The Poetics of Geography in English-Canadian Literature
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Claire Omhovère
Abstract
This paper found its inception in what Barbara Godard (2000) has termed “the persistence of a geografictional imperative in Canadian fiction”, thereby suggesting that geography possesses an illocutionary force that artists relentlessly seek to capture and translate. As a result, this paper's approach rests upon the premise that references to geographical formations and processes (e. g. ‘peneplain’, ‘fault line’, ‘divide’, ‘moraine’, ‘metamorphism’, ‘erosion’, ‘foldings’ or ‘sedimentation’) acquire an additional value in fiction that exceeds their descriptive requirements. Reversing the perspective traditionally adopted in literary geography makes it possible to probe the symbolic process upon which verisimilitude relies and determine to what extent physical geography informs a distinct response to space in contemporary Canadian literature. This reorientation opens onto a series of interrogations: what blanks in conventional landscape writing may geography fill and how? Where does the efficiency of geography lie beyond its scientific accuracy or descriptive relevance? Pondering the role of geography in a work of art therefore amounts to considering what makes geography work as art – is there such a thing as a poetics of geography?
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
