This thesis is a study of the ways in which readers actively and collaboratively co-produce fiction. It focuses on American Sherlockians, a group of devotees of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. At its centre is an analysis of geographical and travel writings these readers produced about Holmes’s life and world, in the later years of the twentieth century. I argue that Sherlockian writings indicate a tendency to practise what I term ‘expansionary literary geography’; that is, a species of encounter with fiction in which readers harness literature’s creative agency in order to consciously add to or expand the literary spaces of the text. My thesis is a work of literary geography. I am indebted to recent work that theorises reading as a dynamic practice which occurs in time and space. My work develops this theoretical lens by considering the fictional event in the light of encounters which are collaborative, collective and ongoing. I present my findings across four substantive chapters, each of which elucidates a different aspect of Sherlockians’ expansionary literary geography: first, mapping, where Sherlockians who set out to definitively map the world as Doyle wrote it keep re-drawing its boundaries outside of his texts; secondly, creative writing, by which readers make Holmes move while ensuring he never wanders too far from the canon; thirdly, debate, a popular pastime among American Sherlockians and a means for readers to build Holmes’s world out of their own memories and experiences; and fourthly, literary tourism, used by three exemplary readers as a means of walking Holmes into the world. I conclude with a call for literary geography as a discipline to continue to broaden its horizons beyond the writers and readers of self-consciously literary fictions. The kinds of reading practices I discuss here can take us closer to demonstrating the role that literature and encounters with fictions play in the wider production of space in everyday life.

This dissertation analyzes the interactive relationship between narrative and spatiality in contemporary novels and films set in the southwestern region of the United States. While space and place have sometimes been regarded as static backgrounds of narrative events, what supports the entire study is the view of spatiality as an essential constitutive element of every fictional narrative and as a dynamic product of intersecting relations observed at the intratextual, intertextual, and extratextual levels. In Larry McMurtry’s and Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show, the circular pattern repeated in the narrative prevents it from developing into a Bildungsroman and constructs a claustrophobic space, which can be opposed to the open space of freedom often identified with the West. Max Evans, in Bobby Jack Smith, You Dirty Coward!, constructs a parodic post-Western narrative and remaps the mythic West by juxtaposing various social relations that have often been repressed in classic Westerns. Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead merges historiography with cartography in its attempt to retrieve the fragmented past and construct a space in which everything converges in the present. While the narrative space of Cormac McCarthy’s The Crossing emerges as a meshwork of intersecting lines of narrative that is always in the state of becoming, McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men and its film adaptation by Joel and Ethan Coen create a closed space of which there is no way out by mapping the narrative space with various signs, signals, and traces that always point at what remains off the map. And the U.S.-Mexico borderlands in Tommy Lee Jones’s The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada are an uncanny space in which the familiar and the strange, the homely and the unhomely, and the real and the imaginary become inseparable. By juxtaposing these heterogenous fictional cartographies, this study aims to map the polyphonic narrative space of the contemporary Southwest. The reading of individual texts here is partly informed by theories of spatiality developed in various fields. This study hopes to situate itself in the growing interdisciplinary field of literary geography as well as to make a contribution to the understanding of the individual works.

Since the 1940s, many works of Catalan literature have taken place in Cuba. While anthologies mention the genre, there has been as of yet no thorough examination of the importance of this trend. Starting with the long history of the relationship between Catalonia and Cuba, this dissertation employs a transatlantic approach to understanding the significance of the island to Catalan literature and identity. The Catalan protagonists, through their contact with Cuba, undergo change that is accompanied by a redefinition of both personal and national identity. The thesis is structured by various journeys from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean. In Por el cielo y mandamp;aacute;s allandamp;aacute; (2000), Carme Riera tells the story of a voyage which takes place in the late colonial period and in the early days of the Cuban fight for independence. Chapters from Gent del meu exili: inoblidables (1975) by Teresa Pamies and Records vells, histandamp;ograve;ries noves (1941) by Josep Maria Poblet personify the voices of Catalan Republican exile in Cuba. Habanera (1999) by Angeles Dalmau focuses on the overseas experience of a modern-day tourist. The methodology of this dissertation draws on literary geography, the study and interpretation of writers representations of physical space, and focuses particularly on the role that Cuba plays in redefining the protagonists of the works examined. Theories of historical memory and feminism, as well as concepts related to postcolonialism and cultural geography also contribute to the conclusion that the physical and cultural space of Cuba reshapes the identity of the fictional Catalans who encounter it.

The Inverted Compass traces the influence of geography on early American writing. Maps, quadrants, and compasses are at the heart of America’s most celebrated stories, and these geographic tools shaped how Americans understood themselves and their relationship to the landscape in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. But the emerging discipline also provided writers a way to address the young Republic’s most pressing political and ethical problems. The word geography itself - from the Greek geo (earth) and graphia (writing) - articulates the central paradox. Mapping, even as it claims to represent the world, continuously produces it. Literary works follow a similar logic. The Inverted Compass argues that certain early American writers recognized the parallels between mapping and writing and confronted their political implications through narrative fiction. These writers imagined counter-spaces. They created alternate geographies. They inverted the compass. Their allegories, hoaxes, and satires sharpened readers’ awareness of the role of writing and rhetoric in law and government, directing attention to the often-obscured ethical responsibilities related to Westward expansion and the treatment of minority bodies in nineteenth-century America. The Inverted Compass examines the work of Jefferson, Poe, Melville, and Twain alongside exploration narratives, maps, journals, ship logs, field manuals, land surveys, city plans, political cartoons, spelling primers, court cases, land laws, and Congressional documents to uncover the patterns of reading that guide the spatial imagination and its material products.

Master of Arts / Department of Geography / Kevin Blake / Place-defining novelists convey regional imagery and regional sense of place to a wide audience, thus shaping popular perceptions of regions. Peter Mayle and Pierre Magnan are the most recent place-defining novelists of Provence, France. This research compares each author’s regional imagery and sense of place to understand what it means for each author to be in Provence. Place-name mapping geographically frames each authors’ regional imagery and sense of place. Qualitative coding and close readings of selected texts for each author identify sets of regional imagery, including nature and culture imagery, which help develop a sense of place for Provence. The subjectivities of qualitative coding analysis is addressed through personal narratives which acknowledges the researcher’s positionality vis-à-vis Provence. Mayle’s nature imagery emphasizes remote, rough topography and bright sunny skies, which presents the natural landscape as benevolent and therapeutic. Magnan’s nature imagery emphasizes rough topography, rivers, winds, and storms, which presents the natural landscape as powerful, indifferent or malevolent towards human affairs, and imbued with a sense of deep time and an enigmatic quality. Mayle’s culture imagery emphasizes healthy, traditional agrarian lifeways; vibrant village life and social connectedness; a positive and prominent tourist industry; and a food culture which permeates Provençal identity. Magnan’s culture imagery emphasizes the harsh realities of agrarian lifestyles; insular and mistrusting villages; hard and frugal villagers; historical continuity; and references to ruined or abandoned landscapes and cultural loss. Mayle’s sense of place defines Provence as a region defined as idyllic, most strongly developed by his culture imagery which emphasizes idealized agrarian lifeways and Provence’s food culture. This idyll is deepened with the positive associations with Provence’s tourist industry. Magnan’s sense of place defines Provence as a region defined by a melancholic sublime. His powerful, enigmatic nature imagery is the strongest shaping force behind developing Provence’s sublime qualities. Provence’s melancholic quality is linked to Magnan’s nature imagery’s enigmatic characteristics, which invite contemplation, and his culture imagery associated with ruins and cultural loss, which offers further invitation to contemplation and conveys a sense of grief.

Submitted by TIAGO VIEIRA CAVALCANTE null (tiagogeografia@yahoo.com.br) on 2016-11-07T19:14:42Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Tese - Tiago Vieira Cavalcante - Versão Final.pdf: 6758864 bytes, checksum: f59d1495eff46530a1053b2fcf49fcbf (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Juliano Benedito Ferreira (julianoferreira@reitoria.unesp.br) on 2016-11-08T16:46:39Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 cavalcante_tv_dr_rcla.pdf: 6758864 bytes, checksum: f59d1495eff46530a1053b2fcf49fcbf (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-11-08T16:46:39Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 cavalcante_tv_dr_rcla.pdf: 6758864 bytes, checksum: f59d1495eff46530a1053b2fcf49fcbf (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-11-01 / Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) / Rachel de Queiroz foi uma escritora profundamente ligada à sua terra e à sua gente. Ligação passível de ser percebida nas vivências por onde passou e também nas obras que escreveu. Diante dessa geografia que pulsa em Rachel, propomos a tese de que uma geografia primordial lhe é imanente, permeando sua vida e sua obra. A fim de desvelarmos essa geografia, apresentamos pessoas, paisagens e lugares de grande importância para a escritora; analisamos escritos que nos permitem relacionar os aspectos geográficos e telúricos que circundam a sua trajetória; e dedicamo-nos aos sete romances que Rachel escreveu, deslindando mundos que ela imaginativamente (re)criou. Geografia literária que (re)apresenta, com cores próprias e originais, a terra e a gente do Brasil, do Nordeste, do Sertão e do Ceará e revela que os destinos e as buscas dos personagens de Rachel traduzem em muito os seus próprios caminhos. Maneira de entendermos a condição humana, substancialmente geográfica, que permeia a nossa experiência. / Rachel de Queiroz was a writer deeply attached to her land and her people. It builds a connection that can be seized in the experiences she had in the places she knew and also in the literary works she wrote. In face of this geography that breathes in Rachel, we propose the thesis that a primary geography is immanent to her, applying to her life and her work. To reveal this geography, we presented people, landscapes and places of great importance to the writer; analyzed writings that allow us to relate the geographic and telluric aspects which permeate her journey; and have dedicated to the seven novels that Rachel wrote, unraveling worlds she (re)created in an imaginative way. Literary geography that (re)presents, in its own and original colors, the land and the people of Brazil, Northeast, Sertão and Ceará and reveals that destinations and searches of Rachel's characters translate her own paths. A way to understand the human condition, substantially geographic, that permeate our experience. / FAPESP: 2013/06106-5

The mode of carrying out literary spatial studies—or literary geography—has largely shifted to embrace digital methods and tools, culminating in the field of geospatial humanities. This shift has affected the scope of research questions that scholars can ask and answer using digital methods. Although there many continuities between non-digital and digital spatial studies, there are some fundamental points of departure in the critical processes that are involved in carrying out geospatial humanities research, including data modelling, prototyping, and multidisciplinary collaboration, that demand a revisit of the ways that knowledge production and analysis are carried out in the humanities. First there is thinking about how data models, prototypes, and digital projects embed within themselves spatial methodologies and spatial theory that form the foundation of humanities-oriented spatial inquiry. In addition, collaborating across multidisciplinary groups involves working toward shared project goals, while ideally ensuring that individual team members are drawing benefit from the collaborative research experience. Another factor has to do with creating rich and accurate data models that can capture the complexity of their subject of inquiry for meaningful humanities research. This dissertation addresses each of the aforementioned challenges through practical applications, by focusing not only on the literary contributions of geospatial humanities, but also engaging the critical processes involved in this form of digital research. By designing and co-creating three geospatial prototypes, TopoText, TopoText 2.0, and A Map of Paradise Lost, my goal is to demonstrate how digital objects can embody spatial theory and methodologies, and to portray how traditional literary studies approaches such as close reading and literary interpretation can be combined with digital methods that enable interactivity and mixed-media visualizations for an immersed literary geography analysis. The first two chapters translate a literary theory and method of analysis, geocriticism, into a digital prototype and iteratively improve on it to demonstrate the type of research made possible through a digital geocritical interpretation. In that part of the dissertation, I also address the challenges involved in translating a literary framework into a digital environment, such as designing under constraint, and discuss what is lost in translation alongside what is gained (McCarty 2008). Chapter three demonstrates how technological advances enable scholars to build community-university partnerships that can contribute to humanities scholarship while also making research findings publicly available. In particular, the chapter argues that scholars can draw on Volunteered Geographical Information to create rich cultural gazetteers that can inform spatial humanities research. The final two chapters demonstrate how a geospatial prototype that is fueled by rich data and embeds other types of media can inform literary interpretation and help make arguments. By focusing on the process of building A Map of Paradise Lost—a geospatial humanities text-to-map project that visualizes the locatable places in John Milton’s Paradise Lost—the closing chapter addresses the question “why map literature?” and demonstrates how the process of research prototyping is in itself a form of knowledge production. Since the methods and technologies that inform geospatial humanities research are rapidly evolving, this dissertation adopts a portfolio model and consists of five released and one forthcoming publications, as well as three published prototypes. Together, they form a digital dissertation, meaning that the digital component comprises a significant part of the intellectual work of the dissertation. Reflecting the collaborative nature of digital humanities research, some articles were co-authored and all three prototypes were co-developed. In all components of this dissertation, I took on the leading role in the publication and prototype development, which is detailed at the beginning of every chapter. / Graduate

Albert Cossery, known as the ‘story teller of Cairo’, weaves tales of the marginalized living in a city of the global South whose geographies have been impacted by colonial and neocolonial legacy. Cairo’s city and economic spaces have often been theorized as determined and dominated by the forces of neoliberalism, an approach that obscures the experience of residents who contest and evade these forces daily. For example, in “Les Couleurs de l’infamie”, the main character is a robin-hood archetype that revels in observing the resourcefulness of the city’s residents. ‘Alternative’ occupations and spatial uses abound: an unemployed philosopher teaches secretly out of the family crypt and a man has created his own trade in helping old women cross dangerous streets in the city. This paper approaches literature and the act of writing as being more-than-representational. It is a literary geography that considers how the city spaces and economic possibilities of Cairo are performed by Cossery’s writings, and how this performance can be considered an act of resistance.

By utilizing theories surrounding assemblages, the principle of minimal departure, maps, and world-architecture,the thesis has tried to understand how maps and narrative affect each other in creating an imaginary geography infantasy literature as well as what role maps in fantasy have for the individuals reading them. With a focus on hownarrative, map, and other actors interacted, the thesis, having used two methods, a close reading of the book AWizard of Earthsea, and online content analysis of forum posts regarding fantasy maps, has achieved a deeperunderstanding of maps role in creating an imaginary geography. The thesis has found that when reading a fantasybook using a map, the map serves the role of both limiting what can and cannot be imagined while also bridgingthe assemblages of actual and secondary truth values which aid in interpreting the fantasy world. Furthermore, thethesis has found that for average readers of fantasy, the map can serve two roles: Clarifying spatialities andAugmenting abilities.

Le corpus interroge des œuvres désancrées, décentrées, mouvantes : loin d’être des unités séparées et indépendantes, les romans quoique singuliers entre en relation les uns avec les autres sur le plan thématique narratif. On peut donc identifier un univers romanesque, à la fois spécifique et commun. Les romans rayonnent à partir d’un lieu et d’une histoire commune et s’articulent autour de trois îles créant une véritable géographie scripturale : trois romans, trois îles de la Caraïbe, trois auteurs. L’archipel géographique comme l’archipel littéraire apparaissent comme le résultat d’une géographie malléable et/ou d’une écriture sans limite. L’espace dessiné et l’œuvre sont en perpétuelle construction. L’archipélité géographique mais aussi littéraire est, dans cette étude, à percevoir comme une façon de retrouver et rassembler les morceaux d’histoires, de mémoires. La Traite est proprement un « parler indicible » et ne donne lieu à aucun récit. C’est donc sur ce fond d’absence de mythe et d’épopées que s’inscrivent les œuvres du corpus. Elles tentent de retranscrire également la dimension lacunaire fragmentée, mettant en avant une pensée du vide, de l’absence, de l’indicible et de l’ineffable. Le « non-monde » initial laisse la place à l’émergence d’un nouveau lieu digénique narratif. Il s’agit d’une dématérialisation du lieu géographique dans l’espace narratif. Le lien archipélique retranscrit l’indicible et l’invisible des mémoires et des histoires oubliées par l’acte d’écriture. Non contente d’en décrire la vacance, les romans transforment la béance géographique, historique et mémorielle en atout littéraire et poétique. Ce qui était une carence pourrait s’avérer aujourd’hui un atout pour la pensée et, paradoxalement pour la création littéraire. / The body of texts examined in this study deals with disanchored, decentred, shifting literary works. Far from being separate and independent units, the novels, though singular, are constantly overlapping in terms of narrative themes. Therefore we can identify a fictional landscape that is both specific and common. The novels take pride of place from within a common history and focus on three islands, thereby creating a real scriptural geography. Three novels, three Caribbean islands and three authors are under consideration. The geographical archipelity and the literary one appear to be the result of a malleable geography and/or of a boundless creativity. The designated space and the works are in perpetual construction. In this study, both the geographical and literary archipelagos are conceptualized as a way to identify and bring together small portions of history and memories. The slave trade is a truly “unspeakable language” which does not provide any narrative. Against the backdrop of an absence of epic tales and myths, the texts that are considered for study have been highlighted. They are seeking to reproduce the fragmented and incomplete nature of life, thereby emphasizing the importance of nothingness, absence, the unspeakable and the ineffable. The initial “non-world” evolves into an emerging new digenic narrative space. Hence a geographical dematerialization within the narrative. The archipelago itself reproduces the unspeakable and invisible memories that are related to forgotten stories. Thus, the novels are not only describing geographical and historical nothingness, they are also transforming it into an asset for literature and poetry. What was once considered a fundamental flaw has become an asset for literary and creative thought.