ABSTRACT:
With spatiality at the heart of modern and postmodern thought, 'mapping' has emerged as one of its principal tropes. From Conrad's 'geography fabulous' to White's 'geopoetics' via Chatwin's 'dreaming paths', the fascination of twentieth century literature for geographies imaginary or referential has found its corollary in a growing critical concern for maps and texts, where words and (new) worlds collide. Maps paratextual, maps intra- and inter-textual, texts as maps and maps as texts, are but some of the forms that literary maps may take. Following in the wake of the travel book, the novel - long presumed un-mappable - is increasingly attracting the attentions of the critical map-makers. Taking its cue from Brody's observation that "where dreams collide, new kinds of maps are made", this paper sets out to assay the uses of mapping in literature, beyond metaphor and paratext, as analytical tool and theoretical model.
