
experience at the end of the twentieth century. As a modernist
wrestling with a postmodern condition, Vonnegut makes use of
diverse and sometimes eccentric narrative techniques (such as
metafiction, collage, and temporal slippages) to project a
comprehensive vision of life in the United States. Vonnegut's
novels thus become experiments in making sense of the radical
transformations of self and society during that curious, unstable
period called, perhaps ironically, the American Century.' An
untimely figure, Vonnegut develops a postmodern iconography of
American civilization while simultaneously acknowledging the
impossibility of a truly comprehensive representation.
This monograph offers a new interpretation of Melville's work
(focusing on "Moby-Dick", "Pierre" and "Benito Cereno") in the
light of scholarship on globalization from critics in 'new'
American studies. In "Melville, Mapping and Globalization", Robert
Tally argues that Melville does not belong in the tradition of the
American Renaissance, but rather creates a baroque literary
cartography, artistically engaging with spaces beyond the national
model. At a time of intense national consolidation and cultural
centralization, Melville discovered the postnational forces of an
emerging world system, a system that has become our own in the era
of globalization. Drawing on the work of a range of literary and
social critics (including Deleuze, Foucault, Jameson, and Moretti),
Tally argues that Melville's distinct literary form enabled his
critique of the dominant national narrative of his own time and
proleptically undermined the national literary tradition of
American Studies a century later. Melville's hypercanonical status
in the United States makes his work all the more crucial for
understanding the role of literature in a post-American epoch.
Offering bold new interpretations and theoretical juxtapositions,
Tally presents a postnational Melville, well suited to establishing
new approaches to American and world literature in the twenty-first
century.
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