Space and Place in Italian Literature: Writing a Region

Abstract

It has become virtually a commonplace to talk about the ‘spatial turn’ in critical thought in the Humanities and Social Sciences: the fascination with the relationship between people and their surroundings has come to the fore in critical discourse, in counterpoint to a tradition of intellectual thought that has privileged the temporal and historic over the spatial. Just how has this emergence of the spatial affected literary studies and, more specifically, Italian Studies? How can we as critics employ the concepts of space and place in a manner that helps shed light on the texts we examine and leads to innovative interpretations? In attempting to respond to these questions, I will describe the methodological framework that I use for my own research and outline how my research interacts with the spatial. I will start by addressing the emergence of spatial theory in literary studies and some forms of geographical thought on the subject, and also briefly interrogate the notion of region. I will then draw on my own engagement with the spatial in my previous work and forthcoming projects on the representation of Tuscany as case studies to illustrate the value and effectiveness of place studies and spatial theory for textual analysis.