MAPPING LONDON IN PETER ACKROYD’S PROSE
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18485/bells.2024.16.20Keywords:
London, Peter Ackroyd, deep maps, inscriptions, traces, space, place, dwellingAbstract
There are many ways of mapping spaces. Mapmaking can be informed by various realms of knowledge – from history and culture to the sciences. Taking geography as a starting point, maps unite physical and fictional spaces as they focus on the interaction between geography and society, that is, location and culture. Disciplines like cultural geography and geocriticism explore how narratives relate to landscapes. Viewing writers as cartographers, the American writer and scholar Peter Turchi describes how stories about places map those places according to their authors’ visions. The stories about spaces provide the indispensable link between mind and space, making navigation possible. On the other hand, spatial stories make the imagined spaces “real” to readers bringing them close to their own worlds.
In his fictional world, the British writer Peter Ackroyd imagines London by building an intricate network of relationships between the location and the stories that were lived and told by the people who populated it over time. In Ackroyd’s imagination, the portrait of London is produced by the histories, memories, experiences, and daily routines of its real and fictional dwellers.
In this paper, I propose to analyze how London is fantasized and mapped in Ackroyd’s fiction. Drawing on Robert Tally’s studies in literary cartography and Bertrand Westphal’s book on real and fictional spaces, this paper aims to show how fiction contributes to mapping spaces and creating portraits of places.
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