Exokeanismós: The (Un)Mappability of Literature
Keywords:
ancient geography, literary cartography, fiction, mapping, spatial turn, Strabo, Eratosthenes, Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica, OdysseyAbstract
Recent applications of the “spatial turn” in literary studies naively presuppose the mappability of literature, reducing fiction to “invented events in real places”. Hence, one should recall the constitutive unmappability of literature. In the oldest extant discussion of the “spatial turn” in literature, the controversy between the geographer-philologist Eratosthenes and his successor Strabo, Eratosthenes advances exokeanismós (“out-oceanism”), a concept of “moving things to the margin of the mappable” rather than “of the earth”. The Alexandrian theory of fiction implied here seems more adequate to literature than recent Californian non-theories. Apollonius of Rhodes also implicitly discusses conflicting concepts of literature’s (un)mappabilty. Although most of his Argonautica is mappable, Apollonius differentiates between literature and navigation systems by interrupting the geographical coherence of his narrative with structural exokeanismós.References
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