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.
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Review With Topophrenia Robert Tally discerns, first, how literature invents and produces space, and second, what the creative imagination does with space. These become the ground of a critical praxis addressing the conditions of the world in which we live. Blending close analysis with dialectics, Tally's book is a compelling study of the complex relations of literature and geography.
(Tom Conley, author of An Errant Eye: Poetry and Topography in Early Modern France )
Tally writes tersely and elegantly of the Odyssey, The Divine Comedy, of Moby-Dick (notably ‘The Chart’ sequence), Ulysses, Tolkein’s ‘middle worlds,’ and, soon after, Thomas More and of the relation of utopia to fantasy and science fiction. If space belongs to the form and purpose of the novel, it also applies to Topophrenia in general. ... Ambitious in scope, the strength of Topophrenia is found in how it makes its case.
(Peta Mitchell, author (with Jane Stadler and Stephen Carleton) of Imagined Landscapes: Geovisualizing Australian Spatial Narratives )
About the Author
Robert T. Tally Jr. is Professor of English at Texas State University. His books include Fredric Jameson: The Project of Dialectical Criticism ; Utopia in the Age of Globalization : Space, Representation, and the World System ; and Spatiality .

motw/Topophrenia_ Place, Narrative, - Robert T. Tally Jr_.epub

motw/Topophrenia_ Place, Narrative, - Robert T. Tally Jr_.pdf

Tally Jr., Robert T.

Quarry Books

Spatial humanities (Indiana University Press), Bloomington, Indiana, 2019

The spatial humanities, Bloomington, Indiana, 2019

United States, United States of America

The Spatial Humanities, 2018

producers:
Adobe PDF Library 15.0

Memory of the World Librarian: outernationale

Cover 1
Title 4
Copyright 5
Dedication 6
Contents 8
Acknowledgments 10
Introduction: The Cartographic Imperative 16
Part I: Place in Geocritical Theory and Practice 30
Chapter 1. Topophrenia 32
Chapter 2. Introducing Geocriticism 51
Chapter 3. Geocritical Situations 68
Part II: Spatial Representation in Narrative 88
Chapter 4. The Mise en Abyme of Literary Cartography 90
Chapter 5. The Space of the Novel 109
Chapter 6. Theatrum Geographicum 124
Part III: Fantasy and the Spatial Imagination 140
Chapter 7. Adventures in Literary Cartography 142
Chapter 8. In the Suburbs of Amaurotum 157
Chapter 9. Beyond the Flaming Walls of the World 170
Conclusion: A Map of the Pyrenees 187
Bibliography 196
Index 206
About the Author 210

2025-10-27