Topophrenia: Place, Narrative, and the Spatial Imagination

The Spatial Humanities

by Robert T. Tally Jr.

What is our place in the world, and how do we inhabit, understand, and represent this place to others? Topophrenia gathers essays by Robert Tally that explore the relationship between space, place, and mapping, on the one hand, and literary criticism, history, and theory on the other. The book provides an introduction to spatial literary studies, exploring in detail the theory and practice of geocriticism, literary cartography, and the spatial humanities more generally. The spatial anxiety of disorientation and the need to know one's location, even if only subconsciously, is a deeply felt and shared human experience. Building on Yi Fu Tuan's "topophilia" (or love of place), Tally instead considers the notion of "topophrenia" as a simultaneous sense of place-consciousness coupled with a feeling of disorder, anxiety, and "dis-ease." He argues that no effective geography could be complete without also incorporating an awareness of the lonely, loathsome, or frightening spaces that condition our understanding of that space. Tally considers the tension between the objective ordering of a space and the subjective ways in which narrative worlds are constructed. Narrative maps present a way of understanding that seems realistic but is completely figurative. So how can these maps be used to not only understand the real world but also to put up an alternative vision of what that world might otherwise be? From Tolkien to Cervantes, Borges to More, Topophrenia provides a clear and compelling explanation of how geocriticism, the spatial humanities, and literary cartography help us to narrate, represent, and understand our place in a constantly changing world.

Genres: Philosophy

210 pages, Paperback

Published November 9, 2018

Reviews

[F · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's weird to review an academic text. It is also weird to be a book's first and only review.

Tally mentions a lot of things over and over again. He states in the introduction that a lot of the articles in the book have been published elsewhere, and so he tried to make sure that he doesn't repeat himself too much. He could have tried harder.

And, especially the last chapter, has nothing to do with space or topos in my opinion. Just a lot of consideration on science fiction and utopia.

[Kayla Oswald · Rating 2 out of 5]

I technically didn’t finish this book but I made it further than any normal human being would so I’m counting it