Guiding Concepts

We hope that the following distinctions may serve as a mutual frame of reference:

1. There are places in Nordic literature (including everything from the universe to a Chinese pond) and Nordic places in literature (including those in non-Nordic literatures). These two are much to be preferred to the isolationist model: Nordic places in Nordic literature (as in Jorge Luis Borges's argument in "The Argentine Writer and Tradition"—just substitute Nordic for Argentine). Although this is crucial in principle, we still expect the vast majority of the places covered in the volume to be Nordic places as described by Nordic writers.

2. There is space in literature and literature in space, as Franco Moretti says in his Atlas of the European Novel: on the one hand, places as they are represented in literature, on the other hand, the actual places from and between which literature has been produced and distributed. (David Damrosch works in the same way in What is World Literature?).

3. Place is not cosmography (the mapping of the general features of the universe) nor is it topos (literary commonplace); instead, we would like to attach the concept of place to topography (the detailed mapping of a part of the world). (These definitions are from Ptolemy.) A place may be viewed as a relation between elements (its topography) and as part of further relations (its cosmography).

4. The relations within a place and between places may be regarded in Michel Foucault's triangular model from "Of Other Spaces" of existing and normal place, utopia (non-existing place), and heterotopia (existing but liminal place). The concept of heterotopia opens up a spatial history of power, thus encouraging a critical perspective on whatever spatial issue is at stake, but also emphasizing the impact of whatever works on the verge of everyday reality influencing this reality. The history and character of a place may very well be told from a particular heterotopia.

5. From a phenomenological perspective, place is a gathering of time and space (Casey). From the perspective of the theory of globalization, place is itself a node within a network of space and a condensation of a space that is made up of actions, movements and stories (Massey). From either perspective, time, movement and action are pivotal elements of place. Along this line, one might consider what Ottmar Ette has termed in ZwischenWeltenSchreiben the vectorialization of space: historically-layered patterns of movements that can be recalled and repeated in the present.

6. The spatial nodes are geographical points of departure within which we can move through history and on a secondary level make connections within the region. This makes it possible for each essay to trace major shifts in spatial paradigms within the triangle of theocentrism, anthropocentrism, and technocentrism that functions as a reference throughout the four volumes of the literary history (Sandberg). The "centrisms" are present in any historical period, but in varying figurations of dominance.

Bibliography

Borges, Jorge Luis. "The Argentine Writer and Tradition." The Total Library. Nonfiction 1922—1986. London: Penguin, 1999. Click HERE to download.

Casey, Edward S. "How to Get from Space to Place in a Fairly Short Stretch of Time: Phenomenological Prologomena." Senses of Place. Eds. Stephen Feld and Keith H. Basso. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 1996.

Damrosch, David. What is World Literature? Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2003.

Ette, Wolfgang. "For en transareal (litteratur)videnskab" from ZwischenWeltenSchreiben. Verdenslitterær kritik og teori. Ed. Mads Rosendahl Thomsen. Århus: Århus universitetsforlag, 2008. Click HERE to download.

Foucault, Michel. "Des espaces autres" Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité nr. 5, octobre 1984. Translated as "Of Other Spaces" Click HERE to download.

Massey, Doreen. For Space. London/Thousand Oaks/New Delhi: SAGE Publications, 2005.

Moretti, Franco. Atlas of the European Novel 1800-1900. London/New York: Verso, 1998. For excerpt, click HERE to download.

Perec, George. Espèces d'espaces. Paris: Galilée, 1974.

Sandberg, Mark. SEE OVERVIEW OF 4 VOLUMES, Click HERE to return to that page.

To return to Volume 2 START PAGE, click HERE