1st Edition
Novels, Maps, Modernity The Spatial Imagination, 1850–2000
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Orienting, Disorienting the Novel
One
On Getting Oriented
Two
Melville’s Zig-Zag World-Circle
Three
Joyce’s Geodesy
Four
Pynchon’s Baedeker Trick
Five
On Getting Lost
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Biography
Eric Bulson
"Bulson has written a volume…that provides lucid and imaginative observations on the novelistic representation of place from the mid-nineteenth century works of Charles Dickens and Herman Melville to late twentieth-century fiction by Thomas Pynchon and W.G. Sebald. Bulson’s point of departure is the seldom acknowledged importance that documents of geographical orientation—most notably maps and guide books—have played in the writing, reading, and criticism of fiction. As a work of literary criticism, Novels, Maps, Modernity is well researched, provocative, and highly readable. Not only does it offer fresh readings of three of the most widely studied novels in the Anglo-American canon, but it provides new ways of looking at any novelistic representation of geographical place." –Jon Hegglund, Washington State University, Modern Philology
