Fictional Space Research Articles

Fantastic Discovery: Guidelines for Cataloging Fictional Maps

Geographic depictions of fictional spaces present a unique combination of features relevant to an array of disciplines. Scholars interested in cartography, the narrative functions of maps in literature, the specific universe which the materials depict, and the relationships between fictional and extant geography all have cause to seek out these resources. However, standard map cataloging practices can create records that do not prioritize elements most relevant to users searching for them. This paper compares different types of fictional maps, examines which aspects might be most important to users, and suggests how to best ensure their discovery as MARC records.

Decolonising the Map Through Literary Cartography in Select Malayalam Novels

Using select indigenous novels translated from the Malayalam language, this paper will study how fictional spaces created by writers of Indian regional languages become a counter-narrative for colonial history and decolonise narrative and physical spaces. The paper will examine how postcolonial texts become ethnographic and social commentaries on colonial binaries and become resistance narratives to the hegemonic powers. Questions like how regional writers decolonise occidental maps, how the authors write alternative histories, how different versions of postcolonial communities are portrayed, how a postcolonial nation-state is built through literature, how communities that were left out in colonial discourses are brought back to the folds; how the history of a place influences power and identity of people; how Malayali writers locate an imagined space within actual geographic space through cartography; what determines the boundaries of these spaces- economically, culturally, historically, and politically, etc. will be addressed.

Substandard linguopragmatic characteristics in the discursive fictional space of the early 21st century

The article examines the linguo-pragmatic characteristics and function features of the substandard level vocabulary units in the fictional discourse of the early 21st century. The substandard units of the language include slang and jargon from the prison camp and thieves’ jargon, as well as the jargon of military and youth groups. We analyze the discursive fictional space taking into account the ambivalence of the discourse concept and its characterization in terms of the cognitive approach, the semiotic and communicative-pragmatic approach, the sociolinguistic, cultural and psycholinguistic approaches. By discourse, we mean a multidimensional linguistic phenomenon that combines linguistic and speech practices, discourse activities and the text as the product of this activity. The study of the Russian-speaking discursive fictional space in the early 21st century is based on the idea that its essence is associated with the understanding of a linguistic (discursive) personality of a communicative event, which is actualized by speech consciousness as an associative-figurative part of communication reflected in the text. Among the main functions of substandard units in the discursive Russian fictional space of the early 21st century, the article highlights the following: expressing part of the modern society axiological values; reflecting social and ethnic stereotypes; representing the polycode, associated with intertextual categories of a literary text, and the cognitive and cumulative functions characteristic of the characters’ speech individualization.

Специфика языковой репрезентации пространственно-временной категории в идиостиле Р. О. Батлера

The aim of the research is to reveal the specifics of language representation of the space-time category in R. O. Butler’s idiostyle. The article considers modern approaches to the study of fiction space and time, which are considered as basic textual categories providing a holistic perception of the text. The scientific novelty lies in revealing the specifics of the implementation of space-time relations in the work of the ergodic genre written in the “stream of consciousness” technique. This is the first time that R. Butler’s idiostyle is studied in this aspect. The results of the study have shown that a range of expressive means and devices representing space-time category is used. Among them are techniques of retardation and syntactic anticipation to create the effect of slow perception of time; a wide use of Historical Present to convey the feeling of the Past as if it were the Present; the usage of the lexical units with emotive connotation, rhetorical questions and exclamations and repetitions to convey emotional atmosphere of the described moments; non-linear narrative and limited time space description to create the effect of “reverse photography”; detailed portrait of the nearest items according to the law of aerial and spatial perspective; synthesis of the lexical units conveying visual, audio and tactile space perception.

COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE USE OF NATURAL LIGHT IN THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD WOODEN HYPOSTYLE MOSQUES OF ANATOLIA

Light, which is indispensable for human life, is also a necessity for the perception of space. The design, color, texture of the space, that is, its perception in the human mind is possible through light. Light, which makes life possible, is used in different ways in the interior space, providing diversity in terms of design. In Islamic religious places of worship, natural light is utilized to appeal to the spiritual feelings of the users within the space fiction. Natural light is divided into functional light, sacred light and poetic light according to the way it is used in the interior, and light types provide different space atmospheres. Within the scope of this study, it is aimed to comparatively analyze the use of natural light in Islamic religious places of worship. In this context, 5 mosques, which were included in the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2023, were included in the study as a sample. The medieval wooden pillared mosques, which were included in the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage List, were selected as a sample because they are recognized by the whole world and are the common heritage of the world. The use of natural light in the mosques considered in the study was analyzed in line with the light types and the parameters of duration of effect, function, light distribution, focus, and light quality that differ according to light types. In the study, it was concluded that functional light was used in Afyonkarahisar Great Mosque, Ankara Arslanhane Mosque and Kastamonu Mahmut Bey Mosque, while sacred light was used in Beyşehir Eşrefoğlu Mosque and poetic light was used in Sivrihisar Great Mosque. It has been observed that the types of light used in mosques create different space atmospheres in the interior.

The (Re)imagined Shades of Alice Gray: The Counter-Memory of a Woman-as-Witch in Stacey Halls’ <i>The Familiars</i> (2019)

Historical fiction is a way of dealing with painful pasts and traumatic events as counter-memories. Long-forgotten events are (re)created in a safe space in historical fiction. Set in seventeenth-century Lancashire, in her modern historical fiction The Familiars (2019), Stacey Halls narrates Alice Gray’s painful past as a woman-as-witch into existence. Halls achieves it by (re)imagining Alice Gray’s plight within the historical context of the Pendle Hill witch-hunt in 1612 Lancashire. Not only does Halls give Alice her historical voice back, but she sets the historical record straight by counter-memorialising Alice Gray as a woman-as-witch, i.e., a seventeenth-century woman othered and presumed to practise witchcraft, in this instance, merely for being an impoverished unmarried woman and a midwife. In this way, Halls’s narrative invites us to empathise with Alice’s plight, to understand the injustices she faced, and to appreciate her resilience. Besides, (re)creating Alice’s witchcraft story, Halls fleshes out her heart-wrenching emotional turmoil. Moving away from the cold historical recorded facts, Halls interweaves Alice’s troubled personal past as an abused young woman and a grieving and loving stepmother with the unfortunate contemporary events of the Pendle Hill witch hunt. As a result, we are offered a more than plausible (re)imagined rationale for Alice’s witch hunt predicament and acquittal, which cannot be found or is even hinted at in the historical records. Thus, Halls culturally endows Alice’s seventeenth-century marginalised historical counterpart with a contemporary gender-empowered mnemonic (re)imagined counter-memory. Moreover, Hall’s active remembering of Alice Gray politically (re)contextualises and (re)frames this woman-as-witch of the Pendle Hill witch hunt of 1612 previously wanting. Also, the (re)imagined counter-memory of Alice Gray challenges the dominant historical narrative and underscores historical fiction’s power in reshaping our understanding of the past. Ultimately, Halls endears and humanises this woman-as-witch of Pendle Hill and provides us with the many shades of Alice Gray.

The ‘Shakespearean’ roots of Stendhal’s forests

The ecopoetic approach examines the suggestive power of the forest as a major setting in Stendhal's last completed fictions, written in 1838 and 1839. By identifying the progressive layers in the construction of such an object, this analysis will reveal the intimate relationship between the author and the image of the forest, and how this personal construction intertwines with his own Shakespearean imagination. What particular suggestive power does the forest possess under the novelist's pen? How can we understand the use of this natural space in fiction, and where do we draw the line between the possible referential function of the place and its poetic power, which paradoxically only becomes apparent to the reader of the novel when the author's own imagination is taken into account?

‘The ghost I expected to see’: Vernon Lee, the Gothic, and the Spectrality of Perception

Vernon Lee considered the conventional ghost story to be in rather bad taste and, in her own Gothic fiction, evoked ghosts that are never directly apprehended, but are perceived as agential bodies nonetheless. The distinctive ghosts that Lee creates haunt by exploiting the mechanisms of perception that she studied and theorised throughout her career. I analyse Lee’s depictions of perception in three stories, ‘Oke of Okehurst’, ‘Amour Dure’, and ‘The Image’, through the lens of philosopher Alva Noë’s theory of perception as ‘a kind of skilful bodily activity’. Noë argues that we make sense of the world by using our sensorimotor knowledge – ‘a knowledge of the way sensory stimulation varies as a function of movement’. Lee’s ghosts draw on this sensorimotor knowledge of characters and readers, allowing her to convey a potentiality for agency without depicting unambiguously supernatural events. Using mirror neuron studies and cognitive readings of how works of art transport their audiences into virtual environments, I argue that this sensorimotor engagement builds up a cognisance of Lee’s haunting figures as agential bodies that occupy space, acted upon by the material world and, in turn, acting upon it. Lee used these ghosts to adopt speculative perspectives on perception and cognition more broadly, such as questioning the stability and reliability of perception, and suggesting a loss of identity involved in all acts of perception. These perspectives are excluded from her studies and essays but are explored in the fictional space that the Gothic opens up; in her gothic stories, Lee exploits the uncanny aspects of cognition, suggesting and experimenting with queerer and more speculative theories than the objective studies she also pursued could accommodate.

Марсианские хроники «прекрасной эпохи»

The French literature from the late 19th and early 20th centuries that can be classified as “space fiction” centered on missions to Mars and making contact with Martians. The topic’s appeal stems from scientific findings of the time (particularly the so-called Martian canals) as well as the traditional symbolism of the Roman god who gave the Red Planet its name. All authors who wrote about Mars during the “Belle Époque” were inspired, to varying degrees, by the writings of the eminent astronomer Camille Flammarion (both scientific and fictional). The article delves into the specifics of how Joseph Rosnyaîné, André Laurie, Georges Le Faure, Henry de Graffigny, Arnould Galopin, Gustave Le Rouge, and Jean de La Hire interpret the Martian theme in their works. It is demonstrated that the use of traditional materials for popular novels is mixed with a desire to update popular literature’s narrative strategies. Thus, The Extraordinary Adventures of a Russian Scientist Across the Solar System by Le Faure and Graffigny, written between 1888-1896, contrasts the “intergalactic” theme, which was novel in French literature, with its archaic interpretation. The tendency to mix genres, to combine the “merveilleux-scientifique” (scientific marvelous) with Gothic and vampire literature approaches, as well as to augment the story with the occult component, increases. The so-called “martian duology” by G. Le Rouge, which lays the foundation for the poetics of horror – so vital to the 20th-century popular reading – is among the most significant literary works. The modernist bent is particularly evident in J. de La Hire’s 1911 book The Mystery of the Fifteen, which foresaw the rise of the superman hero, a new type of hero for the popular novel (however, this hero did not gain popularity in France).

The Concept of Contamination in Transuniverse Relations: Napoleon in a Fictional World

Richard J. Gerrig revisited one of the most persistent myths of literary theory, Coleridge’s “willing suspension of disbelief” to point out that, contrary to what the English poet believed, our natural proclivity is not to disbelieve, but to believe that everything is true, even fiction. He reversed Coleridge’s concept and revealed that the real effort on the part of the reader is the “construction of disbelief” when one reads fiction; we do not need to willingly suspend disbelief since we naturally believe. But then what happens when one reads a novel in which real historical figures such as Napoleon are mentioned, or even used as characters? The best way to answer this question is to adopt similar conclusions as the ones reached by Brian McHale in Postmodernist Fiction regarding authors who project themselves into their fiction, metalepsis of the author in other words: “the supposedly absolute reality of the author becomes just another level of fiction, and the real world retreats to a further remove.” Thus, when authors enter their fiction, they become fictional themselves and reality is dissolved within fiction. I argue in this article that when a real person enters a fictional space, she or he is contaminated by its ontological environment, that is to say fiction.

Linguistic and Extralinguistic Characteristics of the Processes of Terminologization and Determinologization

The article examines the linguistic and extralinguistic characteristics of the processes of terminologization and determinologization, the peculiarities of the use of terms in professional language. The greatest influence of linguistic and extralinguistic factors on the development and change of the language as a whole. While extralinguistic factors depend on a certain historical period, linguistic factors constantly act in the same way and continuously. The political and social phenomena that took place in the last century formed the basis of the changes that arose in the lexical system of the Kazakh language, which set the task of responding quickly and adequately to the new needs of society. Most of the terms came out of special use and began to be mastered in the general literary language, and some words of a general nature began to be used in terminological meaning. Thus, we see that due to the loss of terms of their terminality and their transition to the sphere of universal interests, a person is mobilized in a priority position in the sphere of professional and socio-political, economic interests and depends on the new modern processes in question. This circumstance has had the greatest impact on the linguistic space of mass media, fiction and speech discourse, which is the most active medium for the use of words of a universal nature. The beginning of use in a different environment has a significant impact on the terminological meaning of linguistic unity and, therefore, serves as the basis for the formation of new patterns of development of these units. The analysis and description of these separately determine the relevance of the issue received in the paper as an object. The relevance of the study of terminology, terminological processes, etc. is due to the special rate of increase in the flow of scientific and industrial information.

MODES OF CORPOREALITY AND SPIRIT IN THE VIRTUAL SPACE OF JANUSZ LEON WIŚNIEWSKI’S 'S TALE «IN SEARCH OF THE MOST IMPORTANT»

The purpose. The article deals with the features of corporeality and spiritual modes in Janusz Leon Wiśniewski’s fairy tale «In search of the most important», which is a synthesis of scientific, philosophical and religious principles. Attention is focused on understanding the concepts of virtual corporeality and virtual space in fiction, parallels between the simulation of the world of the Polish author's fairy tale and the world of the computer game-quest are drawn. The structural features of the fairy tale and the means of characterization of the main characters are determined. Research methods. The research used a system of historical, hermeneutic and structural methods. The author relies on the theoretical-empirical scientific method, uses the methodology of literary cognitivism, which is determined by the specifics of literary research. Research results. The research makes it possible to reveal the features of corporeality in the virtual space, which can be defined as a simulacrum, an artificial construct with an avatar soul. The virtual space itself is imagined as a model of the universe with its special inhabitants. The design of the book, made in the style of net art, complements the visually artistic virtual space and creates the illusion of the reality of virtual bodies. The main character is looking for the meaning of life, the most important thing for her, not in basic reality, but in virtual space, but she understands that the identity she needs is in the real world, where she turns from the thought of a girl into a real girl. Originality of the study consists in an attempt to consider the secondary virtual reality created by the writer in the artistic world, not in the digital one, to trace the peculiarities of its modeling, to investigate the problem of the expressive and pictorial possibilities of the artistic word in combination with the corresponding illustrative material. The practical significance of the article lies in the possibility of using the research results in scientific researches and courses related to the study of Polish literature, the virtualization of space in fiction, the study of modes of physicality in real and virtual spaces.

Mourning mothers and wars that never end: reading Nasim Marashi’s Haras (Pruning) in the shadow of the Iran-Iraq war

ABSTRACT The Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988), which the Iranian government frames as a ‘Sacred Defense’, occupies a large space in contemporary Persian fiction, sometimes in surprising ways. This article focuses on the 2017 novel Haras (Pruning) by Nasim Marashi (Nasīm Marʿashī), which despite being shaped entirely by the context of the Iran-Iraq War rarely treats the experience of living through it. The article explores how Haras builds on previous works that use the war not as a focal point, like conventional war literature, but a point of departure to explore different stories about post-war Iran, intricately connected to, yet far beyond, the war with Iraq. The article postulates that by using the war with Iraq to call attention to the loss of people, homes, and the environment, Haras uses the war to innovatively challenge the messaging of the Islamic Republic.

Autor und Subjekt im lyrischen Gedicht: Rezension und Neukonzeption einer Theorie der lyrischen Persona

Autor und Subjekt im lyrischen Gedicht: Rezension und Neukonzeption einer Theorie der lyrischen Persona

Blade Runner’s Replicant Humanity: Self-Discovery and Moral Formation in a World of Simulation

In the postapocalyptic world of Blade Runner, replicants become the medium and content of a life-changing revelation: human existence has become an enslaving simulation. Humans and replicants are confronted with the challenge of (re)defining the human. The Blade Runner movies enact this (re)definition through the arcs of two key characters: Rachael and Officer K. Transcending externally imposed enslavement, these replicants venture into the indeterminate future, choosing to serve a good that includes and empowers others to struggle for their own liberation. The Blade Runner movies can be interpreted as an apology for moral formation by means of the production of grounding and redefining fictional spaces and content. To combat the global dynamics of dehumanization and ecological destruction they have generated and to which they have themselves become victim, humans must create fictional spaces in which they can remember and imagine authentic living. The desire to become human and act as a genuinely human and humane person forms the necessary precondition for and that which sustains the lifelong self-formation process that is human existence.

The Urban Essential Solitude of the Hunger Character: A Blanchotian Reading of PAUL Auster’s Moon Palace

ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to analyze Paul Auster’s Moon Palace through the lens of philosopher and critic Maurice Blanchot, whose literary theory provides a theoretical frame to study this novel as a fictionalization of the construction of the literary space. Paul Auster’s influence of Maurice Blanchot’s poetics starts with Auster’s experience as a translator of some of Blanchot’s texts, a job that contributes to the influence French literature has in Auster’s work. I argue that Paul Auster’s Moon Palace fictionalizes Maurice Blanchot’s literary theory by introducing a central character, Marco Fogg, who implicitly performs the role of character-author and progressively transforms himself and his own world into a fictional one. In order to accomplish this task, Auster leads his central character to different stages of inspiration and creation comparable to the ones defined by Blanchot in his theorization of the literary space. Whereas most of the critics point at isolation and hunger as a rebellious behavior provoked by the existential crisis of the character, I analyze them as creative stages in the protagonist’s fictional transformation. By introducing this creative process in his fiction, Auster creates a particular Austerian metafiction in which characters become the protagonists, creators and readers of their own urban fictional space.

Dimensiunile și valențele simbolice ale spațiului în proza interbelică feminină. Cella Serghi și Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu

On the background of the synthesis of the concept of femininity in the Romanian literature and in the light of gender studies and geocriticism, this paper aims to question an intimate relationship between female subjects and fictional space in four interwar and postwar novels written by women: Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu’s 1925 Fecioarele despletite [The Disheveled Maidens], 1927 Concert din muzică de Bach [A Concert of Bach’s Music], Cella Serghi’s 1950 Cartea Mironei [Mirona`s book] and 1970 Gențiane [Gentians]. Through close reading and other methods, this paper aims to demonstrate the existence of a transfer between novelists and their characters. Obsessed with self-definition, they project the same infatuation upon their female subjects. In this matter, space becomes a subject of interest and the construction of fictional spaces, the authors are influenced by their new conquest, oscillating between known spaces, with which they are familiar, and daring to claim other spaces.

Phenomenological Narratives: Exploring Space and Identity in Fiction

Phenomenological Narratives: Exploring Space and Identity in Fiction

The Uncanny Box: Nostalgia and TV Culture in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: The Return

David Lynch and Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks: The Return (2017) may be read as an extended meditation on the universal desire to return – to a putative golden age or lost paradise – and the eerie effects that are produced when this desire is realized. More specifically, the show explores the prevalent desire amongst TV audiences to continually “return” to beloved fictional spaces and characters. Drawing on psychoanalytic and philosophical theories of the uncanny, as well as film and media studies, the article explores the theme of returning within the show’s fictional and meta-fictional cosmos (the characters’ and viewers’ dream of going back) in relation to Lynch’s highly critical portrayal of the medium of television. In Lynch’s cinematic aesthetics of the uncanny, television (associated with consumerism, the nuclear family, and mindless repetition) is portrayed as a malign influence, providing faux nostalgia devoid of meaning or experiential value. Given that most of the returns in Twin Peaks: The Return always turn out to be unhomely, I suggest that Lynch’s take on TV culture may be read as a general commentary on the social and political nightmares created by a fetishization of the (real or fictional) past.

«РАСХОДЯЩИЕСЯ ТРОПКИ» КАК ПРОСТРАНСТВЕННАЯ И КОММУНИКАТИВНАЯ МОДЕЛЬ В ИНТЕРАКТИВНОЙ ЛИТЕРАТУРЕ ДЛЯ ДЕТЕЙ (НА ПРИМЕРЕ СЕРИИ КНИГ-ИГР «ВЫБЕРИ СЕБЕ ПРИКЛЮЧЕНИЕ»)

The “Choose Your Own Adventure” is an ongoing collection of children’s gamebooks published by Bantam Books, the first issues released in the late 1970s. The success of the series was ensured by the opportunity provided to readers through a sequence of decisions (a choice from a closed list) to influence the development of the plot, to complete and variably complete the story, to “join” the story as the main character. Readers also interact with the fictional spaces created within the narrative in a new way. They do not simply enter “pre-existing” spaces, but instead, they “complete” them, transforming them into dynamic, mutable forms that can be reassembled. Readers find themselves in two spatial dimensions simultaneously, immersed in both the “adventures” of the protagonist and the “adventure” of reading itself. The dual immersion allows navigation through multiple narrative paths, creating a reading experience akin to a game. This allows readers to replay events that have already occurred, rediscovering the fictional world they had previously explored. It is also important that the interactive story is presented in the form of a printed book (rather than in a digital fiction, for example) because the illusion of an “unlimited” selection of options confronts the reader with a more awareness of the finite nature of the “adventure” of reading. The number of possible choices, paths, and endings is inherently limited (as the volume of a book is finite), while the fictional worlds offered by the story are still open to completion and further development in the reader’s imagination.