Place In Fiction Research Articles

“I Think i Discovered a Military Base in the Middle of the Ocean”—Null Island, the Most Real of Fictional Places

This paper explores Null Island, a fictional place located at 0$^\circ$ latitude and 0$^\circ$ longitude in the WGS84 geographic coordinate system. Null Island is erroneously associated with large amounts of geographic data in a wide variety of location-based services, place databases, social media and web-based maps. While it was originally considered a joke within the geospatial community, this article will demonstrate implications of its existence, both technological and social in nature, promoting Null Island as a fundamental issue of geographic information that requires more widespread awareness. The article summarizes error sources that lead to data being associated with Null Island. We identify four evolutionary phases which help explain how this fictional place evolved and established itself as an entity reaching beyond the geospatial profession to the point of being discovered by the visual arts and the general population. After providing an accurate account of data that can be found at (0, 0), geospatial, technological and social implications of Null Island are discussed. Guidelines to avoid misplacing data to Null Island are provided. Since data will likely continue to appear at this location, our contribution is aimed at both GIScientists and the general population to promote awareness of this error source.

ՄԱՔՍ ՖՐԻՇԻ «ՕՐԱԳՐԱՅԻՆ» ԱՐՁԱԿԻ ԿԱՌՈՒՑՎԱԾՔԻ ԵՎ ՇԱՐԱԴՐՄԱՆ ՈՃԻ ԱՌԱՆՁՆԱՀԱՏԿՈՒԹՅՈՒՆՆԵՐԸ / THE PECULIARITIES OF STRUCTURE AND STYLE OF NARRATION OF MAX FRISCH’S “DIARY” PROSE

Owing to the novels and narratives of Swiss writer Max Frisch, based on the material of autobiographical diary records, the “diary” prose finally took its firm place in European fiction as a equivalent literary genre. The aim of this article – is the analysis of the dynamics of development of the “diary” prose in the German-language literature from the traditional diary to the literary genre, which can be best of all followed namely in the works of Max Frisch. In contrast to traditional diary, which doesn’t have a definite structural composition and one common plot-line, the prose works of the author, based on the biographical facts, have a deep idea content, well organized structure, a strict sequence of plot, cause and effect relationship. This research work is stated in principle of historical-comparative and literary-critical analysis of Max Frisch’s prose fiction. Here is also analysed the connection between the "diary" prose of author and the philosophy of Soren Kierkegaard, which can be observed as the theoretical base of present research.

Koncept prostora u književnom turizmu

The aim of this paper is to depict how the concept of place is presented and interpreted in literary tourism. Drawing upon the poststructuralist and postmodern theories of culture and tourism the paper will explore the relation between the literary places and tourists. In other words, the paper examines how the literary places influence visitors' experiences of certain places and how the visitors assign meanings to the fictional places which exist in the real world and vice-versa (the real places which also exist in the world of fiction). In the context of literary tourism the boundaries between the fictional and non-fictional worlds are inevitably blurred in the tourist's experience. The tourist becomes the active creator of both, the potential tourist offer and the authentic experience which is personal and subjective. In order to create the appropriate tourist offer to the bibliophiles it is of the utmost importance to understand the way visitors experience such places. In order for the literary place to become popular it is necessary to include several factors including the creative act of the visitor.

Prostitution and Perceptiveness: Violated and Aging Bodies in Rizia Rahman’s <i>Letters of Blood</i>


 
 
 This article aims to portray the suffering and trajectories of female prostitutes in Rizia Rahman’s novel Rokter Okkhor (1978), translated into English as Letters of Blood by Arunava Sinha in 2016. By using the radical feminist perspective, the constructive framework of this paper aims to project the social and cultural restraints as well as the hegemonic power relations and male dominance in the lives of female prostitutes portrayed in the novel. Considering neo-abolitionist feminist viewpoints, this paper focuses exclusively on the experience of specific hierarchies, male domination, violence, and old-age problem on the part of the female prostitutes working in an unlicensed brothel in the fictional place of Golapipatti, Bangladesh as depicted in Rahman’s novel. Additionally, the paper also seeks to demonstrate how prostitution and the threat of being classified a ‘prostitute’ work as an impediment to female prostitutes’ heterosexual engagement and are used as a tool of female oppression.
 
 

Border Crossings: Space and Place in Crime Fiction

Border Crossings: Space and Place in Crime Fiction

Cinematic Architecture and Place Perception: A Study on Wes Anderson's Film the Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

Although there are many differences and innovations in creating place in cinema, virtual spaces can be created as well as using real architectural urban or physical environments. The perception of time, which is an important element that improves the narrative language of cinema, is related to creating an architectural and spatial image. Cinema and architecture, as two separate disciplines, are not independent from each other in terms of creating a cinematographic place perception. Therefore, the importance of cinema and architecture interaction in creating cinematic place is discussed in this study. The aim of the study is to examine the relationship between architecture and cinema, which are two separate art branches, through the "perception of place" and to explain the cinematographic effects of architecture through the example of Wes Anderson's "The Grand Budapest Hotel". In both areas, it has been tried to explain to what extent the place's important elements in terms of time, movement, light, color and shadow reflect the reality. While "design" is an important issue in fictional places, it is also necessary in terms of creating a space perception. In this study, it is aimed to analyze the film structure with architectural semiotic approach, especially the role of architectural and space usage in cinema, by emphasizing the processes and reference points of the interaction between both disciplines. According to the case of Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), the specific spaces of the film, the perception of space and the role of cinematographic space designs are discussed. In line with this information, subjects such as space design and spatial density in cinema, space, balance, harmony and symmetry in architecture and cinema, construction process and its effects in cinema and the perception of space in cinema were examined. The architectural structure and the suitability of the space design to the story are also discussed in the film. The film, which is considered as an exemplary analysis within the scope of the research, was chosen as a purposeful sampling because it is an example of especially the relationship between harmony and balance in cinema and the relationship between cinema and architecture explore and sets an example. Keywords: cinema and architecture, perception of place, place design of cinematographic DOI: 10.7176/JSTR/7-04-08

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: a fairytale for endocrinologists.

‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’, a fairytale that is widely known across the Western world, was originally written by the Brothers Grimm, and published in 1812 as ‘Snow White’. Though each dwarf was first given an individual name in the 1912 Broadway play, in Walt Disney’s 1937 film ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’, they were renamed, and the dwarfs have become household names. It is well known that myths, fables, and fairytales, though appearing to be merely children’s tales about fictional magical beings and places, have, more often than not, originated from real facts. Therefore, the presence of the seven brothers with short stature in the story is, from an endocrinological point of view, highly intriguing, in fact, thrilling. The diversity of the phenotypes among the seven dwarfs is also stimulating, although puzzling. We undertook a differential diagnosis of their common underlying disorder based on the original Disney production’s drawings and the unique characteristics of these little gentlemen, while we additionally evaluated several causes of short stature and, focusing on endocrine disorders that could lead to these clinical features among siblings, we have, we believe, been able to reveal the underlying disease depicted in this archetypal tale.

"Stand still": Delta Wedding and the Perils of Perception

"Stand still":Delta Wedding and the Perils of Perception Ryan Sinni [A]s soon as the least of us stands still, that is the moment something extraordinary is seen to be going on in the world. —Welty, "Place in Fiction" 787 [H]e had seen the bird most purely at its moment of death. —Welty, "A Still Moment" 239 You couldn't stop me. —Welty, Delta Wedding 159 Eudora Welty's One Time, One Place: Mississippi in the Depression contains an unassuming photo entitled "Town in a store window" (56). At first glance, this photo might seem to offer a simple depiction of items, such as clocks and lanterns, that are for sale in a local store. Upon closer examination, however, "Welty's diminutive silhouette can be seen slightly hunched over in the act of snapping the picture" (Wright 65). This image is a reminder that every photo, no matter how objective it may seem, is the product of a human perceiver. Although Welty may have been alerted to this reality through her photography, she explores it in detail in her fiction. The role of the human perceiver is an especially prominent theme in Welty's 1946 novel Delta Wedding. In this work, Welty's engagement with the theme of human perception is funneled through the concept of stillness. This concept is especially important to one of the story's most important characters, Ellen Fairchild, for whom the phrase "stand still" is a habitual command (158). Despite its prominence in Delta Wedding, the theme of stillness has not received sustained treatment in the scholarship on the novel, although some critics have addressed related themes. Louise Hutchings Westling and Allison Deming Goeller both read Delta Wedding as working with the pastoral genre; Kelly Cannon comes closest to focusing on stillness in her [End Page 243] article "The Power of Silence in Delta Wedding." But none of these critics offer a detailed analysis of the way Welty engages with the concept of stillness. In this essay, I will provide such an analysis by reading Welty's novel in light of her essay "Place in Fiction" and her short story "A Still Moment." Each of these works reveals a different angle on Welty's use of the phrase "stand still." In "Place in Fiction," standing still is the posture in which one perceives mystery. "A Still Moment" does not contradict this claim but rather complicates it. Like "Place in Fiction," "A Still Moment" portrays stillness as an appropriate posture for the perceiving subject, but it also warns against imposing such a posture on the perceived object. I argue that the ambivalence toward stillness that characterizes "A Still Moment" also characterizes Delta Wedding. In both of these fictions, a receptive posture allows one to perceive an object of perception, whereas an active posture allows the object of perception to slip through one's grasp. In "Place in Fiction," Welty points to primeval religious experience to illustrate the connection between place and feeling: "From the dawn of man's imagination, place has enshrined the spirit: as soon as man stopped wandering and stood still and looked about him, he found a god in that place; and from then on, that was where the god abided and spoke from if ever he spoke" (787). What is important to note here is the relationship between standing still and perceiving the supernatural. The phrase "as soon as" indicates that this perception immediately followed upon standing still. The god is portrayed as already present, simply waiting for an attentive human perceiver to arrive. A few paragraphs later, Welty links standing still with the perception of the "extraordinary" ("Place" 787). Welty wonders about the connection between place and perception: "It may be that place can focus the gigantic, voracious eye of genius and bring its gaze to a point" (787). Welty defines this "focus" as "awareness, discernment, order, clarity, insight" (787). She then claims that focusing has both intrinsic and extrinsic value: "The act of focusing itself has beauty and meaning; it is the act that, continued in, turns into meditation, into poetry" (787). In the context of this "act of focusing," Welty again employs our key phrase: "Indeed, as...

Pre-apocalypse Now: Gold Fame Citrus as Weird Western Cli-Fi

Pre-apocalypse NowGold Fame Citrus as Weird Western Cli-Fi Jennifer K. Ladino (bio) California holds a special place in the American imaginary. Its geographic location at the western edge of the continent mirrors its symbolic one: California signals the frontier’s coastal end game and, at the same time, a birthplace for human innovation, cutting-edge technologies, and progressive politics. Like that of the West itself, California’s mythology manages to be simultaneously nostalgic and forward looking—an end point for colonial settlement and, as a 2013 Boom interview’s subtitle claims, “The Planet of the Future.” In that interview Kim Stanley Robinson describes California as “a science fictional place,” in which “the desert has been terraformed. The whole water system is unnatural and artificial” (4). Its associations with opportunity—gold strikes, Edenic landscapes, fruitful orchards, Hollywood-caliber celebrity—as well as with limits, especially access to water, are world famous and an entrenched part of US colonial history. More recently, California has made the news for its increasingly catastrophic wildfires and the climate refugees sparked by them, bringing the state to the national consciousness once again as a trendsetter and a harbinger of things to come. No wonder, then, that California is a go-to setting for writers of climate change fiction, or cli-fi. Authors as diverse as Robinson Jeffers, Octavia Butler, T. C. Boyle, Richard Powers, and C Pam Zhang have set their cli-fi in California for good reasons. California is a novelist’s utopia, an optimal site for staging complex subjects like environmental activism, techno-optimistic solutions to ecological problems, apocalyptic natural disasters, and class, race, and border conflicts. My essay reads Claire Vaye Watkins’s 2015 novel Gold Fame Citrus as a dystopian narrative of California as a “failed experiment” [End Page 199] (70) and a text that repurposes familiar tropes of the Western genre in ways that connect some of the most frightening impacts of climate change to capitalism and to settler colonialism. Watkins’s novel falls under the umbrella of cli-fi, a capacious genre, mode, or simply category, depending on who you ask. A big tent approach to defining cli-fi helps avoid the dismissive pigeonholing that other subgenres, notably sci-fi, contend with. In “Climate Change Fiction,” Matthew Schneider-Mayerson considers cli-fi “more a category than a genre” because of the wide range of forms it can take (Schneider-Mayerson 312). “Genre” may be too confining a term to encompass the wide range of texts that might count as cli-fi, from YA bildungsromans, to thrillers, to memoirs and nonfiction, to “weird” fiction, to speculative journalism and other forms of nonfiction, or even new “Anthropocene genres” like the weather section obituary (LeMenager 221). In “Climate Change and the Struggle for Genre,” Stephanie LeMenager explains how “genre” too often refers to a rigid structure that calcifies and shuts down innovation; she champions “mode” as “fuzzier,” more generative, and better able to capture “a way of living in the world” that is felt, embodied, and “atmospheric” (222). These conversations about the blurry, contentious, shifting boundaries of genres are familiar to scholars of western American literature. The exciting new volume Weird Westerns: Race, Gender, Genre makes several crucial points about the flexibility of the Western, suggesting that among its “distinctive features” is “its ability to form unexpected combinations with other genres, and the odd resonance those combinations create between the different genres” (Fine et al. 2). The collection focuses on how “science fiction, fantasy, and the supernatural ‘weird’ the western” (3). My essay expands this list to add cli-fi and to hold up Gold Fame Citrus as one example of how cli-fi and the Western “weird” each other by forming “unexpected combinations.” I’ll follow the lead of the Weird Westerns editors and retain the word genre here, though I’d like to embrace its inherent fuzziness and flexibility as Schneider-Mayerson and LeMenager recommend. The emergence of cli-fi is “a symptom of a social need, the need for new patterns of expectation” in an increasingly precarious [End Page 200] world (LeMenager 222). And it is trending. Some scholars suggest all contemporary fiction is, or will soon...

Easy Street, is that the right place for us?

Easy Street is a fictional place where life is carefree. Many doctors and patients are finding simplified, less demanding treatments more appealing, especially in these infectious times that encourage approaches involving minimal contact. In orthodontics, the move to perform more clear aligner therapy may be a faulty step toward Easy Street. A case is made against further trivialization of our specialty.

Mirant al cel/Eyes on the Sky: The (Im)possible Expiation of the Spectral Other

This article analyzes the contribution of the new Catalan documentary in the current process of reclaiming the collective historical memory repressed by Francoism and by the Silence Deal established during the political transition to democracy after Franco’s death. This analysis will consider some films that use the family metaphor as a national allegory to represent the plight of the Catalan nation. The main thesis of this study is to underline the need for reparation regarding the crimes committed by Francoism during and after the Spanish Civil War and the fact that such a reparation has not taken place neither in fiction nor in historical terms. This essay relies on the post-Derridian concept of “hauntology” as a theoretical framework to study the spectral textual encounters that mark the symptoms of an uninterrupted mourning process that appeals to the historical memory in search of dignity and closure. Methodologically, this study offers a close textual reading of Jesús Garay’s film Mirant al cel (Eyes on the Sky, 2008) as a perfect case study where the spectral conflict between victims and victimizers is acted out in the context of Barcelona and Catalonia and the series of urban mass bombings carried out by the Italian Royal Legion under the direct supervision of Il Duce, Mussolini. Garay’s film special relevance lies in the fact of its being one of the few documentaries that revisits those three dramatic days in March 1938 that became a tragic rehearsal of the massive urban aerial raids of the Second World War.

Conceptualising place in historical fact and creative fiction: rural communities and regional landscapes in Bernard Samuel Gilbert’s ‘Old England’ (c. 1910–1920)

Abstract The theme of place guides much exploration in rural history and local history. Attempts have been made to create definitions and typologies of place, but these have had to contend with the diverse, complex and dynamic realities of historical pattern and process, local and regional. Nonetheless, historians and those in other disciplines have evolved different approaches to the concept. This study considers how these can inform the investigation of places existing in historical fact in particular periods in the past, and can do similarly for those places located contemporaneously in fictional constructions. Reference is made to various academic writings on place, including by the local historian, David Dymond. The analysis takes the work of the author of fiction, Bernard Samuel Gilbert. Gilbert, although relatively obscure now, incorporated a feature of special note into his later literary output, and one meriting greater attention. This was his personalised, reflective and explicitly articulated approach to forming and expressing place. Moreover, Gilbert’s ‘Old England’, with its imaginary district of 'Bly', can be recognised as corresponding to landscapes and communities existing more broadly in the years up to and through the First World War, and with creations by other authors of regional fiction.

Place and Placelessness in Postcolonial Short Fiction: Introduction

The unprecedented development of the short story in the literatures that emerged in the former colonies of the British Empire has by now become a well-researched literary fact. Postcolonial critics have teased out the relationships between a genre long regarded as a minor one (at least before its Modernist canonization) and the marginal positions of writers who came to the short story as a creative terrain to experiment with spatial compression and the startling insights it affords, from Joyc...

Smart Crime Tourism as Multilayered Cultural Encounters: Exploring Aarhus via Locative Media and Crime Narratives

This article investigates the trend of smartphone-enabled screen tourism based on the findings from practice-based research carried out during the development and testing of the locative screen tourism experience ‘DETECt Aarhus’. This work shows how smart screen tourism can facilitate multilayered cultural encounters because it can provide a multifaceted perspective on locations and can motivate people to explore local culture. App-guided tours enable the embodied and emotional experiences of traditional screen tourism, but in a more flexible way that eases the crossing of thresholds between the material space and fictional places of crime stories. The testing of the DETECt Aarhus app’s pilot version further highlighted that popular crime narratives and smart tourism technology can address a broader group beyond fans of specific crime media. In addition, visitors with no previous connection to (local) crime stories can use apps to encounter the destination as a material space, fictional place and site of cultural production.

“Beyond the Boundaries:” Negotiations of Space, Place, Body and Subjectivity in YA Fiction

Where and how do I belong? As Erin Spring (2016a) notes in her examination of space, place, and youth engagement with literature, “young adult fiction is fraught with implications for identity, of which place often takes center stage” (p. 432). Yet despite the ubiquity of adolescent characters’ negotiations within and across physical and cultural spaces in contemporary texts for young people, few scholars address the interconnectedness of those spheres with perceptions of subjectivity and the material body. Drawing on the theoretical framework of feminist cultural geography (Massey, 1994; Rose, 1993) and relevant scholarship on conceptualizations of the body (i.e., Butler, 1990; Longhurst, 2001), I aim to uncover some of the ways in which young protagonists respond to the perceived barriers, boundaries, and borders of their bodies, subjectivities, and worlds—including the subtle ways in which they actively shape and redefine them (Bavidge, 2006). In addition to examining the experiences of displaced or somehow othered protagonists in three works of youth fiction—Sonya Harnett’s Surrender, Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming, and Thanhha Lai’s Inside Out & Back Again—I consider how literary spatial analyses of subjectivity and body might enable readers to critically reflect on the real world constraints and freedoms encountered by young people across the spaces and places of their everyday lives.

“Remedios in the Sky with Diamonds: Gabriel García Márquez and the Beatles in their own Write.”

This paper reflects on some of the parallels and intersections in the life and work of García Márquez and the Beatles, and delves into the connections between their seemingly related composition of literary, visual, and musical artifacts during the 1960s. Thus, specific, and at times unexpected, correspondences unfold: themes like solitude and dementia, characters like Rebeca Buendía/Eleanor Rigby or Remedios, la bella/Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, ships like the yellow train/the yellow submarine, journeys to the bottom of the sea and to fictional places like Macondo/Pepperland that question reality and authority, and even the lives and deaths of John Lennon and García Márquez. By examining Beatles songs and films and with close reading of several chapters from Cien años de soledad and from several short stories and opinion columns written by García Márquez, I unravel an exciting implicit collaboration between Colombia’s most famous writer and one of the world’s most celebrated musical bands.

The Poetics of Movement and Deterritorialisation in Katja Petrowskaja’s Vielleicht Esther (2014)

Katja Petrowskaja’s Vielleicht Esther (2014) can be read as a poetic autobiography in which memory spaces constitute themselves by means of a poetics of deterritorialisation (Deleuze and Guattari) and multidirectionality (Rothberg). Borderlines between past and present and different memory discourses are put into motion, as topoi of travel literature and physical movement are employed within an aesthetic of association. This article shows how the travelling subject moves between historical and fictional places, through physical and virtual spaces of European memory, interlinking the author-narrator’s experience with that of Jewish family members, as well as with a wider global community. Challenging major memory discourses and narratives of belonging, as well as boundaries between fact and fiction, corporeal and digital movement, the performative ‘minor’ language of the narrative creates lines of flight and opens new spaces of memory. Tweetable Abstract: Deterritorialisation and multidirectionality: How corporeal and virtual movement in Vielleicht Esther creates lines of flight and spaces of memory.

ESPAÇOS PERDIDOS E IDENTIDADES OUTRAS: UM ARQUIVO QUE SE ABRE AO SUL

Pelo viés da crítica biográfica fronteiriça (NOLASCO, 2013), o presente trabalho pretende evocar espaços de caráter autobiográfico partindo de um espaço ficcional. Trata-se do palácio/cartel da novela Trabajos del reino, uma metáfora que toma as proporções de um arquivo que se abre ao Sul. Contudo, teorizo a partir de meu bios, pautando na premissa que – em uma perspectiva descolonial – o espaço prevalece à noção do tempo. A fim de remontar minhas vivências e experiências pessoais, ao invés de fazer um percurso cronológico e temporal, divido este texto em três espaços simbólicos: o palácio; o castelo e a casa. Espaços que me constituem como um sujeito que habita a fronteira do sistema mundial colonial/moderno. Para tanto, a discussão será ilustrada com passagens da novela Trabajos del reino do escritor mexicano Yuri Herrera (2004). Empreendo, assim, uma busca que culminará em um espaço autobiográfico ligado ao nome que remete à minha identidade; em suma, um espaço, como tantos outros, que se perde e se resgata ao Sul.
 Palavras-chave: Literatura. Fronteira. Espaços. Autobiografia. Arquivo.

VIRTUAL REALITY AND READING CITIES: GPS-BASED APPLICATIONS AS A NEW FORM OF LITERARY TOURISM

Drawing upon Westphal’s idea of the city conceived as a “mega-Book”, recent studies in the field of Digital Humanities have shown an interest in translating real itineraries into fictional ones, as well as in introducing imaginary spaces and characters to our geospace. Since this interrelation between the real and fictional has become a blurred one, new layers of meaning have been attributed to the geographical places and their potential economic benefit when used in relation to tourist attractions. The process of this hyper-realization, a technologically and culturally mediated experience that takes reality to its limits, is nowadays impacting the most actual practices of cultural tourism in Italy and beyond. Introduced by the intersection between fiction and reality and put into practice by means of geospatial technologies, the use of advanced “interactive maps” and GPS-based applications as means of orientation is constantly changing the concept of literary pilgrimages and “jet-setting” tourism. The aim of this presentation is to reflect on the intersection between actual concepts such as “reading spaces” as defined by Westphal and Baudillard’s “hyper-reality” that do not only endow the idea of traveling with a different, modified character, but also tend to merge real spaces, fictional places and virtual maps, and, thus, modify the concept of “reality” itself. Keywords: Virtual Reality, Literary and Cultural Tourism, Spatial Studies, Geocriticism.

Memory, Migration, and Modern Fiction: An Introduction

This introduction situates refugee and migrant fiction within discourses of memory studies, transnational migration, and cosmopolitanism. It describes a reorientation to place and time in refugee and migrant fiction that is defined by the ambient rather than hard boundaries of time and space. Memory and migration are bound together in such a way that the new place may offer the migrant a less intransigent dislocation, a reduced sense of alienation. A cosmopolitan approach to the transmission of refugee memory is one way to remember the past: by putting it in the service of a better future.