Monumental Space in the Post-Imperial Novel: An Interdisciplinary Study

There has been a proliferation in recent scholarship of studies ofmonuments and their histories and of theoretical positions that shedlight on aspects of their meanings. However, just as monuments marktheir territory by attempting to ensure the existence of boundaries, sothese discourses set a boundary between their authority as platforms onwhich the interpretation of monumental space occurs and, in thisrespect, the different authority of the novel. This study crosses thisboundary by means of dynamic interdisciplinary movements betweenselected novels by James Joyce, Yukio Mishima, Rashid al-Daif, andOrhan Pamuk, on the one hand, and various theoretical perspectives,history, and cultural geography, on the other. Through the specificchoice of literary texts that represent monumental space in atypicalpost-imperial geopolitical contexts, Monumental Space and the Post-Imperial Novel brings into question many postcolonial paradigms.

Sakrestablishes a two-way interpretive methodology between theory, history,and cultural geography and the novel that serves as the groundwork forinnovative interdisciplinary readings of monumental space.