Early Modern Visions of Space

How writers respond to a cosmology in evolution in the sixteenth century and how literature and space implicate each other are the guiding issues of this volume in which sixteen authors explore the topic of space in its multiform incarnations and representations. The volume's first section features the early modern exploration and codification of urban and rural spaces as well as maritime and industrial expanses: "Space and Territory: Geographies in Texts" thus contributes to a history of spatial consciousness. The construction of local, national, political, public, and private places is highlighted in "Space and Politics: Literary Geographies"; the contributors in this segment show how built forms as architectural or literary constructions and spatial orientation are intertwined. "Space and Gender: Geopoetical Approaches" traces the experience of gender as political, territorial, and communicative exploration; the essays in this division deal with social organization and its symbolic analysis, resulting in literary texts featuring what could be called psychological production theories. The development of ethical approaches adapted to or critical of colonial expansion is analyzed in "Space and Ethics: Geocritical Ventures"; here we encounter early modern globalization where locals, explorers, immigrants, adventurers, and intellectuals remake themselves in new places, engage in or meet with resistance, or attempt to rework local sociopolitical systems while reassessing those they are familiar with. "The Space of the Book, the Book as Space: Printing, Reading, Publishing" analyzes the tactile object of the book as an arena for commerce, politics, and authorial experimentation.

Dorothea Heitsch is teaching professor in French & Francophone Studies in the Department of Romance Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the author of two monographs, Practising Reform in Montaigne's Essais (2000) and Writing as Medication in Early Modern France: Literary Consciousness and Medical Culture (2017). She has published numerous articles and is the co-editor of two collections on early modern topics. Jeremie C. Korta is visiting assistant professor of French at Miami University. He submitted his doctoral thesis, "Aesthetics of Discovery: Text, Image, and the Performance of Knowledge in the Early-Modern Book," in 2015. His research interests lie at the intersection of history of science, book history, and performance studies.