Literary cartography of place: a geocritical exploration of material imagination and emplaced writing in two garden poems

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Abstract

The dynamic relationship between place, space and literature has always been important in literary text analysis, and after the spatial turn in the humanities and social sciences over the past decade, even more so. A transformation of literary and cartographic practices of inquiry offers new perspectives on the way in which the representation of place in literary texts can be explored, in addition to existing ecocritical practices.

Space and place are not limited to real-world place, but include exploration of other- and outside-world places, e.g. places of myth, fantasy, science, video games and cyberspace (Tally 2014a:1). Understanding the world around us as a multidimensional system of places presupposes both knowledge and imagination.

In this research article two poems are selected from the Byderhand Tuinverseprojek (At hand Garden Poems Project) at the NWU (North-West University) Botanical Garden in Potchefstroom. Two central questions are asked: To what extent does literary cartography take place in the selected poems, and in what way is material imagination used in the creation of the two poems? By implication, attention is also given to the question of the place specificity and emplaced nature of the poems and how they relate to a literary cartographic approach. Attempts will be made to answer these questions against the background of the theoretical frameworks of literary cartography and material imagination within literary spatial studies.

The differences and similarities between geocriticism and ecocriticism are examined, while literary cartography is looked at more closely as a strategy of geocritical writing and analysis. To understand how material imagination of place and real-world place differ, a distinction is made between three categories of place, namely real-world place (as a real, concrete place), fictional place (as a total construction of the imagination), and a third space in which the real-world and the non-real-world places come together and overlap as Another, a “real-and-imagined” place, in the words of Soya (1996). This third space is a place “where everything comes together, […] subjectivity and objectivity, the abstract and the concrete, the real and the imagined” (Soja 1996:67). The study of third space thus offers geocriticism the opportunity to be used as an interpretive and analytical method that focuses attention on the layered physical and spatial meaning of place in literary texts. By asking geographical questions to literary texts and literary questions to geographical representations, natural and human sciences are brought together in a creative way and emphasis is placed on the personal and phenomenological aspects of geography and science.

Literary cartography can be seen as a number of cartographic techniques applied to a text whereby the text is subjected to a critical revaluation so that the graphic potential receives greater focus, either through diagrams or other nonverbal material which activates new discourse on the specific location of the text. This means that cartographic practices aim to establish an objective, verifiable topicality as an anchor, while acknowledging the formative capacity of literary representation.

Cartographic practices in literary texts takes place in many ways. First, of course, it refers to the physical presence of maps, especially in prose texts, where maps are used to help the readers orient themselves and visualise a place in the text. These maps as meaning-bearing systems can take the form of physical maps, diagrams or any further non-verbal extra-textual information that contribute to the meaning-giving of the place in the text. When these maps and data correspond to verifiable real-world tangents or interfaces, the interfaces serve as anchors to ground the text and in Soja's (1996:62) terms are referred to as firstspace. Where the map deviates from the real-world place or creates a fictional world in accordance with the text as a whole, we are dealing with the formative capacity of the text and such a fictional text space can be seen as a secondspace (Soja 1996:65). The overlap of real-world space with non-real-world space, and thus the creation of a thirdspace (Soja 1996:65–7) is brought about by elements of material imagination, including three closely related aspects, namely double vision, place of memory value and inherited value.

Material imagination does not necessarily refer only to fictitiousness, to something which in material terms is non-existent, but also to an idea that humans are simply unable to understand spatial layers and their connections to society and the environment without imagination. Double vision or “seeing double” Tsay (2014:57) presupposes a gaze that exposes the underlying places of memory and activates an imaginary and affective reality to both the poet and the reader. By means of a glance to the past, a double presence is activated in the same place, both past and present, and a double charge attaches emotional value to the place, which in turn contributes to place attachment.

Related to double vision is what Nora (1998:xv–xvi) calls “the place of memory”, where the fictional is layered over the real and the personal over the geographical. Nora uses the term le lieu de mémoire, especially in relation to monumental places, places of collective memory, landmarks and sites of memory that are meant to connect both the past and the present with meaning, where the “residual sense of continuity remains” (Tsay 2014:51), a practice that implies the reader's role and the application of certain reader practices. When the word remember occurs or is implied in a text, it unlocks the residual value and residual continuity, because memory is often rooted in the concrete, in place, gestures, images and objects. The role of the reader and his referential knowledge and subjective, experienced memory is thus as much a part of the literary mapping as that of the author.

Imaginary environment or imaginary place and (with it) the tangibility of material imagination, which is created by mapping, are therefore also the places that are visited by the author or poet through a variety of access points. These access points can be through photographs, through video material, through digital sources, through research, through dreams, through visualisations; therefore through material imagination or imagined geography. Belonging to these access points are also the so-called “third nature” (Wark 1994:115) of media-produced virtual realities that give the viewer access to the virtual space.

Thus, although the imaginer has not necessarily physically been in a given place, it can happen, in some cases, that the intensity of the imagined place is hardly reduced by it, according to Buell (2005:73). The intensity of the imagined place is related to previous place experiences and place attachments whereby a sense of place acts as a series of place experiences or palimpsests in which not only similar but opposite places enter into conversation with each other through material imagination.

The two texts examined are the poems “Under the sweet thorn” by Hein Viljoen (Appendix A) and “By the sweet thorn” by Susan Smith (Appendix B). It is clear from the poems, which both have the sweet thorn tree as subject and which have the same place specificity, that different methodologies with different outcomes were followed by the two poets to bring about emplaced writing. The use of material imagination as a mapping strategy also differs, although similarities can be shown. The research leads to the conclusion that the two poems individually contribute uniquely to the layered, multifocal and multi-voiced literary mapping of the same geographical location. Through the literary cartography of the real-world place of the sweet thorn tree, a dialectical relationship is established between the place, the authors and the multiple readers, all of which contribute multifocally to multiple lived, relived and inherited experiences and perceptions of the same place.

Material imagination and the embrace of digital practices are ultimately part of a diverse range of agencies that contribute to the story of the sweet thorn tree. Practice-based research makes it possible to reflect on the various nuances of the mapping of place and to gain access to the co-creation of material imagination and of the agency of place itself. Literary mappings of place, not only in the chosen two texts but in all the texts in the project that have the same place-specific space as subject, contribute to an understanding of place that is more than the cartographic real-world place. It explores the boundaries of place; it finds possibilities in the folds of reality and imagination. The texts do not reproduce place, but realize it through new virtualities, interact with place in conversation and, through its performative nature, create the possibility of bringing about change in perceptions of place. Through material imagination, unlocked by double vision, inherited value of place and memory, and through place attachment and insertion, a layered, poly-sensory and multifocal perspective of place is created. The story of the matter of the sweet thorns continues. It does not depend on the story of one person; the vibrant survival and retelling of matter's narratives presupposes an entanglement of agencies; the human body is the privileged subject for place imagination, place experience and place projection.

Keywords: emplaced writing; geocriticism; literary cartography; mapping; material non-real world space; imagination; place specificity; real-world space; spatial studies; thirdspace place

 

Lees die volledige artikel in Afrikaans

Literêre kartering van plek: ’n geokritiese ondersoek na materiële verbeelding en ingeplaaste skryf in twee “Tuinverse”

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