The Poetics of Geography in English-Canadian Literature
Résumé
This paper found its inception in what Barbara Godard (2000) has termed “the persistence of a geografictional imperative in Canadian fiction”, thereby suggesting that geography possesses an illocutionary force that artists relentlessly seek to capture and translate. As a result, this paper's approach rests upon the premise that references to geographical formations and processes (e. g. ‘peneplain’, ‘fault line’, ‘divide’, ‘moraine’, ‘metamorphism’, ‘erosion’, ‘foldings’ or ‘sedimentation’) acquire an additional value in fiction that exceeds their descriptive requirements. Reversing the perspective traditionally adopted in literary geography makes it possible to probe the symbolic process upon which verisimilitude relies and determine to what extent physical geography informs a distinct response to space in contemporary Canadian literature. This reorientation opens onto a series of interrogations: what blanks in conventional landscape writing may geography fill and how? Where does the efficiency of geography lie beyond its scientific accuracy or descriptive relevance? Pondering the role of geography in a work of art therefore amounts to considering what makes geography work as art – is there such a thing as a poetics of geography?
