Research On Contemporary Western Literary Geocriticism

From the descriptive geography of ancient Greece to the “geographical poetics” of Giovanni Battista Vico's The New Science In the 18 th century and the Physical Geography of Immanuel Kant,the concept of “literary geography” was clear through scrutiny.Since then,the diversity and spatiality of literary geography have replaced the original teleology based on temporality,gradually transformed into literary geography criticism,and broadly described three parts including theory,method,and critical practice to construct a systematic literary text research model which has become a hot spot and new method of literary criticism.Western literary geocriticism theory pays great attention to the value and function of literature in the sense of geography.With the intercultural integration of the “cultural turn” of the 20 th century geography and the “spatial turn” of the humanities,geographic space has penetrated into the content and practice of literary creation and literary criticism.It is worth emphasizing that although western literary geocriticism is not well balanced between theoretical research and text criticism practice,the study of specific literary geographic phenomena is far more than the theoretical method,but it pays attention to the living space of modern people,discusses the interaction between literature and geographic space,explains the concept category,constructs the theoretical system,and explores the basic methods,all of which have experienced the rich and developing process of theoretical exploration,subject construction and critical practice under the joint efforts of many scholars in the world.The purpose of this article is to combine theoretical methods with textual practice to explore how the three parts of Western literary geocriticism can be better combined,so as to seek a better development approach for Chinese contemporary literary geography criticism and literary geography research.The introduction mainly introduces the value and significance of the topic,the present studies,the research design,and the perspective of my dissertation,and explains the structure and writing logic of the paper.The first part mainly focuses on the historical context of the evolution of the concept of“western literary geography” so as to clarify its respective theoretical connotation.Firstly,bysorting out and explaining the relationship between literature and geography,this paper clarifies the complex theoretical connotation of “literary geography” in the context of contemporary society,and clarifies the evolution and development of the relationship between “literature and geography” in the west.Secondly,it analyzes the influence of the combination of literature and geography on the development of Western literary geocriticism by explaining the theories of Vico,Montesquieu,Heidegger,Mrs.Starr,Chloe.Thirdly,it discusses the role of ecocriticism in promoting the development of Literary geography criticism by analyzing the theories of western ecocriticism represented by Jonathan Bette and Lawrence Buell.Based on these analyses,the paper defines the concept of western literary geocriticism,analyzes its similarities and differences with ecological criticism,and highlights its unique theoretical achievements.The second part mainly studies the important concepts of contemporary western literary geocriticism.That is to say,through the combing and in-depth analysis of the basic categories of the theoretical system of western literary geocriticism,such as geographical environment,place,geographical landscape,geographical space and geographical narration,especially the elaboration of the theoretical connotation of “local concern”.Based on the clarification of the theoretical connotation of each category,this paper investigates its role and function in “western literary geocriticism”,further clarifies the concept category of western literary geocriticism,defines and differentiates the similarities and differences of its similar concepts,playing an important role in the process of theoretical construction.The third part mainly studies the four basic methods of contemporary western literary geocriticism,namely “geocenter”,“multifocalization”,“ploysensoriality” and “stratigraphic vision”.It is based on these four basic methods that Professor Bertrand Westphal from the Université de Limoges in France,constructed the theoretical system of Western literary geocriticism.After that,Robert Tally,an American scholar who translated Westphal's representative work Geocriticism into English,deepened and developed the theoretical system in his work Spatial,combining with his research results.The focus of this chapter is from the“author center” to “geocenter” and “subject gaze” to the “multifocalization”,from “single sense”to “ploysensoriality”,from “singular spatial representation” to “multidimensional stratigraphic vision” to explain the theoretical dimensions of literary geocriticism.The fourth part mainly examines two research methods generated by another important research theory of contemporary western literary geocriticism,“literary maps”,which is the most prominent fusion point of theory and practice formed by the intersection of literature and geography.At the same time,the paper focuses on the connotation,concept and manifestation of the two major representative schools under the influence of literary map theory,namely “literary cartography” represented by the American Robert Tally and the “literary maps” represented by Franco Moretti.The fifth part analyzes the textual interpretation of urban space in Paris from the perspective of the structure and reconstruction of urban space by using Bertrand Westphal's literary geocriticism theory and four basic methods to find the harmony and development of the fictional and real world in the literary text.In addition,it also analyzes the practical cases of Robert Tally's interpretation of the 19 th century American classic literature from the perspective of the techniques of literary cartography by using the theory of literary geocriticism,and explores the practical forms of literary geocriticism as an operable form of criticism to analyze literary works,literary writers,literary phenomena,geographical space,etc.,which is a practical combination of theory and method.The sixth part of the thesis focuses on the innovative influence of western literary geocriticism on Chinese literary geocriticism from multi-dimensional and multi-level aspects and the prospect of the integration of Chinese and western literary geocriticism from the perspective of discipline,technology and media level according to briefly analyzing the disciplinary orientation,theoretical construction,method research and practical exploration of Chinese literary geocriticism,while paying attention to the integration and development of the two.The conclusion summarizes the literary geography and draws the enlightenment that literary geocriticism can bring in literary research,geocriticism,and ecological civilization construction,and provides a reference for future research.After research and discussion on the unity of separation and organic unity by reorganizing the literary geography theory and related texts,and combining the characteristics of western literary geocriticism theory with the empirical evidence of Chinese literature geocriticism disciplinary,the thesis holds that western literary geocriticism is a form of interdisciplinary literary criticism with profound philosophical theoretical basis,scientific theoretical construction system and rich critical practice of many scholars,no matter from the aspects of spiritual substance,thinking path or theoretical paradigm,it has positive reference and promotion significance for the knowledge expansion,theoretical paradigm research,and disciplinary system construction in the field of Chinese contemporary literary geography criticism.It is worthy of continuous and in-depth attention and research.