Tally, Robert T., Jr.2009-11-152012-02-242009-10Tally, R. T. (2009). Geocriticism: Mapping the spaces of literature. L'Espirit Créateur: The International Quarterly of French and Francophone Studies, 49(3): 134.https://hdl.handle.net/10877/3926Literature abounds with the description and exploration of spaces. The writer maps the world, combining a representation of real places with the imaginary space of fiction. In some cases, what I have elsewhere called literary cartography serves to map a well known space (e.g., Dostoevsky’s St. Petersburg or Twain’s Mississippi River); in others, the places mapped may be wholly imaginary (More’s Utopia or Tolkien’s Middle Earth). Most often, the two combine, as the literary representation of a seemingly real place is never the purely mimetic image of that space. In a sense, all writing partakes in a form of cartography, since even the most realistic map does not truly depict the space, but, like literature, figures it forth in a complex skein of imaginary relations.Text1 page1 file (.pdf)enliterary theoryliterary criticismgeographymodern literaturepostmodernismgeocriticismliterary cartographyEnglishReview