Abstract
Chapter 6, “Locating sense of place in literary studies”, adventures on a traverse of literary criticism (or more generally literary studies) in search of concepts, orientations, discourses in relation to which sense of place might have some relevance. It begins with a focus on figures of speech, and the implications of viewing these not as neutral and universal, but rather as culturally constructed and thereby contestable, especially in relation to their function in writing that engages with the natural environment. It then moves to a consideration of the concept of setting. The argument here is that in literary studies setting has become significant by virtue of its comparative absence, or by its marginalisation, or by its subordination to plot and character, or by a lack of attention to its theorisation. Bakhtin’s concept of the chronotope is drawn on in addressing this absence, and arguing for ways of bringing setting back to centre-stage, thereby enabling a theorisation of its relationship to sense of place. The theme of Chapter 5 is returned to in exploring examples of the prose fiction genre of travellers’ tales, showing how they can be used to highlight contrasts in values attributed to place in texts where indigenous and non-indigenous perspectives are opposed. The discussion of poetry concerns itself with pastoral as a genre, with a particular focus on the work of John Clare. The chapter concludes with a discussion ecocriticism as a form of literary criticism that, at least with some of its practitioners, is congruent with the argument of this book and relevant to anyone concerned with the climate crisis.
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Notes
- 1.
It is still in print. See Stead, C. K. (2005). The New Poetic: Yeats to Eliot. London, UK: Continuum.
- 2.
In 1996, Macmillan published an Australian version of the book. At the time, both books found a ready market among teachers who were insecure around their own “grammatical” knowledge.
- 3.
- 4.
The approach to culture is in stark contrast to T. S. Eliot (1967). Notes Towards the Definition of Culture. London, UK
- 5.
Page references are to Leon Golden’s translation (1966): Aristotle’s Poetics: A Translation and Commentary for Students of Literature (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall).
- 6.
If you Google this title, you will find lots about why the plays matter.
- 7.
- 8.
Page numbers are drawn from The Essential James Joyce (ed. H. Levin)(1963). Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books.
- 9.
I am indebted to Anne Elizabeth Baker’s 1854 Glossary of Northamptonshire Words and Phrases for this information. See https://forgottenbooks.com/fr/download/GlossaryofNorthamptonshireWordsandPhrasesWithExamplesofTheirColloquialUseandIllu_10670220.pdf
- 10.
- 11.
Newman notes that the term “ecopoetry” was coined by William Rueckert in his 1978 essay “Literature and Ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism” (in C. Glotfelty & H. Fromm {Eds.}, The Ecocriticism Reader. Landmarks in Literary Ecology, The University of Georgia Press, 1996).
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Locke, T. (2023). Locating Sense of Place in Literary Studies. In: Sense of Place, Identity and the Revisioning of Curriculum. Cultural Studies and Transdisciplinarity in Education, vol 17. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-4266-4_6
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