This volume moves the debate about literature and geography in a new direction by showing the significance of spatial settings in the enormous and complex field of popular fiction. Approaching popular genres as complicated systems of meaning, the collected essays model key theoretical and critical approaches for interrogating the meaning of space and place across diverse genres, including crime, thrillers, fantasy, science fiction, and romance. Including topics such as classic English ghost stories, blockbuster Antarctic thrillers, prize-winning Montreal crime fiction, J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth, and China Miéville's Bas-Lag, among others, this book brings together analyses of the real-and-imagined settings of some of the most widely read authors and texts of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries to show how they have an immeasurable impact on our spatial awareness and imagination.

Offers a complex appraisal of the significance of popular fiction by discussing an impressive range of genres Provides much-needed depth and context to readings of a range of bestselling twentieth- and twenty-first-century authors and texts. Brings together the key concepts and concerns of literary spatial studies and popular fiction studies.

Autorentext

Lisa Fletcher is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Tasmania, Australia. Her books include Historical Romance Fiction: Heterosexuality and Performativity (2008), and (with Ralph Crane) Cave: Nature and Culture (2015). Her current research focuses on twenty-first-century Australian popular fiction.

Inhalt

Introduction: Space, Place and Popular Fiction, Lisa Fletcher.- Cave Genres/Genre Caves: Reading the Subterranean Thriller, Ralph Crane and Lisa Fletcher .- Unstable Places and Generic Spaces: Thrillers Set in Antarctica, Elizabeth Leane .- Chronotopic Reading of Crime Fiction: Montréal in La Trace de l'Escargot , Marc Brosseau and Pierre-Mathieu Le Bel .- Romance in the Backblocks in New Zealand Popular Fiction, 1930-1950: Mary Scott's Barbara Stories, Jane Stafford .- The Inside Story: Jennifer Crusie and the Architecture of Love, William Gleason .- Ghost-Al Erosion: Beaches and the Supernatural in Two Stories by M. R. James, Lucie Armitt .- Pagan Places: Contemporary Paganism, British Fantasy Fiction, and the Case of Ryhope Wood, Kim Wilkins .- Tolkien's Geopolitical Fantasy: Spatial Narrative in The Lord of the Rings , Robert T. Tally Jr. .- Commuting to Another World: Spaces of Transport and Transport Maps in Urban Fantasy, David Pike .- Mapping Monstrosity: Metaphorical Geographies in China Miéville's Bas-Lag Trilogy, Robert A. Saunders.- Air Force One: Popular (Non)Fiction in Flight, Christopher Schaberg.- States of Nostalgia in the Genre of the Future: Panem, Globalization, and Utopia in The Hunger Games Trilogy, Eric D. Smith and Kylie Korsnack .- Bibliography .- Index