Geocriticism: Reading Literature in the Spatial Tur
Abstract
Corresponding with the new wave of interdisciplinary studies, literary research tries its hand at experimenting with the instruments and findings of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) to stir novel questions and issues in the territorially-oriented literary works. Hence, a recent kind of literary GIS has emerged as a methodology of mapping literature. The maps and geo-data which are produced in the aftermath prove that there are still dark spots/aporias which have not yet been clarified in the oldest classics, Biblical literature, and literary works of all times and all kinds. Of course, not all literary works can be mapped, however GIS can recommend the proximity of visualizing literary texts and inspire new research questions. The GIS-map, which turns to be a substitutive text built on the original written or spoken text, a Derridean 'detour' from the origin which is gradually lost, might be feasible to see if GIS can be incorporated as an integral part of the original text so that no information will remain undiscovered, or it becomes a highly demanding supplement to the original text that both should be studied carefully in the light of each other in order to implement a meaning. Hence, the GIS-map would naturally be a 'writerly' text for the active 'reader' to grasp new meanings unfathomed before.
References
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3Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1967 rep. 1997),140.
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5Roland Barthes, S/Z, trans. Richard Miller (Oxford: Blackwell, 1974 rep. 2002), 4.
6Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harperperennial Modern Classic, 1971 rep. 2001), 143.
7Ibid., 145.
8The Epic of Gilgamesh, trans. Maureen Gallery Kovacs, electronic edition by Wolf Carnahan, I998 & Homer's The Odyssey, trans. Robert Fagles.
9Frank C. Bray, The World of Myths: A Dictionary of mythology (New Delhi: Indigo Books, 2006), 148.
10Walter Burkert, The Orientalizing Revolution. Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age. trans. Margaret E. Pinder (London: Harvard Univ. Press, 1992), 88.
11Gezna Gertruida de VillIEiers, "Understanding Gilgamesh: His World and His Story," (Ph.D. Thesis, University of Pretoria, 2004), 11.
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13Heidegger, 146.
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