In this event Dr Jon Anderson explored the relations between human geography and literature. He introduced how pages and places can be understood relationally, focusing on the active role that literature plays in constructing our understandings of place, and how the page becomes the location through which the agency of the reader, author, imaginative space and material location creates new relational cartographies.
The talk suggested the concept of ‘plot’ as one means to conceptualise this approach. ‘Plot’ suggests how text and territory should not be considered as separate and discrete, but rather as thoroughly entangled in nature. The talk illustrated its argument through cases of fictional writing set in Cardiff.
These examples are taken from the monograph ‘Page and Place: Ongoing Compositions of Plot’ which explores these issues using examples from novels based in Wales.