The Plausible World: A Geocritical Approach to Space, Place, and Maps

In The Plausible World, the intersections of literature and cartography enable readers to understand that place is anything but purely geographic: a plausible world is created as a strategy to fill the void. Readers travel alongside navigators, pilgrims, literary characters, and artistic subjects as they experience the thrill of pure space through the exploration of the unknown. Here, political concerns such as the evolution in the orientation of maps, the establishment of meridians, and the naming of place in the image of the Colonizer all play out across the imagining of space and its shaping into place. Innovative in his approach, Westphal challenges the view that perceptions and representations of space are stable or straightforward.