Abstract
The Enlightenment is held to mark a transition from utopias set in a remote location to those set in the future, as in modern science fictions. Since the evocation of space is an important narrative tool, this raises questions about the nature of geographical representation in literary utopias, and continuities and differences that can be observed between pre- and post-Enlightenment works. This chapter explores these questions as part of a general introduction to utopian geography. Following a brief review of some recent approaches, I examine the ideological significance of imaginative geographies in a small selection of pre- and post-Enlightenment works. I conclude that utopia is a spatial literary form and that the modern works discussed here complicate traditional spatial comparisons with additional worlds and show a greater interest in the particularity of place.
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Benison, L. (2022). Geographical Poetics. In: Marks, P., Wagner-Lawlor, J.A., Vieira, F. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Utopian and Dystopian Literatures. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88654-7_42
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88654-7_42
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