Eighteenth-Century Geography and Representations of Space

The book is about the influence of geography on literary creation in the eighteenth century. It approaches the subject within the context of the changes that occurred in the way people thought about space and shows how the geographical way of looking at the globe and one's surroundings became one of the main constituents of fictional realism.

In this study, the author shows that, under the influence of the popular geography of the eighteenth century, an increasing number of literary works began to make use of actual topographical data. Two of these works even make use of maps. He demonstrates that the kinship between geographical and literary representations of topography went further: they underwent parallel developments. His analyses of the different types of geographical representations of space that appeared in the course of the century allow him to explore the worldviews they embody, the new and often conflicting attitudes to space that they reveal, and the connections these representations have with the evolution of the contemporary notions of motion and mobility. The author underlines the role these topographical representations played in the nascent realism of the novel and the new life they breathed into poetry. His study is also a contribution to the discussion of the important changes that occurred in the way people thought about and lived space, many of which announce our time.

Autorentext

Jean-Paul Forster has taught English and American literature in Lausanne as well as at the Centre de Télé-enseignement, University of Nancy. He is the author of Jonathan Swift: The Fictions of the Satirist and of A First Approach to English Literatures: From Beowulf to Salman Rushdie, a short introduction to English, American and Commonwealth literatures.

Inhalt

Contents: The Sea in Defoe s and Swift s Fictions Gulliver s and Crusoe s Cartographic Representations of their Islands Moll Flanders, Joseph Andrews and A Few Other Travellers on the English Network of Post Roads The Emergence of the Rambler in English Literature From the Pre-Romantic Rambler s Space to that of the Romantic Wanderer.