'“A strange enough region wherein to wander and muse": Mapping Clerkenwell in Victorian Popular Fictions'

Drawing on the work of Bertrand Westphal, this essay attempts to perform a geocritical reading of the London district of Clerkenwell. After discussing the spatial turn in the Humanities and introducing a range of spatial critical approaches, the essay “maps” literary Clerkenwell from the perspectives of genre hybridity and intertextuality, spatially articulate cartography, multifocal and historically aware public perception and potentially transgressive connection to outside areas. Clerkenwell is seen to have stimulated a range of genre fiction, including Newgate, realist, penny and slum fiction, and social exploration journalism. In much of this writing, the district was defined by its negative associations with crime, poverty, incarceration and slaughter. Such negative imageability, the essay suggests, was self-perpetuating, since authors would be influenced by their reading to create literary worlds repeating existing tropes; these literary representations, in turn, influenced readers’ perceptions of the area.Intertextual, multi-layered and polysensorial geocritical readings,the essay concludes, can producepowerful andnuanced pictures of literary placesbut also face a formidable challenge in defining an adequate geocentric corpus

To draw a map is to tell a story. Interview with Dr. Robert T. Tally Jr. on Geocriticism

This interview with Dr. Robert T. Tally Jr. (associate professor of English at Texas State University) aims to highlight the strong interrelation between literature and space from the starting point of Geocriticism. With this term, which was coined to define a new discipline able to interact with “literary studies, geography, urbanism and architecture” (Tally 2011: xiv), in fact, Tally offers a theoretical basis for spatiality in relation to literatureThis interview with Dr. Robert T. Tally Jr. (associate professor of English at Texas State University) aims to highlight the strong interrelation between literature and space from the starting point of Geocriticism. With this term, which was coined to define a new discipline able to interact with “literary studies, geography, urbanism and architecture” (Tally 2011: xiv), in fact, Tally offers a theoretical basis for spatiality in relation to literature

Bertrand Westphal as a reference of geocriticism

Bertrand Westphal, Professor of general and comparative literature at the Université de Limoges (France), develops his work as an essayist in the field of geocriticism. This axis of investigation, originated by the same author, explores the interactions between the human spaces and literature and, at the same time, its impact on the configuration of cultural identities. Westphal has mainly deployed its interdisciplinary thesis in three essays (2007, 2011, 2016); the last one, La Cage des méridiens, is analysed in this article once introduced the main features of his geoliterary perspective.Bertrand Westphal, profesor de literatura general y comparada de la Université de Limoges, desarrolla como ensayista una obra fundada en la geocrítica. Este eje de investigación, iniciado por el mismo autor, explora las interacciones entre los espacios humanos y la literatura y, al mismo tiempo, su repercusión en la configuración de las identidades culturales. Westphal ha desplegado estas tesis interdisciplinares principalmente en tres ensayos (2007; 2011; 2016); el último de ellos, La Cage des méridiens, es analizado en este artículo una vez introducidas las principales características de su perspectiva geoliteraria.Este artículo se ha realizado en el marco del proyecto de investigación P1·1B2015-62. Funcions educatives de la literatura a l’entorn de les emocions, la imaginació i la construcció d’identitats

The Pleasures of Polyglossia in Emirati Cinema: Focus on From A to B and Abdullah

Polyglot films highlight the coexistence of multiple languages at the level of dialogue and narration. Even the notoriously monolingual Hollywood film industry has recently seen an increase in polyglot productions. Much of Europe's polyglot cinema reflects on postwar migration. Hamid Naficy has coined the phrase " accented cinema " to define diasporic filmmaking, a closely related category. This essay considers polyglot Emirati films as part of an increasingly popular global genre. It argues that the lack of a monolingual mandate is conducive to experiments with language choices, and that the polyglot genre serves best to emphasize efforts made to accommodate the diversity of cultures interacting in urban centers in the United Arab Emirates. Case studies of Ali F. Mostafa's From A to B (2014) and Humaid Alsuwaidi's Abdullah (2015) demonstrate the considerable contributions Emirati filmmakers have already made to a genre, which offers a powerful potential for cinema in the UAE. A comparative analysis identifies the extent to which each of the two films reveals elements inherent in three of the five sub-categories outlined by Chris Wahl

Екокритичний аспект дикості у поетичному циклі Олега Лишеги «Снігові і вогню»

У статті проаналізовано категорію дикості в поезії Олега Лишеги. Екокритична категорія дикості – як протилежність до цивілізованого, обжитого, людського – дає змогу окреслити основні ознаки лісу у поезії Лишеги як дикого, непередбачуваного, тваринного, магічного простору. Близька взаємодія суб’єкта лірики із лісовим ландшафтом створює глибшу ідентичність дикого лісу, який, отримавши голос, промовляє у тексті. Надзвичайно важливим для поета є збереження неприрученості, гармонійне співіснування світу природи і світу людей

Espacialitat i construcció d'identitats en la literatura

The article studies the new conception of space (spatiality) as a sociodiscur- sive construction and the application of this notion in literature. The meaning of place is distinguished from those of landscape, territory and abstract space. The concepts of geocriticism (Bertrand Westphal), heterotopia (Michel Foucault) and chronotope (Mik- hail Bakhtin) are used to explain the functions of spatiality (Robert Tally) in literature. After referring to various studies on the literary representation of places like the house, the sanatorium or the environment of death, this paper concludes with an analysis of the movie theaters in Catalan literature and, especially, in the poetry of Vicent Andrés Estellés (1924–1993)

The Museum on the Edge of Forever

This article argues that understanding any space or site relies on a knowledge of its fourth dimension - the timescape. It will explore this by situating the investigation in the museum - a place of heightened contrivance which could easily be shallowly interpreted as "mere style". It will defend a new method of investigating museum temporality which combines both phenomenology and literary theory, and will replace the idea of geo-epistemology with geochronic epistemology: an understanding of context and situation which takes on time as well as spatial location. In so doing, it moves on from notions of the museum as a place out of time, situating it in the networks of meaning, power and politics in which we have lived and are living. Thus, "the whole space of the exhibition" as Lyotard said, "becomes the remains of all time": the Museum on the Edge of Forever

Ruts of Gentrification: Breaking the Surface of Vienna’s Changing Cityscape

Last year, the city of Vienna celebrated the 150-year anniversary of the opening of the Ringstrasse, the central ring road that stands as symbol of the huge structural renewal that accompanied the transformation of the Habsburg empire’s capital into a rapidly growing modern city. The anniversary acquired poignancy on account of the way Vienna’s population is once again growing rapidly, with an estimated ¼ million people to be added to the city’s population over the next decade. While accommodating urban migrants was not a priority in Ringstrasse Vienna, and working class districts are not part of iconic mapped mediations, the current city council, a coalition of Social Democrats and the Green Party, studiously tries to avoid 19th-century urban modernity’s “mistakes” in their efforts to accommodate the growing population, and they let the Viennese, and the world, know. This time, GIS and digital mapping are mobilized for planning, mediating and communicating large-scale development and renewal projects.  This paper looks at the mediations of three crucial sites of contemporary urban transformation in Vienna that mobilize the affordances of new technologies: “Loftcity,” a loft development cum cultural centre on the site of one of Vienna’s largest factories, the Ankerbrotfabrik; the transformation of the district surrounding Vienna’s new Hauptbahnhof; and Aspern, “Vienna’s Urban Lakeside,” a new satellite town promoted as a city of the future. By comparing the historical traces that remain in the mediations of these sites with their 19th-century counterparts, a geocritical reading of Vienna’s gentrification emerges that situates spatial practices in historically grown lines of connectivity, presaging and transcending traditional forms of classification, such as national divides or urban/suburban dichotomies

Ruts of Gentrification: Breaking the Surface of Vienna’s Changing Cityscape

Last year, the city of Vienna celebrated the 150-year anniversary of the opening of the Ringstrasse, the central ring road that stands as symbol of the huge structural renewal that accompanied the transformation of the Habsburg empire’s capital into a rapidly growing modern city. The anniversary acquired poignancy on account of the way Vienna’s population is once again growing rapidly, with an estimated ¼ million people to be added to the city’s population over the next decade. While accommodating urban migrants was not a priority in Ringstrasse Vienna, and working class districts are not part of iconic mapped mediations, the current city council, a coalition of Social Democrats and the Green Party, studiously tries to avoid 19th-century urban modernity’s “mistakes” in their efforts to accommodate the growing population, and they let the Viennese, and the world, know. This time, GIS and digital mapping are mobilized for planning, mediating and communicating large-scale development and renewal projects.  This paper looks at the mediations of three crucial sites of contemporary urban transformation in Vienna that mobilize the affordances of new technologies: “Loftcity,” a loft development cum cultural centre on the site of one of Vienna’s largest factories, the Ankerbrotfabrik; the transformation of the district surrounding Vienna’s new Hauptbahnhof; and Aspern, “Vienna’s Urban Lakeside,” a new satellite town promoted as a city of the future. By comparing the historical traces that remain in the mediations of these sites with their 19th-century counterparts, a geocritical reading of Vienna’s gentrification emerges that situates spatial practices in historically grown lines of connectivity, presaging and transcending traditional forms of classification, such as national divides or urban/suburban dichotomies

Under Bech’s Eyes: Emotional Geographies of the European East in John Updike’s Short Stories

John Updike‘s short stories about Henry Bech‘s diplomatic adventures in the European East have been analysed mainly in the context of the Cold-War balance of power and Updike‘s ambivalent attitude to communist Russia. While the hard-boiled politics constitute the backdrop of Bech‘s cultural mission, the three stories which I discuss in this essay entertain tensions between the official and the personal, which in turn shape the protagonist‘s representations of Eastern European others. Accordingly, by combining imagology with elements of geocriticism and affect studies, this essay explores how cultural patterns of perceiving alterity are intertwined with emotions to produce Bech‘s emotional geographies of the European East, which in mapping the other reflect back on and consolidate Bech‘s American self.Los relatos cortos de John Updike sobre las aventuras diplomáticas del escritor Henry Bech en el Este de Europa han sido estudiados principalmente en el contexto de la Guerra Fría y de la ambivalente actitud de Updike hacia la Rusia comunista. Mientras que la dura política constituye el telón de fondo de la misión cultural de Bech, en los tres relatos analizados existen tensiones entre lo oficial y lo personal que a su vez nutren la imagen del otro. Así pues, en este ensayo se combina la imagología con elementos de geocrítica y los estudios del afecto, para explorar cómo las percepciones culturales se entrelazan con las emociones, produciendo las geografías emocionales del Este Europeo, que, al trazar la imagen del otro, reflejan y consolidan la identidad norteamericana de Henry Bech.Universidad de MálagaMinisterio de Ciencia e Innovación FFI2017-86417-