Literature, Travel and Geography: French Orientations
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Paul Claval
Abstract
The interest of French geographers in literature developed mainly after 1970, just as in other Western countries. However, it owed its specific characteristics to the fact that it was influenced by a long French literary tradition in writing geography, and because of Julien Gracq/Louis Poirier, who was at the same time one of the best French novelists and a good geographer. Geographers first considered literature – and more especially novels – as a new source of documentary evidence in the late 1980s and early ‘90s. They were fascinated by the way narratives were used to convey the feelings of people experiencing geographic evidence, and to induce dramatic tension in landscape descriptions. During the last fifteen years, more attention has been given to the construction of geographic representations through texts or images – hence the growing interest in travel literature and guides.
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction
- Literature and the New Cultural Geography
- America/Deserta: Postmodernism and the Poetics of Space
- Postcolonialism and the Politics of Space: Towards a Postcolonial Analysis of Material Spatial Practices
- Literature, Travel and Geography: French Orientations
- Writing English Landscape History
- Placing Stories, Performing Places: Spatiality in Joyce and Austen
- Der Rhein: Poetik des Stroms zwischen Elementarisierung und Domestikation
- The Poetics of Geography in English-Canadian Literature
- Fated Landscape: Choropoetic Practice in Don DeLillo's Underworld
- The Traps: Bukowski as Interpreter of Cornered Lives
- Alexander Onysko, Anglicisms in German: Borrowing, Lexical Productivity, and Written Codeswitching
- Sabine Fiedler, English Phraseology: A Coursebook
- A History of the English Language, ed. Richard Hogg & David Denison; The Oxford History of English, ed. Lynda Mugglestone
- The Celtic Englishes IV: The Interface between English and the Celtic Languages, ed. Hildegard L. C. Tristram
- Innovation and Tradition in the Writings of the Venerable Bede, ed. Scott DeGregorio
- Wendy Scase, Literature and Complaint in England, 1272–1553
- Sources of the Boece, ed. Tim William Machan with the assistance of A. J. Minnis
- The ‘Exhortation’ from Disce Mori. Edited from Oxford, Jesus College, MS 39, ed. E. A. Jones
- Jane Griffiths, John Skelton and Poetic Authority: Defining the Liberty to Speak
- Eingegangene Schriften
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction
- Literature and the New Cultural Geography
- America/Deserta: Postmodernism and the Poetics of Space
- Postcolonialism and the Politics of Space: Towards a Postcolonial Analysis of Material Spatial Practices
- Literature, Travel and Geography: French Orientations
- Writing English Landscape History
- Placing Stories, Performing Places: Spatiality in Joyce and Austen
- Der Rhein: Poetik des Stroms zwischen Elementarisierung und Domestikation
- The Poetics of Geography in English-Canadian Literature
- Fated Landscape: Choropoetic Practice in Don DeLillo's Underworld
- The Traps: Bukowski as Interpreter of Cornered Lives
- Alexander Onysko, Anglicisms in German: Borrowing, Lexical Productivity, and Written Codeswitching
- Sabine Fiedler, English Phraseology: A Coursebook
- A History of the English Language, ed. Richard Hogg & David Denison; The Oxford History of English, ed. Lynda Mugglestone
- The Celtic Englishes IV: The Interface between English and the Celtic Languages, ed. Hildegard L. C. Tristram
- Innovation and Tradition in the Writings of the Venerable Bede, ed. Scott DeGregorio
- Wendy Scase, Literature and Complaint in England, 1272–1553
- Sources of the Boece, ed. Tim William Machan with the assistance of A. J. Minnis
- The ‘Exhortation’ from Disce Mori. Edited from Oxford, Jesus College, MS 39, ed. E. A. Jones
- Jane Griffiths, John Skelton and Poetic Authority: Defining the Liberty to Speak
- Eingegangene Schriften
