The Geographical Imagination in Early Twentieth-Century Latvian Novels
Keywords:
Latvian literature, Latvian novel, twentieth century, literary geography, literary mapping, imagologyAbstract
The article explores the geographical imagination in Latvian novels published during the early twentieth century. We first focus on our experience and preliminary results of the literary mapping, then we turn towards representations of neighboring countries of Latvia as well as selected continents in these novels as case studies. The early twentieth century as a period of extensive migration and growing awareness of global events in Latvian society provides a rich variety of representations of foreign geographical places. By discussing the advantages and limits of literary mapping, we argue that the interpretations of Latvian novels within the perspective of the geographical imagination provide valuable knowledge for the social history of literature. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the research of geographical diversity in novels refers not only to real mobility, but also to stereotypes, therefore the acquired information might be productively used in imagological analyses.References
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