In recent years the spatial turn in literary and cultural studies has opened up new ways of looking at the interactions among writers, readers, texts, and places. Geocriticism offers a timely new approach, and this book presents an array of concrete examples or readings, which also reveal the broad range of geocritical practices.
I am so disappointed. The potential interdisciplinary alignments between cultural studies and cultural geography are rich and important. Unfortunately in this book, the literary critics have taken over this edited collection. Textual analysis and the arbitrary selections of text dominate, without the deep and considered theoretical work I was hoping to find here.
The state of cultural studies has left a scar on this 2011 book. The passion, risk taking and imagination are absent. Instead, the lit crits have - once more - colonized the debates.
A great shame. I was hoping this book would be tremendous. It has fallen far short of my hopes.